I Didn’t Know What Was Wrong with Me, and That’s Why I Couldn’t Find the Answer – Johnnie H.

Hi everybody, my name's Johnny and I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here tonight and I'M GLAD TO BE SOBER, JUST TO BE Sober. If you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous tonight, I hope the word being sober doesn't offend you as bad as it offended me when I said in my first meeting of AlcoholicsAnonymous. When I said in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, it was on the fourth day of November, 1959, and the people of Alcoholic Anonymous talked to me about being sober. And I didn't think AlcoholicsAnonymous had anything to offer me. And the reason I didn' t think that is because I was as physically sober when I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous as I am right now. Just physically sober. But you see, that had always seemed to be my problem. If I could have stayed loaded forever, I'd have never came to La Follette's Knob. But I kept getting interrupted out there on my happy road of destiny. You know, it's amazing, isn't it, how people keep inventing things to help us? They dream up new programs to help us. They got a thing out in my country called intervention. I want you to know that the Los Angeles County Sheriff knew about intervention 1940 and if you live the way I live they'll intervene in your life too you don't have to worry about mama or anybody else telling you about it but I have I have come to understand since I've been sober now call it synonymous from my first meeting to this one and I think about being sober quite quite a bit. When I think about it today, the idea that there's no alcohol or chemicals in my system doesn't even enter into the picture. Sobriety is the way I live. I lived a certain way for a long period of time and for a longer period of time I couldn't stay sober. I just couldn't stay sober! I have lived this way of life for a long period time and all that period of time, it would have been necessary for me to drink anything, swallow anything, smoke anything or stick anything in my arm or be locked up anywhere. And now that's amazing to me because I hear people all the time talk about not drinking and being sober. I'll tell you, I know that physical sobriety is paramount and I know it's a very necessity thing for me, but you've got to understand, sir, I'm an alcoholic. and alcohol is not my problem sobriety is my problem I could never stand to be sober before I got to you good people and you told me how to live so I didn't have to drink anymore and that was amazing to me now I'm glad, I'd like to before I get caught up in myself and I'd like to thank Dick for allowing me the privilege of participating participating in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I have always considered it some type of a privilege to be allowed and come and sit with you good people. I have never been able to get it through my head that I have a right to be here just because I don't drink alcohol. I think it's a privilege. And I think there's much more of a priviledge when I'm asked to do anything in AlcoholicsAnonymous. I'm an active participating member of the Big Book group in Bellflower, California, which is probably the best group of Alcoholics Anonymous in the world. And I have a big deal there. I started that meeting 19 and a half years ago, and now I've worked my way up to assistant chairman. That means I get to help the chairman put the chairs away on Monday nights. So if you're new here at AlcoholicsAnonymous, don't worry about as high as you ever get here sober. You get any higher than that, you leave. But I'm glad to be here tonight. I'm happy to be able to talk to you today. I'm very glad to see you here tonight fully clothed and in my right mind. And I only tell you that because a little over 33 years ago tonight, I was crawling around on my knees in a cell in solitary confinement in a maximum security penitentiary drifting in and out of total insanity. Now, because of a loving God has expressed himself through our program called Alcoholics Anonymous, there's no longer necessarily for me to crawl around on My Hand Knees like an animal. If I get nothing else out of this deal, I could live with that for a long time. It makes me feel good. I'd like to be able to stand here tonight without any doubt in my mind whatsoever and tell you without any thought in my head, that's where alcohol and drugs took me to. Oh, I'd love to be up there to tell you that. That's where I took me too. The only thing that alcohol and drug did in my life, they kept me alive long enough to find alcoholics not. That's all. Well, I'm as sure as I'm standing here without alcohol working in my life, I'd have blown my brains out before I was nine years old. I've always been some type of emotional misfit. I never seemed to belong anywhere. I was angry and hostile and bitter. I didn't like where I was, who I was. Who I was around. I didn' t like nothing. I was just an angry, hostile little kid. And I knew as much about whiskey and what it would do to people when I was six years old as I know tonight. night. I had a ringside seat watching people drink whiskey. I had uncles who drank whiskey and went to penitentiaries. I had aunts who drank whiskeys and worked in those houses on the other side of the track. Had a mother who drank whiskey and beat up my dad. Had her dad who drank whiskey and beaten up my mother. They both drank whiskey and beating me up. I saw what whiskey did to people. I said, I ain't going to drink. I'm not going to be like them. I am going to be better than they are. I want to step out into that world. I will have something, do something, and be something. But one One day, sitting on the back porch of my grandpa's house, I saw where my grandpa stashed his bottle. And as natural as breathing in and out, the first opportunity I had, I went and got that jug and took a drink. Something I said I'd never do, but it was as natural for me to do that as it was for meto breathe. And in that instant of my life, when I turned that jug up and took the drink, In that instant of life, something happened in my life. My life was never the same again for the next 20 years of my life." You see, I didn't know for a long, long time that that reaction or that abnormal reaction that I had to alcohol is what makes me an alcoholic. I didn' t know that. I thought that you drank a lot of whiskey and got a lot 502s, those are drunk drive-ins in my part of the world, and ran over people and had a lot trouble. I thought, that's what made you an alcoholic, Alcoholics. But that's not what makes you an alcoholic. I have some type of an abnormal reaction to alcohol. That doesn't mean I have a bad reaction to alcohol, because my reaction to alcohol was that that stuff went down inside of me and still the screaming madness. It took me from the black pit of nothingness, stood me into the gray fringes of business of living, and installed in me some type OF arrogance. It said, damn you world, it's alright. I'm not good enough to be around the good people, but I'm too good to be among the bad people. It's okay right here. That's what alcohol did for me. Man, if alcohol still did that, I'd still drink it. But it didn't do that. Somewhere along in a lot of real life, it just quit working. That's why it makes me alcoholic. I have an abnormal reaction to alcohol, and it's also coupled with another thing that I find in my life. I find out that once I start drinking, I can't stop. I've never been able to stop. I'm standing here before you tonight with almost 32 years without any type of alcohol in my system, and right up to this instant, I haven't stopped drinking. I have never been able to stop drinking. I can't drink and live without myself. I can keep from drinking. Something obvious has happened to me. Every time I ever drank, I took a drink of alcohol and three days later they pulled me out from underneath the bridge and stood me in front of a judge and sent me to Hutchinson State Reform School. Twenty years later, they pulled my out of a car in Compton after I took the drink and stood in front a judge and sent to me twenty years in the penitentiary. Well, that's what happened to be when I drank. I got drunk and went places. I used to travel around out there, man. I went from reform school to reform school to junior penitentiaries to penitentiaries to nuthouses. Now they call them treatment centers. I like nuthouse. I mean, really, it's a little macho. I mean I kind of like it. You know what I mean? I don't know how you were. In my neighborhood when I was a kid we used to stand around on the street corners and try to be bad. We acted bad. We smelled bad. We talked bad. We were acting bad. We didn't know what we were doing, but we were bad. We had each other convinced we were mad. And the heroes in my neighborhood all went to the penitentiary. We used to stand around and say, there's Richard. Richard just got out of San Quentin. How would you like to be standing on the street corner now and you're looking for a hero? Somebody says, there is Joe. Just did 30 days in the care unit. Not in my neighborhood. You know, I'm sitting on a furlough from a reformed school. I'm, I don't know, 10, 11 years old, I guess. I'm drinking a bottle of Marca Petri red wine, which was my drink. I started on wine and worked down. Most of you have never heard of Marcapetri red wines. We were talking about it at the table. That's because Marcafetri was the experimental stage of the Thunderbird. That's why you never heard of it. I'll tell you how bad it was, that stuff never saw a grave. That's how bad I was. But I'm sitting there and I'm drinking this stuff. I'm on a referral from a reform school. I've got a gallon and I've been drinking it. And I hear people saying AA all the time now. I hear them, I don't know if it's true or not. It quit working. Well, I'll tells you something, it never quit working, it has never quit workin'. It just didn't kick in the afterburners. I always wanted the afterburner gone and I don't know what to do and a guy tapped me on the shoulder and said why don't you try these and he gave me some pills I don' t remember saying to him what are those will they bother me if I take them thank God they weren't X-lax that's all I can tell you we could have a whole new 12 step program called Laxatives Anonymous. I could be standing here tonight as an adult child of a laxative taker. I would have been functional, but mother sat on the toilet all the time when I was little. I hear stuff stupider than that in AA meetings. It worked, though, I can tell you. Thank God it worked. Because I'm sitting on that street corner a couple of years later on a furlough from another reform school and I'm eating pills and drinking wine and ain't working and a guy stuck a needle in my arm. And for the next 14 years of my life, I stuck needles in my armor and then out of institutions. That's what I do. I live out on the streets, and I do what people like me who live in the streets do. I destroy everything that comes in contact with me. And the reason I do that is because I'm a taker. I'm an abuser of things and an abuse of people, so therefore I'm a loser. I've been in this whole room. I spent my entire lifetime before I came to to Alcoholics Anonymous without a conscious thought or a conscious concern for any other human being who lived upon the face of this earth. I wasn't concerned about you. Only if you had something I wanted, then I was concerned about you until I got whatever it was that you had that I wanted. Then I went on about my business as if you didn't even exist. I spent my entire lifetime before I got to the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous without ever one time in my life uttering the word love to another human being who lived on the faceofthisearth. Love was not in my vocabulary. And the reason not is because takers don't love. Takers take. Takers use what we don't love. If I told you I loved you, I gave you an edge. And takers don't give people edges. Takers keep the edge. And I tell you, if you live that way for any period of time like I did, you'll end up like I ended up 33, 34 years ago if you lived long enough, crawling around that cell in solitary confinement, drifting in and out out of total insanity, and there ain't nobody left to write penny postcards to you. I used them all up, folks. I threw every single thing I had, every person I had in the fire, and used them all up. I used up everything. Users and takers use up everything, that's the only way we can live, I don't know how else to live that way. In 1951 on my way to the penitentiary, I'm standing in the old Los Angeles County Jail, and my mother's screaming at me through the vision screen that I'm a murderer. It seems that my baby brother, my 17-year-old brother, got into some of my My poison took an overdose of it and died. I think that's one of the toughest things that I've ever had to live with in my life. That happened in 1951, and I haven't really got over it yet. There are some things you just can't get away with, but I tell you there are some thing you can live with. That's one thing in the wreckage of my past that I have never been completely and totally able to resolve within myself. because if I was capable of caring about anything before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I cared about my baby brother. And I had to crawl back. I remember my actions that day. I remember going back and sitting in that cell like it was yesterday. I can see it sitting up on that cell and knew I was supposed to do something and knew what I was doing. I knew I wasn't supposed to feel something, but I didn't know what it was. I remember being handcuffed between two detectives three days later. They stood us out underneath a tree, and they're burying the only thing in the world I probably cared anything about, my baby brother. And I didn't know what to do. I just stood there. I felt everything. My family's standing there. They won't even let me near my family. My family looks at me without looking their eye. Look what you've done now, scum. You've killed our baby. Killed our baby." Man, I had a tough time with that. I went on to the penitentiary and I stayed there four and a half years. I came out of there fourand a half year sicker than I was when I went in there. Just because I go somewhere and don't drink It doesn't mean I get any better. I just get worse. That's all. I come waltzing out of that institution, Bounty Terminal, where the psychiatrist in San Quentin told me it wasn't true. He said, Johnny, people like you don't change. He says, You're doomed to die at an institution. He took me down and showed me a little green room. He says. You're going to end up here, hot shot. And I told him, Not me. I'm different. Theme song of the alcoholic. I'm Different. Ha ha. I come walking out of the institution. We somehow had that deal beaten. Six months later, I'm laying in a nuthouse kicking and screaming. And that's when I made my round to some of the better laughing academies in the country interviewing psychiatrists. We used to have meaningful conversations, the doctors and I. I'd sit there with my wraparound overcoat on and we'd talk to one another. He'd talk about me about my mother and I'd talk him about his mama. And he introduced me to a thing called better living through electricity. It's just wonderful. They had a bad attitude. You would have a bad attitude if they did that to you. It would make it really wonderful, I'll tell you that, when you remember what they did to you and what I hope and pray to God is my last interview with a psychiatrist happened to me in a federal government hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. If I live to be a thousand years old I'll never forget that day because I'm through. Now I don't know I'm true but I'm through. I'm in a lot of trouble. Now, I don't mean trouble. I mean real trouble. My trouble is this. I can't get rid of me anymore. I Can't turn off the nightmares anymore. I can get rid Of the faces of the people that harm the things I've done. I Can't do that anymore. And I Don't know what the answer is. I am in an awful Lot of trouble as I move in and sit down on this man's desk. I look up against the wall and I see all of his plaques and his diplomas and his degrees and I think for an instant, just an instant. There was a ray of hope came into me. Maybe this is the answer. Maybe this is where it all ends. God, I hope so because it can't go much further and I knew that. I'm at the end of my rope. The minute the doctor started to talk to me, he hadn't opened his mouth and said five words to any little ray of Hope I had he threw clean out the window because he looked at me and he said Johnny, Honey, if you didn't drink these things and swallow these things and smoke these things or shoot these things, you wouldn't have any problems. When I'm a kid in the Hutchinson State Reform School, my counselor told me if I didn't drinking, I'd be all right. When I was in Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, my counselor said to me that if I don't drink, I'm going to be all-right. When I am in Whittier State Reform school, my counselor tells me not to drink these drinks and do these things and I would be all alright. He told me that in Pacific Lodge Boys Home. They told me that in San Quentin. They told me that in Folsom. They told me that wherever I went. What none of those people ever took into consideration was every time they told me that, I was as physically sober as I am right now. As physically sober. How many times I wanted to scream out at them, good God doctor, don't you understand? Because he doesn't. I'm sorry. If you're not an alcoholic, you'll never understand me. You'll never understand why I I drink, and I'll never understand why you don't if you're not an alcoholic. It's really true. That's why Alcoholics Anonymous works, you know, because one alcoholic talks to another alcoholic. I didn't know that. People never understand. Alcoholics, that's why alcoholics anonymous works. It's the only thing that works. That's what Alcoholics Annonymous is. One drunk, one alcoholic talking. I don't like the word drunk. Drunks don't have to go to meetings. Alcoholics have to learn how to live differently. One alcoholic talks to another alcoholic and something happens between those two people and they build some type of a bridge of understanding that walks behind them and as long as this one is sober in front of the other one, it leads them down the path and staying sober they can stay sober together. Now it was never true, ever before, except for a short period of time in 1840-something when the Washingtonians group was gone, it, the alcoholics have ever been able to stay sober until a stockbroker talked to a doctor in 1935 in Akron, Ohio. It's amazing to me. It's the only thing that's ever worked. In 5,000 years of recorded history, Alcoholics Anonymous is the only thing that has ever worked for an alcoholic. I don't know about other things, and I don' t know about a lot of other things. And if you're not an alcoholic, it won't make a fiddler's dam to you anyhow, so it really doesn't make any difference. But I'm an alcoholic My life, very life depends upon me knowing that my life is in a life and death struggle every day of my life. This is the day I get to stay sober. Not because I've been sober. I getto stay sober because this is what I do to stay sobertoday. I didn't know that. I didn' t know that when I got on that bus in Fort Worth, Texas, went back to Los Angeles and tried to kill myself because that's the answer for the alcoholic, you understand? But an alcoholic can no longer live with himself and he can't get rid of himself. He commits suicide, cold, sober. That's when alcoholics commit suicide. They commit suicide cold sober, sometime within the first 30, 60 days of their sobriety. They don't ever do that. I ended up in a Los Angeles County jail tied down on a bed weighing 128 pounds and yellow. That's what I'd do to me. Left to my own devices, that's the way I end up. And the doctor stood to put up my bed that day and told me I was going to die. His words to me were, Son, you're going to Die, nothing I can do for you. And I said, Okay. All day passed and all night passed, he came back wandering into my room the next morning and he said the same thing to me. And the third day he said that I had a terror gripped me that I've never known before since. The idea came to me I was going to live and not die. I was gonna get up out of the bed, go to the penitentiary, come back out and start that rat race all over again and I did not want to do that. I didn't want to live like that no more. I just couldn't handle it no more I laid there for 18 days and 18 nights and one night because I knew nothing better to do I screamed out the only prayer I'd ever said in my life. I said, oh God, help me. I thought for a long, long time nothing had happened. There was no blinding flashes of light. Nobody come running down the hall with a dozen donuts saying we've got an A meeting down there. Wander off into the tulip somewhere. I just went to sleep for a little while. I'll tell you how sick I was. Two weeks later, two short weeks later. I'm up running around a jail looking for some more of the poison to put me back in a bed I'd just gotten off of. And there's a good reason for that. In the back of my mind where my problem seems to be centered was the knowledge, like in the mind of every alcoholic that I've ever met, the knowledge. Not the thought or the knowledge that when I can't stand life on life terms any longer, I can ingest something into my system and it's okay right now. Right now is all I ever wanted. I never wanted to be all right the day after tomorrow. now is when it's heavy. You know what I mean? Get it off of me now. I knew that, so I got loaded again. Years later, I run around with an old man who was like a father to me, a guy by the name of Chuck Chamberlain. And he's dead now. He used to speak a great deal about surrender. Surrender! He'd say, God, the room would shake and the walls would rattle. Surrender. You know, I ducked. I said to him one day, we're coming home from a meeting. I said, I want to ask you a question. He said, well, what do you want to know? And I said, didn't I surrender with just as much depth in that deathbed of mine in the Los Angeles County Jail as you did on your kitchen floor in Beverly Hills? Didn't I? Didn'tI have just as Much of a depth of surrender as you Did he said, why, without a doubt, son, why do you ask? I said then how come I got loaded two weeks later and you never did? He said that's very simple. You've got to surrender every day. See how they are around here? Nothing to it. I stood in front of a superior court judge, and the man called me a blood-sucking parasite in society. He said I had no right being around decent people. He told a woman who was pregnant with my child sitting in that room and she cared anything at all about that child, I'd never be allowed to lay eyes on her. what that man said to me that day literally drove me insane literally my brain actually probably exploded in that courtroom that day because see the one thing I have never been able to do before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous or since I've been in AlcoholicsAnonymous or before I ever got here one thing that I was never able to do I was ever able to hide me from me now I can hide me from you matter of fact I'm a master at hiding me from you I play little funny games with people and hide them away. I wear little funny costumes, and I play a little funny roles that will keep me from you. It keeps me hidden from you, but I was never able to hide me from me, and that was the thing that used to drive me crazy, and when that man said that to me that day, it was the first time in my life I've ever heard me described as I knew I really was, and it literally drove me insane, And so for the next nine months, I crawled around in this cell and drifted in and out of total insanity. I'd come to, out of an enrage, back out somewhere, picking food off the wall where I'd thrown it up against the wall a couple of days earlier. And that's what I had taken me to. See, that's my own best judgment. When I'm running my life, that is the way I end up. That is me and God doing that. When I had me and Gott, I had an idiot running my wife, I'll tell you that. And that ain't very good. I had just as much God in me, crawling around in that cell in solitary confinement, growing in and out of total insanity as I have tonight. Just as much gone. Just as Much the spark of God that I always have. But you see, that little spark of god inside of me has never been able to keep me sober. All by itself, it has never be able to hide that great obsession of the mind that I have and that allergy of my body. But when I take that little spark of mine and infuse it with the great spark of Alcoholics Anonymous and its people, there's enough power there to keep me sober just today. But of myself, I can't do that. Of myself, there's not enough power within me to keep my sober. There's not anything within me that takes all of you and all of them and a kind and loving and cruel sponsor to keep you sober. It just seems to be that way. I don't know what to do, for God's sakes. I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous on the fourth day in November, 1959, not to get sober. Not at all. I was just physically sober when I came into my first meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous, and I am right now. Matter of fact, if I'd have known where I was coming, I wouldn't even have come. The reason I came in my first meetings of Alcoholical Anonymous is because the institution doesn't let women come in there. I came for my first meting of Alcoholism Anonymous almost 32 years ago to smell perfume. perfume. I've been honking and sniffing around here ever since. I don't know, you leave the door open, some of us bent fenders are going to come in. I moved in and sit down in the back row in what I lovingly like to call my throne of contempt. I had my coat collar up and my shades on because I was cool. If I'd have been any cooler when I got here, I'd I'd have probably froze to death, for God's sakes. I remember looking up on the backboard. I saw two big A's and I thought to myself, my God, I've wandered into an anti-aircraft brigade. I didn't know what Alcoholics Anonymous was. And I said to this clown sitting next to me, what is this? He says, it's AlcoholicsAnonymous. Well, I sunk down in my seat. Gangsters weren't supposed to be hanging out with them winos. It's been GangstersAnonymous or OverhipAnonymous or Dope FiendsAnonymous I kind of like that dope fiend business. You know what I mean? I mean, that's a little macho. Makes addicts seem kind of candy-ass to me, but I like dopey. You know what I mean? I thought to myself, well, I'll wait for these women to get up and tell their racy stories. Now, you've got to remember when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, there weren't very many young pretty girls in AlcoholicsAnonymous. There wasn't any girl like Kathy who talked here last night, wasn't there? These old gals got up to talk and said they drank for a long time. time. You could look at them and know they'd been somewhere for a long time. They said, I used to drink. I'll bet you did. Bad stuff, too. I knew everything when I got here. Man, I'm a walking encyclopedia of useless information when I come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I know so damn much about what ain't true, I don't know what is true. There's a paragraph in in our book called Alcoholics Anonymous. And the last paragraph is the tail end of a spiritual experience that described me better than anything I could ever tell you when I said my first meeting. It said, there's a principle which is a boon to mankind, which is bound to keep him in everlasting ignorance. That is a principle of contempt prior to investigation. And I was so frightened before I got here of failing, I never tried anything. I just sat around and knocked it. And thought maybe I'd get it by asmosis or something. I don't know. These people talked about God that day, and I got up and ran out of the room. But something happened to me that day in that meeting because my life had never been the same since. So I didn't just go and sin no more. Something happened tome. It was the people. I did not understand the people, the people confused me. I didn' t have the slightest idea why anybody in their right mind would get up on a Sunday morning, leave their families, drive 185 miles up those back roads to come into a penitentiary to talk to a room full of people who didn't want to listen to them, who sat around and made fun of them. I had no way of knowing. See, well, that's very logical. Takers don't know anything about givers. How would a taker understand a giver? How would an attacker understand somebody doing something just for the hell of doing it? How would they? I didn't know nothing about that, and they confused me. One time I said to one of them, what kind of a sicko are you anyhow? He said, what do you mean by that? I said, well, you get some kind of kick driving up here to see the animals in the zoo. What's the deal? Looked at me and said, when you can answer that question, kid, you won't have to ask it. God, I wish that once in a while somebody would give me some psychological explanation about what they're... They tell you little things like that. When you can answer that question, you won't have to ask it. And what they were really saying, when you quit being a taker and start being a giver, you won'T have to have dumb stuff like that. Oh. And then they really confused me when they'd get at podiums like this. Because I'd be sitting back there in my throne of contempt and they'd say things like, I used to drink, now I don't drink anymore and everything is wonderful. I guess I'm not alcoholic then. I'm Not Drinking Either and I'm Crazy. I said, I used to say... If I could just be that simple, then all I'd have to do is not drink and I'd be wonderful like they are. But I'm crazy. Then they said, you've got to get active in age. See, and I had that all mixed up. I thought active was being in motion. Quick. So I picked up ashtrays and poured coffee and smiled at people. And went back there and set an inventory point and died. I'm doing what they told me to do, and I'm not. And every time you ask one of these people anything, they always said, it's in the book, Johnny. I'd say, what's in it? It's in a book. They'd say oh, it's there. If you go look for it, you'll find it. They used to drive me crazy. I made a fantastic discovery, really. I found if you want to hide anything from an alcoholic, put it in the books. You don't ever look for them. Nowadays, they go to their therapist. I'm sorry, honey. You talk about your doctor like that. I went into this program of recovery in this book, Alcoholics Anonymous, not for any noble reason that I believe in. I believe I went into the program of recovery called Alcoholics Anonymous in this book to prove to you I was different and my defiance was going to prove you I Was Different. I was going do this thing and prove you how different wouldn't work for me. And somewhere a little over 31 years ago, sitting in a room with a man doing what our program of discovery calls the fifth step, the greatest single event that ever happened to me in my life happened to be that day. I heard myself admit to this man that I was an alcoholic. from way down deep inside of me there came a freedom that I carry with me to this very instant as I stand before you tonight I know exactly what's wrong with me exactly I'm an alcoholic I suffer from a disease called alcoholism I'm not an alcoholic and anything but I was an alcoholic and something I could not have your program and the reason I couldn't is because I separated me from you I was either better than you or worse than you I didn't have to quite do it your way. I had to do it my own way. I'm different. You don't understand. You may have to do that, but I don't. You see, but when I became an alcoholic, just like you, I have to deal with the alcoholics. I have a program of recovery called Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the only program of discovery for an alcoholic in 5,000 years before this. and when I started to do things like that things started to happen people came into my life who were more concerned with saving my life than they were in hurting my feelings seems not to be a thing in vogue today but I'll tell you something I went to a meeting last Thursday night in Santa Monica I'm talking at a meeting and I walked in and they got a bunch of them people in from those recovery houses and the guy said to me are you going to talk about God Johnny and I said, probably, why? He said, oh, you shouldn't do that. I said why not? He says it's the new people because they're sensitive. You talk about God you may run them out of alcoholics and all. Oh, I said well let me tell you new people something are you mediums or are you old? If God will run you out of Alcoholics Anonymous whiskey will run your rusty butt back in here. That's what it's really all about. I didn't know that. When I came to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, my vocabulary consisted of about four four-letter words. Mother ran all around it in there. It was kind of a trigger. I had people sit me in a room and word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, gave me the English language. They said to me things like, Johnny, we don't say it that way. and then I rained on them God, I was angry and they stood it and they smiled and went right back at it again and then on the fourth day of June 1961 I walked out of that penitentiary to a world I didn't know anything about and I knew an awful lot about the program of recovery the way it's outlined in a book but I knew nothing about living with you I knew not I knew everything about a program of discovery or nothing about a fellowship called Alcoholics Anonymous I knew everywhere I could recite things to you I had, to the best of my ability, completed the first nine steps of recovery the best I could while I was in that institution with letters and money and things of that nature. I'd done that. And some of the promises were fulfilled for me in that institute, which they come after, the ninth step. But I do nothing about that. So I came out of the penitentiary, and I went home to see my mother, and she fell off the steps blind drunk. I picked her up and put her on a cot and said, Mom, I'm going to an AA meeting. She said, Fine. I think you should. it. I'd like to be able to stand here tonight and tell you my mother's sober, but my mother is not sober. My mother's 86 years old and she still drinks whiskey out of a bottle. She's getting mixed up with a couple of them pellets nowadays. She's really getting kind of weird over there, I'll tell you that. But when my mother is sober, she goes to AA meetings. When my mother was sober, if you're like a lot of people who think that all they got to do is just not drink and come and sit their butt in the chair and then become a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, I'll tell you something. Just because you come to meetings and put your butt in a chair in Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't make you a member of Alcoholic Anonymous anymore than going sitting in a chicken coop would make you chicken. I tell you, you want to really put that on there? Go sit in the garage and see how long it takes you to become a car. What happens is you get tired of sitting there then you have to leave. I didn't know that. And I came out, I had this cruel sponsor. This was the meanest man who ever lived. 22 years I had him before he died. His name was Norm Alfie. And I don't think anybody that ever lived was any crueler than him. He yelled at me in meetings. He'd say, shut up! I was just visiting. He made me sit still in meetings and we were going to go one night to the bathroom and I said, I said, Norm, I've got to go to the bathroom. He says, shut up and sit still. I said. I may wet my pants. He said, so what? Sit down. Shut up. You know what he said to me? How cruel. He said. Go to work, bum. I said wait a minute, Norm. I'm not a bum. He says. What are you? I said I'm an AA member. He says you're an AA remember bum. Then go to work. Bum. Bums don't work. Showed him I went to work and then I didn't know what you do when you get paid what do you do when you got paid I don't know what you do when your get paid I go stand in supermarkets to watch people there they come running in there they come running in with these kids and throw them in baskets and push them down the aisle throw stuff in there and people going you know now I got a paycheck wife has come back now she's got that little girl I was never supposed to see and I got it run home I got this paycheck let's go to the market she says what for I said that's what they do when they get paid she said who and I said, them. Have you ever tried to explain them to them? They're the reason we're in here anyhow, for God's sake. But I guess maybe I had this magnificent spiritual look that all newcomers have. We're going to the market, you bitch, or I'm going to kill you. So we we went to the market. We loaded the stuff up, put the kid in backwards, pushed her down the aisle, threw stuff in there. I said, we don't need that. I threw it out. Went home an hour later and went to get some money and somebody stole her purse. You want to hear somebody scream? Listen to a thief when they get stolen from. So I ran in and raved and jumped and hollered and I'll tell you this. If I'd have caught that guy you'd have another talker here tonight. I'd be up there in Folsom telling you, hey, it don't work. For all the rest of losers. That's what losers tell you. You know, you go to a place, hey, don't worry. I say, how would you know? You never tried it. Every time I see one of them flippers, they come up to me, that's their big thing. Oh, I really, I just found out, hey, hey, doesn't work? I say. How would you now? Well, he said, I've been going to that theater, but how would yo know hey, A don't works? You never try this. Oh, God, that drives him crazy. They'd just look at me and stomp off. Acting like Clancy now, aren't you? Do you know what my sponsor made me do? My driver's license had been suspended for the rest of my natural life when I was 24. And my sponsor... I used to have to ride my little girl's bicycle to A meetings. Because she had a little pink bicycle. It had a big... I don't remember if it had a big back wheel and a little bitty front wheel. It had a little basket with flowers woven through it, a little bell on it so you could ride it. And I used to have to ride it right through my old neighborhood onto A meetings. And then my old partners would stand on the street corner like they always do when they weren't locked up. And here I come, they're going... Oh, that AA really works, don't it, John? Norm, Norm, what? I saved up some money. I'm going to buy a car. He said, you have a driver's license? I said, Norm my driver's license has been suspended for the rest of my natural life. He said you won't drive a car for the next year. of your natural life either. I said why not? He said because citizens like me have a right to be protected from jerks like you who think they have a rights to do any damn thing they want to do. I showed him. I hung up and rode that bicycle. I defied him. And then, I got a driver's license. I got a probationary driver's licence. My parole officer got me a driver license so I could go to work. Isn't that amazing? I had to go to work. Then I had get a driver light so I can go to work. Things are getting complicated now. And so I call him up again. Hello Norm. Hi sir. I've got the money for a car and I got got a driver's license. Did you have money for insurance? And then the day came. I had the money for a car, I had the money for insurance, and I had a driver license. I didn't even ask Norm nothing. I just went and got that car and drove up to his house and honked the horn. Honk, honk, he came out he looked at me he looked at that car now he knew that everything was legal he knew that he knew I did not dare drive that car up there if it wasn't legal he knew that and he looked at me he looked at that car and he put his arms around me and I started I got you know he said Johnny he got tears in his eyes he put his arms around me he said Johnny I'm so proud of you he said you're starting to get the idea is. Maybe you're starting to get the idea that there's not a damn thing special about you just because you don't drink alcohol anymore. Just because you're not locked up does not mean that there are damn things special about you. You're just like everybody else. It's as a matter of fact, as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you've got to be just a shade above and do a shade more than everybody else does because you may be an example of somebody sees. God, what a tremendous lesson that is to find out that there ain't nothing special about me just because I don't drink alcohol. That I'm not one of the chosen ones. I used to call him up. Call him up and I'd say things like Norm! My program ain't working! He'd say, why don't you try ours? He said things like, Jackass, your program never did work. True. You want me to tell you something? Yours doesn't either. Ours does. If your program worked, you don't even need to be here. Why would you have to come to our college? Our program works. It's the only thing that ever works. Our program. See, when it's our program, I just become a part of it. I am not it. My program never worked. my program got me crawling around on my knees in a cell in solitary confinement drifting in and out of total insanity at ripe old age, 29 years old. That's what my program means. Since I've been trying to the best of my ability on a part-time basis to stay within the confines of our program, my life has taken on a story but saying that I don't even believe sometimes. I can't stand here and tell you every meal I've eaten has been a banquet and every day I've lived, I've live out on the sunny side of the street because that's just not true. There ain't no immunity in me just because I'm sober and Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not immune from life. I live life on life's terms. I'm out there on the streets every day where life is. That's it. I go to work, I do the things. This is not an occupation, this is my advocation. I wouldn't keep an AlcoholicsAnonymous by trying to sell it. I don't do that. My sponsor made sure of that. He made me go to works. He says, you do this as an advocation, not as an occupation. Alcoholicsanonymous is a frame for fun. it was given to you, you do it for free and for fun. And when you can do that it's great. It's a fantastic thing. And this is an old man I used to run around with. His name was Chuck. He was he was a different kind of stable individual but he said like a father to me and he taught me like a Father teaches children but he taught me the same lessons that Norm taught me. And he taught me in a different way. I remember I used to ride around in cars with him all the time and I'd always try to figure out how to say something to him because he He was a magnificent man. He'd walk into rooms and people would go, and I'd wave behind him, you know. And I'm always trying to, I hear him say something that I always try, you know how you are when you're new and you're always trying to take these heroes of yours and repeat what they say. Well, I always screwed it up some kind of way. You know what I mean? He'd say, that ain't the way I said it. I couldn't say anything for two more meetings. Do you know what i mean? So one night I'm at a meeting and I snap something off the literature table. And he can't argue with this. We're riding down the road and I'm going to read it. This is this, Papa. What is it, son? I want to read you this beautiful thing. I felt for him. My ego was so good because I'd read this magnificent thing. He said, what is it? I said, why we were chosen. He said hold it. What makes you think we're chosen? I said it says this. I don't care what that says. That's not true. She said, we're not chosen, Johnny. I said, I don't care what that says. He said, we're all God's kids. All of us are. If I am, you are. And if you are, I am. Huh. I said to him, but, he said, no, no. He said Johnny, it makes the rain fall on the just as well as the unjust. That's what the Bible says. I said really? Yes. And then I said then Papa tell me something. and how come I'm sober? You know, if I'm not children, how come that's the way it is? How come I know people who are far better people than I'll ever be who aren't sober? My mother's a far better person than I'd ever dream about being. How come? See, that's very simple. You've come to understand you're one of God's kids and you act like it so he treats you like one. Isn't that amazing? Now, how did God do that? I don't know. I had to be shown how God cares that's what sponsorship is all about I used to call Norm up and I'd say to him things like Norm, what am I supposed to do he said why you ask me John I said Norm you're my sponsor you're supposed to know he said John if I can't run my life what makes you think I can run yours I said then what am i supposed to do he says you do what I do I said just what is it you do He said, if you do what I do, then you'll know what to do. Well, I'll tell you, for the 22 years that man was my sponsor, I knew how he reacted in every given situation of life. I knew everything about him. I knew all he had to work and play on the golf course and meetings. I knew his treatment people, consideration, how he worked in restaurants, how he was courteous and concerned for all people around him. That's why he yelled at me, he wanted me to be concerned about the people sitting next to him. he didn't give a damn about me the only thing i never knew when norm died i didn't know what it was like to sit in the bedroom while he was in bed with his wife now if you'd asked i went in here and said watch i wanted to know say the greatest blessing i had when i came here is that i didn t know and i knew i did know and I knew he knew because he was sober he was happy joyous He wasn't sitting around crying in a poor mouth all the time. He was going to meetings. In that car, going to meeting, doing things, playing golf, going to work, and doing the things that happy, joyous people do. And the toughest period of my life, after 22 years, the day before my 22nd birthday, Norm Alpey got dead of a heart attack. And the next year and a half of my live was the most critical time in my entire sobriety because I got some kind of an idea that because I'd been sober for 22 years that I didn't need a sponsor anymore. That I was going to use the people that I sponsored for my sponsoring. That's sick. Could you imagine one sicko trying to tell another sicko what to do? If you ain't been there, how are you going to tell anybody how to do that? And so I ran around trying to make decisions based on my own emotion There's another thing you got to know about an alcoholic like me. When my emotions and my intellect come in conflict, my emotions always win. Always win. That's why I go crazy. And so after 14-15 months if I survived, I never quit going to meetings. I went to four or five or six meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous a week. I worked with newcomers all the time. I sponsor people. I go to meetings, I do a lot of things. Do whatever I'm asked to do doing alcohol. It's not always that, but I'm crazy because I'm running a mile off. I've got no direction. I'm like a boat running around out there in a thing without a rudder. I don't know what to do. Chuck is sick. Papa's sick. I go down there and sit with him. He's sick, you know, he's talking goofy. I didn't know what to do. So one day I found myself sitting down in the mission, in LA Mission, and I'm talking to Clancy about this hypothetical situation. And I looked at him, and I said, Clancy, it's just dawned on me, I need a sponsor. And he looked at me, and I thought he was going to say, what an order, I can't go through with it. It's too much for me, Biggie, I'll tell you that. And he looked at me, he smiled, and he said, will you do what I tell you and I said no fancy I've always done what my sponsor says my sponsor has always been the sole authority in my life always even though I have a great belief and an understanding that there is a power greater myself with God I'll tell you two or three o'clock in the morning I'd much rather have a phone call for somebody other than the phone to call and lay in the middle of that bed and try to conjure up a God that I really don't believe in really because I have have been there. I have been here sober 22, 23, 24 years, sober and alcoholic synonymous. I've been on my knees at night beside my bed with so much pain and guilt and remorse and humiliation inside of me that I can't conjure up any type of a word or a thought or a prayer. If I could have prayed, I'd have been fine. The only thing that brought me back to life at all was I'd think about one of you. I'd thinking about somebody that I'd sponsored who would walk in and come into an alcoholic synonym and light Light it lit up in their eyes. And I come to believe that if God is in those people's lives, He's in mine too because I do the same thing they do. I go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and I do what I'm asked to do around here. That's all. That's All. I'm just part of the deal around here, another thing that irritates me more than anything in the world. I was taught differently, so that's why it irritates. And I hear people get up here and say, I'm a miracle. Do you realize what a negatistical statement that is? I'm a part of this miracle I am a part of the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous that's all that means I'm just part of Alcoholic Anonymous I'm not the shining light that means I get to take my seat in the meeting of Alcoholical Anonymous and pick up the ashtrays and pour the coffee and put my chairs away that means I get the answer to the telephone with the answer simple answer if the date's open it belongs to you that's a simple message that I learned from that old man that I've traced it on wherever I go if the dates open it belongs to you because I belong to you. You don't realize how simple my life is with that little statement. That takes me to the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all those other things. But you see, I don't really need Thanksgiving and Christmas and the Fourth of July and birthdays because every day to me is Christmas. Every day to be is the Fourth of July because every year of my life there's a day to reprieve from this terrible melody of mine called alcoholism. I get to live the day sober. I got a chance to come down and spend some time and meet some new friends and learn to love some people and see some old people that I've loved for a long time who've loved me. And I get to do that and I get the sitting meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous and I become an actually participating part of Alcoholics Anonymous, not Alcoholics Anonymous. Just a small part of it. And I sponsor people exactly the way I was sponsored. See, I don't break up a winning combination. That's the only thing that I really know to be true. I only know how I was was sponsored and what's happened to me. And I passed that along. And you think sponsorship is tough in my part of the world? You should have been in Akron in 1935. It was really tough down there. I mean, they told those people, you get out on your knees or get the hell out of here. But we want to stay sober. You see, that's the deal. I want to stay sober not because I'm afraid of drinking or not because because I'm afraid of going back to the penitentiary or to the nuthouse? No. That's not why I want to be a priest for me. I don't ever want to be that thing ever again that I was when I came to use with people almost 32 years ago. That uncaring, unfeeling, destructive take of things and use with people. I don'T ever want to be that thing ever again and I'll have to become that before I can do it again. Physical sobriety was the thing i came here with didn't do the last thing i'd leave here with everything in between that has happened to me has been some type of emotional stability some type of spiritual growth some type of mental thing i love being made into an alcoholic As long as I love being around members of our party. That's suicide, my wife committed suicide when I was five years old. It wasn't until I was two years old that it became a trade. People booed me out of a lot of money. I went through a very painful, long-time divorce about five or six years ago. It was very grating and humiliating to me. I lived for all that. I never could go on the news. I never would come in here and I wouldn't talk to my sponsor. And I said, what am I supposed to do? Plant trees. Whatever you do, you do it with a little bit of dignity. Whatever it is. And that's what I've tried to do. I've try to live with some type of dignity here at Alcoholics Anonymous because I walked so many years without any type of dignity. That's what AlcoholicsAnonymous is really all about. It's a way of life beyond description. I don't know about a lot of things, but I do know that I don' t have to think to drink. I think that's a missed moment. I don't have to think about drinking the drink. All I got to do is quit doing the things that make me comfortable right here and I'll wake up drunk. That's all. All I gotta do is quit doing things that make you comfortable right there and I will wake up drunken. Every living thing I have in my life I owe to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything. Every living things I may ever hope to have in life I owe it to the Program of Alcoholic Anonymous and you better believe this It's a long, long walk from a cell in solitary confinement in a massive 30-centipede to where I stand tonight. But for the grace of God, and good friends like this who let me share with you, I could have missed it all. God bless you. Thanks, Jenny, and on behalf of the committee here, we'd like to present you with this. I'd like to thank everybody for being here tonight. And a small morning at 9 o'clock, we'll start again. And you have a nice way of closing if you'd like to join us in the Lord's Prayer.