Clancy I. (Venice, CA) — ‘Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditons Study’; 19920905 – Clancy I.

Oh, that's just beautiful. Again, I'd like to say good evening to each and every one. My name is Elizabeth Bailey. My anonymity is shot to hell for a long time. They call me Liz in AA, and I stick to Liz. It sounds better than what I've been called. My sobriety date is July the 11th, 1952. Clancy just asked me, am I an alcoholic? I am the most definite alcoholic you ever could lay your eyes on. My. And I can be corrected, and I still stand in that position, which is so beautiful. I want to tell each one of you, please take a tape home with you of this weekend. You'd be surprised how well it will do you, especially if you're in a down movement or in a high movement. I have dealt with tapes for many years. I have never said no to anyone who asked for me to give a tape. And over the years, I found out that the tapes help save lives. So if you don't use it for yourself, pass it on to someone else. Please do that. Get a tape. Order them tonight before you leave. I'm supposed to be introducing Clancy. And I'm going to tell you, I had the honor and privilege of speaking with Clancy, in Tennessee. Never did I dream when I got to Scranton, Pennsylvania, that I'd be speaking with Clancy again. And the third time I said that I would be speaking with Clancy, I am going to wear a pamper or a depend. This man keeps me in hysterics. And I sit there and I listen to him and I amen him to death. I now want to tell you, all the speakers that have been here, this weekend, you are just tremendous. And believe me, yes you are. You're just tremendous, every one of you. And I do hope you will do this again, but I do hope that each one of you that are here bring a friend to the next one. And this is how it grows and this is how we get more of AA into AA. I love each and every one of you. And I thank you. Thank you. And I thank the committee for inviting me this evening to introduce Clancy, a person whom I love very dearly. And I'm so happy he lives in California. I'm so happy. So no more further ado, I'm going back to my seat. I don't have a pamper on, though. That's the only difference. And I'm going to enjoy Clancy along with the rest of us. Thank you. My name is Clancy Emerslund, and I'm an alcoholic. You old-timers are ruining AA. I'm glad to be here, and I love Liz, too, and I've enjoyed the weekend very much. And it's gone rather rapidly, as was mentioned in the previous meetings. But now we're just, now we're getting away from the authority in the sense of the book and of the steps and of the traditions, and we get into the area of personal experience and opinion. Now you'll hear it the way it really is. But I, it's amazing how similar we are, and yet what a strange and bewildering illness this is. We were talking about it the other day, Friday noon. Stop and think what a strange phenomenon this illness is. In Los Angeles, where I live, we have a lot of esoteric problems and situations. We have a big county. We have a big county. We have a big county. We have a big county. We have a hospital, which is kind of like, I don't know what the equivalent would be in New York, a charity hospital. But I sometimes think, over the years, I've had several people I sponsor who have died of cancer, or not several, two or three. But I've spent, as a result of that, gone to the cancer wards and held their hand and talked to them during the tough times, and been to those cancer wards. They're really dreary, I'll tell you. And I was thinking, you know, I used to chuckle at myself and think, just think, if I came in here one day and found these people breathing their last and said to them, hey, I got a great thing, would you be agreeable to going to a meeting every night of some people for an hour or an hour and a half, every night, say, for a year, if I could get rid of your cancer? They would offer you their home. They would offer you anything they had. Yes, let me do it. Let me do it for God's sakes. Or you go to that county AIDS ward, there's a winner, buying by open source and dying in absolutely not any way. They'd do anything except just feel sad for him. And what do you think they'd say if I went in there and said, well, would you take some actions outlined in some, what they call 12 steps, as I would suggest you to take them, if I could rid you of your AIDS? They would crawl across the floor and lick your feet. But you go to that same hospital in the alcoholic ward where men are dying of alcoholism and their liver's out to here and their eyes are yellow, and say, we're going to have a meeting. Keep it out of here. I'm no goddamn alcoholic. And it's kind of funny, except when you go back next month for the meeting, he's dead and there's a new guy in his bed saying he's not an alcoholic. Now, if guys were going to be dead in the next week, they'd be dead in the next week. They'd be dead in the next week. They'd be dead in the next week. They'd be dead in the next week. If guys were going to be dead in the next week or two, can prove they're still not alcoholic, people like you and I can easily do it and continue to do it. And for everyone in here, there are many, many people still out there. It's an amazing thing. With all of the treatment for alcoholism, you know, alcoholism, we heard in the last couple of days, AA started, these guys came together and they wrote these books and we heard such an outstanding description. The history of Alcoholics Anonymous last night and the little by little it's grown and how it's got its impetus from various friends of ours and now it's in 134 countries throughout the world and it's in the last few years I've had the chance to talk at meetings in places like Auckland and Tahiti and Hawaii. Mexico and Canada and London and Dublin and Belfast and Paris, Berlin and Frankfurt and all sorts of places. Really exotic, you know, you just know it's exotic places. You can't wait to get there to hear exotic AA. It really will discourage you when you get there. You might as well stay home. It's the same. Perfect example. Three or four years ago, maybe two or three years ago, I sat in Berlin about a half a mile from Tahiti. Checkpoint Charlie, shortly after the wall started to come down, probably one of the most exciting moments in the 20th century. The changing of this whole monolith called communism coming down little by little and sitting at this meeting and watching people from East Germany stream by and coming out of that damn place and just, and you know when you're sitting in that meeting you're going to hear something that's going to just make it for you and sit there and hear some guy behind you say, but, uh, I don't think you really understand that I'm afraid my case is different. See you down at the half brow hunts. Now he's in Russia's with most of us know, in fact, in Russia has become very modern. There are two major groups in Moscow and they are feuding and, uh, he's all over really. And, uh, in America, which is the heartbeat of all alcoholics, anonymous throughout the world, obviously here where it's the center of a, a more sobriety in any state that never was in the history of the world in any country or in the world really. And, uh, I guess the, probably the hottest spot in a, a in America is Southern California now, not because I'm there certainly, but because they have as many. Sober alcoholics in Southern California as they do in New York or Illinois, and there's no need for people to die drunk or as a result of this insanity of the destruction of the human brain. And yet in America today with all the help available, not only AA, but if you can't go right to AA, there are treatment facilities where they'll hopefully ease you into AA. If you can't afford a treatment facility, there seem to be freelance counselors behind it. You can't find every Bush who have new and wondrous answers. And in America today is estimated perhaps 95% of alcoholics in America today still die drunk or as a direct result of drinking. And I think it's safe to say that a number of people in this room who are feeling well tonight will die drunk. Maybe me, maybe you don't know who, because it isn't based on how much you know. It isn't based what you did once. It's based upon a time. It's based on that book, that line that says it's based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. So you wonder, how could I maintain my spiritual condition? Does that mean I must sit in perfect meditation in harmony with the universe? No. You can really be awfully imperfect and stay sober and even feel well. But the problem is you must keep in touch if you be an alcoholic of our type. You know, that's the amazing thing. When Bill wrote that book, he knew, I was talking about this last night, he knew very little about alcoholics, you know. There's much more. I was just upstairs, down about 10 feet, 20 feet from the men's washroom. There's some, this is the library building, there's some racks. There's four, four shelves of books on alcoholism. Nothing from, no big book. But. Meaningful books. Books that explain to the doctor why that patient is dying. Oh, now I understand you. And Bill didn't have the advantage of this. But he intuitively knew somehow, he found, sensed, he had no way of getting the information that there were different types of alcoholics. Who would have known that? You'd think alcoholics would be alcoholics. But they're not. There are different types of alcoholics. Some people who drink until they become addicted to the alcoholics. Some people who are physically addicted and then can be withdrawn from the physical addiction, told the nature of their problem, and seem to be able to make it from then on. There are people who drink a lot, seem to be alcoholic, but have no, no outstanding negative effect and stop when it's necessary. It seems like every family has somebody in the family like that to use as a bad example for people like me. Why can't you be like old Leo? He drank crazy too, but he went to the church and did something about it. And I, I never could think of an answer. I know the answer now, but they're all dead. I have no way to tell. I, I, the answer was, I used to look at Uncle Leo, and I swore that guy hadn't smiled since 1926. And he was married to my aunt, and she ground him incessantly. It must have been a fun-filled 25 years for him. Remember that time in 1922 you wrecked the Model A? Okay. Maybe Uncle Leo can do that. I, I can't. I'm not strong enough. I need a little drink and smash your mouth. And then there are people, another type of alcoholics, who seem to have difficulty with their drinking, and if they get sober, have difficulty with being sober too. And these are known as alcoholics of our type. And that's what the first step is about. We are not here to renounce drinking. We are here to admit we're having. As Willie so well put it, problems with our drinking, and problems with when we're not drinking. That's the admission, the acceptance, and Bill again and again in our book refers to, in some way he couldn't quite understand, but he could refer to alcoholics of our type. Don't know what other types there were, but alcoholics of our type. And alcoholics of our type seem to be the ones who die drunk, and die in pain, or live in agony. You know, we always talk about alcoholics dying. I think it's safe to say that dying is the second worst thing that can happen to an alcoholic. Living year after year with dashed hopes, and another failure, and again and again, going back and having to explain it one more time. And living, just watch yourself drip out your own sleeve. That is the worst. I remember years ago. In the AA meeting one time, I was slipping around, somebody said, you know, if you keep drinking, you're going to die. And I remember thinking, I hope so. I hope so. Rather than this continual seeing looks of disappointment, and rejection, and, oh, how could you, and just, wretched. But Alcoholics Anonymous has an answer. Alcoholics Anonymous is the only thing that has ever provided an answer for large numbers of people on a continuing basis in the history of the world, then why don't people get sober? Because of the one thing that I never thought about when I was struggling, and most people who struggle don't know about it, and the people who are dying on the streets don't know about it. Someone said to me this afternoon something about, you know, you ought to take the program more seriously. I'm in a different position than most of you. During my working week, I see alcoholics die when I have to say, put a blanket over this man and get him on here. I really don't need any lectures from little snots coming around telling me what alcoholism can do. I see it all the time. I am not in the alcoholic treatment work. I am not in a recovery mode. For some reasons of my own, some years ago I left a big job in Beverly Hills and I run a Skid Row mission. We're not trying to sober people up. We're trying to keep them alive for a while. Until maybe something can happen. And we don't often succeed. We do not succeed very often. We are not a religious organization. We try to run in a different way. It's almost kind of like AA. We have a very high recovery rate because all the people who work that mission used to be hopeless cases who are now making it off the street. But I see alcoholics die and I, you know, you'd think a guy, put it bluntly, I'd go all over the world to talk to tell people to stay sober. Of course, I've got a lot of tapes to get, a lot of interpreters. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. That's your tape. You really helped me. Thanks. Every time you play it, send me a little royalty, will you? Maybe you could send me a prince one year and a queen. You know. I don't know why I said that. I wish I had. Every so often I hear something I never, well, where I live you don't ask for somebody to send you a queen. I'll tell you that. See, when I see people, I see people die in front of me over a period of time. Now, I go, I can help people to live in territory. You know, I can help people in Tarrytown, New York maybe that I never saw before or I've spoken to other people. But someone I know and I watched die, why can't I help him? Why can't I help him? You think I'd be able to help somebody that I wanted to keep alive? I can help people in AA that I don't even like. So there are some people I sponsor I don't like. But they respond to what we do and so they stay sober and I hope one day they'll be up to my standards. Perhaps they can buy me gifts and win me over. Send this tape to my group and have them play it every day. But I can't help people dying in front of me. Why not? Because they have reached the terminal state of difference. They have sealed themselves in the cocoon of difference. And there's nothing you can get in. It's an invisible cocoon that's clear as air but you can't get in. And I can just see what I used to try to tell people. And I talk to them for my guts out. And here, see, look at me. Say, thank you, Clancy. I know you mean well. But you don't understand. And I think, how can people be like that? How could they die like that? How could they live in agony? How can you watch people go insane? I know that's one of the interesting little things you might want to think about when you're thinking about alcoholism. We talk about alcoholic insanity and most of us at one time or another have secretly felt we had it or had something else. Some part of it. But the emotions get really out of whack. I'll tell you. That isn't what alcoholic insanity is. Alcoholic insanity is not an emotional problem. It is a physical problem. It is when enough of your brain cells have been dried out and desiccated by the continual use of alcohol that you can no longer function. The neurotics we hear around AA meetings are not insane. Some of them may be psychotic but they're not insane. They're not insane. They're not insane. They're not insane. They're not insane. They're not insane. They're not insane. They're not insane. They're not insane. They're not insane. Alcoholically. People who have alcoholic insanity sit on beds or on chairs and wards and people come and change their diapers three times a day and feed them and put them to bed and get them up the next morning and put on clean diapers and feed them and this goes on as long as they live because there is no recovery from that condition. It's very similar to the last stages of syphilis except in syphilis it has the decency to kill the patient. It has the decency to kill the patient. Alzheimer's has the decency to kill the patient but alcoholism you can stay physically sober for 40 years. Every so often once maybe a year a little touch your memory you might say where's my wife? By the time she comes down you're gone again. It's a terrible thing. So why would people get into that condition when there's no necessity for it? And I pondered that and thought about that a lot. And finally it filtered into my condition. I'm a bright guy. I'm a clever guy. I had some success in life. How could I go to AA year after year after year after year and know that there is no answer here for me under any conditions because my case is different and I wish it weren't. I'm not making a case I wish I were different. But the the last day I drank when I had finished my career as an advertising writer and a faculty at the University of Texas and successful in some fields the last day I drank finding myself being thrown out of a skid row mission under the sidewalk and having a guy say stay out of here mooch and I tried to I wanted to explain to him I'm not a bum. Three years ago I was on the faculty of the University of Texas. Ads that I helped write the old Elsie Downer ads for the Borden County were running that very week in Life and Time and Collier's and Saturday Evening Post. I've had my picture in the New York Times for achievement. How many people do you know have had their picture in the New York Times for achievement? But it's hard to explain these things in mid-air. And unfortunately a couple weeks before that I'd had my front teeth kicked out in the Phoenix jail so I wasn't hitting those continents quite as cleanly as I'd have liked. I stood outside of this skid row mission and I just I just I don't know what I thought. I'll tell you this if a guy would come up to me and say hey pal your life depends on the answer. Are you an alcoholic? I'd have to say no I'm not but I wish I were. I wish I were an alcoholic based on years of being around AA. I wish I didn't have these underlying sicknesses and emotions and crazinesses and I wish I hadn't been victimized all my life and I wish all these things hadn't happened to me. Getting sober doesn't make it better. If you can make it get me sober can you make it in 1950 just before I got expelled from the university three weeks before graduation? Maybe that'd be that might help. Could you get me sober in the future? Maybe a the next year maybe a month before my son died and I was in jail? Can you make me could you get me sober at least before my best friend I hurt him inadvertently so bad he went home and killed himself? Could you make me sober? Could you undo all these things? You can't undo these things and even if you could it wouldn't help because there's something wrong with me and I would never admit it. But there's but there's something wrong I don't know what it is. I know that I live with unease. I guess you know I sometimes think about that alcoholism they call it a disease but it certainly is a disease of dis-ease. Boy it surely is. And I've been to AA and everyone knows what AA is you've been here three meetings you know what AA is. It's a place where people whose problem is alcohol they go there and clean up their act and feel better as their life straightens out. And I discovered and I thought I was the only one who did that going to AA and straightening up my act merely brought back the horrors that I was trying to escape. There's a certain surge of getting sober and trying to do better but after that it isn't very long one night, two in the morning you're lying in bed here come your pals again and you're like oh my God I'm going to die. I'm going to die. Loneliness and frustration and despair and feelings of self-pity and feelings of if only. I suppose of two words lived in my life if only, if only. And I had done everything that I could think of to change this. I had spent thousands of dollars in psychoanalysis when I was a young man and an executive trying to get to the root of these problems and I did get to the root of them at least it seemed to me. I discovered why I was so sensitive. I discovered I had been hurt badly as a child. I didn't know that. I found out it cheered me up a little. I had such a reversion aversion to God and church because I had been psychologically scarred by the Norwegian Lutheran Church. I hadn't known that but I could see it when he explained it to me. You know all these years I thought that I was raised in this little town in Wisconsin most of you have heard it. We talked about Eau Claire, Wisconsin kind of a little Andy Hardy town and except the judge was the wrong one. But it's a lovely little town I was raised there and I was raised in the Norwegian Lutheran Church which is the major church of the area. Come on Jerome. Christ's sake. He's gone out so many times I started to know him by name. I didn't mind before because he's bringing me coffee now he's not. Well. Anyway. But I the Norwegian Lutheran Church was a big church rather strict church but they only really had two rules as far as I could tell. You don't sin and you don't monkey with Catholics. Pretty much. That didn't bother me. As I got older I was a little weak I began to sin and then I got monkeying with Catholics and sinning with Catholics. So I knew I was probably going to go to hell but it wasn't the church's fault. But years later I found out that they had psychologically repressed me and scarred me. As I've often said if I knew then what I know now I would have formed adult children of Norwegian Lutherans. We could have hired a couple of co-dependents and sat around and been pissed off every week. I discovered I'd been where have you been? Don't even bring back coffee. You didn't have time to go to the washer. What are you doing out there? We don't judge you Jerome. Anybody feel free to get up and leave at any time. If you'd like to be immortalized on tape. But I discovered a lot of things and I discovered roots of many things. I joke about it. Again something we talked about Friday is you know I've always seemed to be very sensitive to rejection all my life. I can see rejection when nobody else can see it. I can hear it. I can smell it. A little nostril. And I didn't and my psych round was pointing that out. It was up to me where it came from. I was a little boy up in Wisconsin and it was depression. My parents were both teachers. They had to go teach in other cities and I had to live with my grandparents and for a while. And my grandparents you know they were from Norway and they I was the only grandson they had for hundreds of miles and they just treated me like a little prince and in this my grandma in hot weather would make homemade root beer. You know today you'd buy root beer but then people didn't have any money but they didn't know they were poor they just should make root beer in bottles and I'd come in hot and they'd say Grandma! I want some root beer! My grandma'd say Oh! Look at here Tony. He wants some root beer. Here's some root beer honey. My grandpa'd say And here's some cookies too. Took you long enough. When my parents came home I just went to hell. I want some root beer! Not before dinner honey. What do you mean not before dinner honey? I want it now! No! Yes! Why don't you go back to where you were and leave me alone with Grandma? I found out years later when they left it gave me a deep feeling of rejection. That's all I've ever had is heartaches as long as I've lived. And I really liked striking roses. I spent all the money I had going there and I enjoyed it and I just looked for it and I thought why did I like it so well? Because it cracked me up. All I heard was bad news, you know. But I understand it now in the light of recent years is that it's quite simple. Because it gave me the role of victim. And there's one thing great about the role of victim. Better than anything I know except alcohol. Victimization rids you of guilt. And you're carrying guilt all your life and when you can come to understand you're just a victim. They have done it to you so the rotten things you do are beyond your control. Not my fault. I'm a victim too. I'm sorry that I knocked you down and stamped your face but Lutheran Church warned me. Not quite that obvious but it's a very simple thing. And that's the lure of many of these modern day therapies. If you can accept the role of victimization. You get rid of guilt. I know nothing else that gets rid of the deep-seated guilt that alcoholics have. Other than as quick as alcohol and victimization. And I did other things. I read philosophy. I did a lot of things. But I always seem to be troubled by the ongoing feelings of my life. The ongoing feelings of my life were things that I couldn't really put a finger on but I could feel. And over the last few years in the last third of a century listening to inventories of other people and helping new people I've learned a great deal about myself. You learn more about yourself dealing with new people than you ever will studying yourself. I'll tell you that. Because you can really see how it looks three-dimensionally. And I discovered that one of the great causes of my disease most of my life was I had an ongoing and almost everlasting feeling of somehow or other I'm not quite good enough. And I don't know why I'm not good enough. I don't know in what way but it seems as though they could identify it. And they recognize that I'm not enough but nobody ever tells me what it is or what I can change. So you're always playing catch up. So you've got to have some little gimmick so you've got to get some deal going. Some little dog and pony show to hold them at bay. To have little acts you go into. When I was in college I remember reading studying psychology defense mechanisms. Never, I read it understood it very well but I never understood that there has been a series of defense mechanisms. And as I look back now I understand that all human beings have defense mechanisms. Because all of us sometimes feel highly vulnerable. All humans do. No matter what anybody tells you. But you know there are different kinds of defense mechanisms. I didn't, I wouldn't say this is a defense mechanism. It's just something to hold them at bay. What I did because I was a writer and did a lot of reading in my life could discuss most things or at least if not accurately it sounded accurately to say arguing with someone and say what we're discussing. I don't suppose you have any idea what Nietzsche had to say about that do you? No, I didn't think you did. That's one. There are millions of tools like that. You get all the way to the other end of the extreme and you hear something that sounds entirely different but it's exactly the same thing. I got a new Harley. I'm gonna drive it up your ass. Same thing. Believe my front. Don't get too close and see that I may not be good enough. Another feeling I had a lot but discussed a lot this weekend. We discussed the steps. Fear. I lived a lot with fear in my life. Such an enervating dreadful thing is fear. But we all know it well. It's an old pal for all of us. It's a motivator and a destructor. It's a funny thing. It's really a two-edged thing. But fear and I think the worst fears in my life came I hear people say I was really down and I was so afraid. My major fears would come the terror would come when I was becoming successful. When I was working my butt off to finally get back and get something to be something. And all it would take to set up that triggered fear is someone criticizing me. Someone in a position to undo me. And then my instinct reaction is destroy them before they destroy me. Not with a gun but with snide remarks and memos and eventually that sort of thing always causes your own disintegration. But it's just always I suppose in retrospect if I were thinking about it I'd say I must have the secret feeling I know I don't deserve this and they found it out and I got a silence. But fear is a dreadful thing and I had this sense of vulnerability that's attacked me all my life. Go through life much of my life with hurt feelings. Again talked about that so much this weekend. Common things but when you're the only when you're the only one you got and you don't know it's a common thing. All you know is that there's something wrong with you. Hurt feelings and feelings of rejection and people should have a little suit of armor to protect them in the world and my armor just seemed to me to be always open. And as the old saying goes you can't do anything about the bullet with your name on it or the arrow with your name on it. There's a lot of arrows coming down the street marked to whom they may concern. And I hate these feelings and a lot of other feelings. I went into psychoanalysis and I got into reading Nietzsche and I read German philosophers. Couldn't even understand them but I'll tell you if you're like me here's what you do. You can be seen reading German philosophers. Maybe The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler for example which proves that everything you believe in is false. And if you're a depressive that cheers you up somehow I don't know why. But anyway and figure what the hell does that mean. It's just such a convoluted sentence. But if someone's looking you say how true. And I sat on porches with other weirdos and became metaphysical all night. We just sipped red wine and discussed the real meaning of existence till the sun came up and we had to get back to our caskets so our wives could get to work. I did a lot of things but the one thing that saved helped me the most and got me through my life the thing that got me through was something I discovered as a boy 15 years old on the deck of a ship very early in the Second World War in Pearl Harbor. Some maddened intimidated me into drinking a whiskey that I swore I'd never drink. I'd run away from home to the zeal of being something. And I threw it up and it made me embarrassed so I tried to hold one down and a few days later I finally held one down. And that day I discovered something that I didn't think much of it. It didn't seem like a thing to me. I thought it made me feel bad but it changed my feelings exactly. That was the first time in my life I look back that I ever dreamed that I felt the way men looked. And that's why I drank. I didn't become a terrible old drunk staggered around the Pacific Ocean on warships. A kid got a little older on ships and drank sometimes got drunk at the end of the war I was in a naval hospital up near San Francisco and I was being sewed together and they passed out some papers and I was in a good mood that day so I really did the best I could on this little test I had no idea what it was. I thought about that I never thought about that much in the last three or four years. It changed my life I had no idea but it was a little sheet that the Red Cross passed out and the basis of that test they gave me a high school diploma. And I thought about that just three or four years ago. Without that I'd still have to go back to that different situation. I was able to take this and go to college and be in the first class of veterans after the war and stood around the campus with all the other veterans and tried to look like steely eyed sex crazed killers. I wondered if our unemployment check would come on time. I got married in college now out in the world I became a sports writer a newspaper and a sports columnist and I had married this girl that's a funny thing I used to say couldn't we use birth control and she said no. I thought about that recently I don't know what I would have done if she had said yes because I sure as hell would have done the guts to go into a drugstore and order it. I mean it's different now. In those days you got to remember it took some guys cigarettes and some condoms that took some kind of a man I could have done it now it's all different at least the thrifty drug by my house I watch these kids they say hey give me some condoms and some cigarettes it's terrible but we had children I loved them all I got into advertising finally I have ever had and if you're kind of new that may sound like a terrible thing to say in an AA meeting but I'll tell you something as you get older and wiser you'll start to view with suspicion these old fools that damn alcohol was just rotten from the very first drink it was poison it's like hearing somebody bad mouth an old girlfriend she's a pig now but she didn't use to be when alcohol worked I'll tell you what alcohol did I could stretch it out but to make it succinct succinctly what alcohol did for me it took a person who didn't feel like they were enough and made me feel like I was something more than enough it took a person who lived with hurt feelings and rejections and made me temporarily omnipotent it just was wonder I'm sure some of you guys one of the great examples of that I'll think about some of you guys I'm sure must have done this hard to believe such a nice looking clean-cut crew but sit in a bar late at night talking with your shoulders I might sidle over to such an old queen and imply there will be delights beyond her comprehension she'd like to join me in the old Chevy out there now if she would say now when I've been drinking I don't feel rejected I mean if I were sober I don't know what I'd do I wouldn't be in there it's I don't feel rejected I feel sorry for don't come begging tomorrow beast that's why I drink I don't drink because I'm a drinker I drink because I'm and sometimes I drink too much and sometimes I like to think many times I have been thoughtlessly over-served not my fault I used to learn a few years ago I learned that I came from a dysfunctional family until I discovered I was the one who made it dysfunctional that is a funny phrase I I know people all over the world I don't know a single person alcoholic or otherwise who did not come from a dysfunctional family I guess there must be somebody somewhere we could put him in a zoo somewhere and then I acted a bizarre sometimes they said it wouldn't be bizarre now but in the forties it was bizarre and today I could be a chaplain I guess but I was sent to my first AA meeting by a judge in 1949 that's a long time ago some of you little snots weren't born were you Luann we love you I recently spoke for a little I hate to repeat myself so implicitly but I must for some of the folks here you know at that time I was 22 22 doesn't sound very young in AA today but then no one heard me within 15 years of it they just thought I was some little freak and I thought they were old burned out fools in their forties you know just what it is I've learned a lot since then and I want to tell like little girls like Luann not little girls but grown up lady but a child in my eyes I mean you're just a kid shut up and all these young people here a lot of young people here something they never told me and I want to tell you you got to remember you are the AA leaders of tomorrow I'll tell you something else in Los Angeles I want to tell you one more thing I'm really glad I'm going to be dead AA is going to be some kind of charnel house out there we don't judge and you mustn't take this as a personal attack on you my sponsor told me that 30 years ago the same thing and he's glad he's dead so what goes around comes around I guess very few of us who have had strong sponsors who haven't turned and seen them sooner or later go huh but I then I started going to other therapies and I wound up being thrown out of a skid row mission years later with a lot of bona fides but knowing I'm not an alcoholic and it started to rain on that street corridor outside of that mission and I walked 71 blocks out to the AA club which was the closest AA club again and I went to that club and I had been asked to leave that club a few days before for being in there drunk and fighting with my feelings my pride explaining to them that I was smarter than all of them and I and I hung around that damn club it was just hideous some years before that when I was on the faculty of this college in Texas I had left that by going and the reason I went to the insane asylum had nothing to do with drinking and then nothing on my commitment papers ever mentioned the word alcohol because it was just the opposite and I used to try to explain this to people as a good example as I said I'd been in jail when my son died and so when my wife got pregnant again this time I swore I would stay sober and I would not drink no matter what I put my hand on my son's casket and said this will not happen again John and it was hot in Texas and I had a job in the daytime advertising agency at night on the faculty of this college I had a bunch of little kids who I loved in the abstract but the noise would make me crazy and I couldn't drink and I couldn't do anything I just I wanted to just scream and there was nothing I could do my father told me every time you think about drinking see John's face on the door of that bar and one day I just couldn't stand it and I I waited until my wife took the kids to church and I pulled the car and turned the motor and went to sleep and died and clinically died I guess neighbor found me in there pulled me out beat on my chest got in the ambulance whizzed me off to the hospital where they diagnosed me as a schizophrenic and put me in and commitment to the Texas State Insane Asylum at Big Spring Texas as a schizophrenic to stay there until I got better which I'm glad I found a way around I might have had to send my talk up with Willie tonight and then tell him Willie that and I pretended to get out of that hospital I got out of that as well but pretending to be an alcoholic and getting transferred to the alcoholic ward because I'd been around there 8, 6, 7 years I knew I'd act like an alcoholic but I knew I wasn't I almost didn't get out but that's how I get when I stay sober too long there are things inside of me you don't understand and all I want to do is just get along all I've ever wanted to be was a good man in a good world but by God they won't let me and people don't treat me right and my experiences are bad and I'm a victim and on and on and I it got so bad hanging around this club after I was first sober it sounds funny now but it really wasn't funny then I really remember thinking I was lying sleeping in the back of an abandoned car outside of the club it was cold it was December and I was cold and hungry and trying to go to sleep at midnight there was no place to go no place to get out of the car to go and thinking I wonder if that suicide really was successful and this is what hell is just day after day like this just never any better never any hope and I hung around that club and I was desperate and lonely and sad and afraid my wife and children are gone forever my parents had written me off I couldn't think of a single person who would accept a collect phone call from me maybe I was born in the wrong century I was kind of a civil war buff I still am but I thought maybe I was supposed to be in the civil war if things were simpler maybe I could have been something the saddest words I know in all of literature are the words in that scene on the waterfront I could have been a contender I could have maybe not a champion but I would have been a contender but look what you did to me and that's the way I felt towards the world and then I I was desperate and sad and alone they did the same thing in AA then they don't do it as much now I wish they did it more now but then it was get a spy out there get a spy out there so I saw this actor coming in and out all the time and I had seen him in movies playing character roles he always played a loving kindly uncle and I asked him to be my sponsor because I felt he'd be loving and kindly and maybe lend me a little money and maybe set me up someplace turned out he should have won and played he was a nasty cruel dictator type sponsor AA has no place for dictator type sponsors the people I sponsor they need it but I'm talking about others and he got me to do things he intimidated me I guess I think the greatest gift anyone can get now I got it when I was really bad but some people get it a lot earlier but it has to be there seems to be desperate desperation that is the greatest gift you can have desperation John talked about it in different words but it's the same concept desperation because with desperation you can become a little more flexible just a little more you might just do things and my sponsor was always after me to do things and take actions and he said simple things pick up those cups and I'd just kind of disappear you know and I'd just kind of disappear and I'd just kind of disappear you know I'm a sick genius not a waiter help set up the chairs get a janitor I never said it but I thought it a lot of things it really was dreadful and it was I hung around the guy put me on the sofa the guy put me on the sofa for a couple of weeks then he got mad at me his wife said I put cigarettes underneath the sofa not very many just late at night and I was tired you know went back to my abandoned car one night his girlfriend came over and he wanted to roust me to walk the streets for two hours while they talked or something and I said why don't you have her walk the streets she's more used to it than I am I was back in my car again that night I've had some great topper lines but they just about killed me you don't know how tough it is to be terminally cute and I've often thought when did that change I used to think it changed when I took my fifth step in my life and I've come to believe that change had to happen before then a few years ago someone reminded me of a thing that I had completely forgotten and I've come to believe that was the turning spot of my life and I'd never even paid any attention to it because it changed my it changed everything my I was at the one Tuesday night I was at the Hollywood Central Hollywood meeting which if it's not if it's not the winner it's in place or show as one of the all time not not like the 79th Street Clubhouse not that bad but hey World War II veteran still have a silver plate in my arm here but but at this meeting I mean people wore funny costumes and guys had spiked hair with different colors that doesn't sound so odd but in 1959 this was not a common sight the Eisenhower years and one guy had little shoes I always loved admired him little curly toes and the funny the funny thing about that meeting I that was my favorite meeting I just loved going I I suppose I don't know if it was because I fit in or because I was the only lower companions I ever found for five years but I was there one night and I loved it because it was a participation meeting and I like to go to participation meetings because I hated to go to speaker meetings because there's nothing more dreary when you're a total failure than hearing these pukes get up one after another you know you hear some guy say I stayed drunk around the clock for 25 years one day I walked through that door the desire to drink left me instantly like a cloak fluttering to the floor I now have ten million dollars with me tonight several different families have returned to me and I owe it all to one thing I put the plug in the jug ha ha ha ha ha and when you're sitting there thinking there's a fight between you and me you know there's a fight between you and me it hurt worse to cut your wrists or hang yourself it really is a drag I like to go to sick participation meetings man I had a weird day today I really was weird man I really had I was trying to get in touch with myself all day that's the kind of meeting for me baby and there's the coffee break and I was waiting for the secretary or the leader to come back because I couldn't get called on at these meetings I could once or twice I found out later that the reason I wasn't getting called on because they'd call on me and I'd get up and say what a bunch of crap AA was and they were silly to believe in it and I you know it's not normal you're going to be called on again soon you know I was just trying to be honest helping and I was standing there and I saw a girl in the second row about where the young lady was do you have a sling in your arm or do you have your hand inside your dress well like you but she was there's a girl like this I guess in every group or someone like this sometimes a guy but she was about four years sober her name was like Mary Lisa and she was vivacious and charming and smiled and she sponsored people and her sponsor was always proud of her and she was secretary of a meeting she was always called out to speak and she just fit right in everywhere as the kind of person you just want to go boom boom and I was I was just killing time thinking I wonder what they would say if I were just for the hell of a minute everyone said hey Mary Lisa take a bow boom I wasn't going to do it but it was just and all of a sudden here comes my sponsor through the crowd followed by two of his brown nosers and he said classy god I hated that I used to think when I was about by myself the next time he hollers at me I would say what but I never did he said classy god I hated that I said what Bob he says I want you to apologize to Mary Lisa I said for God's sake she can read my mind I said why Bob he said last night that helped a little bit at least it was something he heard at the Frank Randall group Monday night meeting I heard you called her a bitch and I was glad to hear that it was something from yesterday and I'll tell you something else if you're new and think about getting a sponsor try to get one who doesn't have snitches everywhere do you know what he did now I said Bob don't misunderstand me I'm not trying to be tough but she really is a bitch well why do you think so she told her new girl you're going to apologize and I thought I would rather die I'd rather be drunk on the street in the cold rain and laying on my face in the gutter bleeding myself alive than to take any more public humiliation from this crazed bastard and these other idiots I'm living in an abandoned car big deal for five months of sobriety I'll tell you to hell with it and I decided right then to give Alcoholics Anonymous and I I used to be a good writer I was working on my resignation in my head to just lay it out on them just let them know once and for all I go Bob I was thinking why don't you take these twelve golden steps of recovery season them with the twelve traditions which are to the group as the steps are to the individual garnish them with the twelve concepts of the original service wrap them all in the twelve promises which never come true to anybody with brains and stick them up your nose because I've had all I can take and I was just about to lay it out I knew it would destroy him but who do I care I didn't like him anyway and it suddenly let me tell you a light came out of heaven and illuminated me actually it was just a passing thought but it was a little more dramatic would you rather be Saul of Tarsus or Clancy of Venice I say but it suddenly struck me I've been doing this all wrong what in the hell is wrong with me you know you may have noticed that old timers many times don't have much hair in front that's from a lifetime ago boom I thought I've been acting as though I have to mean these things as though I have to do them with the right motives I don't have to mean anything I can do them and ridicule that old boob while I do them period of him you know I can make a joke out of this thing and he won't even notice how dumb ok Bob you bitch I went into a little wave of activism for a while Clancy pick up the cups sure Bob but I could think you know why you don't get many parts in movies Bob cause you're crazy Clancy set up the chairs sure Bob I bet you'd do it too if you could figure out how to unfold the god damn thank the speaker sure Bob you've taught me to really appreciate hypocrites I became quite an activist nothing must change but I felt superior again and a month later that got me through the next month and changed my perception just enough so a month later when the third day of my new job was a dishwasher I got fired again because of terrible emotional problems of my own can't hold a job as a dishwasher six months you ain't gonna make it I decided to kill myself firmly intend to do that action somehow prompted me to call my sponsor cause I got some points with him over the last month I said Bob I just can't go any on in my opinion Bob AA's not enough for me there's something terribly wrong in my judgment AA can't work and he he explained this to me he said in your judgment who cares about your judgment you live in an abandoned car if I wanted your judgment I'd put my head in the back window and ask you for it I said but Bob what am I gonna do he said why don't you write your inventory the way I told you to and I'd explained to him two weeks before Bob I've taken my inventory with a psychiatrist it won't help to take it with an out of work actor you know it really won't and I don't know why he kept grinding me about it but that day he just ground me I want to say one thing in passing I've talked about this a lot I've quoted my sponsor a lot I've always quoted him saying da da da da da da he always talked to me that way and a couple years ago somebody said you know Bob never raised his voice ever and suddenly I heard him that way he didn't really talk that way that's the way I heard him da da da hmm but that day I wrote an inventory I would have bet my life would have been crazy I just wrote down a thing I can think of and I put in a lot of things I didn't tell my psychiatrist and later on people I used to think why didn't I tell these things to my psychiatrist the answer is very obvious when you're paying that kind of dough you can't risk rejection you know you just can't risk rejection do you think I want to look up and tell him I might have to do that or you can do it I even took a he took me for a ride along the ocean and he gave me a flashlight at night and I read this inventory to him and he drove the easy est way to take him in the store ever far I'm so glad he did that I couldn't have sat looked at him and I told him things he's going the other side, let some other boob with his flashlight and paper. And you can always tell them something good is coming when they say, let me explain this part. It really isn't any good, though. It never is. Nothing's ever new. I'm a much better sponsor than my sponsor was. When we get up and they get done, I turn my head before I yawn. Because there's only so many basic emotional patterns. The specifics vary, but the emotional patterns are very easy to determine after a while. In fact, you can almost tell when you've left something out. That startles them. Did you leave something out there? Have you been talking to that old bag? And little by little, after I took that inventory, things didn't get much better, but I survived. My perception changed a little bit. And a couple months after that, I wish I had time to talk to you about it. The biggest step I ever took in my life, when my sponsor made me write a letter of amends to my father, the man who had victimized me. And ruined my life. I said, why should I write a letter of amends to him? His expectations of me destroyed me. He said, he may be a terrible father, kid, but you were a terrible son. We don't care what his problems were. We're concerned about making you better. I wrote my letter, and he said the terrible words that spoil everything. And I've used them many times since. Let me see that letter before you send it. And I brought him this letter and he says, no, no. Accusation. This is an amend. So I had to write about three verses before he finally accepted it. And I just hated it. I felt I was selling out. Just selling out. My father sent me a card. And little by little, over a period of time, he had me send him Father's Day cards. And Christmas. Jesus, I just... Five years later, my wife and children moved out from Texas, finally joined me. They heard the crinkle of green in my wallet. Leaped out of their post office box in Dallas with horse cries and fled to my side. Nine months and ten seconds later, another Catholic hit the street. But they were there about, maybe about three weeks. They were there about three weeks. And I'll tell you, I was in a bad situation because I'd made an occupation for five years of getting sympathy by my family. I don't have my family anymore. I'm alone over in 1412 Ardmore. Apartment six, come to think about it. But don't worry about me. And I love my children. I'll never see them again. All over. And they moved back. And all of a sudden, my life changed. There were... Every room in that house was full of people and dogs and noise and yammering. It seemed to me that for one period of four days, I didn't get in the bathroom. Just... And the heat was on. I wanted to go to A and say, I need help. And every time I'd go to A, he'd say, well, I'll bet you're happy now. And my father called me and his wife, who I hated very much, not my mother, had died. He said, will you come up and help me get through this, son? Any other time, I'd have said, no, Dad, you did it to me. Now you can keep it. But a little relief from those dogs, I needed briefly. So I went to my father's house. And we sat up all night. And he talked. We got talking. He had a couple of drinks. There was no drinking, but he drank to relax. And we sat up all night. I talked about how my childhood has changed. And he said, you know what? I'm going to go to my father's house. I'm going to go to my mother's house. I'm going to go to my father's house. So the childhood had looked to me. And he looked. He talked about how it had looked to him. I couldn't believe what I heard. He'd done everything he could to make my life happen. He worked two jobs, all during the Depression, hoping I could have some things. And he gave me things. And he sacrificed. And I always seemed to be smart-mouthed and smart-aleck and ungrateful and didn't care. Always bad-mouthed at somebody. And when I went into service, I didn't write him. And he just always felt... When I came home... SS Yeah. and I was a smart aleck, and he wanted so much for me to be a good son, and I just, oh, stop it, that's so crappy. Then my son died. I acted as though I didn't care. What kind of a son would not care? My father and I didn't talk for almost ten years. And that night, it all looked different. And little by little, over a period of time, we became good friends. And I suppose the last 20 years of his life, he and I were closer than most fathers and sons I've ever known. Marlena knew my father, met him several times. When he was old, he came out and lived at our house. When he got dying, he went up to Wisconsin like an old elephant to go back to the burial ground, the Lutheran burial ground. Died, and as he died, I was holding his hand, and he gave me a little squeeze and smiled, and I gave him a little squeeze and smiled. And a couple of days later, we stood at the Norwegian Lutheran Church, a place that used to terrify me incessantly because of that damning God. And I looked around and I thought, isn't it remarkable, because I hurt so bad and got so desperate, I was forced to take actions to realize the same loving God is in this church as is in my meeting in West Los Angeles. And the reason that's important, just stop and think. If it hadn't been for my sponsor making me take those actions, to this day, when someone said to me, tell us about your father, I'd say, I hate him. He's a monster. He's a monster. He's a monster. He's a monster. He's a monster. He's a dirty, wretched thing that ruined my life. And somebody says to me today, tell me about your father. One of the best friends I ever had. Victimization is a very hollow victory, I'll tell you. And you can play that game as long as you want, but it's a hollow victory. I never paid that much of the steps. Little by little, I got jobs back, and I got back in business. And when I was seven years sober, I was doing advertising. I was brought in. I went to another guy, and I created the number one hard rock station in Hollywood, something called Boss Radio. And then I got into television and advertising agencies and big corporations. I did wonderfully well. And one day when I was about 15 years sober in some hideous fit of do-gooderism, I found myself taking a little leave of absence from a corporation I worked at. I was going to, for a couple of months, work at this mission that threw me, until I could find someone to fill the role of the director who had just died. And I got caught up in it, and I've been there now for 18 years. I guess I'll be there forever. Until I get drummed out. And it's a funny thing. My life has gone a whole series of things, you know. I talk about the mission. It sounds as though I'm some selfless, wonderful man. I'm not. I'm a fallible man. And that's what you've got to remember. All of these wonderful steps and traditions. We've talked about this meeting. You've got to remember the operational phrase in Chapter 5. Because all of us have a tendency to be perfectionists. One of the great problems the early AAs had with the Oxford Movement, those four absolutes. Perfectionists tend towards absolutism, and you can't make it so you say to hell with it, why even try? And some of the most helpful words I know. The steps are wonderful. And they really are. They change your life. But even more wonderful is, in a sense, for people like me, is what comes after. And that's what I'm trying to say to you. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is we're willing to grow along spiritual lines. We seek spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection. Willie was talking today about New Year's resolutions and trying to determine to do better next year. That's what other people have to do. You and I have New Year's Eve every night. And I could say, well, I didn't know. I don't know if my resolution is today, but I can, God, help me do it better tomorrow. Know that with me. And I can fail and not say, well, the world is over, why try? But little by little, Alcoholics Anonymous has changed my life. I was thinking the other day, now Willie has passed this stage some years ago, but most people haven't. It's been over a third of a century since I walked off Skid Row. And I haven't had any therapy except Alcoholics Anonymous. To this day, there are still, and there have always been outriders, the coyotes who ride around the herd in Alcoholics Anonymous and say, hey, AA is all right to get sober. But if you have emotional problems, you need something deeper. You need further help. Let me tell you about this therapy. Maybe my doctor can get you some Prozac. Maybe things will get better. Prozac's the modern thing. When I was new, they introduced Librium, which was going to do exactly the same thing with all the same words. I was working in the medical corporation when Librium came out, and I saw the first full-page ad, Doctor, at last you can treat your alcoholics without side effects. And they will be without conflict and pain. And I remember reading that ad and thinking, I would never use that. But my tongue went, got ink all over my tongue. But these outriders say you don't have to. Now, that may be, people with deep emotional problems, AA may not be enough. But let me tell you one thing. I have been in jail 33 times, which is not a record, but it's good for an ad executive. I have been confined in the Veterans Hospital in Wood, Wisconsin. I have been confined in the Veterans Hospital in El Paso, Texas. I have been committed to spend the rest of my life for an indefinite period in the State Insane Asylum at Big Spring, Texas. I have laid chained down in the Beloit, Wisconsin Municipal Hospital. Oh, my wife came in on the next floor, had a baby, and went home again. And I was still there. I think she induced labor to humiliate me. I think I can speak for those with emotional problems. Acting as the spokesman for those with emotional problems, let me say this. I can assure you that alcoholics anonymous, involvement in alcoholics anonymous, and actions, and involvements, and understanding, not knowing all about it, but little by little. I'll tell you, the people I sponsor, I would much rather see them bring a newcomer to the meeting and have a complete knowledge of the 12 traditions. I mean, I'd like to have both, but carrying the message, doing these things, taking the actions, getting out of self, that's the recovery. And alcoholics anonymous, as it is, now set up, will work at least 33 years and 11 months. I can tell you that from personal experience. It may not work any longer than that for people like me. It works longer than that for Liz, but it works that long for me. And so I wanted to tell you, if you feel that you need something more, try this at least for 33 years and 11 months. If at the end of that time it doesn't work, screw you. He said with love. But that's why I like this weekend. I've worked the steps again and again in my life. I still sit here. I read that 12 and 12 many, many times. I still hear new things and new experiences from our people who are dealing with the steps. They have different experiences than I have had with them. That adds another dimension, another facet. And it's really nothing new. I haven't heard anything new in Alcoholics Anonymous in 25 years. But I've heard things that have centered me and made me feel like I'm feeling better again. And that's the name of this game. And the last thing I want to say is this. To those of you, a few of you who are new tonight, or who will be new soon. Those of you who are kind of new tonight and are weak and heavy laden. I always liked that phrase when I was a boy. I remember hearing that in church. It always stuck in my mind. Weak and heavy laden. Boy, that's a phrase I can identify with that. I'm weak and heavy laden. I've been rowed, or down in Texas, I've been rowed hard. And put away wet. But the one thing I like to say is this. When I was in that Texas nuthouse. And I was finally transferred to the alcoholic ward. The first meeting I went to in Texas. I don't know if any of you have been in meetings in Texas. But they do it a little differently than they did it here. You heard a little bit of it tonight, or the other night. I mean, here we get up and say, My name is Fred and I'm an alcoholic. Somebody says, Hi Fred. Down there they say, My name is Fred and I'm an alcoholic. And through the grace of God, and the power of this simple program, it has not been necessary for me to drink any alcohol, or take any mind sedating or tranquilizing medications, since my sobriety day. And for this I'm truly grateful. And they say, Oh, Fred. I guess that's all right. But you're just coming off shock treatment. And I always swore if I got the position of power, I could not have to... If I could tell people something, I wouldn't get into that camp. So I'm here tonight based on my own experience to tell you how it really is. One thing I discovered in Alcoholics Anonymous that I'm an alcoholic. And so I can stand up in front of you tonight with impunity and tell you my name is Clancy Emisland and I'm an alcoholic. I'll tell you what else I've learned. I've learned that through the grace of God and the power of this simple program, it has not been necessary for me to drink any alcohol or take any mind sedating or tranquilizing medications since October the 31st, 1958. And for this I am truly grateful.