He Drove the Wrong Way on the Highway in a Stolen Hearse – Vince Y.

It's not that good. My name is Vince, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. I am most happy to be here this evening. It's good to be a participating member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's good too be able to show up in that capacity. I want to thank you for inviting us. I think this is a false start for me. I think I was supposed to be here one or two times before, and with bypass surgery or heart attacks or whatever was happening at the moment, I didn't get here. I'm lucky I got here at all. But I'm here tonight, and it's good to be there. It's good being here, and Pat and I are glad we're here. We had a good trip. We flew out of Denver with two women pilots. Now, I am not sexist. I want you to know that. I am NOT. But I'll tell you, God has a great sense of humor. I'm phobic about flying, which is when you speak all over an AA, it's really a lot of fun. You know, be afraid of flying, and I had a story about that. I'll tell you later. It's really a great story, but I'm still a little phobic, nothing like I once was. I used to be terrified. I used to start being afraid on Sunday when I have to get a plane on a plane on Friday, and then all weekend long flying home. So it was just, you know, it was not, it wasjust fear all the time of flying on an airplane. It was not good, but something happened to me that I'm going to tell you about a little later on that made it so that that is not true anymore. But I am still slightly phobic, and one of the habits I picked up was that when I get on an airplane, I go up to the cockpit and check in with the pilots and tell them that I'm a little afraid of flying, and I meet them and they reassure me, and for some reason that helps, and then I go sit down and strap in and everything seems to be okay. But it is really humiliating when you have to walk up there to these two young girls and tell them, I'm afraid of flying. What can you say to me to give me courage? And they say, oh that's okay, we'll take care of you mister. But anyway, I did it and they were good pilots and we got here. It's really good to be here. I know that there are new people here tonight or people who are relatively new in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you are in your first 60 days of Sobriety and Alcoholics Anonymous, I would like you to raise your hand. Okay, we got a lot of you. Welcome. That's good. I want to welcome you to AA. And I want you to know tonight that that's where you are. You're in AA. and I hope that you stay. I have never met you if you're new, but I know a lot about you. I know that you've had a bad year. For sure. And I know that probably down deep in your soul you are utterly convinced that you are not really alcoholic and that you are not like us and that your case is different and I want you to know that if you feel that way the very fact that you feel that way means that you are precisely like us that is probably the requirement for membership oddly enough and so I hope that you stay I know that my first AA meeting which was a very long time ago now it was in November of 1965 I can see the girls are looking at me and they're saying he cannot be that old and you are right I was only 7 at that meeting but it was a long time ago and it was on a rainy Friday night in Long Beach, California and it wasn't a long day it was in a part of Long Beach that was a very affluent part of town The Friday night meeting in Long Beach in those days was an event. Do you know what I mean? There weren't that many meetings to start out with, and this was a big speaker meeting, and everybody came, and they all got dressed up. I mean, it was really a big deal. The entire AA community of Long Beach, California went to this meeting on Friday night, and they put on coats and ties, and the ladies wore dresses, and it was a really big deal, and everybody went there. and I showed up on this rainy evening in November of 1965 and I looked around that room and I was bedazzled because everybody looked good. Nobody looked like an alcoholic. They all looked like they had well-ordered lives and that they were together and they were wrapped very tight and if you were to wander into that room on any given Friday night and you were to look at the people there and someone were to say to you you are in a room filled with alcoholics can you pick any of them out? You would pick none of them out. As opposed to this room tonight as I look out here there's several of you that look like you're an alcoholic. Nobody there on that night except me, you'd have picked me out. I had on a filthy t-shirt and a ripped pair of jeans I had not shaved nor bathed in over a week and I spent the previous five days in the Long Beach City Jail due to a series of unfortunate circumstances that were not my fault. The police department in Long Beach is fascist and they had abused my civil rights on a regular basis and I used to end up in the long beach city jail often and this was the latest of those occasions and I ended up that night in this AA meeting in the Los Altos section of Long Beach and I always want to remember why I was there because I was not there for any reason, any noble reason I was no longer there I was never there because I wasn't in search of sobriety or looking for peace of mind or serenity I was 23 what the hell did I want with serenity if you were 23 or in your 20s and you're here looking for serenety see a therapist Jesus, you know the reason I was in that meeting was I had no job, no car no money and no place to live and every time I get in that kind of shape if I go to AA. My reasons were no more noble than that. So if you are relatively new here tonight and you feel your reasons are not good and that your motivation is not good, I have excellent news for you. We do not evaluate you on your motivation here. If we did, this would be a smaller meeting. It only matters that you're here. and I should also tell you that I'm Irish and I'm Catholic and I am from New Jersey and I have difficulty with people from Texas we have a chemistry problem and I sat down in the back of the wall up against the wall in the basement of this church and I was sitting there and I sit down next to this guy who had on cowboy boots and a 10 gallon hat in his lap and his name was Tex and Tex told me he said I'm going to help you boy he was going to hip me and I remember thinking why don't you go hip somebody else leave me the hell alone he was gonna hip me and the first thing he did was he repeated to me in rapid succession all of the AA cliches one after another there's a kid you've heard him haven't you son they're dreary aren't they I mean easy does what and he put his arm around my shoulder and he said ah keep it simple and I thought I'll bet you do Tex no argument with that whatsoever I'll tell you and the meeting began well before the meeting begun he gave me a handful of pamphlets And we have a pamphlet for everyone here. Regardless of who you are or what you've done or what your aberration is, there is a pamPHlet here that will cover you. And on top of the pamPHlets was this card with the 20 questions on it, which is a test we'd like to give you if you're new. This is a... Well, the medical school at Johns Hopkins devised this little quiz for Alcoholics Anonymous many, many years ago. And they have decided that they can determine how alcoholic you are by the way you answer these questions. And if you answer these 20 questions, the more yes answers you have, the More Alcoholic You Get. So the trick is if you don't want to belong in AA you find a way to answer no to these questions and the criteria is if you answer one question yes you may have a drinking problem two yes, you do have a drinking problem and three or more and you are an alcoholic now I answered about 18 or 19 yes I know I answered no to the question do you seek lower companions I could not find any I mean, where the hell do you go for lower companions after the Long Beach City Jail? I was their lower companion in that meeting. And the meeting began, and it began the way we began here this evening. They essentially read that part of our book that constitutes our program. They read the 12 steps. and if you are relatively new here this evening and you wonder what it is we have that is what we have those 12 steps and if You wish to recover here it is required that You take them It is mandatory You must take them If You take the 12 steps If You do not take them, You get better If You don't take them You get worse and you get worse while you stay sober in the middle of AA. To recover here, you have to take these steps and I heard them read and I don't know about you but I didn't hear anything new. None of this is new to me. I'm the end product of eight years of Dominican nuns and four years of Jesuit priests and this is not new. None of it. These ideas are not unique to Alcoholics Anonymous, I must tell you. Searching and fearless moral inventory. Concept well familiar to me, I'll tell you, I mean, we called it by a different name, we called an examination of conscience. Precisely the same exercise in the religious tradition in which I was raised, that's what they call that. I mean I know all about that. Admitting to God and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs. every Saturday afternoon from the time I was seven years old maybe to the time I was 14 or 15 and I'll tell you what I know about all of that clearly has nothing to do with the way that I drink if it did certainly I would not need to go to a Presbyterian church on a Friday night I can tell you that so I sat in the back of that room and I heard these steps read and somewhere in my subconscious I dismissed them I didn't reason all this out but what must have happened as I sat there I said to myself somewhere back in the recesses of my mind not even consciously I said my case is different this is inapplicable to me I'm not like them and the meeting had several participants and they were nice people who said innocuous things that were inapplicable to my life as near as I could see I remember one guy got up and said six months prior to that evening he got drunk and blew the mortgage payment on his house then he came to AA and his life was just wonderful now. So I turned to Tex and I said, where do you send the difficult cases, Tex? And he said, shut up. It's something that equally is appropriate. And the meeting continued. And if I had any doubts as to whether I belonged there or not they were cured at the end of the meeting when they had I don't know if you have them, I guess you have birthday parties in Iowa here, do you? for people who have anniversaries for sobriety. We call them birthday parties in Southern California. We're Hollywood, you know. And what we do is we give you a cake with a candle on it. And everybody, you now, it's really embarrassing. I mean, I sat in that meeting and they had a number of these, I mean just think about it. Some jerk stays sober for a year and they give him a cake with a handle on it and there's a candle in it and all these middle-aged morons sing happy birthday to him it's like something that should take place in a mental institution you know, in the day room right before dance therapy after you've worked on your wallet we'll have birthday parties for the alcoholics and they had a series of these imbecilic parties one in particular for a woman who was about 110 and she apparently had been sober forever they had a fire on top of this cake but I'll tell you she blew the candles out and she got up here and she said her name was Phoebe and she was an alcoholic and then she said something about did I want what she had not tonight Phoebe I don't think so That was my first AA meeting. Now, you might say that I did not have a spiritual awakening. But I'll tell you what happened to me, which is significant, I think, if you're new. For the next three and one half years, I stayed sober in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous. And during that period of time, I participated in AA on every level. I did everything there was to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had every kind of a commitment you can have in AA. I virtually did everything in AA except one thing. I did not take these steps. and as a result while I was doing all of these other things my alcoholism got worse and it got worse while I stayed sober in the middle of AA and I know that there are people here tonight who are precisely in that same state of mind and body you've been here some appreciable length of time you have not become involved in these steps and your alcoholism is getting worse and you know it's getting worse and the way you know it's going to get worse is you are surrounded by people who are getting better and you watch them get better and you knows something has happened to them that has not happened to you something elusive and mysterious and wonderful and you sit here day after day and week after week and month after month and you watch people come in here long after you've been here and they get it. It happens to them and you can watch it and no one has to tell you, do they? When people get better here you know who they are, don't you? All you need to do is be around them. They look different. They change. Their face changes. Their eyes change. their persona changes they have direction and purpose and they're recovering and they are getting better and you are not and it makes you crazy because you watch and you think to yourself if you are like me where is mine? when do I get to feel like that? and emotionally intellectually I know this is ridiculous but emotionally I used to feel that you had secret meetings have you ever had that feeling? Were they all met without you? Because it could not be this stuff here. And that's the way that I functioned in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, on the outside, wonderful things happened. My life came together. I mean, great things happened to me. I was 23 years old. I have a good education. I come from a wonderful family. And I'll tell you about my family. I have, I've come from a huge Irish Catholic family in New Jersey and no one else is an alcoholic. Isn't that, that's heresy in alcoholics, isn't it? It almost can't be. But they're all disgustingly normal. I mean, I am the fifth child in a family of five kids. I have four older sisters. And my youngest sister is 11 years older than I am. and my mother was 45 and my father was 50 when I was born in 1940 and here came this boy in this big Irish Catholic family with all these girls I was the prince I'll tell you I mean they would fight over who would get to babysit for me it was during the war they dressed me in soldier suits and sailor suits and I have pictures saluting the flag and it's nauseating, is what it is. I mean, they could throw up. And they'd take me on dates with them, for God's sake. I would recite for their boyfriends. You know, it's just really awful, just awful. And my parents, my father, just the sun rose and set on me. My father never said a crossword to me until the day he died. I mean he just, he just was, just had me, my memories of Christmas, I'm the big Santa Claus in our group we have Christmas caroling parties for 400 people we love Christmas and I've always just taken for granted I love Christmas and Pat explained to me why one time and here's the reason why my earliest recollections of Christmas are my father in my bedroom at 3 o'clock in the morning kneeling down beside the bed waking me up on Christmas morning saying things like I just saw the sleigh leave let's go downstairs and the entire family would get up and go downstairs at 4 o'clock in the morning because my father couldn't wait that's really why it's really wise and that's the way that I was raised I mean, I was loved I was not abused I can tell you that now I have been I have heard stories in Alcoholics Anonymous about the way people have had to grow up that have made me weep. I mean, horrible, horrible things that I can't imagine could happen to human beings. The childhood that people I have known in Alcoholics Anonymous that they've had to endure. But it is not my story. It's just not, you know, didn't happen to me. I should also tell you that I am the product of the Roman Catholic Church. You cannot be more of a product of the Roman Catholic Church than me. I have been educated by nuns and priests my entire life. And I'm going to tell you something else. I am not here tonight because of some evil torture vested upon me by nunns. I am not here tonight because the Roman Catholic Church gave me some warped concept of God that damaged me psychologically my alcoholism oddly enough and the reason I'm here which you'll find out if you're new and you write an inventory here and you will if you stay when you write a searching and fearless moral inventory here you will make a dreadful discovery. Terrible. Your life is your fault. Not good news. I've got to tell you, it's not good news My alcoholism is not the fault of the Roman Catholic Church and neither is yours if you're new here I'm going to tell ya that and if you have written an inventory and you did not get that information I suggest you go do it again because you didn't do it right that's the answer you got to get now my parents died within one week of each other when I was 12 years old now that's a terrible thing it's really not good and it was tough on me We lived in Jersey City, and these were old world people. My parents were a great deal older than I was, and my entire family, their brothers and sisters were all, so there was this ethnic Irish, we had two huge Irish wakes in a week. And that's a traumatic thing for a 12-year-old kid. There's no question about that. But I'm surrounded by these four sisters who love me, and they're now married to wonderful guys who were just good to me. And so I was just swept up and taken care of. And I never really had to worry about, you know, I was cared for and loved. Always felt that way by them and by their husbands, by these brother-in-laws. And isn't that terrible? You cannot knock your brother-In-law in an AA meeting. It doesn't seem right, does it? But I can't. I have nothing, you Know, I can say they just took care of me. by now getting into trouble in school I am what is known as a behavior problem I get in a lot of trouble in school. I'm a good student though I get very good grades but I don't behave well whenever there's big trouble in the classroom when you peel away everything, there's me I'm there and I'm always in that kind of trouble and in high school I'm in more trouble I went to four different Jesuit prep schools thrown out of the one I was in every year and they would get me into another one my senior year I did not get to graduate with my class I did NOT get to attend graduation I got drunk and stole a priest's car in April and got told even if we have a reunion, don't come back. I mean, just stay away because we'd just as soon not ever see you again. And I went on to a good university, and I did very well. I majored in biochemistry. In the middle of my senior year, I quit and did a very smart thing. I quit in the middle OF my senior and joined the Navy as an enlisted man. Isn't that smart? I was really a bright kid. biochemistry major with you know a very high gpa on track maybe to go to medical school and uh but i was going to show my family that they did not run my life and i did and i joined the navy as an enlisted man and they made me a hospital corpsman and i went through naval hospital corps school and i didn't have any experience very well graduated number one in the class and they sent me to a more advanced hospital Corps School, where they trained corpsmen to go on destroyers, where they did not have doctors. It was more advanced medical training. They did very well in that school. Then they sent me to Medical Administrations School, made me a medical administrator. Three years in the Navy I just went to school. Very well. They commissioned me an ensign, an officer, in the Medical Service Corps and sent me overseas attached to the 3rd Marine Division on Okinawa trouble began to happen now I was I don't know if you know the Navy supplies the Marines Medical Department and I was an administrative officer and they sent me to the 5th Marines which is the this infantry regiment in the 3rd Marine Division a very gung-ho you know these guys were the guys that raised the flag on Iwo Jima you know and they attached me to this outfit And I did not fit, quite frankly. And he said they didn't know what to do with me. I was a medical administrative officer. They didn't have a job for me. He said they put me in an officer's club on the northern end of Okinawa and forgot about me. And I forgot about them. I mean, it was just really the way that it worked. My duty consisted of getting up every morning and reporting to the cocktail lounge and drinking Hagen-Hag Pinch, 60 cents a pop, which is not bad. Pretty good. And that's what I did. And pretty soon they put another guy up there. He was a surgeon out of Temple University, a thoracic surgeon who was a bad drunk and they did not want him around patients. And so they put him up in this officer's club and he and I bonded. We became very close. and we both got up every morning and reported to the cocktail lounge and at night we would go out into the villages and they forgot completely about us and we just forgot we were in the military really we wore shorts and grew beards and kind of lost all our uniforms didn't know what the hell happened so we did, that's the way we lived on Okinawa and finally they caught up with us and they knew they had to give us some kind of duty so they put us in charge of venereal disease control for the island of Okinawo That's what we did. And it was really a, the Marines would go out and they would catch gonorrhea and syphilis and lymphogranuloma venerium. They'd catch hideous VD that you've only seen in books and in Marines. The only two places they've ever been found. And they would, our job would be to go to the bars in the villages and find the young ladies and inject them with Bicillin and we had this quarantine power. We had this power to quarantine the bar, close them down. So what we did, but they'd see us coming and they'd set up the scotch. So I don't think we ever quarantined one bar. We rode in a Jeep all over Okinawa to these bars. In the morning, we'd get a list of places to go and we would go and they would just give us Hagen Hagen. And that's what we did. It was tricky, though. You didn't want to drink too much in these bars because you didn't want these girls to start looking good to you. I mean, you knew why you were there. So you walked a fine line. But that's what we Did. And then finally our tour of duty was up and they sent us back to the United States and we got out. He went back to Temple when I got my undergraduate degree and he went to finish his residency at Temple University. I did something else that year. It was the beginning of early 1965 and you know what I did? I got married. And the reason I got married, some of you might identify with this. Do you remember when you were young and you knew something was really wrong with you? Now you weren't really ready to label it then. You didn't know but you knew you were different, didn't you remember that? You knew you were weird. I mean all of your peers somehow were doing better they were functioning they were completing their education they were, you know the remedy for that is easy, get married I mean be like them so I married this girl that I had known in the Navy, she was a Navy nurse and to say that we were incompatible is to understate it we never should have had a second date remember those kind of relationships and we got married and she immediately got pregnant women, you know how men always say that don't they? She got pregnant and we moved to Southern California because she was her parents lived there and she was an only child and so we moved in with her parents in Southern California and I was going to go ahead and complete my education and we were going to start a life together and we move in with her parents in Orange County, and I got a job as a bartender. Now that did not work out well. About a month and a half later when I would be coming home every morning about 4 a.m. in various states of undress, drunk, they threw me out. And I found myself on Bolsa Avenue in Santa Ana, California with a lot of Samsonite luggage and no money. And i needed a job and and I found a job that summer driving an ambulance in Orange County. And so for the next several months, I drove an ambulance into Southern California drunk. And I'm a blackout drinker. And so some of the ambulance calls were very colorful. I have been, for example, I have come out of a blackouts in an ambulance with the lights and the sirens going in the middle of Main Street in Anaheim. And I wouldn't know where the hell, you know. And I'd have to, it's really you have to turn to the guy next to you and say where are we going? And he gets upset. I tell you. One night we, in Newport Beach we got caught and I got, you knows how you lock on, I got caught in a cul-de-sac going around in a circle. you know how you lock on to something and it was 4 o'clock in the morning and the beacon light on top of the ambulance is spinning around going into these people's bedroom windows they're all coming out in their pajamas on their porch and looking at this ambulance going around in circles and they finally sent a police car in just to kind of lead me out that's what they did and oddly enough I lost that job shortly after that and they revoked my driver's license in the state of California forever. You know, I mean, shortly after that, I got to that AA meeting that I told you about earlier in November of that year. So that's the package that I brought to Alcoholics Anonymous as a very young man in November. November of 1965. And with my newfound sobriety, some wonderful things happened. A new profession opened up in civilian medicine called the Physician's Assistant Program. Many of you probably know what PAs are, but it was a brand new concept in 1966 in civilian medicine. And the reason for it was that all of these guys coming out of the medical schools in the 60s were all going into residency specialty training and taking residencies, and not enough people to do primary medicine in the emergency rooms. So they took people such as myself who had this sophisticated medical training in the military and they made us physician's assistants. We were PAs and we went to work in the emergency rooms and we did the primary medicine. We essentially triaged medicine in emergency rooms. We sutured the lacerations and evaluated the patients and prescribed medicines and treated them. We did everything that a physician does in an emergency room and I was the third licensed PA in the state of California and I got a very good job. I went to working in an urgency room in East Los Angeles that saw all of the industrial injuries at Kaiser Steel and these big manufacturing companies and had the police contract so we got all of the stabbings and shootings and that place was a jumping joint, I'll tell you. On a Saturday night that emergency room was moving and I was the guy in that emergencyroom and I have four nurses working for me. It was really, you know, and I enjoyed it. I did it very well, quite frankly. I did very, very well and I enjoy that kind of medicine and it was rewarding to me psychologically and spiritually and it was rewarding and paid a lot of money too. And I was in on the ground floor of a new profession and I was sober in AA and it looked like good things were in store for me. I met a beautiful girl, the daughter of a long time sober AA member and we got married. She went to Al-Anon. We were precious. I mean, we really were. But I had not taken these steps so there was no spiritual recovery in my life and I'd go into this emergency room at night and I would get terribly depressed and I would get anxious and I would get inadequate and I would get all of the things that happen to you and I when we are unrecovered and we don't drink when we are dry and so I don't have a program but I have an excellent medical education so I know how to take care of depression. I use dexedrine. Fifteen milligram spanchels work best and by the time I was through with those, I was taking six or seven of them a day. Now if you know anything at all about amphetamine abuse you will understand that's got you moving right along. Whatever you're doing it will be in a hurry the problem with that is so long about the fourth or fifth day when you've not slept nor eaten your hair stands up on end like that boy and your eyes dilate out here like this you show up in the emergency room to help the sick the people you're relieving never want to go home. They say things like, Vince, you need to eat. But thank God for medical science because there's an anecdote for that. And the anecdote for that is a drug called Demerol, which everybody in AA knows what Demerrol is. I remember there was a time when you'd have to explain it. You don't anymore. Demerhol is a narcotic agent. It's not really a... which I'm going to talk about right now. This is for you new, so let's eliminate confusion. Narcotic addiction and alcoholism are different. They're not the same. So let's get that straight right now, and if you can go tell your counselor he's wrong, if they're telling you that, they're different. They're nicht der selben. Narcotics come from opium, all of them. They're all the same drug, really. did you know that? Heroin, morphine it's all the same drug it all comes from opium and narcotics are addictive I mean they're addictive for everybody physiologically and psychologically they're addicted you inject heroin intravenously you will be addicted period. You don't need to worry about whether you have an addictive personality you just inject you need a needle and a syringe is what you need and you'll be addicted everybody gets addicted. That is not true with alcohol. Nine out of ten people who drink alcohol do it with impunity. We represent only one out of 10. Nine out of 10 people who drink alcohol are social drinkers. They do not have our experience. They don't wreck cars, they don't go to jail, they don' t lose families, they have a drink and they go the hell home. That's what they do. They say things that are bizarre. I mean, you know, they say things like, no more for me. I'm driving. You know, shit. Or I'd love to have another drink, but my wife's waiting dinner. I have to go home now. You're not going home, are you? You and I are going to Las Vegas. But that's the way that nine out of ten people who drink alcohol drink. Now, sometimes and you know, I never knew that. Did you know that? Did you ever think about that? Did you never, you know I don't think I ever really thought about it but if I did think about it I think I assumed at least subconsciously or psychologically that everybody had the same thing happen to them when they drank that I did. That the world transformed. That they became self-contained. And that they became able to cope. And that the world became better. Now, that's our experience. It's not theirs. They don't have that experience. Nothing like that happens to them. and it is strange now sometimes non-alcoholics can drink too much they do, they drink too many and they get in trouble a non- alcoholic is perfectly capable of getting drunk and wrecking a car and when they do that they say things like Jesus, look what I did I'm not going to do that anymore and you know what? they don't that's not our experience I must tell you, but that is the way that 9 out of 10 people who drink alcohol drink. On the other hand, I have never met a social heroin user. I don't think they exist. The entire dynamic is different. I believe that people drink alcohol, alcoholics drink alcohol to fit in, to be a part of. I think people inject morphine and Demerol and heroin to drop out. So the entire dynamic is different, it's not the same. But there's another real problem with Demeril, and that is people care about where it is. That is an insurmountable problem with Demerol, because they would come in the emergency room in the morning, open the narcotic drawer, and all the dope is gone. And they say things like, Vince, where is the Demerrol? And I'd say, I don't know. Used to be here. And everybody gets upset. The pharmacists and the administrators and Jesus, they get crazy. And the people who get the most upset are the Medical Quality Assurance Board of the state of California. I can personally tell you how upset they get. they came into that emergency room one Thursday morning and placed me under arrest, charged me with appropriating narcotics for my own use, which was a felony, and took me to the Los Angeles County Jail at 3 a.m., which was what they did with you then. There were no programs for impaired physicians in the late 60s. The programs for Impaired Physicians were the L.A. County Jails. and they took me down there and put me in this tank with drug addicts can you believe that? it was awful common drug addict and they reduced that to a misdemeanor and I didn't have to go to jail but they took my medical license away from me and I ended up spending the summer of 1972 living in an apartment by the airport in Los Angeles drinking one half gallon of vodka a day that's how I spent the summer of 1972 and that kind of and I have to tell you about that kind of drinking you know all about that and if you drink a half gallon of vodka a day I can safely say that you are not a social drinker a half gallon of vodka a day drinkers are alcoholics I'll say that without equivocation I mean they are and that kind of drinking is uniform everybody has the same experience if you drink a half gallon of vodka a day. Experience is just generic, isn't it? You vomit bile and you don't go to... You never sleep or wake up. You pass out and you come to with that kind of drinking, don't you? If you look at a clock and it says 9 o'clock, now is that a.m. or p.m.? And you lose about 40 pounds over the summer and my wife left and they took the car and they took the furniture and they left just me in this apartment in August with a Turkish bathrobe. I mean, and I would walk to the supermarket to get supermarket brand vodka. You know, the kind in the basket at $7 a half gallon and I would bring it home and drink it hot. It's great, great stuff. I mean it. Social drinking. And that's what I did in June, July, and August of 1972. Now I'm in and out of blackouts all the time. I am a blackout drinker and I came out of a black out in Newport Beach and I don't even remember how I got there except it was about 110 and I had on a three-piece wool suit and a white shirt and a tie and I'm sitting on this bench and the sun's beating down and I become cognizant of where I am and I're sitting on a bench and I've been looking for a job because I knew I've got to have some luggage next to me You know, this is how I come to. I found a job, too, that day. I found an apprentice embalmer for a mortician in Newport Beach. It was close to Mesa, actually. It was the only job I could get. I mean, it was, you know, my medical license was gone. So I went to work for this mortician. He hired me. The job paid $85 a week, and a fringe benefit was a bachelor apartment over the room where they kept the caskets. Jesus. so you'd get to walk through the casket room in the morning with a hangover which would set you free and this mortician was a ghoul he even drug his right foot when he walked like some kind of Edgar Allan Poe this guy was out of it and he and I got into this big argument one day and I went to the caskets and I fell asleep and I drank and stole his hearse and on september the 20th 1972 i came out of one more blackout driving the wrong way on pacific coast highway in newport beach in a stolen hearse with a young lady next to me who i did not recall meeting screaming at the top of her lungs and i remember thinking you know i know why I have this character flaw. I really do. I really am neurotic. I tend to get involved with women who are really unstable. I choose them. I mean, it's like a magnet. All the women in my life end up hysterical, screaming. And I remember telling this girl, too. I said, you know, you really need to get some counseling. You really do? You are unstable. You need to give help. That was September the 20th, 1972. Now I haven't seen her again. I hope she got home all right. But I have not had a drink of alcohol, nor have I used any mood-altering chemical whatsoever from that date to this. And what's remarkable about that is that it was not my intention. I mean, if you would have materialized in the back of that hearse and foretold my future sitting on the shoulder of Pacific Coast Highway at dawn on September the 20th, 1972 and foretold my future. What you would have told me would have been amazing. You would have said today you're going back to AA and for the next 25 plus years you're not going to drink any alcohol and you're nicht going to use any mood altering chemical and your experience in Alcoholics Anonymous will be completely different and it will be completely different for one reason and one reason only because the condition will exist with inside you that has never existed in your life before the ingredient in my opinion that is necessary for recovery here and everybody has to have it in my view or you don't get better and it's not love I'm going to tell you that right now we cannot love you into recovery in AA I wish we could but we can't it's something far less attractive than love it's called desperation and that's what existed in me in September of 1972 for the very first time in my life I was desperate. I was desperate enough to take actions I did not believe in and direction from people I did NOT like. That's what's necessary for you to get better here, in my view. Now I didn't know that but I took the guy's hearse back to him and he was upset he had called the police and he'd been in the bachelor apartment over the room where they kept the caskets and he threw all of my clothes out the window. And I found all of my earthly belongings strewn all over this blacktop parking lot at 6 o'clock in the morning, and I got a cardboard box and I went around and I picked up all my clothes and I reported to Alcoholics Anonymous to the Costa Mesa Alano Club, which is grim. And I sat at the coffee bar and I had a cup of coffee and I'd like to tell you that they had an AA meeting there that noon, and I'd like to tell you that I had a spiritual experience in this AA meeting, and it was wonderful. It was awful. It was a terrible, awful AA meeting. Six guys from Texas sitting around a Formica tabletop talking about putting the plug in the jug. They had another meeting there that night. The manager of the club let me sleep on the sofa because I didn't have anywhere to go, and in the morning I got in a gin rummy game with some ladies in that club and won 20-some-odd bucks, I think. I went and I rented a room for $11 a week near that club. You know what $11-a-week rooms are like? You know What they're like. They're all the same, aren't they? They're generic. You don't have to worry. You think about it, you'll be right. And I moved into this terrible room, and I thought, my God, I don't think I can live here. I mean, this is terrible. I mean... God... I clearly have to be here several weeks till I can figure out my next move. And I don't think I can live there that long. Two years later, when I moved out of that room, didn't look that bad. Funny thing happened, I'll tell you. Your perspective changes. I spent my first two years of sobriety in Orange County. And what I know about that now that I didn't know then, and if you're new, I'd like you to hear this. It was the most important two years of my life. But I didn' t know it when I was living it. I only know about it in retrospect because wonderful things were happening to me in that two-year period of time, but I wasn't aware of any of it. If you would have asked me at any given moment, how was your life? I would have said it's awful. It's terrible. I mean, my life, I lost a job as a gas station attendant for being incompetent. I lost a job as a drill press operator a $1.87 an hour drill press operator you know I got this job in this machine shop you report there at 6 o'clock it's like something out of Charles Dickens you know a long believe me it was grim you go in there and you sit on a stool and they wheel up this cart with copper plates in it and you take a copper plate out of this cart and you put it in the middle and you pull a handle and you push it you put a hole in the metal of the copper plate and then you put over in this cart. That's what you do. That's it. You can't do that wrong. Not really. And I put the hole in the wrong place on about 800 of these copper plates one day. And the foreman who was from Dallas said to me, boy, I've got to let you go. They always call you son. Son, I'm going to let you go and it's too bad because I can see you're a real trier but you're just not quite bright enough to do this kind of work you know she's bright enough you moron I told him you know where I went to school I went to Cornell University never do that bad idea he said I'll tell you what boy you ought to go back there take the course in drill press operation and that's And that's what happened. I remember going back to that $11-a-week room that day, and it was pouring rain, and I got soaking wet, and I was coughing, and i had bronchitis, and I thought I was going to get pneumonia, and I didn't have any medical insurance. And I thought, how the hell did this happen to me? How can you be losing a job as a $1.87 an hour drill press operator? I mean, driver's license gone, family gone. How the hell? Look at the incongruity of my life. I mean, how the hell does this work? And a letter from a doctor from upstate New York invited me to join a committee for my college class reunion. How do you answer that letter? Can't make it this year, Dr. Medoff. I've just lost my job as a drill press operator. And that night is a big speaker meeting down in Newport Beach on the Balboa Peninsula. There's a huge meeting. It's a great meeting. It's very up meeting. It's crowd like you are tonight, up and exciting and electric and they would tie their yachts up outside and I'd get depressed in that place. I'll tell you, I'd walk in there and that night the speaker was the quintessential speaker in Alcoholics Anonymous, the guy who was, if Frank Capra were to invent an AA speaker he would invent this guy his name was Norm Alpe and he was a wonderful Beth remembers him and Bo does he was an amazing speaker wasn't he Norm Alope he said the same thing you could repeat his story as you listened to it he said that he said it the same every time he talked but it was always like the first time you heard it it was an amazing thing and he was inspiring and he was uplifting I listened to Norm Alpey that night and I was depressed I mean I was and I went back to this crazy filthy room and got soaking wet again for the second time that day and I knew that I had a fever and I know I was getting pneumonia and I did something so stupid I can't believe I ever did it I found myself on my knees beside the bed in that crummy room, and I said a prayer, a very simple prayer. God, please help me. I'm afraid, and i'm alone, and I don't think I can make it anymore. And my recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous began that night. And if you are new here tonight and you wish to know how to recover, that's how you do it. And I said that prayer, andI got up in the morning and I went back over to the Alano Club, my office. And there was this guy who was in the floor covering business. His name was Clarence. He was a one-man operation. He went and sold floor covering to these rich people down in Newport Beach and then he went up to the manufacturer and he bought the materials and he ran back and he did it. A real entrepreneur. And he was from Texas too, incidentally. He was sober about 11 years and ClarenCE was... He said, how about if you go to work for me? He said, I'll hire you. You can be my gopher. He says, you can carry the tools and go for the coffee and you can help me and I'll pay you $10 a day and provide your meals. Sounded like the presidency of General Motors to me. And I went to work for Clarence and I worked for him for about eight months and I was his gophor and I acquired some material possessions, a 1964 red Chevrolet convertible with no brakes and a hole in the top. and I used to wheel I used to go down to this big meeting on the Belmont on the Balboa Peninsula on Thursday night and this I'd pull in the parking lot and this whole Chevy and they'd all jump in their Mercedes and put them on the other side of the lot and they're always asking me questions like do you have insurance on that car I hadn't had a driver's license in three years why the hell would I have insurance you know it was ridiculous idiotic question And I became two years sober, and I knew I needed some help. I just was going nowhere, and I needed a sponsor. Now, I didn't have a real sponsor up until then, and I don't recommend that if you're new. But the reason I did is I put it off because I knew who the sponsor had to be, and I didnít want to ask this guy. He was arrogant and just really cruel to new people, quite frankly. But there was something about him that was indisputable. He had the capacity for helping losers in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because the dregs of humanity in Orange County would drop off the face of the earth and join this guy's fascist AA group on the west side of L.A. And they would get him for a sponsor, and they would reappear, and their lives would be transformed. So I asked him to help me, and he said to come up and have lunch with him at this mission he ran on Skid Row in Los Angeles. And so I drove this old Chevy up to that mission, and I went in and I had lunch with them. and I asked him to help me and I'll never forget what he said and if you are new here today I want to tell you what it is he told me because the most significant thing anyone has ever said to me in Alcoholics Anonymous and I hope if you're new someone says something like this to you someday. He said yes I will help you on one condition that you can accept the very simple proposition that your best judgment about your life is terrible and that my judgment about your life is infinitely better than yours. And if you will do everything I suggest you do without debate, I will help you. I was just desperate enough that day to make that unholy pact with the devil. and uh i agree to do that and he said i'll tell you what i want you to do i want you to move into this mission and live here i said you what i said you don't understand i live in newport beach why the hell would i want to move into a mission on skid row in los angeles and he said do you have a better idea he always stumped me there when he said that so I moved into that mission he said, I'll tell you what I want you to do I want to give you an allowance I'm going to give $8 a day and I want for you to put on that three piece suit go outside and get on that 83 bus that runs up Wilshire Boulevard and when you get on the bus I want your to ask the bus driver for a handful of transfers because every time you come to a hospital or a medical facility between downtown L.A. and the San Fernando Valley, I want you to get off the bus, go see the administrator, tell him that you've lost your medical license, that you need a job, you need help getting your license back, and you need an appointment. You need a good job. Do that with every hospital you come too. And at the end of the day, you'll be in West L. A., and you'll go to one of our meetings, and then you can take the bus back down to the mission. That's your job. I said that's the most preposterous God damn thing I have ever heard of in my life That is ridiculous I thought that, I didn't say it But I did it I reported to his office every morning And I got that $8 and I got on that bus And I rode up Wilshire Boulevard And I did this for 8 months I lived in the midnight mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles for eight months. And every day, I got on that bus and I rode up Wilshire Boulevard and I went into every hospital. I went to Good Samaritan and St. John's and Santa Monica and UCLA. I went in places like the Elmer Belt Urological Clinic. I went everywhere and I saw the physicians and I said, and I gave them, I said exactly what this guy told me to tell him and they all told me the same thing. No, we can't help you. It's nice. the two, you know, it's nice you're trying, kid. I'm glad you're in AA, but no, we can't help you, and I'd go back, and I try to tell him. I'd say, you don't understand. You know, in my judgment, he'd say your judgment? What judgment do you have? He said, if I wanted to know anything you had to say, I'll go upstairs to your bunk. He was very unkind to me. He's been a lot more kind to other people than he has been to me, and he says, why don't you just do what I asked you to do, and I did. And I found myself one Sunday, one Friday morning in June of 1975, I went outside to get on that bus and I was put on my suit and I went outside and I got on that bus and the first thing I did is I sat down in a huge wad of chewing gum all over the back of my trousers. And, I rode halfway up Wilshire Boulevard and I get off the bus and we're in this service station and tried to clean the chewing gum off my, found myself standing in the restroom of the service station with my trousers in this hand and wet paper towels in this arm trying to clean the chewing gum off. I looked grotesque. I don't know if you ever tried to clean chewing gum off a wool suit with a wet paper towel. It went all down the legs. I got it all over the other leg. Jesus. So I thought, Christ, maybe if I just sat in a movie I won't drink. I'm two years and eight months sober and alcoholic. two years and eight months sober i live in a mission on skid row i have no job no car no money and no hope i don't have never met anybody doing as bad as me at two years in eight months over an alcoholic's anonymous and maybe if i sit in a movie i won't drink because i might as well drink so I got back on the bus and I rode to the end of the line to the mall in Santa Monica and I thought I'd go into this cafeteria and get some lunch and then go to a movie and I went in the line and I got my tray and I sat it down and I was like, and I said, I went outside to get a newspaper and the busboy came by and bust the tray took my lunch it was not a good day I gotta tell you so I walked from Santa Monica at the beach, all the way over to Westwood Village where the UCLA campus is to go to the movies. I went to the Bruin Theater and I stood in line to buy a ticket. The movie was The Godfather 2. It was the name of the film. I stood in line for the movie. I stood on the line to buy a ticket to go to that movie and I heard someone call my name. I turned around and came face-to-face with the administrator of the medical center in which I had been arrested for stealing narcotics. And he said, Vince, how are you? I said, I'm okay. Got this chewing gum all over my rear end. He said, when have you worked last? I said I haven't worked in a long time. He said well, that's amazing. We have a urologist who's joined our group practice who's a member of the Medical Quality Assurance Board and he's going to be down in the clinic tomorrow. Why don't you come down, we'll have lunch and I'm going to introduce you to him. Maybe he can write some letters and get your license back. and if you can, how would you like to go to work back in the emergency room? And I went down, and I met that urologist the next day. We had lunch within 60 days. My medical license was restored in the state of California. I went back to work in the very same emergency room in which I was arrested in for stealing Demerol and worked there for the next two years. And the patients got good care, and no dope was missing. And my life began to flourish, and i began to recover, and Alcoholics Anonymous. And I want you to know that it's 25 years later, and I'm still in the same group and I still have the same sponsor. And I wanna tell ya that it turns out he's not such a bad guy after all. He's not arrogant and he's mean. He's the kindest man I know really and he has infinite patience because I've watched him be available anybody, anytime, any place in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think if you can make that statement, you've said a lot. And we have a different relationship today. He doesn't order me around anymore but I enjoy watching him order others around. Pleases me and I love him very much. And my life has flourished. I've spent 25 years in the same group and I'm not in medicine anymore. I got into another profession and I made a lot of money and lost it, you know how that all goes. I married to the same woman for 17 years and I met her in 1975 when she was brand new and her husband was dying of lung cancer. She got sober and took care of him while he was dying all at the same time. And she was a wonderful, loyal wife and I really liked her a lot. We became friends and her husband passed away and we became better friends and we dated and fell in love and we got married. And we're married for 17 years. And, we've had wonderful times and we've been very successful and we have been unsuccessful but we've always through at all, loved each other and cared for each other and walked this way together. And I know that we will as long as we live. I know it. I know a lot about our marriage. And that's a wonderful thing to be able to say. I have grown up in Alcoholics Anonymous. I Have Become a Man. I have learned how to become a man in this relationship. I love my wife. And I will tell you that unabashedly. And i will also tell you if you are new and young and male, i will give you some interesting information that I hope you remember because if you do, it will save you untold years of grief. Listen to me. Women are not the enemy. They are your partners and you are to cherish them and you walk this way through life together. And wonderful things have happened to me and bad things. I mean, I've had heart attacks and bypass surgery and I've lost my business but we're on the way back, aren't we? that we're on the road back. We're on The Comeback Trail and things are going to get good. I know it. It's just around the corner and wonderful things will happen. I'm going to close and tell you what I said I'd tell you about earlier because it's a wonderful thing if you're interested in the... I'm a Roman Catholic and every... I go to Mass every... I was then going to Mass every Sunday when I wasn't speaking somewhere and I had this terrible fear of flying. I mean, it was awful. It was just driving me crazy. When I was in town I would go to St. Philip's Catholic Church in Pasadena at 8 o'clock Mass and I would sit on the end pew of the fourth row we're creatures of habit and that's where I would be during Mass and I'd go to Mass every Sunday at 8 O'Clock Mass and during the consecration of the Mass you Catholics know what I'm talking about I would say a silent prayer and that prayer would be please God help me if I have to keep flying on these goddamn airplanes I'm willing to do it but you need to help me please make me not afraid or if you can't do that please make it so I don't have to do it and I would say this prayer silently I wouldn't even move my lips and one Sunday morning during the consecration of the mass I said this prayer to myself and about five pews up ahead of me a man stood up and he turned around and he looked at me and he smiled from ear to ear he had a wonderful smile and he left the pew and he started walking out of the church and he walked past me and he handed me a card and I thought this is L.A. you know knows what this is and he kept walking and I glanced down at the card and the card said dear God please protect me as I travel to do the work you have given me and return me safely to my family. Through Christ our Lord, amen. And he had walked completely out of the church. And I turned around real quick to find him. But he had gone. But I think that was a gift from God. Now I'd like to tell you that I then went out and jumped on a jet and had no problems. That's not true. It took a while. But I'm not afraid to fly now. so I guess that is a gift from God so if you're new anything can happen to you here and I hope that you stay if you are new and I love you very much and thanks for having us to Iowa