Earl H. at the Rule 62 – 2018

Hi, everybody. My name is Earl. I'm an alcoholic. Hi. Thank you for having me here. It's always an honor and a privilege to do this. Thank you to the committee for asking me to come. Thank you, Pat, for picking me up at the airport and getting me here It's nice to get off a plane. You feel like you just got launched into space. I do because I never pay attention to anything. I just, you know, I look at the calendar and it just says Kentucky. It's like, all right, get on a plane, fly here. This trip was a little weird because I was in L.A. on Thursday and I had to get from L.S. to LA back to Scottsdale to catch a flight the following morning to fly out here to be with you guys. And those of you who know me know that flying is not my favorite thing. and so we my flight kept getting delayed out of Burbank to fly in on Thursday right like you know then I got him this planes gotta go it's gotta go I got to be there I got it's gonna be a quick turnout I got unpack one bag pack another and off I go again right say hi to the wife side how did the dog go and so take off and we take off in them and they come right on and they go Well, there's a sandstorm in Phoenix. And I'm thinking, well, the place we just were is fine. Why don't you just turn this thing around and just go back to where we were? Because, I mean, I do want to get to Kentucky, but not through a sand storm. I don't want to go through a stand storm. So they took off. So the hour flight turned out to be two hours and 40 minutes long. as we're flying over and we're getting diverted to Tucson, but that's not going to work. So we're flyin' around up there and there's an electrical storm hits and so there's lightning that doesn't go down. It just kind of goes sideways through the, you know what I mean? And everybody's got their windows open. I mean, it got, and it's the turbulence hits and it gets so bad. The girl behind me, and she was in the middle seat in the row behind me. Right? I know because I did the big head swivel right in the center. In the middle of it. And she called her mother to kind of say, you know, might not be coming home. Might not make it. I'm like, hey, hey hey! You should keep that to yourself. So I was a wreck when I got finally, we're going in. Terrific, that sounds very appropriate, we'RE GOING IN. It's like, you know what I mean? Are we at war suddenly? and what are we doing, you know? So we went in and we're getting off and the flight attendant said, I think you should all thank the pilot for navigating us through that storm effectively. And I got to tell you, I understand her thinking but I wasn't having it. That thinking. I was thinking about who's in charge of this? This is ridiculous. You don't fly people. They knew that that was happening when we took off. I'm certain of it. And they just said, they'll figure it out on the way. So I got home and just sort of like, you know, stared at the ceiling, you know, with my dog looking at me like, what's wrong with you, man? You don't look right. Unpacked the bag, packed the bag. Flew here. And everybody has been really nice to me since I've been here. And you guys have been great. And I've gone, I've being in AA since then. Since then, I just came to AA. and I heard a lot of wonderful talks and I've met a lot of wonderful people and my talk is superfluous. I mean, this talk is completely unnecessary after hearing Carl up here at 7. She was awesome, man. That was just a great talk. Yeah. But schedule says we got to do this, so buckle up. Here we go. This one's going to have a sandstorm and an electrical storm in it. Had a little coffee. Probably shouldn't be allowed. I didn't start drinking until I was 12. I waited, I waited. That was as long as I could hold off, was 12th. Four, it made sense at four. I remember walking down a hallway. You know how you have little snapshots of your... If you have a tortured childhood and You live in a house with an extremely violent individual. What you have is you have pictures. You have little snapshots that you remember, that you kind of cling to. Those are kind of your anchors where you climbed your way out of this vicious childhood, if you want to call it that. And I remember walking down the hallway and my father put his arm on my shoulder, which was unusual because even by four we shook hands and we fought. That's it. There wasn't any friendly stuff, you know? And he had his arm around me, and I was four. Count them. Four. And he said, you know, you're going to be a man soon. And I remember thinking, at four, I remember thinking, I don't think that's right. I'm pretty sure that's incorrect. I am not going to be a Mansoon. I've been looking around. I mean, I'm not even up the people's belt yet. You know what I mean? I got a long way to go. So, I mean, it was – I was troubled and it was confusing and I'm getting mixed messages and I'M getting beat on. And, I MEAN, by the time I'M 12, THEY DID A BUNCH OF TESTS ON ME, RIGHT? AND I GET INTO THIS BOARDING SCHOOL. SO HOW I FIND OUT I'M GOING TO BOARDing SCHOOLS IS THEY – MY DAD COMES INTO MY ROOM AND SAYS, GET IN THE CAR! ALL RIGHT. WE GOT IN THE car and we – IT WAS A CARAVAN OF FAMILY MEMBERS AND WE DROVE AND DROVED AND DRIVE AND GOT TO THIS PLACE AND I GOT OUT OF THE CAR AND HE GOT OUT of THE CAR AND NOBODY ELSE GOT OUT Of THE CAR. He just kept the engines running, you know what I mean? And he came out and he put a suitcase down next to me and he shook my hand and he said, this will make a man out of you. And got back in the car and drove off. Now, the feeling was I just got thrown away by the people who knew me best in the world and I didn't know what had gone wrong to get thrown out like that, right? It was devastating to me emotionally. The fact is, was that I was being given an opportunity for a wonderful education. Held me in good stead to this very day. But I'm not a facts guy. I'm a feelings guy, and if it feels bad, it is bad. And this was bad. Turns out I'm the youngest and smallest kid in a school of 250 boys. They'd scoured the earth to find 250 of the brightest, most disturbed young men they could find. Like Lord of the Flies in this joint, right? And there were 249 teenagers and me. That doesn't mean anything to anybody but a 12-year-old, right. They're teenagers. I'm not. I don't belong here. Called home for three days, talking to my mother Going, look, you gotta come get me This is all wrong Just come get Me, there's nothing else to talk about Just come and get me And I hear my father in the background, hang up You know, my mother's like Oh, gotta go And after three days it was like Something broke inside of me and I decided You know what, you don't want me, I don't wants you, screw you And I just turned my back on my family And pretty much never went back A few days later I met Tiny Every high school has got a guy named Tiny He's like 6'4", 240 Plays guard on the football team I'm this little 5 foot tall, 103 pound Frightened child Actually he found me in the quad Trying to make my way from one class to the next And I was on my way to Latin Moved across and he looked at me And he said how you doing punk And he slapped me inthe back of the head And just sent me flying out My books went flying All the other kids standing around I mean, yeah, kids are. You know, we're a cruel bunch. You know what I mean? They're all like, eh, look at the little guy just get flattened by, you know, Tiny. Yeah, good move, Tiny, yeah. But Tiny thought he just smacked the little boy or the little girl. You know? He didn't realize he had smacked someone that was willing to die over this. Right? You know ? I just got out of a place where that went on all the time. I ain't starting up now. So I got up and walked over and I belted Tiny as hard as I possibly could and then just stood there looking at him, right? Now, the punch I threw, which was a very good one, I might add, had no effect on Tiny whatsoever. Tiny just looked down at me, and he said, You got a lot of guts, kid. And then he beat the crap out of me, right. And as I'm taking the beating, I'm thinking, This is going pretty good. And I thought it was going good because he had said you got a Lotta Guts. My violence had masked my fear, right, so my first tool for living was when frightened, attack. If you're attacking people, they're not worried about how scared you are. They don't see that. You know, you can mask it with the violence. So that became, you know, you looked at me sideways, I just came at you, you know? And I went back to my dorm room, sitting there waiting for the bleeding to stop. I mean, he beat me, right? Because I just kept popping back up, right? I mean it was bad. I mean dudes were simping around going bro, just stay down man. It ain't like you're going to change the outcome any. And I couldn't do it, you know what I mean? You know what i mean, if I could get up, I got up. And I said, I may lose, but I'm going to make you look bad for beating up this little guy right over here. So fire away big man, bam, right back on the ground. Until finally I couldn' get up. After a while I went back to my room, sitting there on the edge of my bed. I got knots, eyes are closing, waiting for the bleeding to stop. And the word spread across this campus like wildfire. Watch out for this little high tower kid. He's a maniac. He attacked tiny, you know? You know how it is, right? The truth leaves the conversation quickly. So the cool guys came around. A guy stuck his head in my room and he goes, bro, you want to smoke a joint? And I said, yes, I do. And I didn't even know what that meant. i didn't know what he was talking about all i knew was this guy was saying you want to come with us the answer was yeah man i'm alone in the universe man my family threw me away giant people are trying to kill me you know you want you want go smoke this joint thing you know i'm down let's go so we went picked up steve on the way and steve had a tupperware container full of cheap red wine i mean you know no grapes involved red wine the fortified the mad dog, you know what I mean? I heard mention of it earlier, right? Yeah, and so we went about two 13-year-olds and a 12-year old. Babies, babies, right, and he fired up the joint, and I don't know, you Know that, I'm sure none of you have passed, grabbed a joint from somebody else and passed it on. I'm Sure none of You've Been Involved in That Kind of Behavior, but You Know That Technique of Where You Reach for It, and You Stick That One Finger Out, and you Just, You know, the guy's got the joint and you just slap it with that finger And you pin it with the thumb And it's just sort of a one slick move It's just kapow, you got it, right? I do not know how I knew to do that I think it's a DNA thing Like somebody was hitting the weed And, you know, my Civil War folk or something I don't know But that joint came around, and I just quack. Took a hit off of that, and it burned my lungs. I'm like, uh-uh. That is uncomfortable. Give me the wine. So the wine came around. I took a pull on that wine, and you know how it goes down and hits your stomach in that wafting action? You know what I mean? It just kind of bounces back up. It's like, oh. That was nasty. Give me that joint back. Let's try that again. Pop that joint back. You know, so the one thing, I'm looking at these two guys, Matt and Steve, and I'm like, yeah, all right, you know, I'll do it. I'm going to do it, I don't know, but I'm doing it. I'm not like this, you don't. And, I mean, it happened. That thing that makes me bodily and mentally different from my fellows occurred. And suddenly I was comfortable standing where I was standing, doing what I was doing with the people I was dealing with, and I never felt like that before in my life. That was the first time in my life I ever remember completely exhaling. Just that, I was home, man. I don't know, is it the pot? Is it the wine? Is it a fact that I'm standing here with my two very close personal friends, Matt and Steve? Because these are my boys now. I don' t know and I don''t care. How we got here is irrelevant to me. It's just we got her. And I need to do this every day. This needs to be a part of every day because the fact is, in the beginning, it worked perfectly. Right? I mean, it work perfectly. Nobody died. Nobody went to jail. No blood was drawn. Nobody went into the nut house. Nobody went through prison. All those things were going to happen, but they didn't happen that night. That night, feel better than you've ever felt before. Nothing bad happens. Dude, I'm in. Right? Woke up the next morning, first thought. Where's Matt and Steve? I've got to track those boys down. And if a tiny gets between me and them, we're going to take another run at it. At some point, that man's fists are just going to give in. So, I mean, that was humble beginnings for me. You know, a little pot, a lot of wine. 13 was pills. The only reason I took a pill was a guy, I was on a 10-hour pass at this party. I don't know where I was. It was just some party some people took me to. And they said, the guy took out his hand. Would you like a couple of pills? And I said, yes, I would. I threw them in my mouth and swallowed them and said, what were those? Because that's how we do, right? Normal folk go, well, what do we got here prior to consumption? I just need to know should I lay down or are we going to paint the house what are we doing I just want to get ready that's all I don't care and you know what right in that moment tells you pretty much all you need to known about the rest of my drinking and using history right, was I'm not a specialist. I didn't get one thing rolling and just ride it into the dirt and crawl on in here, man. My drug of choice is what do you got? It's all anti-heral medication because I learned it's like, look, if I get to choose, I mean, I like alcohol, heroin, barbiturates. These are a few of my favorite things. I like these things. I like right in here, right? Right? I like it. I like the idea of a good night sitting around checking my pulse. I don't need a window. I don' t need a woman. I don''t need a TV. Only people who need TVs are speed freaks. Only people in the... I love you guys. I love your spinners, man. I love the way you tweakers will walk. You're the only people in the world who walk into a room and go, I believe I need to take that television apart. I love you for that. I don't get it, but I respect it. But if you don't have any of those other things, I'll take a big bag of the cocaine. Can't go down? Let's go up. i'm happy driving the freeways decoding license plates let's go just instant psychosis come on all right sure i've done it anybody remember black beauties there you go all right three of those and all of a sudden you look at a friend and go we need to go to seattle and everybody just gets in the car and you don't stop till you get there Because you don't need to. But so, I mean, it wasn't about down or up. It was about I got to get out of right here right now because right here, right now, I'm restless, irritable and discontented. Right here, right now I'm comparing my insides to your outsides and I'm losing every time. That's what's up. I can't be in this moment. And if I'm not mistaken, the only place life exists for us is now. We got to Get Between Those. That's What's Up. Just get in there. They're not alive anywhere else, so just follow along now. Get in there, all you speed freaks jump the gun. So there's a half a beat early. I saw you. But that's it. So, I mean, if life is right here right now, if this is all there is, right? Because that's the power of life is in this moment. It's not in the moments to come. It's Not In The Moments Past. It's right now. This is where it's at now, right. That's what we have, this together, right, it's an amazing thing to know that. It's also an amazing things to recognize that you're so terrified of right here, right now that you will surrender your life one day at a time to drinking and using to avoid the living of life in this moment, and that's what I did. I surrendered my life. I let it kill me one day at a time. Let it take my life one day at a Time. I let It remove me from the only place I could live one day At a time I let It take me willingly gladly. Yes I'll do whatever is necessary to get Whatever I need into my body to remove Me from this moment so That I am not present. I am Not in life. I Am not in the world. I am absent And and that's the way I roll that was a humble beginning still still you know 14 with psychedelics the only reason i took a psychedelic is i was on a 10 hour pass again with this girl named debbie very bad girl i will love her till the day i die right that girl was man you know i mean and she said would you like to drop some acid and i said well yes i would debbie again i have no idea what we're talking about but if debbie wants to do it i'm in so she took out a lipstick tube and spun it up and on the end of it was a little pill, which I thought was kind of clever. Could see a little like that, right? Took the pill off, threw it in my mouth, swallowed it, and she looked at me and said, did you take that whole thing? And I said, well, yes, I did, Debbie. It was a very tiny pill. And she said, well, that was three hits of white lightning. I always love the one person, right, that I know knows that just goes, oh, that's incorrect, man. Three hits of white lightning. That's not the right thing to do. And I was like, well, all right. Next two days were very interesting. About 600, 650 hits later, I got classified legally insane by the military, but that's a whole other story we haven't got time for. But I went to enlist and the Army went, no. Wow, I'm being rejected from places I'm not really that interested in going. Fifteen, I started shooting dope. Only reason I shot dope was a girl on a boat in Marina Del Rey named Cammie. Delightful girl. Said, would you like me to stick this in your body? And I said, CammIE, I am certain of it. I was catching on, you know what I mean? So she hit me up and it was one of those shots where you just go, huh? Right? And on the way down, all you're thinking is, if I'm not dead, I'm doing that again. Because that... That was right to the point, man. There was no mistaking what was going on here. That just lights out, brother. I thought, that works really well. Taking you out of the moment, man, Just like, is it still Thursday? Oh. And I thought I was winning, man. I was catching, I mean, just my bag of tricks was growing and growing and going. I thought this was all working out fantastic, right? It wasn't starting to slip sideways yet. Immediately following that, and I'm drinking the whole time. I identify as an alcoholic, all right? But I talk about drugs. I'm a child of the 60s. We were focused on the drugs. Our parents were the alcoholics. We, you know, we weren't going to, we were carving out our own identity here. We weren't gonna drink ourselves to death like them. We're gonna kill ourselves in a whole new way. That's what we were, we were focused upon the drugs, but the fact of the matter is, no matter what else was going on, there was always a fifth on the table. The booze was there every day, and the reason for that is simple, in my opinion, which, by the way, all of this is, My opinion. In my opinion, drugs are completely unreliable. There's no quality control going on out there. You don't know what you got until you get it in your body. I never went to the connection and had the guy say, you know, Earl, the cocaine's a little weak this week. You know what I mean? I really think you come back next week, we'll have something a little bit better for you. Never said that. Every time I went, oh, it's good, it' s great, you're probably going to have to step on this another couple times each. And he's selling you, you know. Salt. right but you get a fifth of jack daniels you get a quart of good gin you know you got something reliable on that table so you get so much cocaine and you can't get your mouth open anymore you know and it's 7pm and the party just started and you've completely overshot the mark again you don't worry about it he stuck a little jack through your teeth jack will get you back in that zone man you can party on you can keep going right acid a little too spooky this evening don't worry about it. Good gin will get you right back in that smooth area, right where you need to be. Booze is reliable, man. And I was relying on booze early in my early teens. At 16 years old, I had a guy say to me, you know what? You're an alcoholic. And my response was basically, what's your point? If you think calling me that's going to change the way I behave, the way i act, you are sadly mistaken, my friend. Only reason we're talking is I've had a few belts here. That's, you know, I don't leave, this is how I breathe at this point. This is how i get out of the house. This is how, I do what I call socializing. You can, you probably refer to it as anti-social psychotic behavior. I refer to, it as socializing, not really sure what's going to happen from one day to the next. I could be them, I could say wasn't it nice to see early yesterday he was just lovely at the party right and or you wake up to the phone call He was like, dude, what is the matter with you? I don't know. I do. I do know what's the matter with me. Already at 16, I knew. I'm a drug addict. I'll own that. But everybody I knew was, so that was no big deal. But I was an alcoholic too. That separated me. It was me and one other guy, Dar. We were the guys that you could tell. We'd play with everybody else, but we were the guys that always had the fifth in the backseat of the car we were always the guys that didn't that always head the glass on the table we were those guys that we were drinking through everything right so I dropped out of high school at 16 oh I've got put in my first nut house for 15 three months of observation and a year rehabilitation talked my way out of there got thrown into the nut house again escaped the first day cuz that guy I got my my bearings with the nut house you got to get out before they get the Thorazine in you. You're leaving when they say, right? So I learned, you know, you get in the intake process and you act all ashamed. I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. Hey, look at that. You know, and you're out. Three years on the street doing what we do, end up in business college. Long story. End up in бизнес college. And I'm a drug dealer now because I have no sense of family, have no sens of community, have not morals, have ethics. I am just loose. And I'm in business college. I'm studying marketing, production, distribution. I'm applying it to my business. Business is booming. I think college rocks. They have a health fair. So my buddies go, let's get high and go to the health fair, and I was like, yeah. So we all get high, go to The Health Fair, you know, and this doctor goes, I think you need to go in and get some blood work done. So I said, okay. All my friends are like, maybe they're going to find out what's wrong with you. I don't know if it's in my blood, but okay, I'll go. So we went and they said, you have malignant cancer. I was like, great. So I flew back to L.A. and hooked up with this doc at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. And they set us in this office. He prepared me to die. They told my family the odds were not in my favor. And I just remember my mother, it looked like she shrunk the way she just slumped over, hearing that her firstborn, her son, probably wasn't going to make it. And I just remember thinking, you know, it's just the way I live. You know, It's just another day. You know what I mean? You know? Just an opportunity for she and I to talk a little bit because I don't see her much, right? And because I'm steering clear of my father. So they take me in. They do surgery on my upper back. And surgeons saved my life. And they put me in nuclear medicine, they called it back then. It's chemo now. And I went in and got a couple of shots. and I just went, you know, you guys drugs suck. You should see what I got back at my house. So I didn't do the chemo. I went back to my, I get loaded the way I get loaded and I'm a long-term cancer survivor, right? So well, I appreciate the applause but I seriously had absolutely nothing to do with that working out. Anyway, went back up to school, doing my thing. My mother calls me crying and says look we have You know, your 22nd birthday's coming. We haven't been anywhere as a family for 10 years. We'll go anywhere you want to go, but we're going as a family. We're putting this family back together. And I said, fine. Well, you know, crying mother, what do you do? Right? So I flew back to L.A., and on my birthday, my 22nd birthday, we took off to fly to Guadalajara, and on the way there, the plane crashed, and my mother, my father, my little sister all died in the crash, and I survived. I woke up in the trash, and, um, my skull was fractured. My back was broken in three places, crushed my leg and my arm. I was paralyzed from the waist down. I had a lot of internal injuries, just broken from head to toe, broke all my ribs. I was just in bad, bad shape. And my mother was laying right over there, and my little sister Kimberly was right over here, and I couldn't get to any of them to help them. All I could move was my right arm. And I laid there and I watched them all bleed to death. And it was like flipping a switch in my head i thought you know what i have no interest in a god like this um take a kind gentle loving poetic creature like my little sister kimberly and leave a lying cheating thief and dope fiend alcoholic like me on the planet there's no there's nothing right about this there's not justice or mercy in this this is i'm out man i renounced god then some guys came up and they scavenged the plane wreck took what they could find of value and they left me up there to die so i had no more love for you either i had no love of god had no love on my fellow man i was just angrily enraged broke into pieces little drug addict alcoholic dying on him in the dirt in mexico some other guys finally came up and they threw me in the back of a flatbed truck next to my mother and i held my dead mother's hand and they drove us to an aid station they tagged her dead they tagged me dead and they sat there smoking cigarettes and i just watched the fleas in the light it was in the afternoon light and so there were these shadows and there were fleas jumping in this flatbed truck to have me in. And I was just looking at the rhythm of the fleas. I was watching that. I thought of it as like the rhythm of death, this is the day where everybody dies. And I would tag dead and I wouldn't die. So they finally took me to a place called Hospital Fatima in Las Mochas, Mexico. And they took me in there and got my ID and they started trying to put me back together. Then the Federales showed up because they got my name. The Federales show up and they wanted to know what I was doing back in Mexico. So that's another story we don't need to get into here. Let's just say that the Mexican authorities were not thrilled to see me. So they interrogated me through an interpreter for three and a half days, which means nothing for paying. They tortured me for three undead days, and I wouldn't give them what they wanted. And that will change you, fellow, though, I'll tell you. And I finally got a hold of a phone. I called up some guys I knew up in Northern California. One of them was the nephew of the president of Nicaragua. This guy, Alvaro Somoza, this big Latin thug, man. He flew a plane in and paying guys off. They got me and plastered me from the neck down and put me in a plane and smuggled me out of Mexico. Ended up back at that same hospital where I'd had the cancer surgery, St. John's in Santa Monica. And I was in there for a long time. And I came out of there as crazy as I've ever been in my life. I had pictures in my head I knew I couldn't live with. I was strung out on Demerol because I don't know how to work a nurse, man, when you've got the story I had, man? And I worked that story. And I got those maximum shots of Demerol every three hours around the clock. So I knew when I left, I had to hook it up because, I mean, I figured you check out of this hospital, you've got three hours to connect, man, or it's going to get bad fast, right? So I had the right voice pick me up. You know what I mean? I was high before I got out of the parking lot. And I was higher for the next six years. The next six year, I used like a madman. As the book talks about, I tried to blot out the intolerable nature of my existence. And I failed. I was not successful in doing that. I was running around like a mad, wounded animal, just exposing the nature of my pain to the world around me. I came out of my last – I'm going to shorten this up. I came Out of My Last Blackout. I was 215 pounds. I had hair down to my elbows. I was yellow. My thyroid had shut down. My heart was swollen. You couldn't touch my liver. My kidneys were pissed. You know, I had no place to live. I had no friends. My family was dead. There was an ambulance and a police car outside because they were deciding whether or not to charge me with the attempted murder of David Luboff. And I'm the most peaceful boy you will ever meet sober. But there's this little Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing that goes on with me. You know, I go into a blackout, and it's up for grabs. I've been stabbed twice, shot at. The violence has been completely nuts. And I're just not a violent man. But I wasn't a man anymore. I was an animal. And I came out of this last blackout. I've had hundreds of blackouts, you know? You know, I'm comfortable with that moment, that bing, oh, what are we doing? Who are you and what are you doing? I'm good with that. That doesn't shock me. It didn't shock my mind. It didn' t shock me anymore. What shocked me was I came outta that blackout and I said, please help me. I don' t know what happened, but I came outer that black out and it was over. I couldn' t do it anymore. I'd been beaten just beaten and I said please help me and somebody knew the game somebody knew what was up far better than I did he said the magic words and they threw me in the ambulance and got me out of there before the cops knew what was happening and I ended up at UCLA and they pumped my stomach and they said get him out of here or he's going to die they took me to Olive View Medical Center and they kept me there for five days and I just kept getting sicker and sicker and sickER and sickEr and they took be by ambulance down to a place called Long Beach General Hospital under the care of Dr. Vicki Fox, the Georgia peach, man. I mean, and she saved so many miserable, useless souls like me that you couldn't count them. And she had that magic, man, she had the hair up, the big beehive do, you know, with the pencil stuck in it, you know? And the glasses on a chain, and always wore a sweater, and she had a cigarette, she put a cigarette in the corner of her mouth like that, and light it, and just leave it there. Right? So just ashes all down this side of the sweater. She always had these manila folders like, oh, it was us on paper, you know what I mean? On her arm. And she just had that. If she walked through that back door right now, you'd all turn and look. You could feel her, you Know What I Mean? And I'm in there kicking like a dog. Where I kicked, it Was Long Beach General Hospital. It was one room with 42 army cots in it. There was 21 army cotes on each side of The room with sheets drawn between it. And how you kicked is called riding the cot. There was no meds. There was nobody coming around at night going, you a little anxious, Earl? Are you anxious? Can I get you a lil' something for that? Help you sleep. I'll help you sleep, if you want some. That guy never showed. It was just 42 guys flipping out and kicking, right? I mean, oh, it was Dante's Inferno in this place. If I could paint it, I'd just go, no, I don't need to. That one right there of the inferno, that's it. Just screaming people falling off cliffs. That's what it looked like. That's how it felt like in the show. You didn't sleep a wink. I spent 47 days riding that cot, right? Kicked up a couple seizures where you just bucked up out of the cot, you know? Like, oh, I'm on the floor. What happened? Throwing you on a gurney and wheeling you into the hospital to shoot you full of anticonvulsants or something, you don't know what I mean? Check your blood pressure. 178 over 90. he's okay send him back like wait a minute i don't think that's good and then i remember just sick so sick and i just didn't seem to be getting any better and ray w my my guy said to me uh earl you got to go to the a and a buddy i said and i remember i mean if you looked at my life the last 10 years of my life right he said hey it's like really there's some place for me to go awesome give me the address not my reaction. He said, you're gonna have to go to AA. And I was like, really? Really? Come to that, has it? Gotta go to the A&A, huh? I've never been there, but I know all about it. It's a terrible place. With you guys sitting around putting the plug in the jug. Walk in and you go, how are you doing, Bob? Bob says, what are you doing, bud? Well, not drinking. Okay. What do you got planned for later? What are we doing later, Bob? Well probably not going to drink. Well I'm new, Bob. I could use a little help here. You got a little something for a... I'm begging you, Bob! You got something for me? I mean, I don't get it. I don' t understand. A little nutty, Bob, what do you think? I don't think you should drink either Earl that's AA that's what I thought I thought really I gotta go to that place great glad I just went through that 52 days of hell to feel like this so I could go there really looking up thanks Ray I'm gonna remember you ended up on a Friday night in the basement of a church, mad-dogging everybody, man. Just mad, just, you know, no, no. You're thinking of coming over here, aren't you? No. No. That will not go well. No. No! Crazy? I don't know you. Don't confuse me with somebody who wants to hear about your day. I don' t give a shit about your Day. I got some serious issues cooking over here. Asking me questions, I don't have the answers to. How you doing? What's going on? Why are you doing this? Why are here? What's my name? You don't know my name. Get away from me. Just get away. But every meeting he's got a guy with nine months who's on fire with Alcoholics Anonymous. All he sees is the new guy, and he's giving it away tonight. My guy was a guy named Vegas. That was his name. He was named after a city. His name was Vegas N, his last initial. And he saw me, and He was like, new guy. And he was coming, and I was just everything I had. Like, uh, uh-uh. No effect. Just walked right up, and then goes, hi, I'm Vegas. I'm an alcoholic. And I said, yeah, me too, man. Not exactly the highlight of my life. What are you so thrilled about? Get away from me! And he kind of leaned in a little bit and he went, keep coming back, buddy. And like five guys standing over there were like, wow, did you see that? Vegas told a new crazy guy to keep coming Back. Like it was like a big deal. And look, I'm watching all this just going, what is this? I don't get it. So I'm sitting in the back with my arms folded, you know what I mean? You're not getting in. Just talk. Do your thing. And I'm like sliding up. I'm trying to read the room, who's got the power, you know what I mean? Slide up on the guys that seem to be running the show, burglarize the conversation, just kind of pick up. They're going to give me the lowdown without me having to actually get into it with them. Slide off and I got it. Oh, they got 12 steps and 12 traditions. Traditions are for the group, not a group. Screw those. Steps. Read the 12 steps. And thought, okay, I get it. What else you got? I read them. I get It. Right? what else would you do with those right sat in the back arms folding the guy got up and he shared his experience strength and hope I didn't know that's what he was doing but that's what he did and it was like that guy reached right in me and got me turned on the light you know because I was just dead inside I drank like that guys you know what I mean and there was no denying that guy knows how I drank that guy knows how i feel it's like that has been reading my mail I don't get it I don t get how that guy could be talking that way in front of people and getting the reaction that he's getting. He's saying stuff you don't tell people. Don't tell People that stuff. And he's just up there smiling and telling them, you know, yeah, then I ran over this dog, and then we, you know... Everybody's like, yeah! Me too, I ran Over a Dog. Yeah, I was... Guys are pretty loose with your info around here, man. You know? but there it was, you know what I mean? It was like, you could tell it was real. There was something going on and I knew it was better than anything that was going on inside me. You know what i mean? It was the barometric pressure wasn't leveling out. Where you guys were operating and how I was operating was like this and I could feel it. It wasn't so much the words as the vibe, the energy, the way of being that was just going on in a meeting that I just, it was like completely unfamiliar to me And I knew I couldn't live with what I had anymore. I knew that. And so I thought, I left with the one thing I hope everybody that goes to an AA meeting leaves with, the feeling that they want to come back. And that's what I left without. I left thinking, I've got to come black. And I left thinkin' that I knew so little about this, I thought that was the meeting where that guy spoke. So I was gonna come back next week and hear Bob talk some more, you know? Whatever the hell the guy's name was. Let's call him Bob, right? And I came back the next week, And I know how to do the meeting. You sit down, put your keys on the seat. Yeah, how are you doing? Fine. How are you going? Fine. I had my newcomer mantra down, you know what I mean? Just when everybody ain't said anything, I just went, fine. Fine. Don't go past fine. That's as far as we're going. Fine. And I sat and then they did a little guy and he talked a little bit and he sat down and then a guy talked and he drank and that was good and he drink and then he sat down. Then they passed the basket, and you're like, don't take the money. Don't take the money? Let the basket go. Basket go. And then they went out. We smoked. I smoked. And we go back, and then a guy said, I'm waiting for it, and I'm ready. It's like they read the 12 traditions, 24 things ABC, 24 things AB. I knew that that's what, in meaning, right? I got that far. And then and all the while betty's heading like 75 years old she's making a move for that podium man she's got the arms working she's got the whole head We're back on. Thanks, man. Hey, man, is it Dicob Tapes or Dicoby? Dicobe. Dicrobe Tapes. Did you hear that? everybody? Dicode. I was just confused for a minute, that's all. Anyway, it's the coffee, man. I can't drink this thing. Take this away from me. Alright. Where the hell was I? Betty! So Betty gets up and Betty goes I'm Betty, I'm an alcoholic and I'm just, oh my god how am I getting this out of my life back? and Betty, all of a sudden Betty goes, you know in my day if you were a reasonably good looking woman you could take 50 cents, walk into a bar and drink for two weeks and then broke down how you go about doing that and when she sat down I looked at the dude next to me and I went bro, Betty's a badass I would so roll with that lady man and I left kind of freaking out I'm like now I'm identifying with a 75 year old woman what the hell is happening I'm in my 20s what the heck is going on But there was just something about it. The nature of a meeting. It was never, that speaker was so awesome, man, I'm coming back. Or, boy, that's the best coffee I've ever had. It wasn't a thing or a piece. It was the combined effort. It wasthe atmosphere. It wasthevibethatwascomingoffaroomfullofdeadpeoplewhocomebacktolife. It was theeenergy of the people that didn't run up to the cliff and step back. It was a room full of people that had run up to the cliff and just leapt into the abyss, man. These were my people. These were the people that understood when I said to them, look, I'm not suicidal. I never have been. But death became an acceptable consequence for the way I used. If this shot's going to kill me, then it's goingto kill me. It's not going to stop me from taking the shot. It's just the way it goes because I've got to numb it up. And if numbing up is an overdose, then numbingup is an overdose. If we've got to go back to the hospital and go to the bootleg sanitarium one more time to kick, you know, then let's go. Throw the cash on the table and strap me to the gurney. I'm down with the five-point restraints. I know all about them, man. I know how to do it. I know what they're all about. How are you doing, Earl? Fine. Can't really look at you, but I'm fine because they've got the band on and I can't turn the head. I can. You talk to voices in the periphery because this is what you get. You got that. Right? And then I just stayed. And you know what I found here if you're new? If you're knew, this is what I find that I think is the foundational elements of why I'm coming. I got 37 years clean and sober and I couldn't stay sober for a day on my own. Alcoholics Anonymous put that time together for me by me staying connected to AlcoholicsAnonymous. There's two things that happen in here, the fellowship and the program. The program, there's this triangle with a circle around it. It's an ancient spiritual symbol. It stands for mind, body, and spirit brought together as a whole human being. Therein lies the balance I saw my whole life, and I never had drunk or sober. AA adopted that symbol. It's the same thing. Mind, body and spirit. Unity, service and recovery. Unity is the body I bring in here. I can't get sober, but we seem to be able to. I mean, I walk in a room and I see Doug. My blood pressure goes down. Just a sight of him. That's all it takes. I know people all over the world in AA. I walked into a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand thinking, man, if you go any further than this you're on your way home again. That's as far as you can get. You just go right past that neighborhood and you're going on your own way back. You're coming home. I walked in and a dude from Colorado was sitting in the room and the first thing I heard in a meeting in Bangkok was, hey Earl, how are you doing? that's us man we are everywhere so if you're thinking about going out doing a little bit on this on the slide nobody will find out all the best to you anyway what was i saying oh unity is the body i bring it here i can't get sober but we seem to be able to it's first we're in the steps we we it's a it's i gotta i can see the change i can see it happening there i can't i'm too busy it's too crazy over here i don't wake up in the morning and go you know i'm i'm you know just i'm fractionally better today i don' t notice i'm just it's just you know wake every like every morning wake up uh-oh you know and then do everything in my power to combat the thoughts that come racing in you know what I mean? Call the sponsor and go, check it in! That sounded a little tense. You going to a morning meeting? On my way! Because for the first few years, I woke up terrified. I'm 37 years sober and I wake up mildly concerned. It's gotten way better, but I'm wired the way I'm fired, man. It is just never going to be... I am not a smooth dude. I am in it. that's the way I like it, I like it intense, that's what I like, I'm all in you want to do it? yeah, all in it's like, you want a little skydiving? how high do you want it to go? how high does this plane go? actually I don't want to go skydive it's crazy people anyway unity is the body, I bring it here recovery is the mind, I work the 12 steps because this isn't about stopping drinking, man. This is about how do I stay stopped. And the only way I'm going to stay stopped is if I can get comfortable, clean, and sober. And I've never... The only way you got to address the whole disease, not just the physical phenomenon of craving. I mean, if that was all this was about, man, detox centers would be kicking out winners. 72 hours and free, man, what are you doing? I'm not drinking. How are you dealing with that? Just don't do it. I got no physical phenomenon of craving. I got nothing pulling me in that direction. I've seen the results. Any man in his right mind, which I am, would look at that and say, that's a bad idea, so I no longer imbibe. But we know that's not what happens, right? It's not that... Yeah, we stop, but we always start again. And that's the part we gotta focus on. It's like, hey, look, I stopped. Yeah, but you can start again, right, because none of the thinking has changed. The obsession of the mind is still there. The beast is whispering in your ear. Like Carla was talking about, telling you, yeah, I got a great idea. Right? Anything that starts with, you know what, I've got a good idea, I've gotta great idea, run. Not a great idea. Great idea stands on its own. You go, check this out. There's a great idea. You start with, I gotta great idea. No, you don't. No,you don't work the steps. That's the only thing I've ever seen that stops the obsession of the mind relieves me of that madness step one is what's the problem lack of power is my dilemma i may be good at a bunch of other stuff but when it comes to this i'm crazy if that's my problem what's my solution step two that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity soundness of mind relieve me the obsession to drink i'm down for that man that's the best deal i've ever heard of what do i do step three get out on your knees and turn your will in your life over the care of a god you may or may not understand i turn my will in my life over to the care of a God I don't understand. I don' t understand God. I tried. Never got there. I see evidence of God on a daily basis. That woman getting up with one day and taking a book, that's a power greater than me right there. I never took... I couldn't take a chip. I never did. I didn't take the chip. I didn' t take a cake until I was three years sober and the only reason I did it was when I was two and a half my sponsor asked me to give him a cake which was like the greatest honor of my life and so we went to the Wednesday night wrist slashers meeting of alcoholics anonymous I love that meeting I was very comfortable in there because you look down and you went crazy people this is good I don't stick out in here and he got up and I gave him a cake and he walked up to the microphone and said my name is Donald Madden and I'm an alcoholic the miracle of my wife is that I'm sober and who needs to know that is me and sat down. And it was like he branded that on my head. I waited six months to my birthday, and I said, will you give me a cake? And he said, yes. We went back to Wednesday night, wrist slashers meeting, and I got up, and he gave me a cake, and I went up to the podium, and i said, my name is Earl Hightower, and im an alcoholic, and the miracle of my life is that im sober, and who needs to know that is me. And i sat down, and i sat next to him, and when he looked at me, he went, oh, that was wonderful. He said, you said it six months ago! And he said, well, of course I did. So anyway, evidence of God. I see evidence of a power greater than myself. I know it's there. Consciousness beyond my own is out there. I believe it. I know. I believe that there's a consciousness beyond my own that is in play. It's in play, it's happening around me, right? Four and five is me, six and seven is God, eight and nine is you, and that's the whole team. There's nobody else to play with. That's it. So I swallow a large chunk of truth about myself, square it away over here. I get right with this power greater than myself. And then I go out in the world and I make amends with you. And to make amens means to change. So I walk out in The World and I set things right with you with the promise of change, that I'm going to change this behavior, that I'M NOT GOING TO SPEAK TO ANYBODY LIKE I SPOKE TO YOU. I APOLOGIZE FOR BEING DISRESPECTFUL TO YOU AND I'M not going to do that anymore. And I go back in the house, man. 10, 11, and 12 are me, God, and you. Me, God and you keep me in the game. Ten, I continue to take personal inventory when wrong promptly admitted. Eleven, I seek God. How? Through prayer and meditation. I pray for knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry that out. And I meditate to quiet the mind so that when the answers come, I can hear them. With me? All right. Third side of the triangle. Unity is the body. I bring it here. Recovery is in the mind. I work those steps. I'm now for the first time in my life having had a spiritual awakening as the result to work on these steps. That was the whole point, to relieve me of the obsession in the mind so that I could walk the earth free. No longer enslaved by alcohol or drugs for the first time since I'm 12 years old. Since I'm a baby. I can walk the Earth free and I can practice these principles and carry the message. Unity, service, and recovery. Service, how can I help? Service, spiritual. What can I do? Get out of self, be there for you. Get out if me, be their for you I can't heal in here focused inward. I heal when I focus on you I connect when I Focus on you I grow I become exposed To that which I need To flourish and grow When focused on you It's a pretty good deal right It's so far past Not drinking and using It's like my life Is an etch-a-sketch And they go Okay here's the steps Now take your life And just shake it You got to play canvas Paint your life Right Now when I came I came out of that Plane crash I came back I came up swearing and I'd never love another human being again as long as I lived, and there's no way I'd ever tell you who I am. There's no Way You're Going to Love Me. I'm out of that loving and being loved stuff. I'm not doing it, right? And I'd been a pretty creative guy. I'd be a child prodigy as a musician. I would paint it. I had a lot of creativity going on in my life, and I shut it all down because I had what they call survivor's guilt, and I had no right to any pleasure or any joy is how I felt, right, plus I had PTSD through the roof. I mean, I was a real trick bag, man. You know what I mean? They sobered me up and it got worse, you know. And plus I was physically sick for the first two years that I was sober. You know what I mean? I'd just wake up every morning and go, really? And my sponsor was just a beautiful man and he just kept saying, keep coming this way, man. It's the only way for you. You've got to just keep coming. You've Got to keep coming You come over and you lay the madness on me. You come all the way. You come and you come over, shed the tears on my shoulder. You just keep come to you. the late great donald madden saved my life he was the only person in the world i trusted and trust anybody i didn't know how i went to christopher pitney and i said to him please tell me how to trust somebody and he knew me just well enough to know that i was asking a serious question that i didn'T know how to do it i DIDN'T know HOW TO BE WITH YOU i DIDNT KNOW HOW TO BE IN THE WORLD i DID NOT KNOW HOW I HAD NEVER HAD I'VE BEEN UNDERGROUND MY WHOLE LIFE I'VE BEEN a criminal. I didn't know how to balance a checkbook. I didn't have to go to the market and get food. You go home and you make meals out of that. I don't know what to do. I didn't how to be a friend or have a friend. I didn't know how to do any of this stuff that you guys are doing. So I sat and watched you and you let me be with you and watch you be human beings and you slowly made it possible for me to be a human being. You made it possible for me to tell you how broken I was. You made it possible for me to tell you the truth about how damaged I was inside, and you didn't act surprised. You just took me with you. Donald Madden was your emissary to me, and he didn't tell me about Alcoholics Anonymous. He showed me. He would tell me, with the meetings at 730, you get there at seven. I'd say, why the hell would I do that? He said, because there's somebody that's going to show up that doesn't know how to do this and they're going to need you. And I remember being stunned. What do you mean somebody's going to needs me? Nobody needs me. I don't have anything for anybody. He said yes you do. You're sober. You prove. You proof that those damaged beyond repair are in fact salvageable. That you can return from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body and be restored. And that's what happened. So I have this huge life now. It's huge. I look around all the time. I walk through my living room, and I look at the whole back of my house is glass, and i look down this valley at this desert sunset, right? And I walk by, and out of my mouth audibly you will hear me go, God damn, I live here. I mean, and I come and go as I please. I'm all over the world. I fly into cities and I get welcomed by my brothers and sisters of mine. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm free. I walk the earth free. Right? And I have a code I live by. I live the life of a much better man than I actually am. You take me out of this in a very short period of time, I'm not a very nice person because I get self-centered and I give up. I get busy and you get in my way. I'm not having that. In here, I live the life that Donald Madden gave to me and told me. This is your path. Chop the wood and carry the water of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you're going to be okay. But stick to the basics. You go to regular meetings regularly. You have a sponsor. You work the steps, and you get out of yourself, and you be a service to other men. You help them through the 12 steps of Alcoholic Anonymous. That way, you'll always be in them. So I've always done that every day. Every day since the day he died to now, I've honored him through all of this. If you're new, I'm telling you, I took it back. I am loving and being loved. That plane crash became something of value when I sat in a meeting on a Monday night swearing that there was one line in the book that would never be true for me, that I would not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it. I always knew that that would never been true, that there would never come from that plane crash until I was sitting in a Monday meeting. You know where that meeting was? It was in the church where my family's funeral was. And I had been afraid to go in that building for years. And one night, I made the decision. I was going to the Monday night meeting in that building because I couldn't stand that there was a place I was afraid to go in. So I walked in and I sat down. And the guy who was running the meeting knew me. He gave me the head nod and I gave him the nod. And he said, Earl, you want to share? And this woman stood up. And she screamed. And she stood up and she said, just stop the meeting. She said, are you Earl Hightower? And I said, uh, yeah. And she came over to me, and what I love about Alcoholics Anonymous is there weren't a bunch of bleeding deacons sitting around going, well, goddammit, we're still having an AA meeting here. Let's get that woman back in her seat. We're going to go away. We've got a format here, for Christ's sake. They didn't do that. Everybody there just kind of went, well, I guess we're going this way now, right? Let's find out what she wants to talk to him about. This ought to be good, right. and so she came over and she sat down in my lap and she was crying and I just kind of held her and I was looking at the sky with my shoulder like I don't know I'm as lost as everybody else and she looked up and she said I've been looking for you for two years I was in a plane crash and I lost people I loved and I got hurt real bad and I need you to tell me can I make it and then i was crying and she's crying and the whole meeting's crying and i and you know she sat patiently till i could compose myself and i said yeah darling we're going to make it and she said okay she got up and kind of straightened herself up and went back to her seat and sat down and kind like go and we went back to our meeting right if you don't stay with us you're going to miss those you're gonna miss those moments that just can't happen to you and i had to go back to my book and read that the promises one more time because for the first time in my sobriety i had to read them all i had owned them all had to accept them all as being true and valid in my life. So if you're new, stop worrying about are you maybe going to drink tonight? How about no? And we're not going to drink with you. We're all not going to drink today and we're going to do what all of us do one day at a time. We'll stay sober. So the victory here is that we're all going to go to bed sober tonight. We're just going to bed sober tonight and we'll live to fight tomorrow together. And if you need us, we will be here. We will be here to love you until you can stand on your own. We will always be here for you. Understand this about the fellowship. The fellowship is real life. We're no different than the rest of the world. If you stick your head up around here, people will try to knock you down sometimes. Most of the people in here are kind, loving, gentle people that are on your side from the gate. Sometimes you get well known around People say, recently I've heard some horrible things about me. Seriously. I've been sober 37 years. I'm talking to a girl one day. In 37 years they've had me drunk five times. Yeah. Oh, he's drunk. I said, well, nobody. And I would always say, Earl, they said you're drunk. I said wow, nobody called me. I didn't know. I was not informed. They said I was drunk. That happens a few times. It's floating around right now that I'm actually drunk, so fooled you. Drunk, ill, HIV positive, moved to New York, moved to Chicago, those five basically, right? And I remember I went to this meeting which was like the hub of the gossip in LA and I got up and I spoke and I said, look, I've heard these five things about me recently I'm here to tell all of you, three of those are lies. Couldn't help it. I had a mess of them a little bit. But Dr. Bob in his last talk talked about three things, and one of the things he talked about is he said, you know, we've got to get out of this rumor mill, this gossip. Oh, I heard about you. You know, I know what you did. You know what I mean? Or, you know, Tony, it's awful. It's awful, I'll tell you after the meeting. Which one's Tony? I don't know what he looks like. I don' t really... I don''t know him, but I heard, I heard. So if you're new, don't worry about all that bullshit. And if you''re back again, and I''ll close with this. If you''r back again. If you have relapsed and you have come back, boy do I love you and welcome. I love you and Welcome. I don't care if you've been out 45 times in the last 52 months. I don'T care if you were the secretary of the meeting and took off with all the money. Just somebody just write it down on a piece of paper and we'll get to it later. You know what I mean? I'm just glad you're back. And I don't curse much from the podium, but I'm going to tell you this. For you returning people, if anybody gives you a hard time, looks down their nose at you, acts like you don't have the same right they do to a seat in Alcoholics Anonymous where we tell people to keep coming back, this works. But you've got to work it. We tell people that. And somebody gives you any attitude about coming back. You tell them that you met this guy named Earl Hightower, and he said you should go fuck yourself. And I would now like to make amends for that. When we're wrong, we promptly admit it. So there's a little step demonstration there for you. That's how they work. If that burned some mirrors or offended you, I apologize. That was not my intention to be disrespectful in any way. It was just the only way I could express the heartfelt feeling that I was having right there. So you've all been beautiful, and thank you for being so good to me, and I wish you all peace. Take care.