Chapter to the Agnostic and the 24 Things in the Big Book – Earl H.

Hi, everybody. My name is Earl. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Earl. Hi. All right? All right. Oh, God. First I want to thank Steve and Guy And Annette For the honor And the privilege of coming down here To speak at an event like this It's always These are life-giving events For somebody like me I mean, I'm just Maniacal in my life And I could get pulled out of that And thrown on a plane And delivered to paradise once in a while And it just healed me It's a wonderful experience And I also want to thank the speakers that have spoken here so far this week, Clancy and Johnny and Paul and Tom, who had to take back off again for their talks. Always fed by those guys. I mean, my opinion is that if you can't hear the message out of those guys, you're not paying attention, man. That's some powerful stuff. as for me I started drinking when I was 12 years old I'm going to get sober as fast as I can you can do that now I started drinking when i was 12 year old kind of a late start according to some of the people from where I'm from but the first time anybody offered me a drink was when I Was 12 years Old and I said, yeah, I'd like a drink having no idea what that meant I didn't know that I had been restless, irritable and discontented for some years already that I was in desperate need of a drink I just was a kid that they'd done a bunch of IQ tests on me and determined that I have a very high IQ I'm not bragging because I don't have it anymore It's gone. I was gone by 15. That was a thing of the past. So they shipped me off to boarding school without informing me that they were going to do this. I just was deposited in a car, driven for hours. They pulled over, got out of the car. My father got out Of the car I wondered why no one else was getting out of The car He put a suitcase down next to me, shook my hand and said, This will make a man out of you. Got back In the car and drove off And I was suspended the next four and a half years there fact is I was given an opportunity for a terrific education the feeling was that I'd just been thrown away by the people who knew me best and I had no idea why it was a devastating moment for me and I remember I was in a lot of pain, emotional pain for like three days which was about as far as I could get I just couldn't be in that kind of pain any longer it was as if something broke inside me and I just said you know what, you don't want me, I don't wants you and I turned my back on my family and never looked back I stayed there, I had no tools for living I mean how many tools do you need at 12? people tell you when to get up, when to eat, whento study, when you go to school I mean at this campus like 84 bells a day went off and they all meant something I mean this was an unbelievable place but it was a whole new world for me and I was the youngest and smallest kid of 250 young boys from all over the world and it was like Lord of the Flies in this place It was a bunch of very bright, very disturbed young men. And they scoured the earth for the most disturbed of us and thrown us into this campus. And we were just crazy. And I needed some tools to be in this place and deal with these people. And I want to remember ever feeling was terrified. And the first tool I got was violence. I ran into Tiny. Every high school's got a guy named Tiny. Tiny's 6'4", 240, plays on the football team. He found me. I didn't find him. and he came up to me and slapped me in the back of the head and said how you doing punk and you know I mean I had no experience that you know worked here so I just walked up and hit him and he looked down at me and he said you got a lot of guts and he beat the crap out of me right there and I remember thinking as I'm getting this beating that this is going pretty good this is doing well because the fact is is I was terrified of this guy and he had just said you got allot of guts so the violence had masked my fear and I thought that, you know, got to remember that. Went back to my room, word spread across the campus like wild, you know in 30 minutes everybody on campus knew, watch out for this little Hightower kid, he's a maniac, he attacks tiny. So now I got a reputation that's got absolutely nothing to do, just the hole's getting deeper as far as I can tell. I'm 12 years old, sinking into my first real deep depression sitting in my room and the cool guys started coming around. Matt came by and said, you want to smoke a joint I said well yeah had no idea what he was talking about I had no idea what that meant all I heard was we're going over here do you want to come with us and I needed to hook up as far as I could tell I was alone in the universe so I said yeah and we swung by and picked up Steve and we went behind the dorm and Steve had a little container full of cheap red wine no grapes involved had fortified stuff and Matt lit the joint took a hit off of it and handed it to me and I just did what he did and the wine came around and I took a pull on the wine and this thing's gone. I have no idea why we're standing here. You know, I'm two complete strangers and I'm ingesting two completely unknown substances. I have no idea but I mean it's the nature of my life at this point and all of a sudden it happened. That part of me that's bodily different from my fellows kicked in and suddenly it occurred to me that this could work out. This wasn't going nearly as bad as I thought. It'd be pretty good. And I didn't know what it was. I didn'T know, is it the pot? Is it the wine? Is it my two best friends, Matt and Steve, that I'm with that I feel this close personal bond with suddenly? I don'T know what IT is. All I know is is that I FEEL better than I've ever felt in my life. For the first time, I feel comfortable standing where I'M standing doing what I'M doing with the people I'M DOING it with. I never felt that before and I thought, you know, and I have to remember there was no downside to this. they didn't pull up a car and take me to jail I didn't go to the nut house these things would happen much later this was the beginning there was no downside no repercussions to doing this and I thought I saw no reason not to do this as often as I possibly could I just felt wonderful and I did every day for the next 16 years no matter what given a good I was given many good reasons along the way to stop this behavior and I never even touched the brake pedal you know what I mean and I just kept flying right by. That's the difference between me and a problem drinker. You give a problem drinking a good reason to stop, you'll actually do it. Me, I don't even slow down. That doesn't affect me. This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. Nothing has ever made me feel this good. I've got to go with it. I'm willing to pay the price, whatever that price may be. And the degree of the price that I paid increased so gradually that it sort of eased me into the next level you know what i mean by the time it got to the point where you're probably going to die you have no friends you have no family you have a place to live i'd had 16 years of easing into that so when by the term i got there was like okay you know i can accept that but it was a gradual process 13 with pills and he kind of organized like a pill was because the guy came up to me said would you like a couple of these and i said well yeah i would took him 20 minutes later i was laying on the ground i was very happy down there And I thought, this is good. I feel good. So I took all kinds of pills. At 14, I started doing psychedelics. Now, I've got to qualify at this point that I talk about drugs in my story, but I identify as an alcoholic. And the reason for that is that drugs led me to alcohol and alcohol led me here. I'm a child of the 60s, and we were very, very focused on the drugs because that was what was hip, that was wat was fashionable, that was wot was cool, that's wat separated us from our parents, which is really wat we were all about. Our parents were the alcoholics, and we weren't going to drink ourselves to death like our parents had. We were going to kill ourselves in a whole new way, going to find our own way to destroy our lives. So we were very focused on the drugs. But the fact of the matter is that having done my inventory work and looked back on my life, what I understand as true is this. The drugs would come and go. Nobody was committed to drugs. The only thing that was on the table every single day was booze. That was the only thing that was always on the tab. and the reason for that in my opinion is because booze is reliable drugs are extremely unreliable i mean there's no quality control going on out there you have no idea what you're getting when you go buy a eight ball of this or you know pound to that or whatever you're gonna whatever you're buying everybody's got the best it's the greatest oh yeah yeah yeah you're going to love it you're probably going to have to cut it again i mean it's just a lie man it's nothing but live you never know what you've got till you've gotten in your body and on occasion that's too late. You go get yourself a quart of gin or a fifth of Jack Daniels, you're set. You can count on what this is going to do. And so it was the great equalizer. It was the stabilizer. It stabilized everything else we were doing. You didn't have enough heroin to get you through the night? Don't worry about it. Jack Daniel's will get you the rest of the way. You've done so much cocaine, you can't get your mouth open anymore. You just, oh, don't worry. You suck a little gin or your teeth you'll be alright you'll loosen up and go on with the party it's just the nature of booze my best friend even in the 60s even while I focused on drugs I knew what I could rely on and it was alcohol so alcohol was a daily occurrence for me everything else was just what do you got that was my drug of choice what do ya got show up all ready to do a lot of heroin we don't have any we have cocaine which is the complete opposite direction and I just fine let's go there we'll go up instead of down today I don't care I just got to get out of right here. Right here is bad. Right? Here is uncomfortable Right here. It's filled with fear remorse anxiety I gotta get out here want to blast me into the stratosphere fine You want to down under that what my favorite place is just heart and lungs working that heart and lung Nothing else is happening. No emotion. No feeling nothing going on your heart is beating you're breathing air. It good And alcohol is the best at that alcohol is a bastard getting you there And the beauty of alcohol is blackouts too Not only do you get to go there But you get a chance But you also get to do absolutely absurd things And have no memory of it whatsoever I was always fine with blackouts If I wasn't in jail and I wasn' t in the hospital It went fine That was my criteria for a good run or a bad run So anyway I did about 650 acid trips Got classified legally insane by the military started shooting dope when I was 15 and I wasn't seeking these things out I was just running in the appropriate circles so that I would be at a party and somebody would say would you like me to this girl came by and said would you want me to stick this in you and I said yeah, I would I had learned that when people ask me these questions it was always good to just say yes because good things happen so she slammed me with this stuff and my head hit the table and all I remember thinking on the way down was just yeah oh yeah this will work it's a beautiful new color for the paint box that's what that was and every day was just about opening the paintbox and what colors do we use today what combination do we put together to kill the fear because that's all I'm doing here I'm not, I'm just killing fear I'm trying to get enough going on inside me things calmed down enough evened up enough so that I can get out the door and try and function at all in the world that's All I Was Doing 16, I started going to the nut houses I dropped out of high school my father came back in my life said you've obviously lost your mind threw me in a nut house for three months of observation and a year of rehabilitation I thought that was a little excessive I started trying to talk my way out of the joint, I tried to escape found out that escape from mental institutions is very difficult when you have a lot of thoracine in your body I'm shuffling around in there for weeks, you know what I mean and I finally decided it's time to make the break I'm in the dining room having lunch with Kilday, KildAY was the best person to have meals with because Kilday was completely insane and you could just get her spinning at the drop of a hat she would just go nuts so every meal was like dinner on the show when you had Kildays eat your meal and watch Kildey lose her mind so I had my she was my diversion and I sent Kildae spinning off in that direction and I was going to bust out and ready ready GO! and I'm hauling ass that's all I got the arms are working I'm trying and from the on the loudspeaker from the nurse's station you hear uh Ed when you got a minute whenever you want to grab Earl he's making a break for the door you know Ed's over there having a sandwich going yeah yeah yeah I'll get him in a minute no hurry at least another 20 minutes to the door for him now most people would give up there I mean I just filed that for future reference I mean in my life my tools for living were drugs alcohol violence and run and if you're gonna live my life you gotta know you're going to get thrown in the nuthouse, you've got to get out before they get the thorsing and you're leaving when they say so the next time I got thrown in the nathouse, I escaped the first day I was in the intake interview I didn't even have my room yet oh yeah, I'm terrible, I really glad I'm here it was rough out on the street hey look at that and I took off to the place and the whistles start and the bells start and pandemonium breaks loose and I head out across this lawn for this fence and I've got an intern right on my tail he's hooping it he gets like extra points or something if he catches me and i'm making it and i mean if that i'm running across the lawn at that point in my life i'm an alcoholic i'm a drug addict i mean i'm high school dropout i'm in any moment hopefully an escaped mental patient it's like my resume this is all i have to say for myself and all i'm thinking is is that if i make that fence i don't have any problems i have no problems if i made that fence because i'll be drunk in 20 minutes. And that's all that matters. Because I drink no matter what. It's like, I hate that thing that they tell newcomers and they tell newcomers, just don't drink. Just don't drink. Thanks. Thank you. I feel much better now. When the demon strikes in the middle of the night, I'll just remember that I shouldn't drink now. It is like saying, just say no to me. You know what I mean? It just misses the point completely. Because on the flip side of that if i could do that i would but i can't i drink no matter what you give me a good reason i just keep right on going that's the difference between me and the problem drinker gets a drunk driving charge again goes before the judge judge says you know what i'm sick of you i see you again you're doing a year we're not going to talk about it no discussion you're doing ayear we'll see in a year and we'll talk down probably make her think i don't want to go to jail actually stops drinking and driving me i start wondering what it's going to be like in jail because i'm going i know i'm gone i'm gonna get another one i'm i appreciate the information thank you for the help i'll kind of work that into the schedule get up have breakfast go to jail for a year so anyway 16 i got out of night escape from the nut house i spent three years out on the street doing what you do to stay loaded on a daily basis no big mystery not a friendly place but i was committed i was clear of purpose what i do is i drink and i'm going to do whatever it takes to keep that going because i can't function in the world without it i can be i'm too afraid i can measure up i compare my insides to your outsides and i lose every time i'm just too frightened a person to be out in the world doing the thing i was always just amazed even when i was a kid in school and i would walk into a classroom before i ever took a drink and i would see people talking to each other in the classroom before the class started i just would think how do they do that how did they do this i was self-centered and afraid at birth probably i don't know i mean it just i was always that way i don t remember ever being any other way um did three years out on the streets turned 19 met a woman at the party we talked for 20 minutes it went pretty well so we were in love and we decided that you know we didn't really have this kind of aussie inheritance thing going you know what i mean I mean, we didn't see ourselves hooking up. I was a maniac. And she found that attractive. So we were a real pair. And we decided that we had to do something about our lives. So I heard that they were doing interviews for a business college in Northern California. Steve and I are alumni of that institution of higher learning. And so I went on this interview. I mean I'm a high school dropout. You know, I have no high school diploma. I'm on a college interview suddenly. And the guy, he was a musician, so I was a musician. His favorite color was blue. You know, that's remarkable. My favorite color is blue. I just lined up with this guy and an hour and a half later he said, you will be a fantastic addition to our campus in the fall. Great, I'm in college now. I went back to see my father. I said, look, I just got accepted to business college. Don't ask. If you write me a check for the tuition for a year I'm leaving town. To which he replied, beautiful. So I gave him a check and me and this woman piled all our belongings and eight pounds of hash and got in this truck and went to Northern California to hire learning. And I started studying marketing and production and distribution. I immediately became a drug dealer and was applying these concepts to my business. Business was booming. She got a straight job. Um, she started saying things to me like, um, I'm too high, which makes no sense to me at all. I mean, you can say that it's not true. You know, I was wanting to tone it down and I knew this woman's got to go. So we shipped her back to L.A., and I was just drinking and using the way I wanted to, which was from when I came to in the morning until I passed out at night. I was going to college. I had this business that was booming. And I looked back on it, and I realized I was just this person adrift in the world. I had no sense of family, no sense of community, no connection to any other outside person or group or organization or anything. I was just adrift out there. And everybody around me was around me as a result of the things we were trafficking in i mean that was pretty much why everybody was around and i knew then if this dries up all these people are gone they'll just shift to the next connection um but it was the best i could do is the best I had and when I was 20 I got diagnosed they have malignant cancer and I flew back to LA and I had major surgery on my upper back and they put me in the nuclear medicine program and they told me I was probably going to die and they tell my family I was going to and I just remember thinking you people don't even know who you're talking to you know that comes up like twice a week for me the way i'm using i mean i was using hammer and tong at that point a lot of i was starting to overdose starting to take the ambulance ride starting to get the stomach pumped every now and then it was getting it was heating up um so they did this surgery and they put me in the nuclear medicine program and i didn't like the drugs they had that they were shooting me up with so i just stopped and went back to my house and got loaded the way i get loaded and i beat the cancer thing basically i believe because i was so toxic at that point cancer could not live in my body i was i was more diseased than cancer it was cancer just now go somewhere else and i went um went back up to school and i was a junior in college i was editor-in-chief of my college newspaper you know i had an early acceptance to go to usc law school i'd lined it all up pretty good you know what i mean i was on i i was in communication with my mother who was a dear dear woman um and had always remained very close to my little sister kimberly who was 15 months younger than me and she wasn't she didn't really belong to my parents kimberly was mine i was her big brother and it was the pride of my life that i was kimberly's big brother and she was very proud of me and it it was really um the greatest example of unconditional love I've ever experienced in my life the way she loved me because I was a maniac I was causing problems in every direction and she just loved me I was her big brother when she had problems she brought him to me and she didn't take him to her parents she came to me. She had started to attend this college with me as well I'd gone to school up north and when she graduated from high school she came up to the same school and we were up there together and And it made me feel wonderful that this little girl looked up to me. It was the pride of my life, this little sister of mine, Kimberly. And when I was 21, almost 22, my mother called me and said, look, we haven't been anywhere as a family in 10 years. To which I replied something to the effect of, yeah. And she started to cry and said look, we need to go somewhere with the family. We'll go anywhere you want to go. Let's go somewhere for your birthday. So I said all right. So I flew back to Los Angeles on the night of November 6th, 1974, used all night long, showed up at 6 a.m. on November 7th, 1974, my 22nd birthday, and unable to get my mouth open, just locked down, and piled in the car, went down to the airport, got in my father's plane, and took off to fly to Guadalajara, come down here to Mexico. And on the way to here, the plane crashed, and my mother, my father, and our little sister were all killed. And I wasn't. And I woke up on a mountain about 250 miles from here, in Los Mochos, Mexico. And my skull was fractured and my back was broken in three places. And I paralyzed from the waist down and my leg was... The only thing I could move was my right arm. I was just torn to bits. And I was awake. And i laid there and I watched them all bleed to death in front of me. And I quit. I quit It's kind of weird to talk about this today because I'm so close, you know? The only people I'll ever come to Mexico with are Steve, Guy, and Annette. I feel safe with them. I had never been here. I had Never come back to Mexico until I started doing these trips with Steve and Guy and Annett. Anyway, I pretty much quit the game. I mean, a few hours later, some guys came up and scavenged the plane wreck and took the money out of my wallet and took whatever else they needed and left the mountain and left me up there to die. So I had no use for you anymore. I had No Use for People. and I had no use for a God that would take somebody like my little sister and leave a lying, cheating, thieving, dope fiend alcoholic like me on the planet it just made no sense to me at all I wanted no part of it and I quietly on that mountain renounced God renounced my fellow man and just said I'm going to get out of this mountain and I'm gonna play it the way I want to play it the need for pretense is gone I'm gunna drink and use the way I wanna drink and us and if you don't like what I'm doing get outa the way cause nobody's stopping me from doing what I want the governor was off and I kept banging myself in the side because it hurt so bad because I was shocking out and I knew I was going to die and they finally came up and got me and they took me in a flatbed truck down to a Mexican Red Cross station tagged my right toe and waited for me to die and I didn't so they finally took me to the hospital and kept me under I was under guard by the federales for three and a half, four and a hal days I don't really remember with an interpreter and they interrogated me due to they wanted to know why I was back in Mexico it's a totally unrelated matter we don't need to get into now and i uh i finally got out of there and i got back up to southern california and spent a lot of time in the hospital and i got out of there horribly addicted to demerol i'd been on maximum doses of demerol every three hours around the clock and because i had a story here that i could really work i was getting everything i wanted in the hospital they weren't holding back anything they just give me whatever i wanted poor boy poor boy what he's been through you know and i worked at for years i mean i was the kind of guy man if i was in your house drinking your wine and drinking your gin and snorting your cocaine and grinding my cigarettes out in your carpet and just being a complete madman and you came up to me and said you know what man you're using you're out of line you need to ease it back a notch i could i'd pull it out on you i'd say anything to anybody i said look at this i got cancer you got cancer i'm dealing with i'm under a lot of stress here you know they just think geez i'm like fine give him another drink fine they just talk away and if the cancer didn't work on you had to say i got this dead family see this dead family got a lot pain inside me and i'm trying to medicate the pain who you got a dead family you've been through anything like this now that pretty much covered 99.9 of the people i ran into which point they'd say give them another drink i mean and that's a very sick thing to say to another human being and if you think that's sick you're getting the point i had this disease it's called alcoholism i will say or do whatever is necessary if you start to cut me off you frighten me when you fright me you activate all my defects of character and i will say her do whatever it is necessary to get you out of the way so i can get back to the bar and that's what i was willing to do and there was nothing sacred as far as i was concerned so i got out of that hospital and i got a lot of money from the plane crash and i went on my last run and it lasted for four and a half years and i drew a sober breath on three separate occasions during that four and a half years they were for 72 hours each and it was because i was strapped to a table they would strap me down shoot me full of anti-convulsants in this little pseudo sanitarium in hollywood where you give them 150 cash up front i mean these places don't like i mean highly illegal joints right you'd go in and you'd give them your bottle of valium and your car keys and your wallet and your gun and your 150 cash they take you into a room and and strap you down, shoot you full anti-convulsants, hang an IV on you and let you ride. And 72 hours later they'd either send you to the morgue or send you home. And you'd lay in there screaming and hallucinating and just going through it and saying, you know, reintroducing yourself to God. God, me again, I know it's been a while but I seem to be losing my mind. And I'm very, very uncomfortable here. You know, I haven't had a muscle relax in about 34 hours now. If you get me out of this sane and alive I'll swear to you I will never, ever, ever touch and drop alcohol again as long as i live and i mean it with every fiber of my being mean it with ever fiber of mine being and when that's 72 hours over i'd go back to that nurse's station and she'd give me back my stuff in my valley into my wallet and she's car keys and she'll say now you be a good boy don't drink girl and i'd say no ma'am i know when i'm licked i can't do this anymore man the party is over and i go out in the car and on the way the card take about 30 40 milligrams of allen because i was shaking and you shouldn't drive when you're shaking And I get that valium in me and I'd be driving home and I and the next thing you know, I'd wake up an Oakland Be four days later. I'd being open and if driving down this freeway It happened driving down the freeway in a car before the people have no idea who they are Big roll of money in my pocket. I've no idea where that came from crazy Thinking how did that happen had no idea how it happened? The thing was is that I knew I was an alcoholic I'd known that for a long time now So what that's who I am knowing that I was an alcoholic meant nothing to me That was just the name. I put on the life I was living it was I was very comfortable with anybody saying to me that guy's a hopeless alcoholic fine I'm doing this till I die anyway, what's the problem? You know, just stay out of my way You like what I'm going get out of the way So that went for four and a half years by the time that four and half years was up I had my family was dead. I had no friends left I had one guy left on the face of the planet who would talk to me. He would meet me at a park He would not let me come to his house anymore. His name was Albert Davies and I still talked to him occasionally. It's a good friend Not one of us Had no money, I had no place to live. I was 215 pounds. I with bright yellow I was dying of alcoholism literally. I had two physicians independent of one another i kept going to them and saying i feel really bad and they kept saying well you're an alcoholic and if you don't stop drinking you're going to die and you're gonna do it soon systems in your body are starting to shut down or you've got to stop we need to put you in the hospital now and i'd say no no no and i just go on about my way um i had about i had between 600 700 stitches in me at that point i'd been stabbed a couple of times shot out i'd broken 75 bones i mean I mean, I had just burned it to the ground. No money, no friends, no family, no place to live. Very little grasp of reality. I mean I couldn't distinguish between fantasy and reality. I'd come to and I didn't know if I thought it, somebody told it to me, if I dreamt that, if I saw it on TV. I just didn't now. It was all becoming real blurry for me. And I came out of my last blackout and I had a moment of clarity. And I was sitting on the edge of a bed with about six half-gallon white wine bottles in front of me. I'm not a wine drinker. And they were all there and they were empty. And I had that wine hangover working where every fiber of my being was screaming at me. Both my hands were broken and we were being evicted because apparently I had attempted to murder the landlord for some reason. And I just threw up my broken paws and I had hair out like this and a beard out like that and I was psychotic and I just said, help. I mean, the moment of clarity was I was completely alone in the world and it wasn't the knowing that that broke me it was the feeling i felt that aloneness for the first time there was no i couldn't get enough booze in me to stop that feeling from just driving through me like a spike and i just said help and they took me to the uh by an ambulance to an emergency room they pumped my stomach and they said get him out of here he's gonna die that was just a pathetic drunk a waste of a human being to them that's where i was and they put me in a car and they took me another place and they kept me for five more days and they say he's getting worse get them out of here. And they took me by ambulance down to Long Beach General Hospital under the care of a woman by the name of Dr. Vicki Fox. And she was a piece of work, man. I did 12 more days of detox there and then 30 days of rehab on a free bed because I was just a broken alcoholic. And she took a cotton to me because I Was the one that would sit in my chair and hold onto my chair and try not to throw another seizure. I mean, that's what my detox was, was just don't seize again. And I was sitting in this chair and I was holding onto my chair. And I would just sit and hold on to my chair until they'd take me and put me back in a bed and they'd do what they do and then they'd bring me back out and see how long I could sit in the chair without flipping out onto the floor. And she came walking in the room. It was the first time I ever saw her. She had a, she was a something, man. She was this woman from Georgia and she had this hair piled up on her head with a pencil stuck in it and glasses on a chain around her neck and she always wore this sweater and a big stack of files under her arm at all times and she has a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth that never left her. She lied it and smoked it. Never take it out. this leader right there so she always had ashes on the files and on her sweater and she was the kind of person when she'd walk into the room and it'd be like 30 of us you know i mean you know we'd have like 20 guys fresh out of jail 10 you know eight nine guys off the street you know plus me nope and she'd walking through and everybody just she'd walked in and she walked into the room and she looked around and she took a beat on me man and i stopped breathing when she and she walk right over to me and she reached down and she patted me on the cheek and she said Baby, you really do need to be here And turned around and walked away And I just went, yeah I mean there was something about that moment Where there was nothing to discuss You need to me here Pay attention And I did And I had a counselor This guy named Ray W Who had like 8 years at the time And he got one thing through my head I mean it was just I was crazy If you drink you'll die And if you don't want to drink better go to a so through when i got out of there through a series of weird circumstances i ended up in a meeting of alcoholics i did not immediately get it and go directly to aa i didn't get it i can't it had never crossed my path i came to aa to meet a woman with all that information i came taa to meet woman i had met this woman she said yeah let's hook up but uh i go to these meetings why don't you meet me there we'll have a cup of coffee afterwards i said cool so i showed up at the back of an aa meeting on a friday night and i sat in the back with my arms folded with the toughest meanest look i could muster which is pretty funny because i'm not a tough guy never have been and ever will be what i've been is very frightened and extremely violent that's all i am never been a tough gut i'm sitting in the back and although guys with some time they knew who i was they knew that i was dangerous only because i was so frightened and they said from across room glad you're here buddy coffee's right over there get yourself a seat we'll be starting a meeting pretty soon you know i just nod and go over get my cup of coffee you know shaking terrified sitting in the back but every meeting's got a new guy you know with six or nine months it just caught fire where they ain't gonna give it away tonight and all he saw was new guy so he came flying across the room at me with his hand out i just remember feeling so helpless i mean the truth for me is that i couldn't come to alcoholics anonymous any other way than just destroyed no other way if i had any place else left to go i'd have gone there i'd never let that guy get across the room with me because i didn't know how to deal with human beings i didn' have any idea i'd been underground my whole life i didn''t get it i didn ''t know how to do the simplest stuff and i figured the person who knew me best in the world was my father and he threw me away why would you want to keep me so i got to just shut up and be here i can't let anybody know who i am or what's going on inside me because you'll throw me away and i gotta know where to go so i sat in the back and this guy came up and he's a big smile on his face i hated that smiling he said hi i'm vegas i'm an alcoholic and i said so what me too pal and it ain't exactly the highlight of my life i don't know what you're so thrilled about get away from me and he looked at me and said keep coming back hey thanks that'll help about 3am when i'm losing my mind one more time i'll remember to to keep coming back. And I'm sitting there thinking, this isn't going to work. This is stupid. It's stupid. These people have no idea who's sitting in here with them. If they ever knew some of the things I'd done, they'd call the police. I was so filled with shame of who I was. And the meeting started and things were happening and I had no idea what was going on. And all of a sudden there was this old guy up at the podium. Skid Row bum, why no xboxer i mean i remember it was like it just drilled into me and i thought i'm none of those things this guy doesn't know about me what first of all if you're five years older or five years younger than me you don't know About Me you come up in another thing you black hispanic gay a woman you don' t know about Me you Come Up In Something Else Not Better Or Worse Just Different You Don't Know About Me I Spot The Differences Between Me And You Like That Man I Can Pick It Up Immediately Talk To Me For 10 Seconds I'll Spot Something I Don't Have To Listen to you i got so good at that out there by the time i got the wagon circle so tight by the time i was like if you're not earl you don't understand did you were doing something else and now i got this boxer skid row bum wino 65 year old guy up there what's the point of this right but i had nowhere to go so i just sat there and he changed it for me he gave me something i hadn't had in years he stood up there and talked openly and honestly about his feelings as a man He did it with dignity. He did it with self-respect. He talked about how there were days that he'd wake up and his head was chewing him to pieces. And while his head was doing that, he would get up, he would get dressed, he Would drive to work, he would be there on time, he'd give an honest day's labor for an honest day's wage, he didn't get himself something to eat, he would go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, not to see what they had to give him tonight, but to see What he could do for the people that were at that meeting, the new people. He would go To a meeting Of Alcoholics Anonymous to give away What had freely been given to him to be of service and then he would go home and he would get in bed and he'd finish his day no wreckage and i thought that's amazing i had never done that in my life anything even remotely like that and then it was like he looked right at me and he said you know what i don't care whether you like what i got to say or not you don't like it go to another meeting i love this I love this because it made it real clear to me he's not selling me anything he's sharing it with me if I want it, I can have it it's mine, take it if I don't need it, go to another meeting I'm sure they'll have something there for you I thought this place is cool, I'm coming back and I left there with something I hadn't had in years I left with a little bit of hope because I'm a hopeless alcoholic I came here with none hadn't heard any for years and this guy gave it to me and I thought, this is cool I'm going to go back next Friday night and I'm gonna hear that guy talk again because I didn't know I thought that meeting that was the guy that spoke at that meeting and you would go there and that guy would talk and you'd listen to him and I thought he was great so I went back to the meeting and this lady was talking I thought what the hell's going on is something wrong with the guy I thought he must be sick they got a lady talking and she talked and I started listening you know eavesdropping I was burglarizing conversations everywhere I went I just eavesdrop and didn't hear what they were talking about and they were talking all kinds of nonsense they were talking one day of time keep coming back turn it over it's meant nothing to me i hated that stuff because it made me feel separate and apart from it made me feel less than i thought they all understand the deep spiritual significance of one day at a time keep Coming Back Turn It Over no idea what these people are talking about and they had a way of telling it to me that made it clear that this is deep pay attention Turn It over the hell is that i feel like a total loser now all right if you're new and people whipping that AA things on you, you know what I mean? Just step up to the plate. Just a suggestion. Next time somebody says to you, hey, keep coming back, buddy. Say to them, excuse me, I don't understand the deep spiritual significance of keep comingback. Would you mind expanding on that for me a little bit? Well, from my turf, if they're honest, about 75 or 80% of them would say, you know, I don' t really know what it means either. You know, they said it to me when I came in. I'm just saying it to you. You know what? And there's a guy over there reads the big book. Why don't we go ask him? Maybe he'll know. Just my opinion. So I started going to meetings and I heard what they said and they started talking to me and they were very good to me. They were very good for me because I was, I wouldn't let anybody near me. Wouldn't let anyone touch me. I was like a shadow guy. I wanted to go with you but don't touch me, don't talk to me, just let me be there. That's all I can do and they They let me. I mean, I was the guy that would come with you and... Oh, no, no. All right. And I had to keep my distance because I was afraid. It was six and a half years before anybody knew where I lived in AA. I just wasn't hooking up. I didn't open my mouth in AA for two and a halve years. I didn' t take a chip. Never took a chip, didn' T take a cake until I was three years sober, never said a word till two and half. And the only reason I did is my sponsor told me, You're going to share or you're going to drink, and you're the first speaker here next Saturday night. I said, all right. And I did it because he knew how to talk to me. Anytime I'd take exception to something he'd say, he'd stay fine and drink. There's no talking to these people. You know what I mean? You're trying to have a discussion with your sponsor and he just goes right to the drink thing. There's not talking to him. So I would do it. I would be like, I would go to the bar and do it and I'll... Next thing I know, I had a sponsor. I had an ambitious sponsor. The man was vicious. He would just yell at me. He never talked to me, he just yelled. And little did I realize it was good because it was so loud in my head I couldn't even hurt him unless he yelled. I mean, there was one night we were at Ohio Street on a Saturday night and he was the secretary of the meeting. The late, great Donald Madden saved my life. The man, God came back in my life as a result of Donald Maddon. Donald Maddan was the messenger there. I came to believe that Alcoholics Anonymous was something that I could be in and I could participate in as a results of the message that Donald Madman brought to me, as a resultado of the example that Donald Magdan brought to my life, he saved my live. I trusted no other human being in the face of the earth but that one man for two and a half years and he rebuilt me from the ground up I remember one night I had this cleanup commitment I was two and a half years sober I was standing in the back of the meeting I was just caving in it was one of those days just standing back there just caved in I'm no good I'll never be any good this is never going to work I'm never going make it and the speaker was up speaking and Donald saw me and he got up and he walked up to the front of the meet and interrupted the speaker and the speak stepped aside and he went and I just in the back of the meeting and he said, we're having a meeting God is right, we are having a meet and he just brought the speaker back and went back to his seat and nobody knew who I was what the hell is Earl, what's going on I've been there for two and a half years he knew who he was dealing with he was an amazing man and I did everything that guy told me to do everything. I bitched, I kicked, I screamed and I did it because he told me you don't have to like what I tell you and you don' t have to think it's a good idea. You just have to do it. So I'd voice my displeasure and then I would do what he said to do and my life started to change and things got better and better and then it got a little crazy for me again because all of a sudden I got a car that other people are willing to get in. I have an apartment that you could actually say, you know, would you like to come over to my house and have a cup of coffee? I could actually do that. You know, I had clothes that pretty well matched up. I knew the rent was going to get paid on time A job had turned into a career And it was starting A little public relations thing was going And I was, you know The gift of gab was paying off You know what I mean? I was starting to speak a little bit And Iwas being an AA And Iwas sponsoring some guys Talking to my sponsor on a daily basis Going to seven or nine meetings a week Taking out a couple of panels Never turning down any requests Man, I was in the game And I started losing it And I went up to this old timer And I said, what's the deal, man? I don't get it He said, Earl! Saw you come in If you don't give me a program you're going to die, go away what the hell are you talking about seven or nine meetings a week got a sponsor blah blah blah Earl that's the fellowship vital to your recovery the program however is in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous if you don't get involved with the program you're gonna die,go away alright you old bastard I'll get a program me and my buddy got the book and we started going through the book reading the book,reading the book reading the big books I was stunned who knew Who knew? Remarkable book. Talked all about me. Every page I was going, well, yeah, I identify with that, that's right. Read the doctor's opinion, found out. Obsession of the mind, allergy to the body. Ah, spiritual malady, manifesting itself in a physical and emotional manner. Oh, oh, yeah. That's exactly what seems to be going on here. First eight pages of the Bill story. Wow. I relate completely with this guy. I mean, he just overshot the mark by so far. It's unbelievable. And I'm relating to him. And I was in. I was In. Some emotional sobriety started to go along with the physical sobrietry that I was experiencing. And I started to feel better. And I just did the things I said in the book. I mean that little circle with a triangle came into play. That ancient spiritual symbol stands for mind, body and spirit brought together as a whole human being. And therein lies the balance that I had always sought and never had. Drunk or sober. I didn't have it sober either. Just a maniac running from meeting to meeting to meeting and running around. You know what I mean? There was nothing, I mean the inner work had not been done. Yeah some stuff had rubbed off. Yeah some understanding had come. But that grass roots gut level commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous and the spiritual path that's discussed in that book had not taken hold in me yet. And I was the kind of guy that was going to get it or die. So I jumped in. First up triangle was unity. That's the body. Unity, recovery and service. my body spirit unity is the body bring it here i can't get sober but we can i have to be with you if i'm out there deciding on my own what's a good idea a bad idea i'm doomed i got 16 years of experience that says that's not gonna work i've gotten two things right in my entire life one was to drink for somebody like me to drink was an excellent idea the only other thing i ever got right was that i made a decision to take the advice of someone else over my best thinking that was a great idea and I had continued to do that with Donald I was in meetings all the time the recovery of the mind is the greater aspect of my disease because for me at that point it's not about stopping drinking it's about not starting again how do I not start again how do i relieve myself from the obsession to drink how doI quiet that voice in my head that says a couple of drinks won't hurt you a couple drinks could be a good idea and that popped up every now and again to my amazement so I worked the steps That's what the recovery of the mind is about. The steps are designed to bring about a whole new state of mind for me, to relieve me of the obsession to drink. A spiritual awakening is what that's going to take. So I did the steps. Step one is, what's the problem? Lack of power. It's my dilemma. I'm powerless over this thing. Left to my own devices, I'll drink and I'll die. Got to get a power greater than me. That's goingto have to be the solution. Where's that? Step two, can I come to believe that a power greatere than me could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me the obsession of drink? Yeah, I'd go for that. Then get out on your knees and do the third step. Turn your will and your life over to the care of that God. Okay, got down, did it. Got back up, they said, you've got to do this action plan or that's never going to happen. Okay, four through nine. Did an inventory, read it to another individual in five, hooked it back up with God in six and seven, hooked it Backup with you in eight and nine, and then I had 10, 11, and 12 to keep me in the game. Nobody else to play with. 10, me, 11 God, 12 you. 10, I keep my side of the street clean, and when I'm wrong, I admit it. Now if I'm busy watching my side OF the street, There's so much going on over here. I got no time to be getting on your side of the street and getting in your business, which is where I belong on my side of this street. I don't belong over there. If you catch me over there, send me home. You have my permission. Of 11, as I seek God, it's an action step. How do I seek him? Through prayer and meditation. What do I pray for? Knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry that out through making deals. I'm not cutting deals anymore. I'm asking for direction. How do care? How do we carry this out? And I meditate to quiet the mind so that when the answers come, I can hear them. And the twelfth step is the third side of the triangle. Service. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, that was the whole point. The obsessions removed. I can practice these principles and carry the message. Be of service. How can I help? Not because I'm a good guy. It's because I want to stay sober. Because I don't want to drink and die. I don'T want to dance with the beast anymore. I DON'T want to go back into the pit. I like it here. I LIKE it here. I'M having a very good time. So I got the whole thing working and i try to do a little bit of each side of those that triangle every day every day is like a little lifetime for me every day i get to have a new life every day i get out and experience the buzz that's available to me believe me the buzz is big my perspective changes on a daily basis my life gets broader and broader and more full with every single day it's it's a long process i mean i heard a guy one day say you know what and i agree with him completely basically what he said is you know i mean I've had some lousy days sober. I've had some down in the dirt, drooling on myself, miserable low life, ugly days sober, but I've had 15 and a half wonderful years. And that's how I feel about it. I agree with that guy completely. That's what it's been like for me. I have a life beyond my wildest dreams. And the perspective that I'm given allows me to be able to be of service to other people, particularly other men in Alcoholics Anonymous. For a guy like me, I never had any purpose. In my life. I never had a sense of community and I have that now I never have a sense family and I that now all the things that I knew Just a little fiend living like an animal kind of guy All the things are other people had could never happen in my life And they're here, and they're not here because of my best thinking or my hard work They're here because the principles in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous And if there are people that have gone before me who have been willing to turn around and extend the hand to me and say to me, you know what, Earl, based on my experience, I think this is a pretty good idea for you. To this day, I take direction from men in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that I don't understand at all. I don' t understand what they're talking about. But that's not necessary anymore for me. That level of egotism isn't there for me anymore. It used to be if I didn' t know what was going on, something is wrong. That's a very egotistical point of view. Now it's like, you now what? I have no idea what's going on, and everything could be fine. This means I don't know what's going on. And I'm pretty used to it now, not knowing what's gone on. Happens a lot. And that's fine, you know? When I'm helping other guys in the program, when I'm being of service to them, the real gift is mine, and I've come to understand that, that what that does is that allows me to stay sober, but the perspective has changed as well. I mean, I need to remember what I was like when I was new and afford the guy who's coming up who's new with me the right to be new I forget I mean I'm 15 years now and I'll be sponsoring Dave and Dave's got you know 90 days and Dave was a low bottom alcoholic he's got 90 days he's just stopped shaking he's now starting to sleep he's keeping his food down pretty well you know he's pretty excited about being an AA and I hear that some guy's speaking that I just love and I get a hold of Dave and I say Dave we're going to go hear Lou talk every time Lou opens his mouth Lots of spiritual pearls just fly out of this guy's mouth. We're going, and you're going to love this. And I'm thinking as we're driving to the meeting, isn't it great that Dave is going to be exposed to this at 90 days? You know, and it took me 12 years to really catch on to what Lou was talking about. So we'll go to the meaning. We'll sit there, and sure enough, Lou is ripping tonight. Lou, it's flying out of Lou. It is amazing. I'm healing sitting there. It's just, you know, God's in the room. Everybody knows it. This is one of those nights. and I'm looking down at Ed and Dave, and Dave's going hmm, yeah oh yeah, I'm thinking in this one what I have to remember is Dave is not at the same meeting I'm at Dave's having a completely different meeting and I had to remember and allow that for Dave that Dave's had a different meeting I remember me when I was new showing up on Ohio Street going to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous it was not a pretty picture And the inside was fundamentally different than what was happening on the outside. I'd get dressed, and I'd comb my hair, and I would get ready, and I could get in my car, and I go down there, and I park across the street from Ohio Street because sometimes you can get blocked in in the parking lot of Ohio City. That can't happen. If I get blocked then, I snap because my escape route has been blocked, and it's got to always be there. It can't have that happen. So I parked across the Street, and I'll be moving towards the door, and I think, okay, I'm here, I am here. Ohio Street, found it again. Good, good. Go ahead. Get a seat, get a seat. Get a see, get see, can see, can see. God, I want to see. What am I going to say? Oh, Jesus. The guy with the red coat. Red coat. Nice. The guys with the Red Coat. The guy without the Red coat know where the seat is. Good, good, good. It's a bell ringing. Bell ringing. Wait, what? Oh, sit down. Good. Sitting, sitting. This guy was talking. I don't know. I missed that. I miss that. Sorry. I misled that. He's down. It's not the guy. He's up. He's reading something. Chapter 5. Chapter 5 must be important. Probably in that book they got that blue book. Chapter 4. And he's saying, oh, oh. He rarely sees something. He rarely reads something. He really reads something and says, I miss that. Jeez. God. I've got to concentrate. he's 12 things he's reading 12 things they got 12 things in Alcoholics Anonymous 12 things I missed them but there's 12 I'll find out about the 12 things he's down he's done I missed that whole thing jeez okay remember 12 things 12 things here comes another guy another guy chapter 3 3 how come they read 5 and then 3 why don't they read 3 and then 5 I miss that he's now oh god this is draining here's a guy this guy drank he drank he drank I did that it's good it's down it was fast it was very fast he was up he was down I missed a lot of that but he drank this is good It's a drinking thing. It's drinking. I drink. We're up. Where are we going? We're smoking. I smoke. We'll smoke. We'll smok. We're not even smoking. Smoking. It's good. It's Good. Okay, there's a bell again. The bell. The bell has got to sit down. It's got to stand out. Where's the guy with the red coat? Where's the guy with the red coat red coat red coat where's the guy with the red coat red coat red coat red coat red coat red coat red coat red coat red coat red okay they're reading 12 things these don't sound they're eating 12 things these don' t sound like the other 12 things okay they have 24 things in Alcoholics Anonymous 24 things in Alcoholic Anonymous I can't remember that I can never remember that he's down he's done I didn't get any of that either I don't know what I mean there's another guy he's talking he's talkin ah ah ah this guy drank he drank I did that I did dat I did det I felt like dat I felt lik dat that guy knows how I feel that guy does how I feel that guy did dat this is good this is very very good this is verry verry good he's den he's dem that other guy's back why is that guy up again? I don't understand why that guy's up again. He's up and he's making some announcements. It's more than I can hear. We're up again, we're up again. They got me by the hands. What are we doing now? We're praying. Lord's prayer. No, it's prayer, no, it was prayer. And then that was the end of the meeting. And then I would leave to go to my car and somebody would say, how do you like the meeting? And I'd say, great, fine. I love that meeting. It's a good meeting. And I gotta know I gotta know that while I'm sitting there loving Lou, David's having my kind of meeting. over there. That's what Dave's doing. Dave's tweaking like a madman over there and we leave the meeting and sure enough, I say, Dave, did you love that? And he looks at me and goes, it was great. It was a great meeting. And I figure Dave sat through a whole meeting. Dave wins. Dave went to a meeting with his sponsor. Totally contrary action to anything Dave's ever done in his life. Dave went through a meeting mit his sponsor that he asked to sponsor him and sat through an entire meeting. David wins. You know, and two days later, Dave calls me and he says, you know, I didn't get that Lou guy at all and I say don't, that's fine man that's fun, let's go, there's another guy he's talking about, let' go listen to him so we go and we listen to another guy and we hang in together and everybody gets their place it's just Ed's turn, I'm not doing better than Dave I'm just with Dave and we're in this game together and we just move together and as a result of it, I am connected because I get to sit there and listen to Clancy and Johnny and Paul and Tom and I get to listen to these guys who have gone before me and had turned around and extended the hand of AA to me and I listened to their guidance and their direction and what they had to say. And I love every one of them. And I listen to what they say and I show them respect because they're my elders. And they went before me and I showed them respect. It's a big deal with me to show my elders respect. See, I don't take that stuff for granted in life because I never got to do any of that. I like showing them respect It makes me feel good to show respect to my elders and it makes me feel a little superior because of course the guys that I sponsor show me none at all if you knew congratulations turn around and walk back in the teeth of your disease man and you got no tools at work and if you're sitting out there and you're crazy and you are sitting out here and you know I really could kill everybody in the room here tonight as far as I'm concerned perfect You're in great shape. If you're angry, if you're hostile, if you'RE lonely, if YOU're afraid, if you'Re having trouble identifying, if youRE having trouble communicating with other people, beautiful. You'Re in the right place. I mean, look around you. There's people in here that got the light in their eyes. And everybody in here, you know, was in a position at one point or another where they were dying of a disease called alcoholism. And they're not dying anymore. They're living. They're livin' a day at a time. Instead of dyin' a days at a timе, they're liVIN' a daY at a tiME. And we'Re havin' fun. I mean to be in a place like this with people like you that it can that there's no way to get for where I come from to this place to be here can't happen it can't happen and here we are having fun I mean I'm walking on the beach I'm dancing in the deal for God's sakes I was out there last night line dancing man I was slapping some cowboy leather and I'm about as country is Mussolini you know what i mean it's not there if you knew stick with us find the people who got the light in their eyes and have fun like paul talks about man we absolutely insist upon having fun and we do this isn't the end of the line the party is by far over when i came and i thought the party's over no more fun what i found is that the people in here people run up to the cliff in life they run up to the clip and most of the people they run into the cliff and they say the clip then they take a quick step back kind of peer over the cliff this room is filled with people that ran towards the and never slowed down, and just dove into the abyss. And it was the kind of life we led. And we land in cemeteries, we land in mental institutions, we land in prisons, and we land here. The party ain't over. Stick around and find out for yourself. Thanks a lot.