Self-Will Run Riot and the Crash That Follows – Johnny H.

Hi everybody my name is Johnny and I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here this morning and I am glad to sober. There's some new people in Alcoholics Anonymous here this morning and i hope the word being sober doesn't offend you as bad as it offended me when I came to AlcoholicsAnonymous. You see what I said in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous on the first Sunday in November 1959, and you talked to me about being sober. I didn't think AlcoholicsAnonymous had anything to offer me. I was as physically sober when I came to my first meeting of alcoholics anonymous as I am this morning, as physically sober. And that seemed to be my problem. If I could have stayed loaded forever, I'd have ever came to Alcoholics Not. I kept getting interrupted out there on my happy road of destiny by those people in those little black and white cars that said I was having too much fun. You know, it's an amazing situation that's going on today. People have big new things that they're starting to introduce to us. And one of the big new deals that they'RE talking about in Alcoholics Anonymous is intervention. I want to let you know that the Los Angeles County Sheriffs knew about it in 1940. Intervention's no new deal to them guys, man, I'll tell you that. And if you don't believe that, just keep on going in all of them. Now, I'm extremely pleased to be here this morning fully clothed and in my right mind. And I only tell you this because the longer I stay sober at Alcoholics synonymous the more necessary it becomes for me to remember from whence i came and i never want to forget that a little over 30 years ago right now i was crawling around on my knees in a cell in solitary confinement in a massive security penitentiary barking at the moon now because of a loving god as they express himself through this program called alcoholic synonymous it's no longer necessary for me crawl around my hand knee like an animal if i don't get anything more out of this deal than that i can live with that for a long time i'd like to be able to stand here this morning and tell you without a shadow of a doubt that that's where alcohol and drugs took me to well i'd love to beable to tell you that but you see that's for i took me too the only thing that alcohol and drug did in my life they kept me alive long enough to find alcoholics anonymous that's all i'm as sure as i'm standing here without alcohol working on 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 just wandered around out there full of bitterness and hatefulness and anxiety and anger and frustration and mood. Just terrible feelings inside. I don't know where that came from. I always had that. It was just something that I just always remember having. I always remember Having That Feeling Of Uneasiness. I always remember having that feeling of knowing that something was wrong. Not knowing what it was, but something was wrong. It seemed like to me that I was just born needing an answer for something and I didn't have it. And because I didn' t have the answer I was angry and hostile and bitter and I did not know what was going on. And everywhere I went, everything I did, everybody I saw was confusing. Now I want to get something real clear, real quick. I am not Catholic. And I'm going to tell you, the Pope is tickled to death about that. I don't know what my heritage is. family weren't really all that well adjusted, I suppose. They had a lot of fun, them folks. They made whiskey, they sold whiskey, and they drank whiskey. And they did the things that people who did that kind of stuff did. They all drank whiskey, everybody in my family drank whiskey! They made whisky and they sold whisky. They used to gather up on Saturdays and beat each other half to death they stole each other's whiskey and each other women god whoever was survived that week with the king i guess i don't know how they worked that deal out see i understood that i understood very well i understand that violence and that anger and that hot i understand it real well make you you know put your foot into somebody just it's almost like a spiritual experience it just i understand when you're full of anger and bitterness and hostility and all that you can understand whipping on somebody just oh you know what i was never able to understand was is how these same people who did that on saturday could put their arms around one another on wednesday and say we love one another because we're family and i guess i said to myself i don't them i guess i said to myself if that's what love is you can keep it i don't need it because i don never remember uttering the word to any other human being who lived upon the face of this earth before i came to alcoholism the word love was not of my vocabulary and the reason the word of love was out of my vocabularies you see i'm a taker i'ma take her things and i'm abuser of people so therefore i'm a loser i'm selfish i'm self-centered and i'm self-serving and i got an ego bigger than this whole room now you don't need much more than that coupled with a bad attitude to have a bad start in life it seems like you're going to get headed into trouble right there and you see if i ever told anybody that i loved them that means i gave them an edge and takers don't give people edges takers take takers don't love takers use i used up every single thing and every person who ever came into my life prior to coming to alcoholics now i used them up i didn't drink them up i used him up i burned them up and i threw him away when i was through with him and he had no more to offer me and that's the way i lived my entire lifetime i didn t know that but i started looking for a way out of this situation a long long time ago because i knew i wasn't supposed to feel that way and i knew I was supposed to think the way i thought and i didn't know what was going on i had this terrible conflict inside and i did know so i started looking for her way out i looked up one day and my grandmother stood there now my grandmother was a kindly old lady she lived she was almost 90 years old my grandmother she never took a drink of alcohol or smoked a cigarette in her life so me staying sober for 29 years no really big deal grandma didn't drink for 90 and they didn't give her any standing ovations for christ's sake grandma would just sit around in there and sing songs to jesus that's what grandma did she was a strange old broad really she was really that's the truth i mean grandma grandma was a candidate for al-anon before there was alanon i know what it seemed like to me that every morning she just got up on the cross and hung there for a while. It's the way grandma feared to me. I don't know. But grandma would be sitting in this kitchen. I'd be sitting there with grandma in the kitchen, and she'd be singing songs of Jesus, and these crazy people come flying through there. You know, blood dripping from them, their shirts ripped off of them, their eyes black, one kicking the other one, and grandma just, yes, Jesus loves you, you know. Okay, granny. So grandma took me where she went. I wanted to go where Grandma went because I wanted to be like Grandma. I didn't want to be like these other bums, I wanted to be grandma. So I went with Grandma. But I never figured out of one very simple little thing. Wherever I went, I went. I know that's a little heavy for seaside but try to hang on to it. That's about as deep as I get folks, I'm gonna let you know that right now. You've had already had the intellectual talks already, the ones who were educated by the Roman Catholics. I was educated by the Whittier State Reform School. That's the way I lived. But my grandmother took me to this place and I remember sitting in that room with my grandmother full of excitement and anticipation on a Sunday a long, long time ago. I'm different and I'm strange and a miracle i hate everybody in the room i don't know what's going on and i sit there and wait for a man to mount a rostrum in his robes of authority and tell me what's the matter with me that's what i wanted to know what the matter was me the question i always ask good god what's the matter would make I didn't know I guess even more important that what I wanted to do that morning to tell me about what to do about what was the matter with me because I didn t know I just needed some instructions at some and the guy stood at that podium that morning and he confused me he told me I was supposed to love and honor and respect my parents he said you're supposed to love your brothers and your sisters and i didn't i hated them i hate him for reasons i didn t even understand god i felt guilty about that i became frightened of death sitting in that church a long long time ago that people were going to find out i was hated when i was supposed to be loved and i did not know what to do about that turned to walk outside the door of the church that day the old man's down there drunk and hung over and he tapped me on the head and said son you continue to go to church you're going to grow up to be just like me i really don't know what that did for my old man but i haven't been back to church since it ain't got anything to do with church got to do with my own man i didn't want to be like my old men my old male was a drunk and like my own hated my own my mother was a drama i hated my mother i lived in a house where there were two drunks working it's not a nice place for little kids to grow big frightening place in that house in the middle of the night they're screaming and yelling and cussing and flesh hitting flesh and breaking furniture and deadly silence. Every once in a while the old man come and got me and started kicking me around. He didn't do it to my brothers, he did it to me. And that's not the most frightening time. The most frightening time is when they're gone somewhere and I know they're out there and I'm out there and I knew what was going to happen so I lay there and I think. I sometimes get behind my older brother who lived in this little one room shack and I'd get between my older Brother and the wall so they wouldn't find me because I knew what was gonna happen and I lay here and think about my uncles who lived in penitentiaries. I thought about my aunts who worked in those houses on the other side of the tracks. I thought of my old man who beats up my mother, my mother who beats up my old men. I thought about all those kind of things. It dawned on me what the problem was sitting back there one night. It's alcohol. They drink these people and they do these things. I'm not going to drink. I'm nicht going to be like them. I'm going to better than they are. I'm gonna step out into that world. I'm going to have something, I'm gonna do something, and I'm gonna be something. What do you do if you're weird? I don't know what you did, I took a drink. It's exactly what I did. I don' t remember any decision on my part about it, I just got into my own mad bootleg hooch one day and took a drink. And what happened to me that day, I became enslaved to a feeling that I pursued into the gates of insanity and death and beyond not to alcohol the feeling I got when I drank alcohol that's what kept me enslaved for the next 20 years of my life that's why I pursued into the gate of insanity in death and Beyond was the feeling i got when i drank alcohol he did stuff went down inside of me and it's still the screaming madness it took me from the black pit of nothingness, stood me into the gray fringes of the business of living. It installed in me an arrogance that said, damn you world, it's all right. 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. If alcohol still did that, I would still drink it. And the reason it doesn't do that anymore, the reason I don't drink alcohol and the reason i don't use drugs anymore because they don't work that's as simple as i know how to tell you the sad part about my life is they quit working 10 years before i knew they did i spent the last 10 years of my life running around out there trying to find the answer and end up a hypodermic needle 10 years after quit working i want to tell you something this morning if hell is any hotter than that i hope i never go there i can't remember hell i hell couldn't be any more torturous than that than to have to live in that nightmare that i lived in for the last 10 years of my life when my answer is no longer an answer and i don't have one and i'm going crazy drifting in and out of sanity what happened to me in the next 20 years of mi life happened to be every time i drank nothing ever changed in my life i took a drink of alcohol and three days later they pulled me out from underneath the bridge stood me in front of a judge and sent me to the Hutchinson State Reform School. Twenty years later, I took a drink of alcohol. They pulled me out of a car in Compton, stood me up in front with a judge, and sent to me to 20 years in the penitentiary. That's what happened to me when I drank. I got drunk and went places. I traveled around out there. I went from reform school to reform school to junior penitentiares to penitentares to nuthouses. Oh, nuthoses. They call them treatment centers today. Society has a way of whitewashing anything that sounds offensive to them. I guess they're as sensitive as we are. How would you like to go down there and say my insurance policy says I can come to the nuthouse and get shock treatments? I'm not going to get many buyers for that, baby, I'll tell you that. You may do it the first time, You'll never go back with that second series of electrotherapy as a way of stimulating most everything that happens to you in your life. You'll notice that my hair still stands up from time to time when I get near electric things. Some things never forget. I'm sitting on a furlough from a reform school when I'm nine or ten years old and alcohol's not working. I don't know what to do about that. I'd sit there and drink a whole gallon of Marcafetri red wine. I'm sober as damn right now, scared to death. I don' t know what happened. 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? Do you think they'll bother me if I take them? Thank God they weren't ex-lax, that's all I can tell you. Hell, I could stand here this morning, I'd have a whole new 12-step program to work through on in the joint, shouldn't I? It's called Laxatives Anonymous. Yeah, we'd get a lot out of that deal, you know what I mean? I could be standing here this morning as an adult child of a laxative taker. I would have been functional, but Mother was on the toilet all the time when I was little. All I can tell you is that stuff worked, for Christ's sake. If it worked, I used it. I didn't ask what it was. It worked. I'm sitting on a pro-reform school and I'm 11 or 12 years old and I're eating pills and drinking wine and nothing's working and the guy stuck a needle in my arm. and for the next 14 years of my life i stuck in legals in marmor and then out of institutions that's what i do i live out there in them streets and i do what's necessary to survive in them streets well i did them streets if you had something i wanted i took it didn't care whether you liked it or not i took whatever i had to do to survive out in those streets i did it to survive on industries i had no conscious concern no conscious thought no conscious idea or about anybody else upon the face of this earth only my own well-being that's all i was concerned about i lived in a total world of selfishness and self-centeredness self-serving that's the only world i live in i didn't care about you i didn'y care about them i had no concern for anybody i cared about not my family i didn''t care about anybody i care about my own well-beings if i use you fine when i got through with you you were history and people who live like that don't last very long the world i burned up and used up everything i cared about nothing who lives upon the face of earth say one thing my baby brother if i was capable of caring about anything in my life before i found you or before you found me it was my baby brothers in a 1951 i'm on my way to the penitentiary and i'm staying in the old los angeles county jail and my mother's screaming at me through the visiting screen that i'm a murderer it seems that my 17 year old brother got into some of my poison took an overdose of and died i don't know how to handle that very well to handle like i handled most things i got mad at it made it go away i stood handcuffed between two detectives three days later while they buried the only thing in the world i cared anything about with all the guilt and shame and humiliation and degradation of a lifetime hanging around my shoulders i'd like to cry but i didn't know how i didn'T have the simple gift of tears that god gives every creature that's born on the face of this earth and the reason i didnT have them because i didn'T think they were necessary i went on to the penitentiary and i stayed there four and a half years i came out of there four and a Half years sicker than i was when i went in there you see my disease doesn'T get better just because i get locked up somewhere it gets worse my disease is worse now than it was when I came alcoholic synonymous it's progressive illness i'm getting constantly worse even though i haven't had a drink of alcohol or a mood all in chemical in my system for over 29 years four months and some odd days i'm still worse off than i was the last time i took it no i haven''t got anything to do with that that's not anything me that happened that's nothing to my credit i didn't come to alcoholics and I was of my own free will. I don't take any credit for coming here. I remember sitting down with a psychiatrist in San Quentin. I remember this psychiatrist saying to me, Johnny people like you don't change. You're doomed to die at an institution. He took me down he 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. i'm different the theme song of the alcoholic i'm different that's going to kill 95 percent of the people in this room today the alcoholics in this who are going to die drunk some of us are maybe me i don't know the ones of us who are gonna die drunk the alcohols in this room are gonna died drunk for one reason and one reason only because their cases are different, that you don't have to do this nonsense that all the rest of us robots have to do. That's the ones who are going to die drunk. I may be one of them. You may be. I don't know. I can't look at you and say, oh, you're going to dye them. I maybe one of them, I don' know. There may come a time in my life tomorrow or the next day when my insanity will return. I'm saying I'm tired of doing this nonsense. I won't do anymore maybe I don't know but that's the reason and you're sitting here no matter how long you've been sober and you think your case is different you're damn near drunk you're not far from it I can tell you that that's what I've come to understand alcoholics anonymous that's what kills alcoholics not alcohol that thought in the back of their head that they're different that they don't have to do what the alcoholics have to do to stay sober. That's the sad, sad thing about the alcoholic. Cases are different. It protected me for a long, long time. It kept me from getting a little bit out of me in San Quentin because I was different. I come walking out of that institution and bound to determine I had death due beating. Six months later, I'm let in a nuthouse kicking and screaming. And that's when I made my round with some of the better laughing academies in the world interviewing psychiatrists. I had to sit around here with my wraparound overcoat on and talk to them. They talked to me about my mother, and I talked to them about their mother. They introduced me to a thing called better living through electricity. Said I had a bad attitude? My dad had a bad attitude. You have a bad attitude too if they did that to you. I don't know. I don' t think it's kind of I don''t think that's a way to treat a person just because they attack you. I drove across the desk one time with a psychiatrist in a straitjacket. That's exciting. Take that. Not much of a win in them places, I'll tell you that. They got you wrapped up on them funny things with them wraparound overcoats on and you're trying to attack somebody. You really don't have much defense against coming attraction. But that's the way I live. I do that all the time. I just attacked everything I didn't understand. They didn't have any answer. I knew it. They thought they did. I knew they didn't. Very simple. And I remember my last, what I pray God, is my last interview with psychiatrists. It was in a federal government hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. I never will forget it if I live to be 3,000 years old. I remember shuffling into this man's room and sitting down across from his desk and looking up against the wall and looking at his degrees and his diplomas and his plaques and all these kind of things. Now, I want you to understand I felt exactly that day the way I felt sitting at my grandmother's knee when I was a child. Nothing had changed. I still hated everything in the room. I was restless and I was irritable and I Was discontent. Only now I've got one more problem worse than all the rest of those problems put together now the things i'm injecting into my system to make those problems go away and no longer make them go away now i'm in deep trouble all the time now i can't get rid of the nightmares now i cannot turn off the faces of people out of harm now i cant get rid me at all now im in deep deep trouble and i sit across the desk from this guy and he looked at me and he said johnny if you didnt drink these things or swallow these things and smoke these things to shoot these things you wouldn't have any problems when I was a kid in the Hutchinson State Reform School my counselor told me if I didn't drink I'd be all right so mad like my family if I didn't make that be okay when I wasn't Whittier State Reform School they told him if I did drink these things would swallow these things to smoke these saying to shoot to these things I'd feel right well I've questioned juvenile penitentiary they told me he didn't drink these things and swallow these things and smoke these things, shoot these things you'd be alright. When I'm in San Quentin they told me if you didn't drink these thing and swallow this thing and smoke this thing and shoot this thing you'd all right. When I was in Folsom they told me if you don't drink this thing and swallow it and smoke it and shoot it you'd get all right." But none of them ever, ever take into consideration that 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 across them good god don't you understand because they don't understand if you take this madness from inside of me i'll never have to put that stuff back in make it 1950 again i won't do that anymore bring back my baby brother take that nightmare away from me i won t have to do bring back all them countless faces of the people that harmed and destroyed and i won' t do these things anymore make the nightmares go away doctor but i didn't say that i just looked at him and hated him because i didn t know all i knew was that they were trying to tell me a nothing who had always been nothing who come from nothing who was nothing who was going to be nothing who put something in his system and became almost that the thing i put into my system to make me almost from a nothing was a problem when i know the problem i'm nothing like trying to sell the guy that building fell down because the elevator was defective didn't make any sense then and it doesn't make anything now would it prove to me without a shadow of a doubt what the state of California and the federal government proved to me with out a shadow a doctor treating me for 20 years there's how long they had me in their custody how unique I was that there wasn't anybody else upon the face the earth like me so I went back to Los Angeles to kill myself that's what alcoholics like me do you know when we no longer have an answer and our answers are no longer answered we kill ourselves alcoholics kill themselves cold sober alcoholics who kill themselves while drinking to do it accidentally we do it on purpose cold sober because we cannot stand sobriety see alcoholics can't stand sobriet that's why they keep getting drunk sobrieti to me and the penalty I had to pay in my life prior to coming to you weren't half as severe as the penalties I had to pay when I was sober. The nightmares that I had to live in and the pain and torturous things that I had to live while I was over was much more severe to me than the idea of going to the penitentiary or getting beat up and shot at and stabbed and kicked and electrocuted. Those weren't have as severe the penalties I paid while sober. I didn't know that. A little over 31 years ago, they tied me down in a bed in the old Los Angeles County Jail. I weighed 128 pounds and I was yellow and there was a medical doctor trying to put up my bed telling me I'm gonna die. He said to me, son you're gonna die and nothing we can do for you. And I said okay. All day passed and all night passed he come wandering back in my room the next morning he looked out at me and he said, son, you're going to die and nothing i can do for it i said okay the third day came into my room i had a terror grip me that i've never known before since in my entire lifetime the idea came to me i was going to live and not die i was gonna get up out of that bed and go to the penitentiary and come back out and start that rat race all over again and god knows i didn't want to do that i laid in that bed for 18 days and 18 nights i didnít need sleep drink or do anything i just laid there one night because i knew nothing better to do i screamed out the only prayer ever said in my life i said oh god help me i thought for a long long time nothing had happened because there was no blinding flashes of light nobody come running down the hall with a dozen donuts and we got an a meeting down there i didn't get up and wander off into the room somewhere i just went to sleep for a little while i don't know how many of you ever kicked a two-year heroin habit but that's what i was doing that's the first time i've been asleep in a long wrong time i'll tell you how sick i was just two weeks just two short weeks later i'm up running around the jail looking for some more of the poison to put me back on a bit i'd just gotten off of and there's a good reason for that you see because in the back of my mind where my problem seems to be centered what is the knowledge that once upon a time when i could not stand it any longer when i could not stand anything any longer i had eject something into my system and it made it okay right now that's all right now it got it off me get it off of me right now is what i want it off to me don't make it tomorrow now and even though it wasn't working anymore and i knew it wasn t working anymore i knew i would if i could just find the right combination thing it had always worked before once upon a time good god it has to work again it's the only thing that ever happened and so i got loaded again i stood in front of a superior court judge who was sentenced to 20 years in the penitentiary i was told exactly what i was that morning he called me a blood-sucking parasite in society he told me i didn't have any right being around decent people he told a woman who was sitting in that courtroom carrying my child she cared anything at all about her child she'd never let me lay eyes on it and he didn't say anything to me that day that i didn't know that's the only time i'd ever heard it i spent a lifetime trying to masquerade that from the world you and the people i was around but i knew me i knew what kind of a thing i was i knew a kind of sky what kind of rock i crawled out from underneath nobody had to explain that to me i'd never heard it said before i had never been exposed to that openly the man's statement was so damning it literally drove me insane i spent the next nine months of my life crawling around in itself drifting in and out of sanity barking at the moon more dead than alive my brain gone coming and going drifting in and out of sanity and on the first sunday of november 1959 on a sunday morning i wandered into a meeting of alcoholic synonymous see i don't take any credit for coming to alcoholics anonymous no do i take any credits for staying here from that day to this day if i'd known where i was coming i wouldn't even have come i wasn't an alcoholic i didn't know what an alcoholic was the reason i came to my first meeting about all economics because the institution i didn then let women come in here i came to my first meeting of alcoholics and i was over 29 years ago to smell perfume and i've been honking and sniffing around here ever since you got to be careful what gets us sick folks in here I'll tell you that you open up them doors one of us bent fenders are going to come flying in the door I remember this I moved in and sit down in the back row and 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 would have froze to death for God's sake. I remember looking up on the backboard and I saw two big gates and I thought to myself, my God, I wandered into an anti-aircraft brigade. I didn't know what Alcoholics Anonymous was. I said, this clown sits next to me. What is this? He said, it's AlcoholicsAnonymous. I sunk down in my seat. Gangsters weren't supposed to be hanging out with them winos. If there had been GangstersAnonymous or over hip anonymous or how about this one dope fiends anonymous that kind of makes addicts seem candy ass you know what I mean baby get it done be it yeah I thought well I'll wait for these women to get up and tell their racist stories You've got to remember, when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous 29 years ago, there weren't very many pretty young girls in alcohol. There just weren't. These old gals got up to talk. And they said things like, I drank for a long, long time. You can look at them and know they've been somewhere for a while. They said, I used to drink. I said, bet you did. Bad stuff, too. I knew. I had got the answer. i was a master a master of cutting you off and cutting you down master because you can't come in then just keep out sickness in my pridefulness that's what i was i was so prideful i was dying in my differences my differences were getting sicker and i was getting sick here and my pride was getting bigger because i was private with my differences and i said in means of alcoholics anonymous and made fun of you and you talked about god and i ran out the room when i came here you talked to me about god i left because god was the reason i was it was not my fault i want you understand that see i had run out of everything else to blame i'd run out of every person people places and things circumstances and conditions to blame for my dilemma i had nothing left so i blamed god see when you don't have anything left to blame for your dilemma you can blame god for it you don t talk back if you listen real careful sometimes in the club rooms in Alcoholics Anonymous. You can hear that. You'll hear things like, I guess if God wants me to have a job, he'll shoot it down here to the club. Deal. Next time you get hungry, you go lock yourself up in a closet and pray for a hot dog. If God squirts you one through the keyhole, call me. See, I've been active and close to an Alcoholics Anonymous for over 29 years now, and I haven't learned very much about God. I'm not a spiritual giant because I had no formal education, no formal religious training. I was indoctrinated. I hadno false ideas about what God was when I came in AlcoholicsAnonymous. All I've ever learned about God is what I've learned from you. And what I have come to learn about my God is this, that God will not do anything for me that I can do for myself. There has only been one single thing in my entire life I have never been able to do. One thing and one thing only. Of myself and by myself, I cannot keep from taking a drink. I can't do that. but yet for over 29 years and four months and some odd days i haven't ingested any type of chemicals in my system not even aspirin and what blows my mind even more than that is i havenít had a conscious thought or a conscious desire to put any of that nonsense in my systems from the first moment i laid eyes on you to this instance. But that doesn't make me wonderful. My God seemed to understand that as sick as I am, I cannot harbor a thought in my head for over 30 seconds without putting it into action. God knows how sick I am. I don't have to tell you. He knows. And he gives me all the protection I need. All I have to do is do what his children do. And that's all I've ever done i didn't know what was going on in alcoholics and honors i kept coming back to meetings because they kept telling me these strange people came up there every week different groups of people kept coming up there i kept going in there they kept talking about god i got up one sunday a long long time ago went in and said in a meeting of alcoholics anonymous with my coat collar up and my shades on and my bad attitude and i sat back there and a man stood at the podium like this very much like this who had done 23 years in the penitentiary and told me something I've never forgotten. It makes more sense to me than anything that I know. It'll make more sense for me tomorrow than anything I'll ever learn. He said, you don't have to live like this no more if you don'T want to. He says, you DON'T have to do it like this NO MORE. Nobody ever told me that. They've been telling me all my life, don't drink, swallow, smoke, and shoot, but they didn't tell me how to live without doing it because they don't know. How do you live in a world that you don' t belong to? That wants no part of you, and you don't want any part of. And the only thing that makes it bearable for just an instance is when you ingest something into your system. After the meeting I went up to this little guy, and I said to him, Les, the strange thing about this is, this little guys used to be my manager when I played baseball for the San Quentin Pirates. I was a star second baseman for the San Quentin Pires for two years running. Stick that on your resume sometime and try to see how it flies. Here he is, this little guy. And I walked up to him. I said, Les, how do you learn how to live? That's all I want. That's what I'm interested in. I'm not interested in anything else. I'm only interested in how do I live. He told me about a book. This book called Alcoholics Not. He said, Johnny, if you go get that book, I'll go home and pray that you find some part of you in it. I guess he's prayed real hard, that little fella. because I've been a student of the book Alcoholics Anonymous from that day to this day. And the only thing I've ever found in that book is me. I haven't looked for anything else. I'm not looking for a way to sober up the world or cure all society's ills. I'm looking for away to live peacefully and comfortably and joyously with me and the loving God that made me. Now, the strange phenomena that takes place in my life, and I really don't know anything about anybody else's life, if you really want to know the truth, and neither does anybody else it seems like to me that the closer i adhere to the principles that are written in this book and the more willing i become to share that knowledge in this fellowship just for the sheer joy of doing it the more peaceful and the more comfortable and the most joyous i live with me and the loving god that made me but i had a lot of trouble when i came to alcoholics anonymous because i was confused here I didn't understand what was going on. I'm drifting in and out of sanity all the time, my brain is half gone, and I'd hear things I didn' t understand and people would get up at podiums like this, well-meaning people I'm sure, and they would say things like, I used to drink, now I don't drink anymore and everything is wonderful. And I'd say to myself, I guess I'm not an alcoholic then. I'm no drinking either and I'm crazy. God, I wish I was an alcoholic. If I could just be an alcoholic, if it was just that simple. But you don't understand. I'm sober as that clown is, and I'm not. And then they said, you've got to get active in Alcoholics Anonymous. I heard that. So I got up and ran around like a chick with my head cut off. I picked up ashtrays, poured coffee, and smiled. The newcomer smiled. Welcome, welcome to Apollixinana. If you come in and climb these golden stairways to happiness, you can join us spiritually magnificent people also. I got here 30 days ago and it was just wonderful. And then I went back and set an inventory point and died. I was doing what they told me to do and I'm crazy nothing's happening for me so I said to myself it's logic it's pure logic I am not an alcoholic if I was an alcoholic all I would have to do is not drink and pick up these damned ashtrays and I'd be okay but there's something far more wrong with me than that I'm crazy and every time I talk to somebody they said oh it's in the book what's in the book oh it is there you go look for it but what is it look for it on page 82 for the benefit of you newcomers this morning I'm going to take that mystery away from you I'm gonna tell you what it is what it is is what I thought it was but it really wasn't when I took my first drink. What it is, but it really wasn't, is what I thought it was when I swallowed my first pill. What it isn't, but what it wasn't. But what I though it was when I stuck that needle in my arm for the first time. What it is, is that peace that I was born without. What it Is, is the thing I had looked for all my life. What it IS, is that seemingly missing link in that puzzle of life that I had no answers for, that I searched the world over and every dredge and filthy corruptible place in this world. What it Was, is I found a living God who lived inside of me. I became my father's child, and I didn't know that. One filthy, corruptible thing I'd ever done in my life, and during that conversation with that man, I heard myself say to that man I am an alcoholic. I had never said it before. I was always something else and. I was all the time I was this or that and and, and this, and that, and and this. And all that did for me really was it separated me from you. It made me different. As long as I was an alcoholic and, you see, because I come to understand that day, from way down deep inside of me there came a freedom that I carry with me to the sense that I know what's wrong with me. I am an alcoholic. I'm not an alcoholic in anything. When I was a alcoholic and something, I couldn't have your program. And the reason I couldn't have your program is because I separated me from you. I was different than you. I did not have to do what you do. I didnot have todo what the 100 people who wrote this book had to do, who put it down for dummies like me to pick up and do. I didn't have todod that. But you see, when I became just like you, I had todo whatever it was that you had tod. if i wanted to obtain and maintain enough peace within me that i don't have to drink to calm the screaming madness that goes on inside of me i have to do what you have to do to keep my selfishness and my self-centeredness down enough where i can live comfortably enough out there in that world one day at a time till i get back here to get my medicine just alcoholic non-alcoholic and nothing if you're sitting in this thing and you're separating yourself from our program by that little funny differential thing and uh for god's sake close that door come on in come on name. Come join us. Just be one among many. If I would have liked to live in peace, not to have to outstand and be outstanding. Funny thing started to happen to me after that. I had to start writing letters about making amends. It's another thing that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous that I observe sometimes. People are always writing inventories. I think it would be a lot better if they went ahead and did the eighth and ninth step. You know, it's a lot easier to go back and redo something than it is to go forward. I remember not long ago I was going to go do a retreat up here somewhere and I was telling Clancy about it. I said, Clancy, I'm going to do a retweet. He said, wait a minute, kid. and Alcoholics Anonymous we're supposed to advance not retreat true we're supposed to grow along spiritual lines if I'm supposed to believe what this book says it has been the only tool I've used in the 29 years since I've been here this book I've come to understand there's a vast difference between our program of recovery and our fellowship big, big difference program recovery is perfect this book the first 164 pages of this book is a design for living that's perfect in structure and full proof and application anybody who applies those principles to their lives will get better, I don't care who they are anybody nobody lives so well that you couldn't apply these principles in your life and get better but you see our fellowship is different Fellowship is made up of people like me and you. And what I've come to learn here is all people have feet of clay. All people have feet of play. They made one perfect person that I know about, and they hung him on a piece of wood one time a long time ago. You know that perfection frightens people like we do? I'm frightened of perfection. I can't love perfection. I'm afraid of it. I don't understand it. There was an old man that I ran around with who was like a father to me that I love probably more than any man that I've ever loved in my life. His name was Chuck. And I used to sit and ride around cars with him when he went to meetings when I was new. And he had a big old Lincoln as long as that screen. And I'd sit over there in the corner and look at him. He was magnificent, magnificent man. He just walked into a room and went, oh! And I was frightened of him. And he loved me like his kid. He put me on his lap and rocked me to sleep, called me his son. Loved me like his son. And I was frightened of him. And one night we were coming back from Santa Barbara from a meeting he was talking at, and he stopped in this little restaurant that had something to eat, and got out and went into the glove department and took out some Rolaids. He swallowed them Rolaidos, and I thought to myself, thank God he's got gas. I loved him, that's all I can tell you. Not because he was perfect, but because he was a human being. And when Jerome was talking about his daddy yesterday, about how he had to go sit with his daddy when his daddy was dying. I spent the last year of my daddy's life sitting with him, hugging him, loving on him, trying to give back to him what he'd give to me. I wouldn't trade that experience, that drive I made to Laguna Beach once a week for a year for all the tea in China. I sat there and watched him and told him he had get up off his butt and go to meetings he'd laugh and giggle at me i watched a human being in action and i loved him more than anything that i know of when he died i know about being able to love somebody i learned that here from you by observing you by exerting what you do that's what i have done here people like you came into that penitentiary i was at and told me things like my vocabulary which consisted of about four four-letter words mother ran all around in there you told me things like custom was a crutch for conversational cripples and then you stood my wrath when you corrected me you told me think like we don't say it that way Johnny we say it this way you were more concerned with saving my life than you were in hurting my feelings. And I learned to love you, Lord. I was angry at you and hostile and bitter at you most of the time. But I've come to understand as an after effect how much you love me, how much love it takes to correct. It takes much more love to correct than it does to overlook and make allowances. it doesn't require any love to overlook some nonsense that you're doing it takes love to have to love you enough to be willing to isolate me from you to tell you the truth somewhere in a book that was written a long time it says know the truth and the truth will set you free but alcoholics like me don't want to hear the truth we want some warped idea of what we think we want some justification for the actions that we're taking we want to be different and so we died by the multitudes out there in them streets defending our rights to be difference and we come into Alcoholics Anonymous and they tell us we're just one among many. We've got to be like everybody. You know that on the 4th of June 1961, I walked out of that penitentiary. I came out of that penitentiary before Jerome even took a drink. My wife said that she was five years old when I was coming out of my first penitenciary. I told her, well, I hope she's strong enough to hold up under the stress of it, for Christ's sake. See, some of these young people ain't got much going for them anymore. It's amazing what's happened to me since I've been hanging around you. See, I came out of that penitentiary not knowing what was going on. Never had I spent a day out there in them streets, out there In that world where you have to live sober. Well, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous teaches me how to live out there. See, the Program of Alcoholic Anonymous teaches me to live up there. The traditions have taught me to living here. There's a difference. With you, the traditions teach me how to live with you. The steps have taught me to live out there with them. The traditions have taught me to live in here with you." I didn't know that. I came out of the penitentiary on the 4th of June, 1961 to a world I didn' t know anything about. My mother fell off the steps blind drunk. I picked her up on a couch and put her on a coach and said, Mom, I'm going to an AA meeting. She said, Fine, I think you should. My mother will soon have 90 days. I will also hasten to tell you it ain't the first 90 days Mom's had. When Mom's sober, she comes to meetings, like a lot of people. But like a Lotta people, my mother doesn't stay sober because my mother's different. my mother doesn't have to do these things my mother only comes here when the heat's on see my mother is not desperate enough to do these things yet and my mother may have to die drunk I don't know I really don't know my sponsor my hard-hearted sponsor that I went to school with the school for hard-hardened sponsors told me one night that I had to go to work and he got me a job down and I showed up at this job and a guy want to know a dumb thing wonder what my social security card number was he said what's your Social Security card number kid and I said what it's a Social Security car don't you have one I said no and he said how old are you nice I'm 30 either you don't have a social security car and I says no I don't he said why not as I've never needed one so where have you been all these years I said you wouldn't understand if I told you nobody they took me down and got me a social security card. Put me to work. I couldn't go home and tell my sponsor that they weren't hiring ex-convicts. They weren't firing them. They hired me, put me to work. Dan Rick killed me on 10M oil fields. Put me to working. Can you imagine being high roll an adult dealer with a pimp working in the oil field? Kind of a humiliating experience. My sponsor wouldn't let me get a car when I had the money. He made me ride my little girl's bicycle to meetings. right through my old neighborhood. I'd ride this bicycle through this old neighborhood and my gang would be standing on the corner, oh boy does that AA really work? Now I drive my 1989 Corvette Roadster right by Folsom and honk the horn and say, yes, AA really does work. I should tell you that I only get loaned that from my wife from time to time. Life is good. You know that I remember I used to have to go out and find out what people did when they got paid. I didn't know. I used stand off in a corner of markets and watch i'd see people come in with their wives and these little kids they stick them in baskets backwards and push them down the aisle throw that stuff in there you go up there and a guy standing over grave look of concern on his face where that cash register is working so finally i got a paycheck and by this time my wife had come back and brought that little girl i've never supposed to see and she's going to have another the baby. I said, let's go to the market. She said, we don't need anything. I says, I don't care. We're going to market anyhow. She says, why? And I said that's what they do when they get paid. She asked, who? I said them. Have you ever tried to explain them to those? They don't know who they are, really. I mean, after one of them meetings on them, them Al-Anons will walk up and say, who are them? I'll say, you. We went out in the market that day, and gee, I had that look, that spiritual look that intoxicated newcomers, you know, like, let's go to the market, bitch, or I'm going to kill you. We pushed the kid around the thing backwards and she pulled cookies off the shelf and tore open peanut butter jars and threw them on the floor. It was just a real wonderful experience, trying to look cool all the time. Went home and went to get some money for a haircut and somebody stole her purse. You want to hear somebody scream? Listen to the thief when they get stolen from you. I ran it and raved and jumped and hollered. I'll tell you, if I could have caught that guy, he'd have another talker here this morning. I'll be up there in Folsom telling you, hey, hey, don't work, baby. That's the theme song of the losers. Hey, hey don't word. Hell, it don't. Yes, it does. Works very well, thank you. I tell you. A guy told me the other day, a newcomer. You know, newcomers got all kinds of sources of information. Everybody do. I mean, if you ever work with one later, just get one. Sit there. God, he'll tell you things you don't even know. This guy told me, he said, You know what the difference between a loser and a winner is, Johnny? And I said, What's that? He says, Losers do what they want to. Winners do what we want them to. Winners are the ones who do what have to. Do you know how smart these newcomers are? They're smart. They just got all the answers. They really do. I just didn't listen to them. I didn't know that. Yeah. Anything else you want to know, Sponsor? God, I don't know how I made it before you got here. That's another thing the newcomers don't seem to understand. Somehow or other, us old-timers survived till you blessed us with your presence. But most of us, most of it had a blessing that some of you don't have. most of us were more indoctrinated in a program of recovery than we are in the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous that's why there's a difference i'm not saying anything against the fellowship god knows the fellowship is essential i have to come to a fellowship i have to have a place to work i have people to talk to i have have a sponsor i have to have a meeting to go to to check my measurements i have to have some place to come in and sit down and be me and then no matter what's happening out there in that world i'm safe and secure here this is the only place in god's world that i am absolutely and totally safe and secured in the meaning of our thoughts now i am safer the great blessing has been mine is this that every once in a while every once in a while i am able to take the way i feel here out there and apply it in my life for periods of time you see these roundups and conventions are magnificent things the only problem is that tomorrow we wake up in reality tomorrow we wake up in the real world some of us have to go to work that's still not a good word but it's something I have to do but you see if I can take what I have felt being with you this weekend put it in that car and put it on that plane and take it home with me and take out there in that world tomorrow and apply it to my life and to the people I do business with on a daily basis and bring it back in and put it into my home group tomorrow night then this roundup would have been a success for me but if I hang the way I feel here on that doorway as I walk out of and I go back out of that world and I become an overbearing, anxious irresponsible, inconsiderate asshole then this thing will just be a memory i have to be able to take this into the meetings and i go to this feeling that we have there's a feeling of love and togetherness in this room i felt this weekend you could you could just whack it with a knife and cut it and take it with you that's what's here but you see that's the healing commodity for alcoholics is love that's that'sthe separation that separates us from the rest of where we love one another not because we're perfect for christ's sakes but because we all have a little single flaw in our makeups that made us alcoholic what it is i don't know what it was a strange thing that makes me alcoholic it makes me different from my fellows i don t know the book says that i have to i have to smash the idea or the illusion that someday i'm going to control and enjoy my drink and the idea that i am different has to be smashed i'm just like you i'm an alcoholic i'm not going to be like those other people out there thank god i know that and i've had all kinds of things happen to me since i've been sober you know i've meant to my wife committing suicide i raised those two little girls i've missed the business failures my sponsor died my father in alcoholics anonymous die my mother and alcoholics anonymous died people who raised me died i went through a divorce of a long time marriage it seemed to be the thing that's catching on nowadays i don't know what's going on out there i really don't no i'm just i don t know what happened like sharon was talking about and by the way i want to tell you something that i've been thinking about i know all speakers i know jerome i saw jerome come to alcoholic synonymous i knew vince i saw ben i was that guy Ben talked about when he comes to his first meeting. I'm the only guy who's ever known him since the day he came to Alcoholics Anonymous in this instance. I watched him through all that, and I watched Sharon come into Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm going to tell you something. These are fine, fine, fine members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Good members of the Alcoholics I know them folks. I don't just see them stand here in their fineries and talk, I see them in action in your home group where it counts. I see him working with newcomers and I see him at meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous and I do the things, I see them do the thing they do so I know they're good members of allah i can't say that about a lot of people i've heard talk in some places but i can say it i'll tell you i just hope and pray to god there's proud being here with me this weekend as i've been with them i'll say that i'm proud to be with them if i'm allowed to have that word in my vocabulary that's the pride i feel of being able to associate with these good people you good people my life is taken into a new dimension fifth fourth dimension hell i'm in the 17th dimension somewhere i don't where i'm at most of the time i wander around out there you know i live long periods of time and never want anything for myself it's amazing to me a guy as selfish and self-centered as i am don't want nothing for me it's amazing my wife said to me what do you want for christmas i don't know what do i want i don t need nothing she looks at me like i'm nuts have you ever told an alcoholic what you want to say i really don't know i don' t need anything hell they usually give you a shopping list but it's true and just because i've been doing things around here now what's my life i'm going to tell you what my life's like by telling you a little story I love this little story. It says so much without saying a lot, really. Everybody that knows me knows there's one thing in the world I love to do, and what Barbara doesn't tell you is that the reason that I don't have a tough time getting to Seaside is because that convention that I was going to happened to be at Augusta, Georgia, two years in a row, the ones that are going on this weekend. but she caught me before I made my reservation to Augusta this year so I'm stuck. That's why I love to play golf, everybody knows that. And a few years ago a company I was working for bought me a membership in a very exclusive country club and I'm out there playing golf and I walk down the fairways one Wednesday and play golf with a couple of doctors got a short sleeve shirt on on my arm but I think like daggers through skulls with blood dripping from them little panthers with their sides shot out you know and there's a few homemade things you know just real conversation pieces in the coffee shop I'll tell you that little doctor looked at me and he said you have big forearms Johnny and I said I sure do he said you ever played baseball I said every time I went to jail he looked at me and he went you've never been in jail well I never told him any different I'm kind of glad see he told me his story this little doctor he's a little Jewish guy he lived in the Bronx in New York he was in an orphanage this little Jewish man bound to terms self-made guy man he worked and he studied and he sacrificed he did what he took himself out of that orphanage then he worked and he studying and he sacrificed, he did without, he put himself through school, through medical school, became a doctor. Then he saved his money, worked, he studied, he sacrificed. He bought a house. He joined the country club and he plays golf on Wednesdays. Man, he worked and he studied. A self-made man. Worked, studied, sacrificed, and did without and he did all that stuff all his life. See, I can't tell him. I spent my entire lifetime running in and out of penitentiaries and nut houses up and down the street using and abusing and destroying people and got sober and ended up in the same place he did. And the reason I can't tell him is because he don't believe me. I even showed him the scars once. I said, that's where I used to stick that heroin. He says, that tattoo probably got infected. They can't believe. They can take you from there and stand you there. It's impossible. But you see, very few of them ever reckoned with the will of God either. The power of God, the power of Almighty God in a human being's life. See, God ain't given up on none of us. The doctors gave up on me, the psychiatrists gave up upon me, the preachers, the teachers, the wardens, all of them. They all gave up one. They told me I'm hopeless. I got papers in Sacramento to prove I'm nuts by some of the better doctors in the world. and yet the only therapy I've ever applied in my life has been a program called Outpost Now. And yet from time to time I have sat in these rooms and I have heard things from this podium like this people will say to you AA ain't enough. Anybody who would ever tell you AA ainít enough ain't tried AA. Because I don't know anybody who lives any better than I do and I ain't never tried nothing else but AA. I said to these old timers one day, what is my sobriety? Where did it come from? How come I've got it? And this old lady I love by the name of Myrtle Snyder said to me, honey, your sobriery is a gift from God. Being the type of person I was, I said, I don't want to owe God nothing. What do I do for God? Now, all these are, we don't wanna be indebted. She laughed and smiled. Like they do, them old-timers that smile, well, granddaddy got you. What'd you do with your sobriety, she said to me, would be your gift to God. I have thought about that for a long, long time. Matter of fact, I didn't think about much of anything else. my sobriety is the most priceless gift that I possess I do nothing to put it in jeopardy I live nowhere contrary to the teaching to this program of alcohol economics I'm a basic human being and I make mistakes, sure and my mistakes usually hurt other people, sure but my sobrietty is my most pr restless gift I do not do anything to put in jeopardies if what I did with my sobriety would be my gift back to my loving Father God. I would only live with one prayer on my lips from now forever and evermore. I would always pray that my loving father God would be as pleased with my gift to him today as I've been with his for 29 years. Thank you. Thank you.