He Wanted to Be a St. Louis Cardinal But He Was an Alcoholic – Johnny H.

My name's Johnny, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here tonight, and I'm happy to be sober. I'm glad to be in a gathering of Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to thank the committee, whoever is responsible, for extending to me the privilege of participating in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I don't know how you feel about it, but to me, it's always been some type of a privilege to be able to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. And the longer I'm sober, the greater that privilege becomes and the more meaningful it becomes to me because I got such a good life. It's really an amazing thing. My life is so good, it's beyond description. If you're new in Alcoholic Anonymous tonight, that ought to make you want to throw up. what you have to remember is that I was new once too and I have never forgot that I have ever forgotten my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and it's written, it's been written by somebody who's far wiser, more intelligent, more educated than I'll ever be in my life, that anything that I forget I am condemned to relive and I never want to forget sitting in my first meet of Alcoholic Anonymous who wasn't even alcoholic see what you've done to me you gave me this sick disease thing here and what is really important to me my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous was very nearly my last because I sat in that meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous that day and the people talked to me about being sober and I didn't think AlcoholicsAnonymous had anything to offer me at all because in my mind I was just physically sober when I came to my first meeting of alcoholics Anonymous exam right now physically sober but that had always seemed to be my problem I didn't know that if I could have stayed loaded forever I'd have never came to Alcoholics Not but I can't interrupt it out there on my happy road of destiny by peeping in little black and white cars they had bad things in people they knew about intervention before the geniuses dreamed it up but I've been here in Alcoholics Anonymous since that day free from any type of alcohol or neutral oxygen chemical to this very instant no near beer no Prozac God, that always brings a hush over the crowd I have a friend of mine says if talking about Prozack makes you nervous you probably ain't sober I don't judge that's my friend says that but I just thought I'd pass along his talk to you tonight while I'm here but you know I had a lot of things mixed up in my goofy head when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I thought being sober had something to do with not drinking alcohol I thought being sober had something to do with the absence of any type of chemicals in my system that's not true at all all that was All that is, to me, is a state of undrunkenness. What I've discovered in Alcoholics Anonymous through the firm, loving hands of sponsors and the directions that are written in our book, a thing called sobriety. And sobriery to me is the ability to live peacefully and comfortably and joyously with me and you and God. And if I couldn't do that, if I didn't do it on a prolonged basis, I'd probably be drunk before I got home tomorrow. but I didn't know that sitting in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous I didn' t know anything because a few months previous to this I came to crawling around in a cell in solitary confinement at a maximum security penitentiary drifting in and out of total insanity I was 26, 27 years old everything that was near and dear to me in my life was gone any type of dream or hope or aspiration that I ever had to ever crawl out of that mire and muck that I was in, that life of destruction and violence and all the things that go with that kind of stuff, were all gone. And what's significant about that to me today is I sit in this room and have all weekend around people that I've known for over, well, ever since they got sober. 30 some years, 30 years, 25 years. And that day when I came to in that cell, there wasn't a single solitary soul left upon the face of this earth that would send me a penny postcard. They were all gone but they should be gone and I didn't have any right to have any of them back. As I stand here before you tonight I haven't had a drink of alcohol or neutral or chemical in my system since sometime between the fourth day before the fourth date of November 1959 and right to this very moment I still don't have a right to have anything good and decent in my life just because I was lucky enough to stumble into a room of Alcoholics Anonymous and get sober and stay that way and I discovered a long, long time ago when I develop rights in Alcoholics Anonymous I'm going to have to defend them and one of the great lines in our book AlcoholicsAnonymous is very simply this, that we cease to fight anything or anybody it's not our business here our business is what's been talked about over this podium for the last two days that I've heard, it's just one alcoholic talks to another alcoholic to try to get them to do something that they don't know how to do. And how to live in a world that they don'T know how TO live in with some degree of comfort so it isn't necessary for them to have to drink. I didn't know that. But see, I knew sitting in that room that day that there was something wrong with me, but I didn'T know what it was. But that was nothing new to me. I always knew there was something wrong WITH ME. As far back as I could ever possibly remember, I knew that I needed an answer. I didn't know what the problem was, but I knew I needed an answer for it. And over and over and over again, I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, before you can teach the answer to a problem, you've got to know what the program is. I don't know what the product of the problem is. I'm restless and irritable and discontent. I'm an angry, hostile little kid. I don'T understand then as I understand it today that those are the symptoms of the most deadly disease that's ever been known in mankind. You know, alcoholics don't have any market on emotions for Christ's sake. We just don't. A lot of people live with them all the time. I mean, look at Benoit, for Christ's sake. I'm so glad to see Benoit here today. I'm glad the weather was nice and afforded travel. Clancy told me to say that. That's not me. I mean... I'm kind and loving like Andy said. But I hear time and time and time again about these set of emotions that alcoholics have. Alcoholics aren't the only one to have those emotions. No, not at all. Well, everybody has those type of emotions. Whether we got them more or less, I don't know, but I think everybody I've ever met, I sit there and listen to the two Al-Anon ladies talk today, and they had them emotions. So what made me different? I don' t know. I did the same thing everybody did. I wanted a way out of this dilemma I'm in. I don't know even though I'm in a dilemma, but I went out of it. I don' t like me. Specifically, I don''t like the way I think about people. What was going on in my house with all them drunks and all these whores and gamblers and bootleggers didn' t make any difference to me. I didn' d like me, I didn'' t like the way I thought about them. I enjoyed it when I watched them beat the hell out of one another though, I thought that was good because I like violence. I looked up one day and saw my grandmother. My grandmother lived until she was 90 years old. She never took a drink of alcohol or smoked a cigarette in her life. My grandma wouldn't think it's a big deal, but I've been an Alcoholics Anonymous for over 40 years. Big deal, she'd say. I ain't had a drink for 90. But I used to say to her, you ought to have a couple, Granny, make you feel better. My grandmother found everything she needed in life in a church that she sit in. My grandmother did. And because I love my grandmother and my grandmother was the only thing that I saw that had any semblance of sanity, I wanted to go sit at my grandmother and be like my grandmother. I wanted to go where my grandmother went and sit where my grandmother sat and have the same thing happen to me that happened to my grandmother and so as a little child I went over with my grandmother and sat in her church and waited for this magnificent thing that happened to my granddaughter in her chair to happen to meet. And it didn't happen. Obviously, if it had happened to me, I wouldn't be here today. If it had happen to me I'd have been a Major League Baseball player. If it happened to sit in that church that happened to my grandmother I'd had a scholarship and fulfilled it at UCLA. If it would have happened to be, I'd of been a St. Louis Cardinal baseball player. If it have happened me, but it didn' t happen to be. It happened to My Grandmother. But you see, I thought that all I have to do is go where Grandma does and do what grandma does and be like my grandma. I'm not like my grandmother. My grandmother's not alcoholic. My grandmother never would be an alcoholic. You couldn't pour enough whiskey in my grandmother to make her an alcoholic She wouldn't drink it for one thing she'd get dizzy and spit it out say ooh it bothers me. What separates me from all those people in the world who have these funny sets of emotions that people are always talking about in Alcoholics Anonymous is what happened to me sitting on the back porch of my grandfather's house with my grandfather watching my grandfather drink whiskey out of a fruit jar. What happened to be in the next few minutes of my life is what changed my life and what makes me an alcoholic. My grandfather put his fruit jar down and went somewhere and I picked it up and took a drink of it. That's all I did. And I went down inside of me and got that warm, fuzzy feeling, I suppose. But the feeling I got from drinking alcohol is not what makes me an alcoholic. It might make me a drinker but it doesn't make me an alcoholic the reason I'm an alcoholic is because I have this abnormal reaction to alcohol that most of the people who drink it don't have it and what really sealed me into my fate was what happened to me once I put alcohol into my system then I started to drink to overcome a craving that's beyond all human help and beyond all human understanding. And I didn't understand that. And what happened to me, my first drink of alcohol happened to be my last drink of alcohol. And it never changed. It would never vary. It was just, it got closer together and it got more violent and more crazy in between times. Because I took a drink of alcohol and three days later they pulled me off from underneath the bridge, stood me in front of a judge and sent me to the Hutchinson State Reform School. Twenty years later I took a drink of alcohol. They pulled me out of a car in Compton and stood me in front of a judge and sentenced me to 20 years in the penitentiary. That's what happened to me when I drank. I got drunk and went places. I just travel around out there. I went from reform school to reform school to junior penitentiares to penitentares to nuthouses. Now they call them treatment centers. I'm a little more partial to nathouse if you want to know the truth because I think it's a little more macho. I really do. I still think if you're going to be bad, you ought to be mad. You ought to not be bad. My old sponsor Norm Alpert used to say, don't quit drinking because you puke a little. Hang in there. Give it everything you got. Alcoholics and I was working a hell of a lot better when you run out of options. And last week, I was with a bunch of guys in some little place down in Oklahoma and we discussed some words and one of the words was hopeless. hopelessness, without hope. And every alcoholic that I've ever known who's ever stayed sober in an alcoholic's anonymous 100-degree comfort has always come to that point in their life. It's called hopelessness that's without hope, that you can't go on, you can'T go back to yesterday, and you can' t go forward to tomorrow, and today is hopeless. I don't know where I reached that state of nothingness or not. I don'T know. I didn'T know what was wrong with me for years. I never knew that I took a drink of alcohol I triggered this craving because I never one time ever came out of one of those institutions from the time I was eight or nine years old until I was twenty some and said to myself self do you realize how long it's been since you've had a series of electroshock treatments why don't you have a drink no I never said to my self why don'T you take a drink of alcohol and go out and kill your baby brother self why don't you take a drink of alcohol and go out and destroy everybody you come in contact with self why don' t you just go out there and wreck lives and trample people and get rid of them and do the things that you do why don''t you do that self no I never one time ever wanted to do anything like that and I never took a drink of alcohol to do it either I took a drink of alcohol after being sober for a period of time the reason alcoholics of my type drink after being sober. It's just to go, whew, that's all. But you see, that is all if you are an alcoholic of my type. That is all that is needed to trigger this murderless obsession, this physical craving that the doctor talked about in her book that leads me into the gates of insanity and death and beyond. I don't know that. That is why when I come to Alcoholics Anonymous and they talk, you hear them talk all the time, it's the first drink to get you drunk. They are talking to alcoholics that was written for alcoholics the first drink that gets you drunk they're talking to alcoholics who have this phenomena of craving once they ingest alcohol into their system they cannot quit drinking that's what an alcoholic is that's why it separates us from the normal drinkers or the heavy drinkers or the people who can get drinking or the people that they hold up as examples from these treatment centers are they sober for a while it isn't necessary for them to have what an alcoholic of my type must have and I damn near died learning is. An alcoholic of my type, the one that this book was written for, alcoholics of my time, people who need some type of a spiritual answer to a spiritual dilemma. I didn't know I had a spiritual dilemma. I didn'T know what was wrong with me and I tried everything to get out of this madness pace that I was in. I did everything. I sat on street corners, kids home from furloughs and we sang around with a little gang of guys being bad and talking bad acting bad, smelling bad. We was bad. We were real bad. We had ducktail haircuts and leather jackets, and we ripped people off. We talked about how bad we were. Anyway, I was sitting on that street corner one day drinking a bottle of Marca Petri red wine, which was my drink. I don't think any of you ever heard of Marcapetri red win. Well, the reason you didn't, it was the experimental stages of Thunderbird. That's why you never heard of it. I'll tell you how bad that stuff was. that never got near a grape. It'll get you. I'm drinking this stuff and I don't know what it was doing or whether it wasn't doing. I was just there. You hang out where I hanged out. You live in them barrios and them ghettos. You just hang out there. And I'm hanging around with my little gang and the guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, you ought to try these. And he handed me some pills. I didn't say to him, what are those? Will they bother me if I take this? Thank God they weren't ex-flax. That's all I can tell you. There's no telling what we could hear in our gatherings. Work, that's all I can say. A couple years later, I'm on that same street corner and I'm drinking this cheap wine and I meet these pellets and a guy stuck a needle in my arm. And for the next 14 years of my life, I stuck needles in my arms and I ran in and out of institutions. That's what I do. See, I live out there in the streets. And I do what people like me who live in the streets do. I destroyed everything that comes in contact with me. There's a reason for that, you see. I'm a taker. I'm a takER of things and I'm a user of people. That's why I'm a loser. I'm selfish. I'm self-centered. And I'm self-serving. And I've got an ego bigger than this whole room. My entire lifetime was spent before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and for a long time after I was here. Maybe even a great deal of time today. I don't know, I haven't got perfect yet. I just haven't. It's all right. I'm working at it. I've been trying to convince my wife of that and she just nods and says, okay. Without a conscious thought or a conscious concern for any other human being who lives upon the face of the earth. Self-centered people like me don't think about anybody. Not at all. I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous to give anything I came to Alcoholic Anonymous to get something that's the great dilemma here this is not a getting program this is a giving program if you're new here in Alcoholics Aneumos down to the lady who took that book for her first day everything you need everything you need you brought in the door with you tonight all you gotta learn is how to uncover it and bring it out. And that's why there's people who are called sponsors in Alcoholics Anonymous to help you along on this journey that you don't know how to make. I've heard it time after time after time from Barney last night, Benoit this morning, my friend Keith and his lovely wife Sally. I heard it over and over and over again. And I'm a byproduct of that. I could have never made it on my own because I'm too selfish and self-centered. My ego's too big. I'm too self-serving. I know everything before it's even asked. I got answers for questions that's never asked yet. And let me run wild and self-will run right. My book talks about self- will run right, and I am a classic example of self- will run ride, drunk or sober. I gotta have something like that. I don't know that. I don' t know anything. I stood handcuffed with two detectives what really drove me into the brink of nothingness out underneath a tree one day while they buried my baby brother, my 17-year-old brother. And I remember the look my mother gave me across the gravesite that day. She gave me that look of hate and disgust. And that look that said, Look what you've done now, scum, you've killed our baby. Because a few days before that she stood at a visiting screen in the old Los Angeles County Jail and called me a murderer. You see, my baby brother had gotten into some of my poison and took an overdose of it and died. And I didn't know how to handle it. And I remember standing underneath that tree like it was yesterday. I remember looking around that gravesite and I'm feeling everything. Everything. You know, people say that alcoholics don't feel. Alcoholics feel everything. We just don't know what to do. We just want to know how To expose it. That's what drives us crazy. We feel everything and we don't want to do this, but we're powerless not to do it. and I don't know what to do and I'd like to have been able to cry but I'm standing there handcuffed between two detectives and there's a few of my gang members and a couple of my partners standing there and I'm looking tough and I've got to go on and keep my images going up there I've gotta go on to the penitentiary with my images you don't cry or show weaknesses you suck it up and go on about your business because somebody might find out you're weak but just how weak can you be how frightened can you be if somebody's going to find out that you're scared to death how frightened you are that you want to show some type of emotion you wantto run over and put your arms around your mother and say God I'm sorry mom please forgive me I didn't mean to do it I didn' t mean to be this way all I want to do is play baseball that's what I wanted to say but I don't know how to say that I don' t know howto suck up that macho image and become a man and walk across the road and put my arms around my mother and tell her how sorry I was that I became such a sorry example for the child she brought into the world. But I can't do that because I'm all hooked up in these sick images of mine. I'm always wondering about what the guys are going to say, what these people are going to say and I've got this image I'm protecting and I have to live up to that image, whatever it may be, death or anything, but I'm going to live up to it. I'm not going to die but I want to die with it. that's the way I felt but I want to do it I want all these things I just told you I want it with my mother I want be able to tell my mother God I love you mom and I'll do everything anything that I can but I don't know how to do that I went to the penitentiary I stayed there four and a half years I came out there four and a have years sicker than I was when I went in there just because you go somewhere and sit without alcohol doesn't make you any better than you were four years ago something to do here if you're an alcoholic now see I'm only talking to alcoholics I'm not talking to heavy drinkers I'm the only I'm talking to people who can quit drinking giving any type of reasonable excuse I'm taking to alcohol that's the only ones I want to talk to because they're the only ones who understand this terrible malady that I have if you have that there's hope for you here if you had this hopelessness and this utility they talk about there's a hope for you here maybe not through me but if you go to a meeting long enough and go around these people long enough pretty soon your hopelessness will get a simmer of hope in it and once your hopeless just becomes with a simmer of hope once you get a little bit of hope back then you'll start doing these things pray God that's true for you was for me I remember sitting in that room that day remember sitting in that penitentiary that day like it was yesterday I'm sitting in the back row where hip people sit I got my coat collar up and my shades on because I was cool if I'd have been any cooler I would have froze to death for God's sake if I had a hat on I'd had it on backwards so I was hip I sat there and looked up on the backboard saw two big A's thought I was in some type of an anti-aircraft brigade didn't know what an A was guy said to me I said to him what is this? He says, it's Alcoholics Anonymous. I tried to hide down in my seat. I didn't know if I'd see the big gangster hanging around with them winos. Got an image. Come on. A little embarrassed to be there. So I thought, well, I'll sit away from the women that get up and tell their racist stories. You know, come here to get entertained, I guess. When I got to AlcoholicsAnonymous, there weren't very many young pretty girls in AA, really. There were... Well, they just weren't. if they were, they weren't setting up that penitentiary where I was at. I'll tell you that. These old gals got up to talk and one of them said she drank for a long time. You could look at her and know she'd been somewhere for a while for a very long time She said, I used to drink. I said, I'll bet you did. See, I knew everything when I came here. I'm a walking encyclopedia of useless information. I know so damn much about what ain't true I don't know what is true. And there I sit for all intents and purposes, a dead man. I got nothing going inside of me in my life. It was just one long series, one more day in hell, one more days in hell. One more day and hell, one more way in hell and that's where I would live and I'd live in an absolute hell. I couldn't sleep. I didn't, I couldn' take any medication because I had a narcotic record. I wasn't given any type of medication. I couldn''t sleep. I laid awake at night dreaming about to look at my mother's face. My mother's faith in the middle of the night would come to me out of the wall I'd see my baby brother I'd be trying to get whatever I wanted whenever I ever needed and that's the type of nightmares I lived in when I came here I didn't sleep I didn' t know what peacefulness was the only time I knew about peace was when I took a drink and then that was only temporarily because it became more and more necessary and I didn''t know as I sit there that day that if you're new, you may not know it either. I didn't know when I was sitting there the other day that I was staring at the answer that I had sold my soul for. How was I to know that? I didn'T know I was an alcoholic. And this don't look like the answer. This doesn't look like the answers to nightmares. This doesn'T look like the night, the answer to end of this misery that's mine. This doesn' t look like much of anything to me. I don'T understand what these people are doing. I'm fascinated by them because I don't understand them. I don't understand why anybody would get up on Sunday morning and leave their house and leave their families, get in cars and buy their own gasoline, buy their own lunches, drive a hundred and some miles up those old back roads and spend two hours talking to a room full of people who didn't want to listen to them. Selfish self-centered people don't think about things like that. They don't know why people would think these people are lames to do stuff like that, what a bunch of dudes they are. What do you get out of coming up here, I'd say to them? Well, we can answer that question, you won't have to ask it. These A people got these deep answers that they throw at you from time to time. If you're hip as I am when I got here, you don't understand that. You don't understanding anything but man, cool baby, get it on. Let's go get down. Ain't never one time I ever heard one of them lame suckers ever say let's go get up. You know why? I'm going to tell you why. Ain't nobody down once you up. because if you're up and they're down you're a testimony to the lie that they're living that's why they say let's go get down that's what they're doing that's how you get these people hanging around here saying oh you don't have to do that nonsense come on over here with us the dance starts pretty soon not the people I hang out with they tell you go in there and wash them damn cups you know why they do that make you feel better about yourself. Make you feel like you're a part of something instead of apart from everything. And if an alcoholic of my type knows anything in the world about being apart from, they know about being depart from. Even in Alcoholics Anonymous. Even in alcoholics anonymous people sit in here and they're apart from this magnificent way of life. And all they got to do is say help. All they got do is walk up to somebody and say, stick out your hand and say will you help me which is the hardest thing that any alcoholic ever does I didn't understand all that I didn' t understand all these people doing all this kind of stuff I didn''t understand why anybody would do this I'd sit in the back row and I'd make fun of them I'd laugh at them I'd punch my partner see these lame suckers who are they what are they doing up here looking at the animals in the cages I had all kinds of phraseologies to masquerade my fear and my differences and I'll tell you how sick that is if you really want to know this is for you hipsters sit around making fun of A I sit around the penitentiary making fun of these people in A tell you what I'll say how sick that is here I am sitting in the penitenciary I don't know when I'm going home and I'm making fun of people who are leaving in an hour right on dude them lames leaving today but I'll be here next week when they come back I used to sit in meetings when I was an alcoholic and I tried to say this to anybody back there with my partners I heard people get up and put it like this and say I used to drink now I don't drink anymore and everything is just wonderful I said I guess I'm not alcoholic then God I wish I was an alcoholic if I could just be an alcoholic then all I would have to do is not drink and I'd be okay if I was alcoholic but you see I'm sober I'm sober I'm an alcoholic because I'm sober and I'm sober as that guy saying that and I can't sleep at night I got nightmares these things that I've done in my past are choking me to death I'm not safe around myself. You know, I'm attacking people because I'm so frightened that I'm going to expose myself. I attack people and jump on them. I don't want to do that. But I'm an alcoholic. You see, alcoholics are people who drink and then quit drinking and they're good and they are wonderful. They just smile. I'm that. I don' t know then I'm describing to myself not a problem with alcohol. That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinkin' a problem of alcohol. I'm thikin' About a problem with alcohol. And what I'm talking and explaining to myself is this maddening, debilitating disease called alcoholism that I don't even know that I have, but I know that there's something more wrong with me than that. I'm sober. I'm as sober as the guy saying that. And my time came one day, sitting on my little perch, my little throne of contempt. In the back of that meeting, my day came. and if you're an alcoholic your time will come if you are an alcoholic of my type and you keep coming to these meetings your day will come what you do with that time and that day and that moment in time that approaches and comes to you what I hope and pray to God for you when your moment comes I hope you're smack dab in the middle of a group like I go too I hope you're smacked dab in the midst of a bunch of people who care more for hurting your feelings and making you look good when your moment comes. Mine came sitting in a penitentiary a long, long time ago 39 years ago it became. A little guy walked in that I knew did 23 flat years in the penitenciary and stood at a podium of Alcoholics Anonymous I didn't believe what I was seeing but he told me something that nobody had ever told me he looked down where I was sitting and he said you don't have to live like this no more if you don' t want to he says you don''t have to do it like this no more nobody had ever told me that they've been telling me since I was 8 years old in every institution I'd ever been in the same people with them degrees hanging all over the wall kept telling, they all told me the same thing Johnny, if you didn't drink these things and swallow these things and smoke these things and shoot these things, you wouldn't have any problems that's what they told me none of them ever took into consideration that every time they told me that I was as physically sober as I am right now. They tried to want to scream out at them good God doctor don't you understand because they don't. If you're not an alcoholic you'll never understand why I drink but if you're not alcoholic I'll never understand why you don't I mean I don't understand it I just I see people wasting alcohol it just drives me crazy you don'T get it. I went up to this little guy after the meeting. I knew him. He was my baseball coach when I was a star second baseman for the San Quentin Pirates. You know, I put that on a resume once. Swear to God. My sponsor told me that I was trying to get this job. I was I was trying to get out of working in the oil field. I was tryng to get a job selling oil tools, and we were going to go to Arabia too. They were developing the oil fields over there, and I ought to have been a rich dead man by now if I'd have got that, I'll tell you that. No alcohol over there but damn it, a lot of that hashish maybe. Well, that's not drinking, you know, I mean. And so I went in there and my sponsor said, I don't care what you do, damn it. Tell the truth. I said okay and I went in there and I had a lot of blank spaces on prior employment but it had a little thing down there recreational activities and I put down star second baseman for the San Quentin Pirates two year running and I never will forget this guy he was looking at this thing he was a very nice man he looked at this things he said San Quinton and I said yeah He said, where's that at? I said, that's up near Stanford. He said oh that must be a good school then. I told him yes I've learned a lot of things there I'll tell you that. Needless to say I didn't get the job because he asked me one of them dumb questions can you get a passport? Well you got to be a citizen to get a password if you got as many felony convictions I got, you ain't a citizen very long I tell you that well that was in the old days when we were persecuted for being badly that's before everybody was equal he told me that day he gave me the greatest piece of information that you can give a newcomer in Alcoholics Anonymous. I walked up to him and he told about this book called AlcoholicsAnonymous and said it was in the library. He said if I'd go get that book and read it he'd pray that I'd find some part of me in it. Go get the book. The book is right the people are wrong. The book was right the people were wrong. I never have forgot that phraseology. That book is always right the people are wrong because we're just dealing with human beings here some of us are a little more egotistical than others some of them are more boisterous than others but the answer to any question that I need to know or if you're an alcoholic of my type you'll ever need to know is in here this book and anybody that talks beyond the experience of this book is only talking about their own experience they're not talking about anything else we have people who study the book oh I mean they study they're looking for things in there one guy said to me what do you think Bill was trying to say to us I said what he said now that to the intellectual mind is deep I guess the little guy prayed real hard he's dead now his name was Les Hamlin and I loved him a great deal I got to do the eulogy at his funeral when he died I loved this little man like something I learned to love him good then he went home and prayed for me and I opened up this book Alcoholics Anonymous to find out what it was he was talking about one day I sat in a room with a man doing what our program of recovery says is the fifth step and the greatest single event that ever happened to me in my life happened to be that day without a doubt everything else in my live pales compared to what happened to being sitting in that room that day doing what this program says is a fifth step I heard myself say to that man that I was an alcoholic and from way down deep inside of me there came a freedom that I carried with me at this very instant see, I stand here before you tonight I'm an alcoholic and I suffer from a disease called alcoholism I am not an alcoholic and anything when I was an alcoholic and something or other, I couldn't have your program and the reason I couldn't Have It is I separated me from you I'm not quite like you I'm a little different than you I'ma little better than you, a little worse than you a little smarter than you, a little hipper than you a little slicker than you but I'm not like you you see when I became just like you or like the people who wrote this magnificent manuscript here in this book called Alcoholics Anonymous it became absolutely my great privilege my great privilege to practice the only program of recovery for my disease in 5,000 years of recorded history, this is the only thing that's ever worked for people like me, alcoholics if I get to do this and I want to let you know something from that moment to this moment it's been the easiest thing I've ever done Alcoholics Anonymous and its program of recovery once I got involved in the program of recover called Alcoholics Aonimous it's bee the easiest thing I've every done and if you don't know about easy you never live like I lived out there you never lived with a tear At any moment, they're going to come through the door. At any moment, you're going have to answer the phone. At any minute, they're gonna grab you and take you off. At any moment, somebody's gonna blow your brains out. That's a tough line. My old Papa Chuck used to say, there's a hard way and an easy way to do alcoholics now. The hard way is to think you can do it yourself. and the easy way is to know that you can't. I know that's a little too deep for Ames, but I thought I'd kind of throw it out there so people could kind of catch hold somewhere there. It means what it said. I can't do this thing. I can' t run my whole life either. I walked out of that penitentiary on the fourth day of June 1961 to a world I didn' t know anything about. I didn't know what it was like to go to work. I never had a job. People like me don't work. We steal. We take what we want. Damn the consequences. Getting on our road, you're just a statistic. It's the way I live my life. I didn' t have a social security card. I didn''t have a driver's license. But I walked out of that penitentiary armed with the only thing I needed to be armed with. I was armed with completion to the best of my ability the first nine steps of our program of recovery. So when I walked out of that penitentiary, all I wanted to do was go sit in meetings. I said to myself, give me the privilege of sitting in their meetings. I'll do anything they ask me to do. I'm happy to report to you that for almost 38 years of my life, I have done practically everything you've asked me to doing, Alcoholics Anonymous. Never willingly. Because I always know better. but I always do it I went over to see my mother she fell off the steps blind drunk I picked her up and put her on the couch said mom I'm going to an AA meeting she said fine I think you should I'd like to tell you that my mother got sober and my dog got sober and my cat got sober and my kids got sober and it's a sober, sober, sober, sober that ain't my experience I sat in Alcoholics Anonymous and watched my mother drink herself to death surrounded by this magnificent program of recovery and the benefits that you reap from it by following a few simple suggestions around here powerless to do anything about it oh somebody my mother would show up from time to time because she's an alcoholic she ain't going to drink forever she's going to have to get sober see alcoholics have to get sober they sometimes drink themselves sober but they got to get sober because they can't they're too sick not to and when she was sober she'd come to meetings the guy asked me one day how long was your mother sober and I told him very simply I said I don't I don' t think my mother was ever sober because all my mother ever got in Alcoholics Anonymous was a series of periods of undrunkenness but she never knew what it was like to live in the peace and comfort of sobriety in Alcoholic Anonymous and my mother died alcohol killed my mother She drank herself to death. And I sat at a bedside the day she died and held her hand, and I was the last thing in this world my mother ever saw. And she looked at me with those beautiful blue eyes of hers, and I'm sure right before she closed them that moment, if somebody would have said to her, aren't you proud of your son? Look at him. Man, he's a member of society. He pays his bills. He's a remember of that AA thing. He found out he was an alcoholic. He wandered around. He has a host of friends all over the world. He's been all over the world. Aren't you proud of him? My mother would have looked at you with all the sincerity that my mother had, and she would have said to you, my son's not alcoholic. My son is not an alcoholic. My son's life got a lot better when he quit running around with the Mexicans. Now, that has nothing to do with Mexicans, I was raised by Mexicans that's why we ran the gang. But you see, if you were to talk to some of these giants who fall in and out of these psychobabble, nonsensual crap that you hear in some of these meetings. Again, I don't judge, but I'm just trying to point it out to you. They say to you, I guess your mama was in a state of denial. A denial is a lie. And the person who tells you they're in a stage of denial is a liar. error. My book, Alcoholics Anonymous, talks about a delusion. My book, Alcoolics Anonymus, says people like me don't know the truth from the false and we think our life is the only normal one. That's not a denial. That the delusion, the delusion that we're like other people or presently maybe it's got to be smashed here. I am not like other people. I'm not like nine out of the other ten people who drink alcohol with no punity. I don't like the people who drinks alcohol forever and quits and comes and sits in these meetings and does nothing. I'm not these people. I'm an alcoholic. This book describes me. That's why I know I'm a alcoholic. Not thoughts or feelings or emotions. This book tells me what happens to me once I drink alcohol. That's what makes me an alcoholic, not a series of emotions running unchecked for Christ's sakes. I have an allergy to alcohol. of an allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind. That's nothing to do with my feelings. Nothing to do with the issues. Geez, I don't know where all that crap came from for Christ's sake. Maybe some guy paid a lot of money to find out he had issues. I never read that in this book. If it was in here I wish you'd point out to me because I'd like to quit saying it. See this book? This book. Alcoholics. Same one we got in Los Angeles. I thought I'd throw a little hip talk in there for you just to get the guys in the back row. Well, see, we've gained a few for the dance. I'm going to piss you off. I may keep talking until the dance starts. See this book? This book here. This book, for all you intellectual giants, you people who are educated beyond your intelligence. See this books, Alcoholics Anonymous? Changed more lives since it's been in publication than all the combined therapy in the history of the world. I want to caution you if you tell your therapist he may not write you a prescription. I just observe and report the facts to you. I just give a little action to go on there. I went to a meeting one night and I had the strangest thing ever happen to me. A guy walked up to me and told me he was going to be my sponsor. I said, what's that? He said, well, I'm going to help you get it done, kid. I said okay what do you want me to do he looked at me and he said why do you ask me I said you just said you were going to be my sponsor he said Johnny if I can't run my life what the hell makes you think I can run yours I said then what do I do what do they want me to do he says why don't you do what I do what is it you do he said if you do what I do then you'll know what I did how's that for you hipsters that's got it all together that kind of kills this myth of these dictator type sponsors don't you want to be sober for over 40 years do what I do if you want to be sober for over 40 years with some peace and happiness and joy do what I do if you wanna be miserable and hang on there and fight a drink forever be my guest cause you ain't never gonna get me to deny the right for anybody for the privilege of suffering and it does take suffering pain is the touchstone of all growth around here he ain't going to do any of this thing our book Alcoholics Anonymous makes magnificent statements makes magnificent statements it says that nobody will do these things only if they have the desperation of the dying the first thing you got to learn is you have a disease that kills more people than any disease that's ever been known to mankind if you don't have the disease you don' t have to do nothing so I had to Or take this skinny guy who talked fast and teach me how to live in Alcoholics Anonymous in our fellowship. Oh, I knew how to Live Sober. This book will teach you how to do that. This book, by following the instructions of what this book says, you will learn how to clean up the wreckage of your past. You will learn to make the amends and rid your mind of the nightmares that kept you in bondage all your life. That's what the ninth step is all about. That's why the step after the nine-step promises things that are foreign to alcoholics. Peace, it talks about. Usefulness. We will know serenity and we'll know peace before we're halfway through. That's what it says. That's What this book says. What tremendous promises to alcoholic. I drank all my life for comfort, to feel good, to get that terrible I don't care switch on my head so I wouldn't feel that I cared so much. and now I care much and I cry much and I say so I love my life I love my sponsor he was mean to me he was more concerned with saving my life and he wasn't hurting my feelings first thing he ever said to me was are you how long have you been sober hot shot I got 19 months in the joint baby he said no this is the first day you're sober because in there and out here what a tremendous thing he did for me I didn't realize it at the time cause I fought him with it he let me be a newcomer imagine come walking out knowing everything and 19 months over with my monumental ego 1961 19 months with a lot of time, particularly in the Alano Club. I mean, some of them had 19 days. They just, ah, 19 months. I said, what do you want me to do, Norm? He said, why don't you get a job? I said what? He said why don t you go to work, Johnny? You re a bum. I said oh, Norm, don t say that to me. I m not a bum He said what are you? I said I m an AA man. He says, no, you're an AA bum. He says bums don't work. As a matter of fact, he says you better get off of welfare. I said, I ain't never been on welfare. Don't you ever say that to me again, ever. He says what do you call living in a penitentiary? Self-supporting through your own contribution? He had an answer for everything. I used to call him up in the middle of the night just to see if he'd answer the phone. No, I don't want nothing. I'm devious, you know. I'd say things to him at one o'clock in the morning. Norm! You know, at about one o'.c.m. we can really get your thoughts together in the dark. But if you're really serious about laying awake at night in the darkness or in the light you should go in a closet with your pistol. Saves a lot of effort and tranquility. Norm, I'd stay to him. Norm, my program ain't working. Norm! He'd say, why don't you try ours? Hang on. I have to call him back and say, what did you mean by that? And he'd say things to me like, Jackass, your program never did work. Your program at the ripe old age of 27 years old got you crawling around in a cell in solitary confinement of the maximum security penitentiary, drifting in and out of sobriety or insanity. How's that for a working program, kid? He says, now ours, on a part-time basis, they give you the best life you've ever known. He said, just think what would happen if you just got into it real deep. Think about stuff like that. I'd go to meetings with him. He's always talking. He'd talk fast. I'd walk in behind him. He's the speaker. I like to sit by the speaker he gave me some status and you don't have any anything is better than none do you know what I mean I'd sit there and listen to him one night I'm listening to him and had a coffee break and I went back by the literature table to let everybody know that the speaker's guest was walking to the literature table to get the speaker a cup of coffee and I'm back there and the guy tapped me on the shoulder and turned around and he looked at me and he said, Johnny? And I said, yes. He said, I heard you talk the other night. I said really? He said yes. He said do you know that you're a miracle? I said really? What was it that I said? He said oh you went blah blah blah and all this stuff and God I kept getting bigger and my head kept swelling and my ego kept going and you know one thing about an ego ain't never got enough. The more you give, the more you've got to have it. And first thing you know, I'm so gone that I don't know what I've come floating back and I fall into the seat and Norm's talking and he looks at me and I'm staring out the window looking for my spaceship. I know I'm in the wrong place and the wrong planet but I know it's coming to get me because I'm a miracle. You know, Norm used to stare at me. He sees I'm gone. We're in the car going home that night because I can't drive. I ain't got a driver's license. Makes me ride a bicycle to meetings. See how cruel they were to us in the old days? Made us ride my little girl's bicycle, if you want to know that. Pink. Little bell on it. Bing, bing, bong. I ride it by my old neighborhood, by my own partners. They're sitting on the street corner in their thousand dollar suits and their big automobiles and here comes the old warlord on his little girl. Little girl's bike. They say things like and it ain't working on the Jones well on the way home that night he said to me what's wrong with you jackass are you smoking that stuff I said I don't think you're going to understand this Norm but I'm a miracle Old Norm didn't understand that at all he yelled and screamed and run the car into the divider and said you're what and I said I'm a miracle he says you're not a miracle jackass Alcoholics Anonymous is a miracle you're just a small part of it now I don't know what that does for the miracles here in Ames but I can tell you what it's done for me it's kept me small enough to stay here you can't possibly imagine what an egotist like me would do if I thought I was a miracle let your imagination soar we could probably hire some greyhound buses to leave for Waco to do it right next time you see I don't have any doubt that I have that type of an ego I know that I know that much about me. I know that much about me that I have this monumental never satisfied always engulfing ego I know that. That's why a sponsor who's stronger than my head has always been necessary in my life. You can imagine left to my own devices what I would do with this type of a monumental ego. I watch it happen all the time because I'm close to an active and alcoholic synonymous and I sit in meetings and see what goes on around me. You don't have to judge things to see things happen in front of your eyes. I watch what happens to these people who run their own lives and who don't need sponsors, who have got to the point now where all that stuff they were doing in their first couple of years is fine and dandy, but I've got to have a little more spirituality than that action stuff. I've had a rash of that in the last three or four months. phone calls from all over the country and people that I sponsor say they don't understand people have been sober a couple of years now are tired of this type of action stuff, just going to meetings and reading this book and studying this book and trying to sponsor people and looking like they belong in a world that they don' t belong in cleaning up and having some type of respect for this thing that saved their life now they need a little more spiritual growth so they're moving on what they're really telling you is I don't want to do it no more. I want to stay home and play with myself. That's exactly what they're telling you. Sometimes the devil just gets into you. but you know the good doctor in our book The Doctor's Opinion tells us about things he tells you you think that some of these people have been sober around here a long time and are lying to you about this commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous and this sponsorship and this home group and all these things and this wearing coats and ties to show you how to respect you think that's all nonsense but come with us and sit on the firing line of Alcoholics Anonymous and watch the people who don't do it. Watch the people come in here and seem to get a little taste of this thing. Then all of a sudden they back off and want to go do it another way and find another way and watch what happens to them. That's what happens to people like me. I get to see that. I get the same feeling I get what happens to people who find out that old cruel sponsor that they had. I know he's an active person but I don't need to go to all them meetings anymore. I don't need to work with them newcomers anymore I don' t need to go to book studies anymore I don''t need to call my sponsor anymore I'm taking it easy I'm trying to get my life together I'm tying to get some balance in here baby they'll probably balance him in a hole somewhere pretty soon because that's what happens to alcoholics and I have had the opportunity like a lot of my friends have had here to sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and watch that happen over and over and over and over and over again. And it tears your heart out. Some of these people become like children to me, like my own children. Some of these people who do these things and kill themselves are closer to me than my own children. I just, not very long ago, I had a kid, a friend of mine, who went through this nonsense. He's sober five or six seven years, a great little kid. And he opened up a little business and he lived down in Orange County. He started meeting, missing meetings. And every once in a while they'd show up and I'd jump at them. I'd say, Jesus Christ, man, what are you doing? You're an alcoholic. You can't be doing this stuff. You know, you can't show up whenever you feel like you want to show up. You got to be here. You've got to set some example. You're sponsoring people for Christ's sake. If you don't know how to do it, they're not going to do it. You don't understand. I'm getting my life together. Man, I know it. I am not thinking about taking a drink. It is okay. A couple of three weeks go by and I miss another meeting. Shows up on Monday night and I corner him again. Not because I want to be cruel or hard hearted. Because I am concerned he is an alcoholic. He is going to die. His life is hanging on the thread. I can't save him. But maybe I can jog him. But what my experience of that is, when they're that far gone, they ain't coming back. This was on a Monday night and Friday night I got a phone call that this kid went into the bedroom and taken an overdose of heroin and died. One of the guys he sponsored found him. Well, that's what you have here. His girlfriend who had been dragging him around and loving him and getting loaded and eating pills and stuff with him. Called me up and started crying. She said, you heard right to dead and I said, yeah, did you sell him the dope? She said why would you say that? And I said you're the only one I know he's running around with that was using. Funny she hasn't called me back and asked for an apology. But that's what's here. That's what I read the doctor's opinion last week with them guys down in the mountains in Oklahoma or what they call mountains. And I read that doctor's opinion and it jumped out of there on me. That's what old-timers, these people sitting in the front row, Keith and Peggy and Barney, come walk with us. Come sit in these meetings for 15, 20, 25 years and watch these things happen. Watch it on the firing line of Alcoholics Anonymous. Out there in the trenches where these people come. Well, not in these group therapy sessions that happen at 6 o'clock in the morning, for Christ's sake. But in AA meetings that happen tonight where the drunks come to. And watch them come here when they have to do a little extra here. When you have to make a little effort when you have to do this for free and for fun. It gets a little boring a little tiring sometimes. You don't want to do that. We've all been there. I don't want to do this no more. I was going to walk away from Alcoholics Anonymous in my seventh year because my wife had committed suicide. Left me with these two little kids. I didn't think AA worked. Thank God I had a sponsor that I had to report to. He told me to give big crosses to big hosses. Give little crosses to guys named John. I went home that night and tried to figure out how big my cross was. Didn't have one because I'd been sober. And though I had a few clouds in my life at that day, that didn't mean the sun was never going to shine again. What a magnificent life I've been given here. Oh, I've had my ups and downs. I've at times when I didn't think I was the greatest member of Alcoholics Anonymous and knew I wasn't in the world. I've that time that I've said in meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous guilty because of my egotistical actions have gotten me to do things. I've went through business failures and divorces. Been through a lot of stuff here. My children on drugs. My mother drinking herself to death. Friends leave. Freedoms come. it just goes on and on and on here. But I have never but one time ever dreamed about leaving Alcoholics Anonymous that night I was going to tell Norm it wasn't working. But I went home that night and I got in that little $60 a month rented room that I lived in. And I got on my hands and knees and I said this prayer, third step prayer of our program recovery, God relieve me from the bondage of self because I have come to believe that selfishness and self-centeredness is the root of all of our problems here. I've come to believe that. I have come to believe that if we don't cross over that line here, that invisible line in Alcoholics Anonymous from being a taker to being a giver, we're going to die drunk. I don't care what anybody tells you. That's the way it works here if you're an alcoholic. If you're not an alcoholic, what difference does all this make anyhow? Come and join the camaraderie. Come and have coffee with us. Come and sit in our meetings. Come do and watch the rest of us do the work if you want. I was sitting in a meeting Thursday night and one of my little groups that I go to was a 12-on-12 workshop and a guy was talking and he said the best job that he could possibly ever have an Alcoholics Anonymous was he was the associate GSR. He said, that associate's a great job, man. He says, you don't have to do nothing but you get in on everything. And I thought a lot about people I know are a lot of associate members here. that's neither here nor there because I'll go home tonight I'll go to my room, I'll lay down and I'll sleep without the use of any type of psychiatric medication I've lived in peaceful contemplation today of he who presides over Saul I know what it's like to love beyond anything that I've ever dreamed of I know what it'd like to tell somebody I love them I know what it's like to walk up to somebody and tell them how much I admire them and love them. My examples of Alcoholics Anonymous have been giants. My example for Al-Anon was my adopted mother, Elsa Chamberlain. My example for AlcoholicsAnonymous was my adoptive father who adopted me. His name was Chuck Chamberlaine. My first sponsor was a guy by the name of Norm Alpey. 22 years he was my sponsor and he dropped dead. If he was still alive, he'd still be my sponsor. Because if he got something for me when I'm new, he damn sure got something from me when I'm old. As long as they keep on doing it. Now I got a guy by the name of Clancy Amundson who's my sponsor for only two reasons. He's sober longer than I am and he's busier than I are. If he loses one of those traits, he won't be my sponsor tomorrow because I got to have that. I got to have somebody out there pulling the wagon because there's times when I want to jump in it and ride. There's times when I don't have the strength to get out and pull it myself but I got to jump in it right. Thank God for the 30 some odd years that I've been hanging around you, there's always been somebody out there pulling the wagon. Those are the people I admire. Those are people I wonder about how much do you really appreciate your heritage here when I see you give polite applause to the people who have been here and kept the door open for you when you could drag your rusty butt in here. And how you make it such an outstanding ovation for somebody who just got here. Somehow or other, I think those things are wrong. Well, I'm not browbeaten. I think new people, new people are very necessary here. But for God's sake, don't ever forget the people who went before you. I never have. I never they're giants they stand on my mind I see them wherever I go they left me something they gave me an inheritance or a legacy that's hard to describe if you don't understand it they gave Me everything that I have they gave My sense of obligation My sense of duty they introduced Me to a God of My very own and He's meeting they taught Me how to love them they made their life so attractive that I would have died and went to hell for a piece of the ribbon that was wrapped in I would have done anything that they did just to be like them and I turned around one day and I was like them because I had got what they always seemed to have that I didn't quite understand they loved Alcoholics Anonymous and they loved alcoholics and they devoted their lives to helping alcoholics get happy, joyous and free they devoted life to helping God's kids get things done that need to be done. And that's the legacy they left me. That's the inheritance that my Papa Chuck left me, that's inheritance of my sponsor Norm Alpey left me when he died. Night after night after night these people were out in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous until they could no longer do it. Then when Papa could no long do it, they wheeled him in a wheelchair. my great blessings in my life one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me probably one ofthe saddest things that'sever happened tome for the last year that that old man lived i got to help take care of him and i put him in my lap and i hugged him and i kissed him on the cheek and i told him that i loved him and i did i loved you more than i've ever loved anything in mylife before or since and probably never will there was a love there that only a son would have for his father. He sure as if he'd sired me, I was his kid and I loved him I never had the opportunity to do that with my sponsor Norm because he just dropped dead one day and I had a tough time with that for a long time, I moaned over that for over a year before I got me another sponsor dangerously and so I keep a hold of my sponsor I sit with him, I have lunch with him I'm with him every time I get an opportunity because I never want him ever to leave me without me telling him the most incredible thing that I know of. Every Wednesday night, I hug him and kiss him on the cheek and tell him, Clancy, I love you. When I left my house yesterday morning, I went into my bedroom where my beautiful wife lives and I reached down and I kissed her on the cheeks and I told her, I Love You. And I'll see you Sunday, honey. See, what would it have been like if I just stormed out of the house on Friday morning mad, angry because I have to go away and be bothered by going to AA and in that attitude I left my wife and something happened to me and the last memory that she would have of me was an angry, hostile no good son of a bitch who just left the room but if something would happen to me before I get home and I don't know whether it will or not that's not my destiny I don' t really know the last thing my wife ever heard me say I love you baby have a good day the last thing that my sponsor heard me say Wednesday night was I love you Clancy talk to you Monday what a great thing here I didn't come here with that folks I'm sorry that had been ingrained in me by sitting around and trying to do what the people who went before me did and all of a sudden I found myself being what they were just a person who loves Alcoholics Anonymous and is willing to do anything he can so when they asked me to come to Alcoholics Anonymous I said okay if the date's open it's yours because you see I belong to you I belong to Alcoholics Anonymous what I am is not nothing that's been restored I am what the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, this way of life and these magnificent people have created by their actions and by their examples that went before me that if I would try to do these things I could be like them and by doing these things I became the thing I never knew before I got here I became me and I got introduced to a brand new person who is capable of love, who's capable of believing in a God of his own, who is capable of being of service to his fellow man without thought, of any thought whatsoever reward. I don't even do this to stay sober anymore. I do this because it's my great love of doing it. Because somebody took the time out of their busy life to do it to me. So I pass that legacy on. I won't mess it up with Freud and its intellectual bobbly goop that has no earthly use to anything but the intellectual mind. My program is all about love and service. I love alcoholics and I'm a sort of servant. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't serve it. And I love you. I don't like all of you, but I love me. I love all of us. I'm not that big. I'm just not. I know some of these people say I hadn't learned to love me before I could love you that ain't the way it is with me there's times when I don't even like me there's time when I wouldn't take me with a large dowry but I have never not loved you I loved you from that fateful day in November 1959 to this very moment the only difference is that I know that I love you today and then I didn't know what I was feeling if you're new here in Alcoholics Anonymous I want to let you know by no while stretching the imagination of my consultant, a counselor or authority on a program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm an example good, bad or different that this program works and in every living thing I have in my life I owe it to Alcoholics Anonymous and everything I may ever hope to have in my life, every living things I may even hope to have here I will owe to Alcoholic Anonymous and dear friends believe this It is a long walk from a cell in solitary confinement in a maximum security penitentiary to where I stand right now. But for the grace of God, AA and good folks like you, I could have missed it all. Thank you.