His Story – Earl H.

Hi everybody, my name is Earl. I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody. Jesus Christ. I want to thank the committee for asking me to come home and the committee for asking to come back to Seaside. I consider that a great honor and a privilege to be here. I also want to think Wendy and Vicki for coming to the airport for picking me up, bringing me up here. I also, during the break after the film that they showed us, I met a guy named Dave and I want to thank Dave for his kind words over there in the hall. I can't tell you how much that meant to me, man. Thank you. So, I didn't start drinking when I was 12. I had held out as long as I possibly could. I had been restless, irritable and discontented for quite some time already. And I mean it was a humble beginning for me. I had a little pot of wine, no big deal you know. I mean I'd been shipped off to boarding school. My parents had had a bunch of tests run on me and they determined that I had this very high IQ. I don't have it anymore so I'm not bragging. It's gone. That's been gone a long time. And so they shipped me off to this boarding school. My father, how I got sent to boarding school informed I was going to boarding schools. My father walked into my room and said, get in the car. All right. Got in the car. Bunch of relatives showed up. Little caravan of cars drove and drove and drove and pulled up to this place. I got out of the car, my father got out of the care, nobody else got out. Walked around put a suitcase down next to me and he said, this will make a man out of you. Shipped my hand, got back in the car, and they all drove off. And I was 12 years old. I was five feet tall. So manhood was, of course, right around the corner. I was just busting into manhood all over. Yeah. And I had been given an opportunity for a wonderful education that has held me in good stead to this very day. The feeling was that I had just been thrown away by the people who knew me best in the world and I didn't know what I'd done wrong. I didn't know what I'd done to be thrown away by these people and emotionally was just a devastating moment for me And I don't know about you, but I've never been I've really bothered myself much with the fact You know, I mean it's just whatever however. I feel about things That's what's going on, and that's how I deal with the world right so well I spent three days calling my mother saying you know you really ought to come pick me up and take me home because this is just a big mistake and You know she talked to me for a little bit you get in my father in the background you hang up up. She said, oh, got to go. And after three days of that, it was like something broke inside me and I decided, you know what? You don't want me. I don't want you. And I turned my back on my family and I pretty much never went back. And as I began this journey alone in the universe, I mean, 12 years old, five feet tall, 103 pounds, absolutely no tools for living whatsoever. I'm walking around on this campus and I mean there's 250 boys on this this campus that are ages 13 to 18, and I'm 12. I'm the only non-teenager in the whole place. I am the youngest and smallest kid in the school. Now that doesn't mean anything to anybody except a 12 year old. Because when you're 12 all you want to be is a teenager. Everybody else is. I' m not. I''m the loser. I´m the guy who doesn't belong here. This is a terrible mistake. I hate this place. And I'm walking around trying not to make eye contact with anybody and I ran into Tiny. Every high school has got a guy named Tiny. He's like 6'4", 240, plays guard on the football team. In fact he found me and he walked up up to me and said, how you doing punk? And he slapped me in the back of the head, sent me and my books flying. And I had this like out-of-body experience, you know, where you're watching yourself do something, but is your head saying no, no, nonono, this is a very very bad idea. And walked up and I hit tiny as hard as I could. Yeah, real good idea. And I like looked up at him like, I'm already past anything I understand, you're gonna have to take it from here man, I don't know what to do now. And he looked down at me and he said, you know what kid, you got a lot of guts. And he beat the crap out of me. And as I'm taking this beating, I'm thinking this is going pretty good. Because, I mean, I knew about taking a beating. You know, my house was not a happy home. But it worked. I felt good about it because he had said, You got a Lot of Guts, Kid. My violence had masked the fear. And that was my first tool for living, man. When frightened, attack. attack. If you're attacking people, they're not thinking, would you look at how frightened this guy is? They're thinking, who's a little maniac, right? So I take my beating and I go back to my dorm room and I got knots on my head, go back in my room, wait for the bleeding to stop. And word spreads across this campus like wildfire, watch out for this little Hightower kid, he's a maniac, he attacks tiny, right. So all the cool guys start coming around and Matt swung by and Matt said, take his hand in the room, and I'm just sitting there looking around you know thinking my life's really going great and uh matt said uh you want to smoke a joint and i said uh well yes i do and i didn't even know what he was talking about you know all i heard was do you want to come with us the answer was yes i want to come with you he could have walked in and said we're gonna go kill a spanish teacher do you wanna come i would have said yes i do i'm going to kill the spanish teacher because i'm alone in the universe man and i got very large people attacking me now I gotta hook up right so I mean I hooked up with Matt and we went down the dorm and we picked up Steve along the way and Steve had a this container wrapped in tin foil right I don't know what that's about so we go behind the dorm to thirteen-year-olds not twelve-year old children and it Matt and you can tell Steve starts to unwrap this Tupperware container you can tell by the way he's doing it what's in here is very very important this is important stuff and it's a it's Tupperwares container full of cheap red wine and I mean cheap red wine no grapes involved wine you know what I I mean? And you know, so Matt fires up a joint, takes a hit and hands it to me. And I just do what he does. And that's nasty. That burned like hell right here. Right? And then the wine, I'll try the wine thing, right? The wine comes by, nice pull on the wine. Nasty over there. I'm not liking this. I've seen two total strangers, Steve and Matt. My lungs are burning. My stomach's burning. I got knots on my head. Tiny's out there somewhere. My family's throwing me away. I'M 12 YEARS OLD! I'M GONNA BE DEAD BY 13 THE WAY THIS is going. It's not good. And all of a sudden, I mean, it happened. That thing that makes me bodily different from my fellows occurred. You know, this feeling just kind of just washed it up out of my shoes and over my body, man. All of a suddenly, I was comfortable standing where I was standing doing what I was doing with the people I was dealing with. And I had never felt like that before in my life. I suddenly knew, this is going to work out. It's going to walk out. And you know, all of the sudden, it's good. It just good. I Everything seems possible, everything seems doable suddenly. And I don't know, is it the pot? Is it the wine? Is it that fact that I'm standing here with my two very close personal friends, men and feet? Because I'm feeling that connection, you know what I mean? I'm with my boys now, right? And I didn't know Tiny's out there somewhere so I can bring him on. I ain't afraid of him. I'll attack his fist in my face any time. So I go back, and I mean, my parents, I'd had the little drug lectures, you know. Oh man, you go smoke some of that evil weed, 30 minutes, you're on your way downtown looking for heroin. That's just the way that is, right? I thought, I feel no need for heroin, so some of the wine, you become a hobo, shiftless, no good, riding the rails, you know, didn't feel like catching a train. So I'm flying around where I was. The mist just went away, you know what I mean? And I thought, feel better than you've ever felt before in your life? Nothing to mean. Nobody went to jail that night. No blood was drawn. Nobody went through the nut house. I mean, all those things were going to happen, but that was not my experience at that moment. My experience atthat moment was, smoke a little weed, drink a little red wine, feel better then you've every felt, get up the next morning, get your little books, go on to your little classes, everything's cool. I said, I got to do this as often as I possibly can, man. I made a decision. Right there. Right? And I was very, very focused about that decision. And so I did. I did that every day for the next 16 years no matter what. I was given many good reasons to stop along the way and I never touched the brakes. I'm not a periodic kind of guy. Every day till you die. That's my story. So it's humble beginnings. A little pot, a little wine. 13 was pills. The only reason I took a pill was a guy, I was at this little gathering and this guy said, do you want a couple of pills? And I said, well, yes, I do. And he gave them to me and I put them in my mouth and 20 minutes later I'm laying on the floor and I'm very happy down there. You know what I mean? And the guy swings by and he says, can we get anything else? And the answer was, you know, just can you tell me what that was? Two and all. All right. Two and a half. Write that down now. That's after that by name. So I mean it was just two and a whole second all placid, Bill. You know, got crazy with all that. 14 was psychedelic. The only reason I took a psychedelic was because a girl was hanging out with this girl, Debbie. Ah, Debbie. Debbie was a bad girl and an older woman she was 15 and a half hey bro I had such respect for Debbie I gotta tell you she changed my opinion of a lot of things and she said to me would you like to drop some acid and I said well yes I would Debbie again I have no idea what we're talking about and she took out a lipstick tube and spun it up and there was a little tiny pill on the end of it and I took it threw it in my mouth and swallowed it Debbie said said, did you take that whole thing? And I said, well yes I did, Debbie. And she said, well I was three hits of white lightning. The guy over here just went, oh, that's not good. Yeah, it was a very interesting couple of days. I just, I came out of like a blackout at one point when we were in the market, a supermarket with a cart and she was standing next to me apparently we were married yeah oh bad experience in the market so this day i have to have like today to this day it takes a real commitment for me to go to the market it just got very weird in there i mean there's a lot of decisions that have to be made in the market i need a list i go into the list i get my stuff i leave if it ain't on the list too bad i'm not buying it i gotta get in i gotta go out you ever seen that uh abandoned shopping car at the market? I understand that guy, man. Not today. Anyway, I did about 650 acid trips, psilocybin, paleo, all that stuff. Got classified legally insane by the military a few years later. That's another story. 15 started shooting dope, and one reason I did that was I was on a boat in Marina Delray, and a girl walked up to me and said, would you like me to stick this in your body? And I said, yes, I would. She did it, and I just And on the way down, all I heard on the thing was, yeah! That was good. Yeah, identify as an alcoholic and I'm talking about drugs, and I've got to explain. I'm a child of the 60s. Right? Our parents were the alcoholics. We were carving out our own identity. You know, we were not going to drink ourselves to death like our parents who were going to kill ourselves in a whole new way. So we were very, very, very focused on the drugs. We were all talking drugs, talking drugs. That's all it was about. But you know what? Any realistic view I have of my life is in retrospect. Having gotten sober, stayed sober for a while, done my inventory work and looked back reasonably upon what was really going on. And the fact of the matter is this. The drugs would come... My drug of choice was what do you got? You know what I mean? I'm not a specialist. If you did one thing into the dirt and crawled in here, God bless you, have a seat, welcome. welcome, right? That ain't my story, man. It's all anti-oral medication as far as I'm concerned. If I can get enough of what you got in my body, it'll kill the fear. And that's the whole point for me anyway. I got to kill the peer. Drug and alcohol use for me is just a fear killer. Right? And the drugs would come and go. I mean, if it was, I mean look, I prefer down and out. Right. Heroin, alcohol, barbiturates. These are a few of my favorite things. You know what I mean? My idea of a good night is sitting around checking my my pulse. That's a good night, man. Just heart and lungs working. Nothing else going on. I like that. That is a very, very good evening for me. But you know what? If you don't have anything, I'll take a big bag of cocaine. We can't go all down? Let's go up. Big bag of cocaine, right? No problem, man, I'm perfect. You want to sit around all night listening to the air around our heads, you know? Yeah, you, right. Yeah, yeah, right, doing the window patrol, right? Driving down the freeway. Spend the whole night around that little vehicle. You know what I mean? Driving down a freeway decoding license plate. Yeah, yeah, it's a good night. It's a great night, right. Because I mean for me it's not about up or down. It's about I got to get out of right here right now. Because right here right now I'm self-centered and afraid. Right here right now, I don't measure up. Right there right now I'm comparing my insides to your outside and I'm losing every time. Right? Now the drugs would come and go. I mean I run them out of specials like Like I said, there was only one thing that was on the table every single day. And that was alcohol. There was a bottle of booze on the cable for me every day. And I think that there's a very, very simple explanation for that. And that's just my story. This is the way I feel about it. For me, that's the case because drugs are completely unreliable. I mean, there is no quality control going on out there on this street. You don't know what you got until you get it in your body. I mean I never had a connection. I didn't even want to connect, I had the connection say to me, you know what, what we got, it's just not up to your standards, Earl. Come back next Tuesday, we'll have something a little better for you. They never said that. Oh, it is good, it was great, you better step on this again, man, be careful with that, it is a bag of salt, you know. But booze, you go get yourself a fifth of Jack Daniels, you You go get yourself a nice quart of gin. You know what you got here. You can count on this stuff. This is reliable. And if you're going to be like me, which I do not recommend, you've got to have something reliable there so that when you go to the party, it's 7.30, the party just started and you've done so much cocaine you can't get your mouth open anymore and the party's just started and you're like, and you overshoot the mark one more time. You know What I Mean? You suck a little gin through your teeth and it'll loosen you right up and you can go on with the party. You're good to go. After a little too spooky, don't worry about it. Jack gets you back in the comfort zone and just start drinking, man. You'll be all right. Not enough heroin to get you to that quiet heart and lungs working place? Don't worry. Jack will get you the rest of the way. This is reliable stuff. And slowly as my addiction, my disease of alcoholism progressed, the drugs became less and less and less important to me and the alcohol became more and more and more important tome. Until the end, I was doing three or four grams of cocaine a day just to keep me on my feet so that I could drink the way I needed to drink. It was about drinking for me. and when I get so sick I couldn't drink anymore I'd eat about 150 milligrams of Valium a day not to detox I never detox I just re-talk you know what I mean sitting on the couch shooting heroin not getting a lot done cocaine we'll get us out of the house right craziness but alcohol was my best friend for me I had a guy walk up to me when I was 16 and a half years old and he said you know you're an alcoholic to which I replied what's your point I just I absorbed that identity effortlessly because I knew what worked for me in the world I knew it made it possible for me to talk to you I knew I made it possible for you to function on any level and if I wasn't drinking or using I wasn t coming out of the house it became like breathing for me and it worked in the beginning I mean I mean, that's the remarkable thing about it. It worked great. And the consequences of that action were minimal. But as the disease progressed for me, that slowly over time began to change. And the buzz I got got less and less and left and left over a period of years. And the price that I paid for that buzz just got greater and greater and greater and so on. So until in the end, for me I was paying a horrific price just to get to zero. It was not about catching a buzz anymore. It was about shaking off the beast. you know just trying to shake loose from the beast for just a little bit a few minutes a few moments before you went back into the blackout you know and as the book says and then oblivion you know. And then that's what it was like for me in the end when I was 16 I dropped out of high school I figured four and a half years of Latin was enough hit the streets my father came back in my life said you've obviously gone insane committed me to my first mental institution they had me for three months of observation and a year of rehabilitation which I thought was a little excessive three cups of pills a a day in a shot if you acted out. So my treatment plan was to get the shot every day, you know, figure out how to get a shot. And your shop went around in there and I decided that one day that I needed to escape. Um, and they had what, you got them here, the green exit sign? I used to look at that and go, there it is. That's all I want to do. Exit. That, that's what I'm after, right? So I decided I was going to break out of this nut house and I was having my meals with this woman named Kilday. And Kildy was nuts, right. The guy over here nodded and sort of heard about Kildey, huh? Kildley was great, man. Kildly would show for every meal. You know what I mean? We'd all sit down and we'd sit down opposite Kilday and you'd look at Kildey and say, Kildley, how you doing? And Kildlay, you'd go, wow, man! And freak! And they'd all go run and chase Kildhay. You know, I mean, we'd all fit there and eat our little meals with our plastic force. Like every meal was like dinner and a show. You know? Watch them chase Klday. So I got Kildbay as my diversion. You know What I Mean? I was ready to escape from the nuthouse so I flipped Kildaya and she went flying off in that direction. Ready, ready, ready. Hey! And I'm all an ass, you know what I mean? That's all I got. Shocking moment in the nuthouse when you realize that those three cups of pills are working. Because your head is working fine and you realize you've only got two speeds, man. I mean slow and stop. That's it. But I'm like, I've got the arms working and everything and I'm going for the door And over the loudspeaker you hear, uh Ed when you got a minute you want to grab Earl he's making a break for the door. Ed's in there having a sandwich going yeah yeah I'll get him, he ain't going nowhere. It's very demoralizing. Back to the room with no doorknob. So I talked my way out of there, spent a little time on the streets, they threw a net over me again, dragged me back into the nuthouse and I escaped the first day because I mean my tools for living at this point is I'm like 16-17 years old. I'm an alcoholic, I'm a drug addict, I am a high school dropout, I mean any moment hopefully hopefully, and escape mental patients. This is like my resume, you know? So I'm busting out of this place and whistles are going off and there's a guy chasing me and I hit this backyard and I'm flying across this lawn towards a 12-foot IV-covered chain link fence. I can see it like it was yesterday. And I am moving for that fence. They ain't got the Thorazine in me this time, bro, man. I'm on it. And, I'm thinking, if I make that fence, I don't have any problems. Right? I don' t have any problem because if I to make that fence, I'll be loaded in 20 minutes. Los Angeles, my town, right? That's my whole life, right? My life at this point, there are so many signals in my life. I'm 16 years old and there are so Many signals in our lives saying, this is not going well, Earl. Everywhere you look, we got serious problems looming, right. Family, you don't want anything to do with them. You're completely disengaged from your family. Education has stopped. Drug addiction, alcoholism becoming increasingly more severe taking up more and more of your life. Relationships with other human beings don't have them. Don't have em. It's never just Earl President anywhere because I'm loaded from the minute I come to in the morning till I pass out at night but I'm young and my body can take it. So I spent three years on the street doing what what you do to stay loaded on a daily basis. 20 years old, I meet this woman at a party. We talked for 20 minutes, so we were in love. And we decided we had to do something with our lives, so I went on an interview to a business college in Northern California. And this guy, I sat down with this guy and he was a musician. So I was a magician. His favorite color was blue? That's unbelievable. My favorite color, blue. Right? I just lined up with this guys and an hour and a half later he says I would be a wonderful addition to their campus in the fall. So I go back to my father and I said said, look, I got accepted to business college. Don't ask. Just write me a check for a year's tuition and I'll get out of town. And he said, beautiful. Wrote me a cheque. Me and this woman piled all our belongings and eight pounds of hash in the back of this truck and drove to Northern California. She got a straight job. I went to the school, said, here's your tuition transcripts are in the mail. They said, no problem. I get down to the local high school to get my high school equivalency done. So I'm going to college during the day and going to high school at night. She gets a straight jab. I become a drug dealer. Right? I mean, I have absolutely no problems becoming a drug dealer because I have no ethics. I have not morals. I have sense of family. I have a sense of community. I've been pretty much just figuring it out for myself since I was 12 years old. There's nothing in the way of me just becoming a criminal. So, I'm in business school. You know, I am studying marketing and production and distribution. I'm applying it to my business. Business is booming. I got great clients all over the Bay Area. I mean when I flew up here today... Again, I apologize for coming to the conference late. Normally I'm here from Friday till Sunday for the whole conference, but work didn't permit me to come until today, so I apologize for that. But I got here today on the way, you know, the plane stopped in San Francisco and as we were landing in San Fransisco, I just kept this creepy feeling, man. I was like, oh God, bad things. Bad things. Anyway, 20 years old, 21 I get diagnosed with malignant cancer. Great. It made perfect sense in my life. Fly back to L.A., they do major surgery on my upper back. They prepare my family for me to die. They tell me I'm probably going to die, and I remember thinking, it didn't even faze me, you know? I look back on it, it's amazing, but it didn'T even fazE me. I remember looking at them thinking, you know what, you don'T even know who you're talking to. The way I'm using these days, that comes up like twice a week anyway, you know What I mean? People are looking at me going, dude, you're going to DIE if you keep this up. It's like, yeah, yeah, right, I'm fine. I'm like, you know, You know, every other day I'm the color of those balloons, you know, I'm just blue. Started overdosing a bit and came back down, did that whole thing, beat the cancer deal, I am a long-term cancer survivor. I'm convinced, yeah. Thanks, thanks a lot, but I have absolutely no idea what I had to do with it, you know what I mean? The only thing I can think of is that I wouldn't do their, I got sick of their radioactive nuclear medicine program they had me in and I just went home and got loaded the way we get loaded, you Know What I Mean? I mean, I believe that my body became so toxic that cancer could not live in my body. That's what I did, you know? And I went back up to school and then the next year... I mean at this point I'm like a junior in college. I got an early acceptance to go to USC Law School. I met her in chief of the college newspaper. I got a boom in drug business. I'm making tons of money. I'm writing, you now, inflammatory political articles for this paper that are threatening to kick me out every Friday when the paper comes out. I'm just nuts. I'm nuts. And my mother calls me up and says, crying, and says look we haven't been anywhere with the family in 10 years. Well the only way you want to go is just go with the family. And I said fine. And I flew back to LA and on my 22nd birthday we took off the flight of Guadalajara and on the way there the plane crashed and my mother, my father, my little sister all died in the crash and I didn't. And I woke up on this mountain in Mexico and my mom was and my father was laying right over there and my little Sister Kimberly was right over there and my skull was fractured and my back was broken in three places and my arm was crushed, leg crushed. I was paralyzed from the waist down. I had a lot of internal injuries and I was awake. And I couldn't get to any of them to help them. I wanted to help my little sister so bad because Kimberly was... I never talk about this but I don't know why this is up for me tonight. I'm in a safe place. I'm with you. My little sister Kimberly was 15 months younger than me and she was mine. She was not my parents. She was mine when she got to be and wanted to know about boys she came to me. When she had problems with her friends or a problem at school, she came to me and I dealt with it. When she wanted to know where to go to... I mean, she came for me with her life and I was her big brother and I'm proud of that. And I was proud to be her big mother and she loved me unconditionally. She's the reason I even know what that is. That I have any kind of a marker at all in my life to say, that's what that feels like and that's where I want to be able to get back to. Not just getting it but giving it. And I couldn't get to her and she bled to death and I felt like she was my responsibility and I let her down. and then I and I said I had a little conversation with God and I said you know what any God that would take a kind gentle loving little creature like her and leave a line she'd even dope fiend alcoholic like me on the planet I have no use for a God of this type and I renounced God and then some guys came up and they scavenged the plane wreck and they came by and took my wallet took the money out of my wallet threw it back in my chest and moved on to the wreck and got what they could get and went back down the mountain and left me up there to die so I had no more use for you either man Man, I was out of the game. I had no love of man. I had not love of God. I was just completely alone in the world. My family was laying there dead and I was angry. And I started hitting myself in the side. I don't think I could move with my right arm but I started to hit myself in my side because it hurt so bad the pain would yank me up out of a shock because I knew I was shocking out and I knew that I would die if I didn't. And finally some guys came up and they put me in the back of a truck with my mother and they tagged her dead and they tagged me dead and they took us to a Mexican aid station and they sat around smoking cigarettes waiting for me to die and I didn't die and they finally took me to the hospital Fatima in Los Mochos, Mexico they kept me there and then the federalists found out who I was so the federalist showed up and they interrogated me through an interpreter for three and a half days wanting to know what I was doing back in Mexico which again is another story we don't need to get into here and I finally called a buddy of mine up in Northern California who called the family in Mexico City who flew in the plane paid a few people they plastered me from the neck down and smuggled me out of Mexico I spent a lot of time in a hospital in Santa Monica, California and I came out of that hospital with a brace on. They told me I might be paralyzed in the way down, I might have a withered left hand and be blind in my left eye. None of that was true and I worked real hard and I got out of the hospital and I was strung out on Demerol and I went to the hospital I was crazy. I mean, I didn't know that I was ashamed to be alive. I didn' t know that I felt I had no right to be breathing in and out but I had what they call survivor's guilt, post-traumatic stress, all this other stuff, right? These labels that they put on what's wrong with you and I don't discount the truth. I mean, all those things are certainly true of me. But what was most prevalent in my life was that I was an alcoholic and I was in excruciating psychic pain and I only had one thing that could work for a guy like me and I went on a drunk and it lasted for six years. And you've got to understand, I didn't have any anchors at all in my wife. I didn'T have a family that I had to keep it together for, a job I had TO KEEP IT TOGETHER FOR, a career that I HAD TO KEEP IT TO GETHER FOR, kids or friends or family I mean I had no anchors I was just loose out there out of my mind with pictures in my head of these people dying that I knew I couldn't live with I knew I couldn'T live with and I just couldn'T get drunk enough and it lasted for six years and about four years into it I'd gone to this little boot every once in a while I'd get so sick I knew I was dying and I'd go to this little bootleg sanitarium in Hollywood completely illegal joint where you give them 150 cash up front and give them your money and your car keys and your valium and your gun and everything and they'd strap you to a gurney and he shoots you fully and I can both and let you ride and you can reintroduce yourself to God on a kick like that you know I'd say look you get me out of this sane and alive I'll never never drink again as long as I live and I remember two years before I stopped drinking I hit my bottom my ass was kicked I knew it I'm laying on that grain dying and I said I'm an alcoholic I'm a drug addict I can't drink anymore I can take this life I can' t take the insanity I can''t take the madness I can ''t take one more second of living like this God if you get me out of this sane and live life, I will never, ever, ever drink again. And I meant that with every fiber of my being. And I drank for two more years because I could not stop drinking. And the madness just went completely sideways in my life. And when I got, the last time I came out of a blackout, I had hair out like this and a beard out likethis. I was psychotic and I don't use the term loosely. I could no distinguish between the true and the false. I'd come to and I didn't remember something. I didn't know if somebody would tell me that, did I do do that, did I read that, did I dream that? I didn't know. It was just this big mad blur. Family was dead, had no friends, had no place to live. They were deciding whether or not to charge me with attempted murder again. Both my hands were broken. I'd broken 74 bones. I had over 650 stitches in me and I was dying of alcoholism. Thyroid shut down, couldn't start swallowing, couldn't touch the kidneys or the liver and I came out of the last blackout and I've been in that kind of shape before and I had my moment of clarity and my sponsor later pointed out to me that for guys like me the bottom is dead. That's the bottom. What I had was, I hit a bottom of an emotional and spiritual nature where I was completely clear on this point. I was not connected to another human being on the face of the earth. And that was a direct result of my behavior. God didn't do this to me. My father didn't do this for me. The police didn't do this with me. The FBI didn't do this in me. I was doing this to me. And if I didn't want to die, I was going to have to get some help. So I raised up two busted hands and I said, help. And they took me by ambulance to USC emergency and they pumped my stomach one more time. I didn' t have stomach pumped so many times I could talk to you while you did it. You know, they'd run the tube. How you doing, Earl? Bad day. And they said, get him out of here. He's dying. I was just a pathetic old man drunk. And it was the day before my 28th birthday. And they took me to another place, kept me five days. I got worse. They took me to another play. And this place was the place, man. This place was hell on earth for an alcoholic. And It was where I needed to go. It was 41, 42 cots in one one room. 21 cots on each side of the room. And they drew a sheet between each cot, right? And how you earned your cot was you stayed in it. And there was no medical detox. There was no, here we'll help you get some sleep tonight. There was no we'll get that shake off of you, you know? We'll get the madness up off of ya. Their attitude was, you're about to be introduced to what your body really thinks about what you've been doing to it. Right? And if you threw a seizure, they'd give you anti-seizure medication because they They didn't want you to convulse the death on them. But that was it. That's all you got. So I got in my cot. Of course, you know, within a few hours I bucked right up out of that thing so they hit me fully and I convulsed and threw me back in the cot and I laid there and I rode. I rode because I knew if I didn't I was going to die. If I was gonna die in that cot, so be it. And that's of course what it felt like. And 17 days later they put me in a 30-day... Their idea... How you got out of detoxing into rehab is they give you one of those little styrofoam cups and they put about half a cup of decaf in there and with one hand if you could pick that up and get it to your lips without splashing it all over the room, you were ready for rehab, man. Out of detox. So, you know, you're just thinking, you know just please come on, man, come on. Because I had a yip for two years, you know what I mean? We'd be sitting talking to somebody, you'd be writing something down and all of a sudden just you just get the yip. And I stayed 30 more days and then I came out of there and I knew one thing. They said to me, they said, He said, Earl, yeah, you're an alcoholic and you don't want to die. You better go to AA because it's the only place a guy like you can survive. And I said, okay. And I came to AA and I went to the basement of a church on a Friday night and I sat in the back with my arms folded, that tough guy looking at my face, man, no tools for living, destroyed, out of my mind. And an old guy got up here, man. He was a wino, ex-boxer, and a skid row bum. I thought, I'm none of those things. Because I can spot the differences between you and me immediately. But I didn't have anywhere to go. I had absolutely no place else to go, If I'd had some potential to go, I'd have gone there. I came here with my life destroyed. It was just a barren wasteland in every direction. You know, I feel for the guys who come in and have that area of their life where they can say, well, you know, it was going pretty well there. I didn't have one of those. Right? I just sat in the back of my arm's full knowing this guy had nothing for me and he shared his experience, strength, and hope. I didn' t know that's what he was doing but I know that that's what it was today and he changed my life. He talked openly and honestly about his feelings as a man and I'd never heard anybody do that before with that kind of grace and that kind of dignity like he had just told me the truth about who he was and then it was like he looked right at me and he said you know what I don't care whether you like what I got to say or not you don't like it go to another meeting and I thought that was great because it made it clear to me this guy wasn't selling me something he was sharing it with me if I wanted I could have it it was for free if I didn't go to an other meeting maybe I could hear somebody else I could identify with and that moment that moment right there was a turning point in my life I didn' t know at the time but it was because I got up and I left that meeting with something I hadn't had in years because I am a hopeless alcoholic and that man gave me hope I think that's the greatest gift one alcoholic can give another is hope and he gave me help and I let there cried all the way home paced trying to get my hour of sleep that I was getting in the beginning and I'd gotten this little job as a house painter and I go stand by the coffee pot in a paint store you know at six o'clock in the morning just you know just you now crazy said you know somebody hire me because I've got to go to work hard now and painting was perfect because you know just that Navajo white on Navajo white man paint apartments you know I mean just this blank canvas my insanity to just pour out on I just paint that wall though I hit a corner you know yeah just crazy love these guys love time he said hi Terry kiddies out of his goddamn mind get him out there man it's just a machine all day long because I think I gotta get exhausted to get something to eat go to a meeting go to try to get a couple hours sleep to get up and do it again yeah just Just crazy. Going to meetings, going to meetings going to meeting, going meeting to get a sponsor. I said okay what's a sponsor? They said a sponsor is somebody who's got what you want. I said well dude I want a drink. You know probably a little early to be throwing a ball back in my court man. And I have since come to believe what I want I want to sponsor somebody who's got what he wants. Because that's the best definition of happiness I've ever heard wanting what you got. And I looked for a sponsor and I found a crazy man. The late great Donald Madden was my sponsor. And I yeah yeah baby baby. Donald Madden. Madman. The madman. This man was committed to the Nuthouse 23 times. He's the only man I've ever known who was evicted from the Nathouse. They told him, you have to go. You gotta get out of here because if you don't go, you're going to be one of the ones that never leave. And they threw him out into Alcoholics Anonymous and he got sober and stayed there and was waiting for me. And I showed up and I said, will you responsible? And he said, what? I said, will you sponsor me? He said, yes. And you don't have to like what I tell you. You don't have to think it's a good idea. You just have to do it. And I said alright, you know, don't get carried away with yourself man. It's all just settled down. And then I just put my head down to the desk and cried like a baby because I realized I had just asked somebody for help and I couldn't remember the last time I had done that. And as I'm laying there blubbering like an idiot, he looks over me to his assistant and says oh wonderful he's destroyed I look up from the table thinking what have I done I just spent my life over this guy who's thrilled that I'm destroyed and what he was happy about was he saw that I had no more good ideas I was not going to debate with him what would be the next good move for me you know what I mean I was just this empty vessel that he could just throw AA into which is what he did he called me this guy was so far beyond what a normal what you should expect from a sponsor I can remember being in my apartment, I had a little one-room apartment. One room and I had, in those days, a telephone and an answering machine. I had the answering machine set up so that you never heard the phone ring and you never heard the outgoing message. All you heard was you'd be in there and you'd hear beep and somebody talking. Right? So I remember it's like 7 o'clock in the morning one morning, a Saturday morning, and I'd have like an hour and a half to sleep and I'm laying in the bed and all of a sudden I hear, beep, wake up! And it's Donald's voice and I went from laying in bed to up. And he said, we're having a day. And I thought, oh my God, they have bed checks in AA. This guy's everywhere, right? And I remember being in a meeting. I never took a chip. I never did. I never could take a chip to a chip chip. I didn't take a cake until I was three years sober. I didn' t say a word in alcoholics and I saw I was two and a half. I'm not one of the guys who was raising his hand saying, hey, I got a lot to say. Let's hear it from me. I never wanted to do this to be up here. This is one of greatest fears of my life. And I remember the day Donald Madden said to me, you know Earl, you never talk to anyone. You're going to end up sponsoring a lot of people and speaking in AA. And I looked at him like, you're high man. That's just not me. I'm the guy in the back who does the clean up, who sweeps up after everybody's gone, who takes out the trash. Earl, come early, make the coffee, get everything ready and then disappear and then come back. That's me. I don't do that. I remember that day it was Saturday night on Ohio Street. I was standing in the background and I was done. I hit the wall. I was a little over two years sober and I hit my head against the wall wall. I couldn't go another step. It was over. My head was chewing on me, telling me what a worthless human being I was and that I had no right to hope for a better life. I had no right doing it. They died. I'm here. You have no right to be happy, Earl. And you're thinking you're about to get that way here in this A&A thing, so let's just knock all that off. And I was just caving in on myself in the back of this meeting. And the main speaker stopped talking. Donald was sitting in the meeting and he looked back and he saw me back there caving In on myself. He gets up. He walks up to the front on to the meeting, taps the speaker mid-talk on the shoulder. Says, excuse me. Speaker steps aside. Donald walks up to the microphone and says, oh! And I'm in the back of the meeting and I just went, wow! And he looked at me and said, we're having a meeting. And I went, got it, okay. I'm back, thank you. The whole meeting's going, who the hell is Earl? Steps back, the speaker comes back up and Donald goes to his town. Speaker just goes, I don't know what the hell that was about. He just goes right on about with his thing, right? he knew when to love me and he knew when to kick my ass you know what I mean it was like no you gotta stay here with us he was much more interested in my staying alive than he was me liking him and as a result I grew to love and respect him more than any other human being I've ever known in my life because I was with him longer than I was with my own parents I left home when I was 12 years old I was without him with Donald Madden for almost 14 years right up until the day he died and the day he died broke my heart and those of us that were sponsored by him we all went sat with him waiting for him to come get the body and I was watering his garden because his garden was real important to him and I heard a voice in my head and it was Donald Madden he said you get a sponsor you little son of a bitch you're not sober enough to be walking around out there by yourself so I called up a guy that Donald Maddon respected and I said Donald is that where you sponsor me he said yes so I was without a sponsor for three hours and I'm a guy I go to 79 meetings a week I'm sponsoring a legion of guys I talk to my sponsor to this day I see my sponsor on a weekly basis every Monday night I go to a meeting I put the chairs away I'm the assistant chair putter away guy on Monday nights it's the greatest commitment in AA because I take the chairs from them and I hand them this guy the only part that I have a little trouble with and it ends up on every inventory I do is apparently they don't feel that I'm qualified yet to actually put the shares away so I hand him to the guy who does and he's only got four years sober so apparently he's doing far better than I am and I would like to know why anyway Anyway, just a little beef I got. But I've been doing... So I'm going to keep this commitment. I don't care how long I've got to do this. I'm gonna keep it till they promote me. And I've had sober now 21 years. Trust me, you're clapping for yourself. Because I guarantee you that my having 21 years of sobriety has absolutely nothing to do with any of the thinking I brought here. None. It has to do avec being an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. it. I found a way to live here. This goes so far past not drinking and using, I can't even tell you. I can' t even tell ya. So far past, not drinking and using. I lost the buzz out there. I became about the buzz and I lost the buzz. Slowly but surely out there, the price I paid to get high got greater and greater and greater until in the end it was horrific what was happening to me and I wasn't getting high at all. I was catching no buzz at all I came in here, and it was nasty. Being new was nasty, so I mean, if you're out there and you're new, congratulations, I got nothing but respect for you. And I don't care what's going on inside your head. If your ass is in the seat, I got respect for you. I have more respect for a 30-day chip than any other event that takes place in Alcoholics Anonymous, because I think that is absolutely remarkable. You know what? And I'm not trying to be politically correct. I'm telling you the truth, man. If you're new, understand me. I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. I really believe that. I believe it's a remarkable thing for an alcoholic to get 30 days without a drink. That's an amazing thing. Because when you think about it, out there, it's the exact opposite in here as it is out there. Out there, the best buzz I ever got was right up front. And I chased the tail of that dragon for 16 years on a daily basis and almost paid for it with my life. In here, you come in here and you work your ass off to get that 30-day chip, man. That's hard, because you've got no tools for living. You didn't like check the steps out on the wall and go, okay, I got that, now what do you want to do? You know what I mean? There's worlds and then worlds there. You can't just brush up against that stuff and get it. It takes time. That's the bad news in here. The bad news is it takes time, right? The good news is, it works! You know? And you've just, you've gotta show up and you've Gotta do it. You've gotta keep going. You've Gotta keep going, you gotta keep bumping up against the madness. You've got to keep listening to that whistling, because when I came in, man, yeah, I had kicks, but that was a small, small aspect of my disease. The mental obsession was in full effect for me. I had a head raging full of alcoholism when I got here and the beast was whispering in my ear all day every day all day everyday you know I've been reading that book and I'm trying to figure out what's going on and the book's saying you know the day will come and you'll have no human defense against first drink and I think well I'm screwed then man because I thought I'm going to be sweeping up Ohio Street right in the middle of a commitment sponsor standing right over there all of a sudden my head's going to explode just going to go drink and I might drop them off and go racing over to the liquor store have the bottle of gin be back behind the liquor story you know that feeling with a stucco in your back you know because you're kneeling down because you ain't got time to get home get a glass and all that sort of stuff you know what I mean it's like now and I'm going to freeze that bottle up and think to myself I wonder where we're going now that that's what's going to happen to me but it's not like that the book says it's cunning, baffling and powerful and they ain't lying man those are the perfect words for the beast because it whispers in my ear I'd be sweeping up on Ohio Street and the beast would whisper up and say how you doing how you doin' man you're having a bad day aren't you I can feel it you're having a bad day you're very very stressed very stressed and we all know stress is very very unhealthy and I don't know what it is it's like you've got a bullseye on your back people hitting that bullsey all day long just treating you terrible and I'm here for you and I love you you know I love you I've always been here for me and I'll never going to leave you you know that don't you Earl you know I love you I'll be here for you and here's what I think we need to do right this is what we need to do here's what we're going to do we're going to go out we're just going to have a couple of drinks. No, no, no. Don't overreact to what I'm saying here. We're just kind of going to go have a couple de drinks. You heard me say it didn't you? Two. I didn't say three I didn'y say four. It's not going to happen like that. It's only going to be two. We're going to have two drinks and we're going to unwind that spring inside you man and get that stress off you. I'm here for you. We're going to work on this. Alright? And let's just keep this between you and me. Let's just keep this between you and me. You know That's very reasonable. Now, I've got 16 years on a daily basis that says that is not what's going to happen. That is not What's Going to Happen. But that's the obsession of mine. I've Got to be relieved of that. And luckily, I came across some guys in this program, in the fellowship, that understood what the program was. See, I was going to 79 meetings a week, talking to my sponsors, sponsoring guys, commitments all over the place, taking out panels, doing all this stuff. I was like a little AA machine, man. I'm doing all the stuff, thinking I've GOT A PROGRAM, man, I'VE GOT IT GOING ON. So I got scrolling, walked up to an old-timer, he said, I'm feeling a little scrolling. He said, Of course you're feeling squirrely. Look at ya! He said, Earl, love the fellowship. Vital to your recovery. Glad you got it. But if you don't get a program, you're gonna die. Go away. What the hell are you talking about, man? Look at all this stuff I'm doing! He said fellowship! Vital to you recovery. Glad you're doing it. Program will be found in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Earl. I suggest you get the book and read it because your life depends upon it. Get away from me! I said, alright you son of a bitch, I'll get a book, right? So me and my buddy get this book and we start looking at it and we thought well probably the way to do this is if there's some right in there we should probably read it. So we read it on the cover back then they had a circle with a triangle around it found out that was an ancient spiritual symbol. They're all over this room. Mind, body and spirit brought together as a whole human being and therein lied the balance I'd sought my whole life and never had drunk or sober. Drunk obviously but sober is the same thing. You take a drunken maniac like me and you sober him up you've got a sober maniac. I come in and say they go, what are you guys doing? I go, we're working out. They go, great, work out. So I'm working out, and I worked out until I literally ripped a muscle from the bone, you know what I mean? Work it out, work it out. This is great. Oh, seems to be a problem over there. You know, just a madman. He said, run, right? I got 74 broken bones at the time, right? Running is not an option for me. You know, I'd just snap and crack, and they told me that I couldn't run, and so I ran a half a marathon, all this hallucinating, stress fractures in my feet, you know what know what I mean, dislocating ankles, you know what I mean? But I'm running. I'm just, I'm not like a middle-of-the-road guy. You know what I mean. And I'm in AA and I'm acting like this. And they said, mind, body, and spirit brought together as a whole human being and therein lies balance. The thing that I seek that I've never had. And at the end of AA, adopted, same thing. Unity, service, recovery. Same stuff. Unity is the body. I bring it here. I have to come into the fellowship. I has to be with you. I couldn't get sober but we seem to be able to. So I have be with you, the ones that I ultimately will love for the rest of my life. It's so so strange to me to have lived the isolated life that I live and to know that I can come to a place like an astronaut and they can blast me across the sky which you know is my favorite thing to do getting in an airplane you know what I mean it makes perfect sense to me just getting in a big metal cylinder again and go rocketing across the earth yeah that's a good idea but the only thing it will get me to do is say hey because I get to prove I'm willing to go to any lengths every time I get in an aeroplane because my head says bad idea it scares me to death anyway where the hell am I I don't know what I'm talking about very hard being me sometimes but a lot of fun always now so the unity is the body I bring it here I must be with my fellows I can love I don't even know I don' t have to like you I don''t even have to know you if you're here I love you because I know what it takes to get a seat in here you know what I mean there's a connection that is just so powerful it's absolutely unbelievable so the unity is the buddy I bring here I must the recovery is of the mind the greater aspect of my disease right I need to be relieved of the obsession to drink and use. The book says that the persistence of this illusion is astonishing, that many of us pursue it to the gates of insanity and death. I'm a gate guy. I've been tagged dead. I go to nut houses. That's what I do. I have to stay here. There's absolutely no explanation for how I'm alive anyway. And I could go out there and push it. It's done. My ticket's punched. I have find a way to stay her. And the only way a guy like me is going to stay is if I can find a way to be comfortable sober. If I can't get comfortable sober, if I can't stop that beast from whispering in my ear the day is going to come when he's going to be whispering at just the wrong time for me and I'm going to get drunk and I am a dead man so I have to be relieved of the obsession I have take the option of drinking off the table I found out how to do it pretty simple work the steps you know so we got the big book work the 12 steps as outlined in the big book in the order that they were presented it's astonishing you know what I mean to me that this was so hard for me to find. Step one was, what's the problem? Lack of power is my dilemma. I may be okay in every other area, but when it comes to drinking, I'm nuts. Right? If lack of power is my dilemma, what's my solution? Step two, that a power greater than me can restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink. Amen. That's what I'm looking for. Step three says, if you want that solution in step three, you better make a decision to do something about it. I said, okay, what do you want me to do? He said, get off the couch, get on your knees, turn your will and your life over to care of a God you may or may not understand oh but do it right now I said alright did it got back on the couch they said this is all a waste of time unless you immediately embark upon a plan of action fourth through nine four and five is me six and seven is God eight and nine is you ain't nobody else to play with four and fives swallowed large chunks of truth about myself in a four column inventory dealing with resentment fear and sex and I just took a good hard look that was a nasty ugly experience for me and if you didn't have a nasty ugly experience with it then I guess you didn'T have a nasty ugly experience but I sure did man that was ugly there were some hard truths for me to accept there patterns and behaviors in my life a guy came into my house before God I read this information to him he said good luck and left the house there's a lot of reading in the book on 8 and 9 a lot more information on 8th and 9th because they're actually going to let me out of the house and mingle among you and they know I'm dangerous so they want to make very very sure I understand but I go out and say I'm very very sorry here's your money I go back in the house no big explanation about what a bitching spiritual guy I've become, you know. It's not, you know, and I don't have to worry, and the people on that list, going on that list, they don't want my money. They want their money. Give them back their money. And to make a man's need to change. So, I'm very sorry I stole your car. Estimate the value of the car at $3,000 at the time of the theft. If that's acceptable to you, I'm going to start with this check and I'm gonna pay you monthly until I've paid you $3 thousand. And I'm not gonna go steal your car and sell it to pay you for the car I stole from you. I'm not stealing cars anymore I gotta change here that's what this is about for me I gotta make the change who's responsible for it it's me making change is tough sometimes man sometimes it just comes down to pulling the trigger you gotta just make the move man just make a move and do it and that's when you find the experience of taking that action delivers the magic taking that reaction is what'll get you the magic right and I started to find that out and I start picking up steam and what I found out was you know what doing these steps I'm catching a buzz the buzz ain't gone there's a buzz to be had here the minute I found out I could be stone cold sober and catching a buzz look out I gotta catch there's a buzz here how come nobody told me that I'm about to buzz give me the buzz so we went at it man 10, 11, 12 keep me in the game 10 me, 11 God 12 you same groupings right same bunch chair I continue to take personal inventory because I just scratched the surface on that first pass man I gotta get into this this world's within rules here I wanna go deep cause the buzz is deep I'm going deep Eleven, I seek God. Great. Give me the infinite. There's got to be a buzz there, man. Do it. How do I connect to this God? Through prayer and meditation. What do I pray for? The simpler you keep it, the purer the buzz. So I pray for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. That's it. That's all. That's everything. And I meditate to quiet the mind so that when the answers come I can hear them because they come in the form of a thought, an intuition, a feeling, an idea. They come to me and whisper, you know, because the beast ain't whispering in my ear anymore. The beast is not whispering in mine ear anymore because I've worked The result of doing that, step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening, been restored to sanity, soundness of mind, relieved of the obsession of drink or use. Not an option. I look at what's going on in my life. I look up the options I have that are available. I look through that list. Drink and use, it ain't there. It ain't There. Because God took that from me. And now I can practice these principles and carry the message. How can I help? Me, God, and you. Me, Dios, y tú. And I can do all three sides of that every single day if I structure my life to make that possible. And the only way I know to structure my life like that is to do what AA suggests just that I do because it's designed specifically for me. That means I have the honor of doing things like this. I have to honor running into Mickey B at a conference and just lighten me up, man. Cause I see here, cause this woman doesn't play. It's a serious business for her. She's about the buzz, you know? And those are the ones I like. The ones that are going, you know what? If I'm going to be here, this ain't about, yeah, I'm staying sober. Yeah. Put the plug in the jug. No, man, it's like life. You know what I mean? The AA got me me back in the game. And you know what? As excited as I get about being a sober man and the way that it's changed my life beyond my wildest dreams, when I sponsor these young men that come to me, and there's a whole bunch of them that I work with, right? I've got to allow them their turn. I've gotta remember that this has been a process for me a day at a time. And that they get their turn to be new. And it's like, I'll get Louie. Louie got nine months. And I'll say, you know What, Louie? Al's talking. Now I know Al. Al gets gets up at the podium and Al throws down, man. I mean, the spiritual pearls are flying. We're all going to catch a bus tonight because Al's at the podium, right? So I grab Louie and I'm like, Louie, come on. We're going to go hear Al and I sit down and me and Louie are sitting there and Al's up there and Al is ripping tonight and I think, isn't this great that I get to be here with 21 years of surviving and I get listen to Al and hear the magic of Al's experience, his strength, his hope. It's just a powerful conduit, this man. And I get to be the one who brings Louie to hear the remarkable experience that is Al. That ain't what's happening. Louie not having the same meeting I'm having. Louie's got nine months and I gotta remember Louie gets to have his turn and I'm gonna remember me at nine months pulling up at Ohio Street I pull up at Ohio Street nine months it's like okay, okay, we made it we made this good, good, it's good bring the keys put the keys in my chair put the kids in the chair put the guys in the red coat Put the keys next to the guy with the red coat. Go on, go up to this guy. How you doing? How you doin'? Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I'm great. Come outside. Sit down. Fine. Fine. I said I was fine. I'm sitting right here. Sitting at the meeting. Guy's up. Guy's reading something. He really saw something. Really saw something... I didn't get a lot of that. Really saw somethin'. What's going on in here? Twelve things. There's twelve things in A. Twelve things in ABC. Twelve things ABC. He's down. i didn't get a lot of that but that was pretty good that was pretty good he's down another guy's up he drank he drank he drank i did that i did that that was good that was good he was gone he's gone he's gone i didn t get a lot of that either very short but i want to talk to that guy remember where that guy is i want to talk to that guy keep an eye on that guy because they're passing my basket what the hell are they passing my basket for don't take the money don't take the money don't take the money okay we're getting up we're going outside where do we go smoke i smoke we'll smoke okay hey I'm fine. I'm Fine. I'M FINE! So ring the bell! We're going in, we're going In! Where's the guy with the red coat? RED COAT! Oh Christ! They've been reading twelve things Those aren't the same twelve things they did Okay, twenty-four things ABC He's up, he's up. He drank, he drank This guy is great. I felt like that This guy has been reading my mail This is absolutely amazing I love that guy I have to talk to him I have talk to that man he's down that was excellent I don't excellent 24 things ABC talk to that guy I gotta talk to that guy and then they got me we're praying alright we're playing I know this prayer say the prayer and then I would go and I would cry all the way home I'm walking out of the meeting I would walk up to some guy and say what did you think of the meeting and I'd say great and that meeting was a total victory for a guy like me because I was insane so when I'm sitting listening to Alan I got little Lou here sitting next to me and we walk out of the meeting and I I look at Lou and I say, Lou, what did you think of the meeting? He looks up to me and he says, Scram! I think, okay, we're on track, man. You know, he made it through the meeting. He did not stand up in the meeting and say, I'm sorry, I have to go kill myself now. You know? He sat there. He didn't bully on anybody. His head did not literally explode off of his body. He made it to a meeting. We're getting somewhere. We're in it together. And that's the thing that I always got to remember. That we're in this together. Wherever you are on your path is what you're doing. Wherever I'm on my path is what I'm doing. and what we do is we come here and we don't tell each other what to do we share our experience our strength and our hope with each other and we do it in different ways and one guy gets a buzz from that guy and this woman gets a Buzz from that woman and we all rise up out of the seemingly hopeless state of mind and body because I mean look I don't know many people up here but I'm in Seaside, Oregon and I got a room full of dead people sitting up looking at me pretending they're paying attention you know what I mean so I know this thing works and if you're new don't miss it man there is a Buzz to be had here There is a way to look out of your skull and experience your life. And it's here. It's right in there, man. Just get between those. Remember I told you before for me it was about I had to get out of right here, right now? I go up, I go down, I don't care, but I got to get right out of it right now because right here right now is too frightening. Alcoholics and the anonymous gave me back right here. Right now. This moment. Right now and they're into anything else. This is life. This is, this is life this is where I'm going to know any love I'm gonna know as a man I'm gunna know right here any ability I have to give anything of value to another human being is going to have to happen right now. It's going to have to happened right now because it can't happen back then and it can happen up ahead. It's got to happen now. I've got to have right now, I've gotta be here. This is where my life is, this is where any honor or dignity I'll know is. This is where the buzz is, it's right now. And Alcoholics Anonymous gave me the tools to not be afraid to go ahead and be here right now. That's a gift beyond anything I ever could have imagined. So this isn't for me about just not drinking. This is about a design for living where We're a completely useless, broken, insane human being like me who had nothing anybody wanted to come to live a life of value and purpose. And it's who I got introduced to in here is Earl. Who you're going to get introduced to when he hears you. And I invite you to do that with us. With us. I mean, these people look like normal, regular citizens. I assure you they're not. You know? They're us. Look in their eyes. The eyes give it away. You can see it in their lives. and you know what if you're new they will love you like no one else on earth can they will love you like no one on earth can because they're just you down the road a little ways that's all and they know it so come be with us because we love you and I love all of you thanks a lot