Sponsorship Without the Best Thinking of Earl – Earl H.

Erle Walsh Reviewer Reviewer 1 Knock it off! My name's Erle. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. It's very nice to be back here. I love it here. I do? You're laughing. I do. I love in here. I really do love it here. I think it's a great place. I landed and it was white. I'm from California, you know, and that never happens. You know, and you guys are very clearly just completely fine with the cold thing. You know? Where I live, man, it drops below 40, we just close the schools. You know what I mean? We don't mess with the cool thing at all. Well, it's very nice to be here. I want to thank Eric for asking me to come share here. It's always an honor and a privilege. Meredith, where's Meredith? Is Meredith here? There you are. Meredith for keeping tabs with me and she and Richie picked me up. Thank you, Richie. Wherever you are, where are you? She's not here. Richie no here. For picking me up at the airport to keep an eye on me and everything is really nice. Thank you very much. So I go till nine, right? Come on, man. All right, I... Let's just do this thing. This is the kickoff, huh? We're kicking it off here. Getting it going. Starting the party. All right. All right... I drank. That's a good start. I drank... I didn't start drinking until I was 12. I held off as long as I possibly could. I had been restless, irritable and discontented for a long time prior to that first drink it just was not going well at all when I was four years old I was sleepwalking and talking in my sleep as told to me by my mother I have no memory of this at all I would wake up in the middle of the night I would walk through the house I would turn on the lights in the house and I would stand at the foot of my parents bed and talk to them for a while scare the hell out of them right this little tiny person you know asleep talking away about stuff and then i'd go back to the house i'd turn the lights off as i'd going i'd get back in the bed and they'd follow me and ask me questions and i'd answer their questions and stuff it's like a freaky little kid right so they took me to a psychiatrist and the answer they came up with was every night before i went to sleep they give me a tablespoon of this liquid right and just knock me out No more problem. So I think subconsciously, at the age of four, my information was if you don't like the way things are going, take something. So I kind of filed that away for future reference and went through the rest of what I call the black hole of my childhood. I don't remember a lot about being a kid. I just don't. And I've been sober long enough now I don'T go looking under rocks either. You know what I mean? I'm not thinking about it all the time trying to figure out why I can't remember my childhood I can remember it fine. it's over anyway what the hell there are many people who will tell you I'm having my childhood now when I was 12 years old they decided to do some more tests on me took a bunch of tests and they determined that I had this very high IQ I don't have it anymore so I'm not lying that's been gone for a long, long time But so they said, well, I'll send him off to boarding school. Get him out from under his mother's wings. My father, right? Jesus. My father decided when I was 12, he said, it's time for me to become a man! Right? And I was, uh, 12 years old, 5 feet tall, about 104 pounds. Right? I mean, manhood was just like any second. You know what I mean? I was like this little child. And I got thrown in a car and shipped off to boring school. And, uh... As I stood there with a little suitcase sitting next to me and everybody else driving away, the fact that that moment was was that I was being given an opportunity for a wonderful education would hold me in good stead to this very day the feeling was was that i had just been thrown away by the people who knew me best in the world and i didn't know what i'd done wrong to be thrown away to be removed from the family so i uh spent three days calling home scared to death crying you know like children will do asking my mother can i come home and my mother saying, well, you know, and in the background you hear my father going, hang up! I gotta go. And after three days it was like something just snapped inside me. I thought, you don't want me, I don't Want You. And I turned my back on my family and I pretty much never went back. And there I was, adrift in the world. I didn't feel connected to another human being on the face of the earth. I was the youngest and the smallest kid of 250 boys in a think tank boarding school. They'd scoured the earth to find 250 of the brightest, most disturbed young boys they could find and put us all on this campus. I was going to school with guys named Tanu Sakhtip Malbutra and a couple of brothers from Lebanon and two guys from Japan. It was a real intense kind of Lord of the Flies kind of place. Just really bright, disturbed kids. And I had no tools for living. I didn't know how to be in the world. I didn'T know how To do anything. And first week there, I'm walking around minding my own business, and I ran into Tiny. Every high school has got a guy named Tiny, right? He's 6'4", 240, you know, plays guard on the football team, right. Actually, I didn'T find Tiny. Tiny found me. And Tiny came up and said, How are you doing, punk? And he slapped me in the back of the head and sent me and my books flying, right, and I got up and I had one of those like out-of-body experiences that you have where you're watching yourself do something while your head's saying, no. This is not right. And I walked up and I hit Tiny as hard as I could, which had no effect on Tiny at all. And Tiny looked down at me and said, you've got a lot of guts, kid. And then he beat the crap out of me. And as I'm taking the beating, I'm thinking, this is going pretty good. Because the fact... I'd taken beatings. That was no big deal. But the fact is that I was terrified of this guy And he had just said, you've got a lot of guts. My violence had masked my fear. First tool for living was, when frightened, attack. They won't know you're afraid if you do. So that was my first tool. So then I go back to my room and I'm sitting in my room. I've got knots all over my head. I'm a mess waiting for the bleeding to stop. In 30 minutes it's spread across this campus like wildfire. Watch out for this little Hightower kid. He's a maniac. He attacked tiny, right? so now I've got this reputation that's got absolutely nothing to do with who I am I'm a frightened, beaten child that's who I Am and now I'm like this wild guy it's this reputation I've Got it's just getting worse by the second and the cool guys came around Matt came around and he opened up my dorm room and he goes, hey, you want to smoke a joint? I said, well yeah yeah I do and I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about I didn't know what that meant. But all I heard was, do you want to come with us? The answer was yeah. I mean, he could have said, look, we're going to go kill the Spanish teacher. You want to go? Yeah, I'm with you, man. I'm avec you because I'm alone in the world and I've got to hook up now. I'll go with anybody. Let's go. So we go and we pick up Steve, and Steve's got this Tupperware container wrapped in aluminum foil. And he's carrying it like it's very important. and we go behind the dorm and we're standing by this tree two 13 year olds and a 12 year old real gangsters and he fires up this joint and he hands it to me and I take a hit and that burns the lungs and that's really fun here you go you can have that right and then Stephen unwrapped the Tupperware container it was full of cheap red wine very cheap red win no grapes involved red wine fortified stuff right and he gave me that i took a pull on that and that burns that's nasty right and i'm standing there looking at these two total strangers thinking i don't get it you know two total strangers heads pounding lungs are burning stomachs burning tiny's out there somewhere you know this is this you know family's throwing me away this is lousy i hate my life and i mean just like that, man. It happened. That thing that makes me bodily different from my fellows occurred and suddenly I was comfortable standing where I was standing doing what I was doing with the people I was dealing with. Never felt like that before. I was fine. I was better than fine. Everything was fine! You know? And I don't know. Is it the pot? Is it the wine? Is the fact that I'm standing here with my two very close personal friends? man Steve I don't know and I don' t care because all the warnings I got as a kid you know you smoke that weed man 30 minutes you're on your way downtown looking for some heroin you know I felt no need for heroin you know drink that evil rum man you drink that demon rum right you become a hobo I don''t feel like becoming a hobos whatever the hell a hobo is. I don't know what the hell that is. I just feel comfortable standing right here talking to my bros, having a good time. That's all. What's the problem? Nobody died that night. Nobody went to prison. No blood was drawn. Nobody went to the nut house. All these things were going to happen. But that was not my experience at that moment. At that moment, I feel better than I've ever felt in my life and nothing bad happened. The knots don't hurt. Family? Screw them. Tiny? Bring it on, man. You know, I feel good. I can do this. I felt like this life, I can go through this. It was a secret to life for me. I said I have to do this as often as I possibly can. I made a commitment right there. And I did. I did that as often and every day for the next 16 years no matter what. No matter what Because, see, I drink no matter what. That's what differentiates me from the problem drinker. The problem drinkers, you give them a good reason to stop, they can actually make a decision to stop and then act upon that decision. They can do it. Me? It doesn't make any difference if I've got a good region to stop or not. It's like air for me. I have to do it, I don't even touch the brakes. I was never one of those guys that tried to quit. I never tried to quit because I knew it was just not possible for somebody like me. I had to do it and nothing that came along ever seemed to be enough of a reason for me to consider stopping ever it was too important to me anyway, what the hell was I talking about doesn't matter anyway humble beginnings a little pie, a little wine 13 pills I took some pills that's what I did went to a party, guy said would you like a couple of pills I said, well, yes, I would. And he gave me a couple of pills. 20 minutes later, I was laying on the floor, very happy on the floor. Very happy down there. He came back and said, anything we can get you? I said just, what do you call those? And he said, two in all. I went, alright, two and all. I'm going to write that down. Asked for that by name. So a little two in all, a little second all, got strong out on all that stuff. Very nice. Fourteen with psychedelics. The only reason I took a psychedelic because I was on a 10-hour pass in the boarding school, and this girl, is that Jim back there? Hey, man. Good to see you. I used to have a home group here. I lived in Chicago for five and a half months, like 97? Something like that? 97? Yeah, it was a blast. I mean, I knew Jim from that meeting. Spotted you all the way over there, man! Excellent. I don't forget. Very kind of me. Thank you. That's going to happen a lot, I think. You know where I just kind of... Where I just kind of go that way. Anyway, where the hell was I? All right. Ten hour pass from the boarding school. Went with Debbie. Was on a ten hour pass with Debbie Debbie was an older woman She was 15 and a half And she was a bad girl A lot of respect for Debbie man, to this day. I didn't even know what was going on. And David said, would you like some acid? And I said, well, yes. Again, I drew that because I'm trying to make it clear that I was not on top of things. You know what I mean? I was just not really keenly aware of what was Going On. You Know What I Mean? It was just happening as I went along. And she pulled out a lipstick tube and she spun it open and there was a little pill on the end of the lipstick, which I thought was very clever to hide that in there like that, right? So I took it and put it in my mouth and swallowed it. And she said, did you take that whole thing? And I said, well, yes, I did. Yeah, I didn't. And she says, well that was three hits of white lightning. The guy over here just went, oh, that's the wrong thing to do. Yes, it was. the next as you can imagine the next two days were very interesting right i kind of like came in out of it you know what i mean i was in a market with her you know you know food market and we were married apparently we had decided and i looked at her and i said do we have any children she said we have two i said then we're gonna need these diapers right here and then kind of went back out and to this day going to a supermarket is like it requires I have to be very focused to go to the market I have a list I have an idea I have got to have a very specific mission to go into the market because places freak me out I mean you've got to make a lot of decisions in there you know what I mean if you're going for corn it's like okay there's canned corn and green corn and that Mexicorn thing and somewhere over there is like corn on the cob screw it man I'll come back too much to do you've never seen an abandoned shopping cart. You seen those? I understand that guy, you know? It's just... I'm back. You got to know your limitations, man. You gotto know your limitation. Those are mine for a long time. To this day, I make a list and I go in. I need these things. And for a while, I couldn't go in them. I was scared to death of them because there was alcohol in them and it scared me to death to go into a place where they had alcohol. Just beer and wine but that'll get me started. Anyway, I did about 650 acid trips. Got classified legally insane by the military a few years later, but that's a whole other story. At 15, I started shooting dope, and the only reason I shot dope was I was at a party in Marina Del Rey, California, and a girl walked up to me and said, would you like me to stick this in your body? And I said, well, yes, I would. And she did, and it was one of those ones where you just go... It was a good one, man. And all the way down, all I remember... On the way down, all I remember thinking was, oh, yeah. That was just like instant what problems. And now, I've got to say, you know, I identify as an alcoholic. I'm talking about drugs, and I want to show my respect. The only reason I'm telling you this is because I'm not a drug addict. The only thing I'm saying about drugs is because I'm a child of the 60s. We were very, very focused on the drugs. What we thought were the original drug addicts, you know what I mean? We were hippies. We were the bad boys, you Know what I Mean? or sticking needles in our arms or dropping acid and going crazy and very focused on the drugs. The truth is, having done some inventory work and looked back on my life in retrospect, here's the truth. My drug of choice is what do you got? You know, I'm no specialist. You know what I mean? I didn't do... But if you are and you did one thing right in the dirt and you came here, God bless you, have a seat, congratulations, you know. Glad to see you. My drugofchoice is What do you got? So, I mean, the drugs would come and go and come and go. Come and go. I prefer down and out. I prefer heroin, barbiturates, alcohol. These are a few of my favorite things. You know what I mean? Those are the things that I like. But if you don't have those, I'll take a big bag of the cocaine, please. My idea of a perfect evening is just sitting around checking my pulse. You know who I mean. that's a good night but if we can't do that, that's fine I'll take the cocaine let's sit around listening to the air around our heads driving down the freeway decoding license plates yeah, that is a good idea deciphering the messages from the radio window patrol all those things I will be happy to do all that stuff Because you know what? The truth is that it's not so much up or down that's a big deal to me. The important thing to me is I've got to get out of right here, right now. Because right here right now, I'm just Earl. Right here right Now, I am restless. I am irritable. I'm discontented. Right here, Right now, i'm self-centered and I'm afraid. Right here Right now I'm not enough and I never ever ever will be. And I know it. So I've gotta get out here. So if we can go down, would prefer it. Can't, let's go up. So the drugs would come and go. There was only one thing that was on the table every single day. That was alcohol. And I think there's a very simple reason for the fact there was always booze on the tablet, and that's this. Drugs are completely unreliable. And alcohol is the most reliable thing you can get your hands on. That's the big dog. Alcohol. Right? There's no quality control going on out there on the street. When was the last time you went to connect with your heroin dealer or your cocaine dealer, and you went in and said, you know, I'd like an eight ball. And the guy said, you know Earl, it's a little substandard this week. You know? We're sending this shipment back. We're going to try to have something else for you next week. You just hang on there, pal. Never. Every time you go, oh, it's unbelievable, man. It's insane. You better cut this once, maybe twice before you eat it. You know, big bag of salt. What are you doing? I'm shooting baby laxative. Alcohol you could count on. Alcohol had to be there for me every day. You do so much cocaine, you can't get your mouth open anymore. And it's 7.30 and the party just started and you've overshot the mark completely again. You suck a little gin through your teeth, loosen it right up, go right on with the party. Acid a little too spooky? Don't worry about it. Gin will get you right back in the comfort zone. Booze is reliable. You get a fifth of Jack Daniels, you get a quart of good gin, you know what you got. You know that no matter what else happens now, I'm covered. Because I've got what I ultimately need to get me out of right here, right now. I've Got It, right there. So anything else is just trimmings. You know? It's the stuff that, okay, I can be cool with everybody else and do all these other little things, but I got my alcohol, I'm cover. The quiet truth. of me in the 60s, right? I dropped out of high school when I was 16, got committed to my first mental institution. That's always a pleasure. Got committed for three months of observation and a year of rehabilitation, which I thought was a little excessive. So I'm taking three cups of pills a day and shuffling around in this joint, you know what I mean? And they're asking me, how do you feel? You know, how would I know? I've been loaded since I was 12. And you feel, I'm fine. Is that the answer? Can I get out of here now? Well, we'll talk some more tomorrow. Ah, good. Shuffling around. So I decided to escape. And you got them here. You got the exit signs, except they were green ones. Green exit signs that were lit up and I used to look at those and think, that's what I want to do. They boiled it down to one word for me. I just want to exit. I don't want to be here anymore. So I devised my escape plan. I usedと have all my meals with Kilday. We were talking about KildAY earlier. Kilday was nuts, right? Hence, she was in this place. And Kildy, all you had to do to flip Kildey out was just look at her and say, Kildly, how you doing? Kildley just went, wow! You got a little Kildane in you, don't you? I said, how are you doing, and she went, ha! Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. And she'd flip out, so I used Kildays as my diversion when I went for my escape, right, So I got Kelly all flipped out and sent her flying that way. She's flying that away, and I'm sitting at my table, and I am looking at the X, and going to make my break. It's like, ready, ready. Go! And I'm hauling ass. That's all I got. But it's the first time you try to make a move in the nun house, and you're looking down like, what the hell happened? Because your hands were confined. You're going, you know, the move ain't there. you got like slow and stopped that's all you got and the arms are working and I'm not giving up I mean I'm an alcoholic right we're tenacious I'm still moving you know I'm going I'm gonna be there in 20 minutes and you hear over the loudspeaker from the nurse's station uh Ed when you got a minute you want to grab Earl he's making a break for the door Ed's in there having a sandwich going yeah yeah yeah I'll get him in a minute off to the room with no doorknob so I stayed there for a while I got out of there, got thrown in another nut house, escaped from there on the first day before they got the Thorazine in me. And as I'm going for the back fence, I'm thinking I'm 16, 17 years old. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm high school dropout. I'm at any moment hopefully an escaped mental patient. This is like my resume, you know. And if I make that fence, I don't have any problems because I'll be drunk in 20 minutes. And that's all that matters in my life because I drink no matter what, like I said before. Given a good reason, I don' t stop. They got this thing they do in my neck of the woods where they tell newcomers, just don't drink or use no matter what. And I think, yeah, okay. That's really good advice. Great advice. A lot of newcomers going, cool, yeah. That's kind of like that just say no thing, right? That worked. That worked really well. So how can I just not drink or using no matter what? I'm the exact opposite of that. I drink and use no mater what. Given great reasons, I can't seem to stop. If I could not drink or use no matter what, I guarantee you I would not be here tonight. What the hell for? Why the hell would I get on a plane and come here? You know? Well, drink, drink. You know what I mean? Good luck to you. I know like ten people in Chicago. Why the heck would I Get on a Plane? I hate to fly. I'm a terrified flyer. I'm not a frightened flyer, I'm terrified flyers. You never ever want to sit next to me in a plane. Ever. I've like freaked out like Korean people that don't even speak English. talking to them when the plane starts to bump. I don't like it. You'll know why in a minute, but it's based on life experience why I hate being in airplanes. Why would I get on an airplane and fly four hours from LA to come here when I could just be home just not drinking or using no matter what? Why would you do that? Why would they work the steps? I don' t think so. Take phone calls at 3 a.m. from whining, suffering newcomers who haven' t done a thing all day long to encourage or support their own recovery, but think 3 a.m. is a great time to call her up, right? Am I taking that call? I don't think so. You know, swing by the house, here's a couple of bucks, first drink's on me. Oh, me at 3 a。m. in the morning. If I take that call, no, because I'd be home not drinking or using no matter what because I could do that, right. Detox centers would be kicking out winners. 72 hours and free, right, It wouldn't be the Betty Ford Center. It would be the Betty Ford Bed and Breakfast, you know? You go in, stay for the weekend, kick, give you a little muffin, a little juice, you know, talk to you. And then they'd say, you know Earl, you know you're an alcoholic, don't you? And I'd say... Now you know for you drinking is to die. You know you are an alcoholic again. I'm going to repeat it one more time. You know your an alcoholic don't ya? Oh yeah. So you're not going to drink anymore, are you? No. No. No. No. You now armed with the information that you have, you will be able to go forth and not drink or use no matter what, not, won't you, Earl? Oh yeah. I'm drunk within an hour. Within an hour, self-knowledge avails me nothing, nothing, I got to stay in the game, right? So anyway, tangent, tangent. Three years out on the street, 19 I went to college, bizarre experience. I met this woman, we talked for 20 minutes and it went well so we were in love. I needed to do something with my life so I went on this interview at this college and I got accepted to a business college in Northern California because we're talkers, right? He was a musician so I was a musicians. His favorite color was blue. That's amazing. It's always good. I just lined up with this guy, and he said, you'll be a wonderful addition to our campus in the fall. All right, good. So me and this woman loaded up eight pounds of hash and all our belongings and we drove to Northern California to hire a learning. And she got a straight job, and we got an apartment, and I went to college during the day, gave them a year's tuition up front, said transcripts are in the mail. They said fine. Got an adult night school thing going. Got my adult night high school diploma thing going, right? I'm going to high school and college at the same time. I started a drug business. My business was, I became a drug dealer. Business was booming. I'm studying marketing, production, distribution in college. My business is booming. You know what I mean? I'm having a great time. I'm living a great life. I'm doing a great job. This woman is starting to say the wrong things to me. God bless her. She's saying stuff like, I'm too high. Right? Well, if you can say it, it's not true. That's not truth. So she had to go. So she went back to L.A., and I drank the way I wanted to drink and used the way we wanted to use. Twenty years old, I got diagnosed with malignant cancer. I flew back to LA. They did major surgery on my upper back. They told me I was going to die. They prepared my family for me to die, here comes the family. And I remember looking at them and thinking, you don't even know who you're talking to. Did the major surgery thing. They didn't put me in the nuclear medicine program, and I didn't like the drugs they put me on and that, so I just split. And I went home and got loaded the way eye get loaded. And I beat the cancer thing. Basically, I believe, the way I was using in those days, my body was so toxic, cancer could not live in my body. I became worse than cancer. The way, ah, it was bad. Anyway, 21, my mother calls me back and says, look, we haven't been anywhere as a family in 10 years. Let's come back to L.A., we'll go somewhere for your 22nd birthday, we'll do anything we want to go, let's just go as a fan. I said fine. So I flew back to LA, and on my 22nd birthday, We took off to fly to Guadalajara in Mexico, and on the way there, the plane crashed. And my mother, my little sister, and my father all died in the crash, and I didn't. And I woke up on this mountain in Mexico and my skull was fractured, my back was broken in three places, paralyzed from the waist down, arm was mangled, leg mangled. The only thing I could move was my right arm, which is basically the opposite of right now. And my mother was laying right over there My little sister Kimberly was right over here And my father was over there And they were hurt bad And I couldn't move I was awake and I couldn' t move to help any of them And I had to lay there and watch them all bleed to death Right in front of me And I said, you know, any God That would take a kind, gentle, loving Poetic little creature Like my little sister, Kimberly And leave somebody like me on the planet I got no use for a God of this type, and I renounced God. Then some guys came up, and they scavenged the plane wreck. Took the money out of my wallet and scavenaged the plane rack and then went back down the mountain and left me up there to die. So I had no more love for you either. I was out of the game. No God, no fellow man. I'm out. I hate this life. I hate these people. I hate the world. I had this big facade going in my life that made it possible for me to be around you. But I didn't need it anymore because I no longer cared what you thought. I thought, I'm going to get down up this mountain, and I'm gonna let you know what I think of this life, this place that we live. And they finally, some other guys came up, and they took me and my mother, and they loaded us in the back of this flatbed truck, and they take us down the mountain to an aid station. They tagged my mother dead. They tagged me dead, and they sat there smoking cigarettes waiting for me to die, and I didn't. They finally took me to the hospital. It was a brand-new hospital. It wasn't even finished yet. It was called Hospital Fatima in Los Mochos, Mexico. And then the Federales showed up because they found out my name, and they wanted to know what I was doing back in Mexico. It was a big problem. That, too, is another story we don't need to get into here. But they interrogated me through an interpreter for three and a half days and wouldn't give me anything for paying. And I finally called a buddy of mine in Northern California who called some associates in Mexico City who flew a plane in and paid some people off, and they plastered me from the neck down and smuggled me out of Mexico up to a hospital in California. I stayed there for quite a while and came out of there crazy. that was crazy and I went on my last run and it lasted for 6 years I was sober 3 times in 6 years they were for 72 hours each and it's when I would go into this hospital it's a little bootleg sanitarium where you'd go in and give them 150 cash and they'd strap you to a gurney and shoot you for lanic convulsions and at the end of 72 hours they'd send you home or the morgue and they didn't really care which way you went and you'd lay there kicking like a dog and I would reintroduce myself to God remember the last time I was in there I reintroduced myself to god and I said you know what I'm dying and I'm losing my mind And I don't know which is going to go first But it's over, I can't drink anymore I can live this life anymore The madness of this life So either just let me die or let me stay sober I'll stay sober, I promise you and everything that I hold dear That I will never ever ever drink again My ass is kicked And I got up off that table and I went out and I drank for two more years because I could not stop drinking. I could not stop. And when it was done, I came out of my last blackout and I was 28 years old. It was the day before my 28th birthday. I had hair out like this and a beard like this. I was yellow. I was psychotic and I don't use that term loosely. I was psychotic. Family was dead, had no friends, had no place to live. I'd broken 74 bones. I had over 650 stitches in me. I'd been stabbed twice, shot at. They were deciding whether or not to charged me with attempted murder again you know I mean I burned my life to the ground there was no place in my life I could look and say that's going okay you know it was just a wasteland and I just said help and they took me by ambulance to the hospital they pumped my stomach I had my stomach pumped so many times I could talk to you why they did it you know they'd run their tooth thing, you know? How you doing, Earl? Bad day. Oh, man. Good thing to get good at. You should know, I mean, there's little telltale signs that life isn't going well. One is that you develop a skill around having your stomach pumped. Another is when they're loading into the gurney of the ambulance after an OD one more time and one of the attendants looks down at you and says, hi Earl. This is not good. These are signs it's not going well. Anyway, I basically drank myself to death and then I came here. And I stayed in the hospital for 17 days of detox and 30 more days on a free bed. And how they moved you from detox to the free bed in this place I was in was they give you a half a cup of decaf coffee in a styrofoam cup, and if you could get it to your mouth without spilling it, you were good. You could move out of detox and go to the program. So I mean, there's guys still in there with the yips and hollering at it, you know what I mean? It was crazy. It was 42 guys in one room, 21 cots on each side of the room with sheets drawn between them. And what you got to kick in there was if you threw a seizure, they'd give you some anti-seizure medication. But you had to throw a seizure to get that. So you'd be hanging onto your cot and you'd flip up out of your cot, you know what I mean? And you're doing the thing on the floor and they'd roll by and give you when you settle down, they'd give you a little of that. No, good, thanks. So you had to want it. You had to WANT it, right? It was not comfortable. It was NOT comfortable. And I came out of there and I knew one thing. You don't want to die? Go to AA. It's the only place a guy like you is going to make it, Earl. I said, okay. And on a Friday night, I went into the basement of a church to an 830 meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and I sat in the back with my arms folded, best tough guy look on my face, mad dog and everybody that looked at me, because I was so afraid you were going to come up to me and ask me the questions I couldn't answer. Like, how are you doing? What's going on? I don't know. I don' t have a clue, man. I don''t know how to chit-chat. I don ''t know How to get along. I don'T know How To Have A Polite Conversation. I Don''t Know How To Engage With Other People. I Don ''t KnowHow To Do Any Of That. I Know HowTo Buy Drugs. I KnowHowTo Sell Them. I KnowhowTo Case A Room. I KnowHowTo Look For The Exits. I Know how to size up who''s got the juice in the room, who's got the power and how I'm going to play my angle. That's how I think. That's what goes on in my head. I don't walk up and say, How are you? And then actually listen when you tell me. Don't confuse me with some guy that wants to hear about your day. I don' t care about your day. I don''t care about you. I don ''t at all. I hate you. I got to go to AA because it's the only place I can stay alive apparently. Apparently you have some information on how I can do that. Great. Let's not get cozy. Just give me what I need, and I'll see you. And I sat in the back, right? And I said, and this old guy got up to speak. And I thought, oh, great. I mean, I tell you, man, if I'd have had someplace else to go, I'd of gone there. But I was lucky. I got here destroyed, which is the only way a guy like me was going to get here and make it was destroyed. The bridge was burned. I had nowhere to go. So I just sat there. And this old guys got up, and he shared his experience, strength, and hope. I didn't know that's what he was doing at the time. I do now, but I didn' t then. But two things happened. This guy, I got to sit there with this look of disdain on my face, acting like I couldn't stand what was going on, and that I knew that this guy was just full of, yeah? I'm really trying to behave with that language there. I'm doing very well. See, I'm getting a nod over there. Very good or keep it up. Doing very well, huh? But I sat there, and this guy, and he talked openly and honestly about his feelings as a man. He talked about waking up in the morning with his head chewing on him. His head telling him he was worthless, he was no good, he was never going to amount to anything. There was really no point in his getting up. And this was as his feet were hitting the floor in the morning. And he'd just go, you know, thanks for sharing. And he would go take a shower and he'd get dressed with his head chewing him, just chewing on them, messing with him. And he went to work and put in an honest day's work and at the end of work he'd go get a bite to eat and then he'd go to an AA meeting. And he didn't go to one AA meeting to sit there and take from the AA meeting, see what they had for him tonight, because he had gotten a sponsor. And that sponsor had taken him through the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he had worked the 12 steps as outlined in that book. And he added a spiritual awakening as a result of doing that. He'd been restored to sanity, soundness of mind. He'd be relieved of the desire to drink. The obsession had been removed. It had happened for him. So he would go to an AA meeting to see what he could bring to it. To be of service to the meeting. To help with the chairs. Or talk to the guy at the break who'd raised his hand who was in his first 30 days. that's what he did. And then he would go home and he would get in bed, head chewing on them the whole day, active full life, no wreckage all day. That was amazing to me because that never happened to me. I mean, I wake up, wreckage. It just happens. I don't know how to be in the world. I don't have to get along. I don't know how to play by the rules. It's not the way my head works. And I got to sit there and inside I'm thinking, this is amazing. While I looked at him on the outside like, yeah, right. and then he said you know what, I don't care whether you like what I got to say or not you don't like it, go to another meeting I loved that because it made it clear to me this guy's not selling me something he's sharing it with me if I want it, I can have it, it's for free I don' t want it? Cool, go do another meeting maybe you'll hear somebody else that you can identify with and I thought, this is cool, I'm coming back now I didn't know but that moment was one of the most powerful moments in my life that guy gave me something I came here without that I think is the greatest gift you can give an alcoholic. I came here hopeless, and that man gave me hope. And now if you'd have asked me that night, well, where would you get out of that meeting? I would have told you to get away from me. I didn't know. You know what I mean? This wasn't clear to me, but it's what was happening to me. And I've never left. I did that. I kept coming back. And I stayed. Last November, I celebrated 21 years sober. And you're just, you're applauding yourselves, trust me, because I guarantee you the 21 years of sobriety that I've had the pleasure of enjoying began and is based upon absolutely nothing that I brought here. You understand what I mean? There's none of Earl's best thinking involved in that, that journey. And everything that's made that possible in my life is a result of coming here, being willing to be a participant in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's what's gotten me through. It's the only thing that's gottenme through. So here I was. Here I am in AA. And they said, get a sponsor. And I said, what's a sponsor? And they say, sponsor somebody who's got what you want. And I say, well, I personally would like to drink. So maybe it's a little early to be throwing the ball back at my court. And I have come, personally, I have come to believe that I want to get a sponsor who's got what he wants. Because I think the best definition of happiness is wanting what you've got. And I had to get this guy to get me a sponsor like that. And I found this guy and he was nuts. The only person he had been committed to the mental institutions 23 times. He's the only guy I ever met who was evicted from the nut house. They said, you have to go. If you don't go now, you're never going to leave. You're going to be one of the ones we just keep. We feed you. We diaper you. We take you out. We get a little sun on you. We bring you back in. You're gonna be one of those guys. And he left. They threw him into AA and he stayed sober almost 10 years and I met him. And he was just this bigger than life guy and he had, you know what he had? He had a love for being sober. I didn't have that and I wanted it. And he had a lot of love of life. He was a very passionate man and I needed that. I wanted to feel strongly about something again. I didn't feel strongly about anything, anything. It was the late, great Donald Madden who was my sponsor. He was an absolutely phenomenal human being. Best sponsor ever in the history of AA. He was. And if you don't feel that way about your sponsor, I suggest you get another one. That's how I felt about him, man. He was amazing. And he said to me, Earl, you don' t have to like what I tell you and you don''t have to think it's a good idea. You just have to do it. And ifyou do it, you're going to be all right because this is a program of action. I said, okay. I'm thinking, I can get around that. No, I couldn't, man. I couldn'T. He never asked me to go to a meeting. He never askED me if I would pick someone up. He never ASKED me if I wOULD like a commitment at the meeting that they were all gathering at. And he and all his poncies, he WOULD call me up and say, we'RE GOING TO A MEETING. Click. Go to the corner of 6th and Santa Monica and pick up little Ed. Click. fine i mean i remember when i was brand new in sobriety i had this little one room apartment that i'd gotten right 325 a month and i was having trouble paying the rent right i mean I was barely hanging on man i had a 1968 volkswagen that you had to push to start it right so i only went to meetings on hills but if i found a good meeting i like this on flat ground i would just leave it outside running Because the only guy in AA knew that I got two hours to the gallon. Just banging away out there until the neighbors complained and they made me move it, right? What the hell was I talking about? Donald and Little Ed, right. And Donald would say, go pick up this guy. And I would go and I would get in my little thing. Oh, I had this little apartment. That's what it was. Look at that, I got all the way back on my own. That was good. You learn when you've done the things I've done in my life, you learn to accommodate that moment when the screen just goes blank. And you're there again. You just learn to roll with it. I've become quite comfortable with it Anyway, I was in this little apartment and those days they had answering machines and phones and they were separate, right? And I had an answering machine and I had everything set up so that you didn't hear the phone ring and you didn' t hear the outgoing message all you heard was you'd be in the apartment and you'd hear beep and then somebody talking leaving me a message, right. So this is early in sobriety, and I'm in this little place. I'm getting like an hour's sleep a night. It's like 7 o'clock in the morning. I've been asleep about an hour. And all of a sudden I hear, beep, wake up! This Donald Madden voice booming in my apartment. I went from laying there to here. And he goes, we're having a day. Click. and I remember thinking oh my god they have bed checks in AA they call you they make you get up it's just unbelievable and that's the kind of guy he was he knew who I was he saw me coming and I said hey remember when I first asked him to sponsor me he looked at his assistant and he said oh wonderful he's destroyed looking at me right and he was looking atme and I thought what have I done I've asked this man to sponsorme and he's happy that I'm a destroyed person. And what it was was he knew there's not a lot in the way here. I'm not going to be debating a lot of this. He's going to say do it and I'm going to go do it. Do you know why you're doing that at all? No. How do you feel about it? I don't know. Are you going to do it? Oh yeah. Because I don' t want to piss him off. He's my link to the human race. I cannot piss this man off, right? He was amazing. I mean, he would kick me in the ass. He was always kind to me. He would be kind to my wife. He was kind to be when I needed it. And I remember being in the back of Ohio Street on a Friday night, Saturday night, and we'd take him over to the meeting. And Donald was the secretary and all of the guys he sponsored. We had all the commitments. I was the clean-up guy. And I Remember standing in the Back of the Meeting one night. And I had like two and a half years. I never took a chip. I didn't take a cake until I was three years sober. I didn' t put my mouth in AA until I Was two and a half because this is not what I do. I don't do this. I don' t do this, I don''t get up here. I don't tell you who I am because then you find out who I am and then you throw me away because my parents are going to be better than anybody else. They threw me away. Why the hell would I want to let you get to know me? Because you're just going to do the same thing. So I'd just shut up. I was a guy who called his sponsor every day, went to at least one meeting a day. I had commitments but I had the commitments of sweeping up or setting up the meetings or making the coffee. I didn't talk to anyone and I remember I was in the back of Ohio Street and I was about two and a half years sober and I was standing in the bag and the speaker was up at the podium talking and I just I hit the wall right in the middle of a meeting. I hit that wall, I just thought, I'm done. I was caving in on myself and I was just going in, I can't do this, I can not do it, I am not going to make it. And for some reason Donald saw me in that shape. He knew where I was and he got up in the meeting and he walked up to the podium while the speaker was speaking and he tapped him on the shoulder. The guy just like went and he just said excuse me And he pushed him aside and he went, Earl! I'm in the back of the meeting. And I just went, whoa! What was that? Right? And he looked and he goes, we're having a meeting. And I said, okay. And then he had the speaker come back up. And everybody in the meeting is going, who the hell is Earl? I've been there for two years. Nobody knew who I was, right? That was my sponsor, Donald, man. And I love that man to this very day. He was my sponsored up until the day he died. I was almost 14 years sober. And I talked to that man every day for almost 14 years and up until today he died and we died. He broke my heart. It broke my art. I didn't know what to do. I didn' t know what do. I felt completely lost in Alcoholics Anonymous. My anchor was gone. And then I thought, and Donald Mann's dead and I don't know what the do. I was a mess about he'd been dead three hours. We were waiting for him to come get the body. A bunch of us had gone to his house, and we were sitting there. And I was out in the back watering his garden because his garden was so important to him, just crying and watering the garden and crying and watering the garden. And all of a sudden, I heard Donald Madden in my head. Get a sponsor, you little son of a bitch! Because I'd heard him say that to so many guys, right? And I went, okay. And I Went into the office he had there, and I picked up the phone, and I called Al S., and Donald loved Al S. And Al loved Donald, and I thought, okay, this is like another seat at the same table. So I'll get Al to sponsor me. So I called and said, Al, Donald's dead. Will you sponsor me? And he said, yes, I will. And Al was my sponsor for six years until I moved to another part of town. And then I was looking around in the room, and I found a meeting that I didn't know about. And there's all these Donald Madden sponsees, all these people that had this meeting. And there was all this sobriety in theroom. There's a guy that Donald sponsored that's got like eight years more than I do. And I was lookin' around inthe room, and I look at him, and he's just a kind, gentle, powerful man. I mean, he's kind, he sweet, he gentle. But when you look in his eyes and you listen to him talk, you know, this guy is a solid guy. This is a stand-up guy. And he's strong enough to be gentle with himself and with other people. And that's what I want to be. So I walked up to him and I said, will you sponsor me? He looked at me and just went, oh. Come on! And he said, all right. So he sponsored me. And Christopher is my closest friend. He's 22 years sober. I'm 21. We were sponsored by Donald together. We were sponsoring by Al together. Now we're sponsored by Luther together. And I got a great relationship with the sponsor this day. And you know what? The journey in Alcoholics Anonymous has been a remarkable journey for me. I came here with nothing, nothing. And I was still cutting deals. But you know What the deal was I was cutting? The deal I was Cutting when I got here was I will sweep up their rooms. I will do anything you ask me to do. And if it never gets any better than the highlight of my day is sweeping up a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll take it. Just don't make me go back in the madness. Just don't make me go back and dance with that beast one more day Because I can't deal with that Beast, man It kicks my ass hard And for some reason I stay alive And the madness is more than I can take The pain and the misery is more Than I can tak I want to die and I just seem to be able to stay standing And I don't want it anymore So just I'll sweep up after you I'll do anything you ask me to do Just don' t make me speak in AA And don' T make me dance with the Beast Those are the two things I can' t do And I told Donald Madden that Donald Madden said, that's a lovely thought, Earl, and you're the first speaker here next Saturday night. Every time I drew a line in the sand, Donald said, we've got to step over that now because, you see, we have to be willing to go to any lengths here. There can't be anything that you hold back, that you keep out of this deal. You've got put all of you into this, Earl. You're not going to make it. You're going to die. You're one of the ones that has to be right smack in the middle of it. You have to embrace this thing the way you embraced the beast for so many years. You've gotta do it. And I said, okay. And I did it. And what I found was it was interesting. Every once in a while, I'd hear the beast whispering in my ear. And the book told me there would come a day where there would be no human defense. There would be not human defense The beast would be whispering and I would be listening. And I thought, and it's a cunning, baffling, and powerful force. You work that out for yourself. Right? And I thought, man, I'll be high off the street sweeping up a meeting and all of a sudden my head will explode. Inside of my head I'll just go, damn! And I'll throw the broom down and I'll run to the liquor store. There'll be no defense. It's on. You know what I mean? I can see it. Quarter gin, please. What kind? The closest one. Just get the gin. Give me the gin and get the Gin. Here's the money. Run outside. Run behind the liquorstore because we don't get in the car and drive home and get a glass. Please. you run around to the back of the liquor store and you squat down and you can feel a stucco with a building in your back right and you hear that crack of that seal and you pick up that quart and you say I wonder where we're going now and you let it go you just let it goes because it's going to happen anyway it's gonna happen the way it wants to happen I thought that's what happened but it's not like that it is cunning it whispers in my ear it did it says how you doing Earl how you doin' brother good to see you guys here you know we haven't talked in a while but i just thought i'd let you know i've been here just been quiet but i've because i love you oh yeah i'm always i love it i'll never leave you you know that don't you i'm here for you i mean for you and i can see you're having a bad day it's a bad day you know and you're a good guy or you're all good guys and i don't know why but world just seems to treat you terribly you know it's like you got a i've got a bulls on your back people just shooting at you all day long shooting at the bulls treating you poorly and I don't understand why because you're a very, very decent fellow. But I can see that you're very, very stressed out about this and that you feel lonely and things aren't going the way that we both know they should be going for you and it's very stressed and as we know, stress, very unhealthy. So what we're going to do here is we're just going to go get a couple of drinks. Just a couple. Don't worry. Just a few. Just a cup of drinks Two drinks never hurt anybody. We're going to get a couple drinks. We're gonna calm down. We're gong to unwind that spring inside you and we're gongo talk this through here for you because I'm here for ya. I'm here for you. And by the way, let's just keep this between you and me. Let's just keep this. Nobody needs to know. We'll go have a couple of drinks, we'll wind down, we're sorting this all out, right back in the meeting, no harm, no foul. Alright? Now I'm sweeping up a meeting in Ohio Street thinking, well, yeah. That makes sense. I go do that, man. I activate the physical phenomenon of craving. It's on. I've lost the power. I have relinquished the power to choose. I got a new head, and it ain't the head that was talking to me before. Now I've got a head that says, I'm back. You know, you pretty it up any way you need to or I'll tie a little bow around it, whatever. Talk about it, discuss it, decide do I use, do I not use today? Do whatever you want to do. Do what you need the best for yourself. Do what I need to do, but understand this, we will be using today because that's what happens every day. I act like I'm making a decision. I'm not making a decison. It's been decided. When I'm drinking, it's no longer in my hands. It's going to go as it goes. It's like the inertia of an addict. An addict in motion will stay in motion until acted on by an outside force. Either a car accident or the police or God, something. But in here, there's nothing that can stand up to it. So I've got to stay here and I've Got to find a way to do the impossible. The thing that made no sense to me when I got here, I've GOT TO find a Way to be Comfortable Sober. Those two things never ever went together, comfortable and sober. You can't have them together. There's only one way I know to be comfortable sober. And that is to be relieved of the mental obsession, the greater aspect of my disease. That's why the detox center doesn't work because I kick and I've dealt with the physical phenomenon but I haven't dealt with the obsession of the mind. It hasn't been dealt with. I have to deal with that because that's the thing that convinces me I can go have those couple of drinks. That's the obsessionofthemind is the thingthat allows the beast to be whispering in my ear. That'sthethingthatallowsit. I haveto deal withthat. So how do you dealwiththeobsessionofthe mind? Work the 12 steps. That's what they're for. Step one is triangle we got, you know? Mind, body, and spirit brought together as a whole human being. Therein lies the balance that I seek and have never had drunk or sober. AA adopted the symbol. Mind, Body, and Spirit is the same thing. It's unity, service, and recovery. Same stuff. Unity is the body. I bring it here. I couldn't get sober, but we seem to be able to. The recoveries of the mind, the greater aspect of my disease. I have to do that, recover the mind or I'll never be comfortable sober. I'll always have that gnawing, aching, whispering thing going on that I've got to combat. And the day will come where life deals out its hand and I will not have a defense against it. So I've gotta prepare myself. I've GOT TO REMOVE IT FROM THE TABLE. So the recoveries of the mind are worked at 12 steps. Step 1 is what's the problem? Lack of power is my dilemma. I'm powerless over alcohol. Whole life's unmanageable as a result of that one thing. If my problem's lack of power, what's my solution? Step 2. that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink. So I know what my problem is. I know my solution is. Step three says you better make a decision to do something about that. Got to do some. Got to take the action. What should I do? Well, get out on your knees, say the third step prayer, Earl, and turn your will and your life over to the care of God, whether you understand him or not. So I got down on my knees and turned my will and my life over to care of a God I did not understand, a God that I thought I didn't believe in until Donald Madden pointed it out to me, Earl. you cannot be mad at a God you don't believe in. Needless to say, that was a rough day. He said it, I mean it was like the man would lie in wait for me, you know? And I'd be grumbling and he'd say, Earl, you can't be mad at a god you don'T believe in! And I go, ugh, I gotta go home. Level me with that stuff. And be so happy with himself, call up all the other guys he sponsored. I nailed Earl today, it was beautiful. So, step three says I've got to immediately embark upon a plan of action or this is all a waste of time. One, two, three, drunk. Got to embark upon an action plan. I've gotta embark upon the solution of step two happen in my life. Four and five is me, six and seven is God, eight and nine is you. Nobody else to play with. Four and five, I do a four-column inventory on resentment, fear, and sex. I swallow large chunks of truth about myself. Right? Get a picture at the stuff I have created that I have put between me and my fellows and me and God. Six and seven, I hook it back up with God. Notice the order of these two. Clean up my stuff, hook it up with my fellow. Hook it back with God, ask God to remove the defects of character because I'll remove the wrong stuff. Eight and nine, you. Having done this and this, now you're a little bit safer as I approach you and say very simply I'm very, very sorry here's your money go back in the house I don't get into you know get a load of me I'm on this amazing spiritual vision quest happening event in my life and you're going to love me just listen right no here's my money here's their money they don't want my money they want their money give them their money back and to make amends means to change. So I'm very sorry I stole your car. I estimate the value of the car at $3,500 at the time of the theft. If that's acceptable to you, here's a check and I will pay you monthly until that $3500 is paid back. And I will not go steal your car and sell it to pay you for the car I stole from you. I'm out of the car stealing thing, right? We're going to end the loop. To make amens, right, 10, 11, and 12 keep me in the game. 10, me, 11 God, 12 you. Same thing. 10? I'm a work in progress. I've got to continue this process. Going through those steps, I've scratched the surface. I've gotta continue to go deeper and deeper and deeper because that's where the buzz is for a guy like me. And I gotta catch a buzz doing what I'm doing or I don't want to play anymore. So I gotta catch a bus. The coolest thing you're new? Check this out. Alright? I know how it looks from where you're sitting but trust me, I ain't lying with these many witnesses. Alright? Remember when you were using? Remember that first joint you smoked? that first red wine, that first line, that first pill, that first needle in your arm. Remember how good it was? Take them all. That's long enough. Now, the guy back there just went, Whoa! Now remember that and you paid no price for it. It was cool, right? Everything was cool. It just was good. It was great. It was everything and you moved on, right, but slowly over time the high just got a little bit less and a little big and a lot less and a bit less And over time you had to pay a little bit higher price To get that buzz Until in the end of the game The point of the gain that drives you in here You're paying a hell of a price Just to get well Just to hit the zero You're not even getting above the line anymore You're just trying to get the zero Things are starting to happen Like people are talking to you about whether or not You're going to remain free You're moving Because you come home and find your bags on the lawn Stuff like this is going on People that you love are saying, I don't want to deal with you anymore. You're starting to pay one hell of a price for that little bitty, itty-bitty, maybe possibly few seconds of buzz and all this mayhem breaking out. The lines have crossed. In here, it's the exact opposite. You come in here, and getting that 30-day chip is a bitch. Isn't it? A lot of heads just went, oh, yeah. That's a hard one. It is. I got more respect for a 30-day chip than any other moment that's acknowledged in AA. I think it's amazing because you don't have the tools. You don't know how to do it. You don' t have the 12 steps. You don''t read the 12 Steps and go, yeah, okay, I got that. What else you got? Some traditions? Let me take a look at those. All right, no problem. What else? It ain't like that. It's such a foreign way to be when we've been out there doing what we do. So you pay one hell of a price just to get these first 30 days, and the buzz you get is, if anything, very small. What's keeping you here is a fear of what's behind you. The beast sitting out there doing push-ups, man, waiting for you to come back, right? In here it's the exact opposite. You pay up front here. The longer you stay here, the bigger the buzz gets. It doesn't get smaller in here, it gets bigger. And the price you pay to get it gets less and less and more. Less and less. You know what that says to me? I've got a bigger buzz ahead of me. So whatever buzz I've caught a hold of in 21 years, whatever enjoyment I'm having right now, it ain't as big as it's going to get. It's goingto get bigger. It's gonna get bigger, and I'm not going to have to pay for it with my life. It will be my life, it'll be the force that propels me forward, it'll bethe thing that sustains me when I need it the most. That's what happens in here. I mean, how can I say this? other than to say, I've been every high there is out there, I've done. People say, have you done X, man? You've been sober too long. No, I did the thing before X called MDA where a molecule off. There's up, there's down, and there's sideways. And everything's a variation on those things. I've don't know what's going on. I've got them all. Ain't no buzz like this because this is the real deal and I can prove it. I can prove it. I'm standing here. That's all the proof I need. You're here. Look at this room. It's a room full of dead people sitting up pretending they're paying attention to me. That's the proof, man. It's here. It's real. It's not words on a page. It's how we live. It's what we do. It's just how we look out of our skull. And I've got to remember that for me, you know the thing that I avoided at all costs was right here, right now, right? Well, I had that sponsor, Al, right after Donald, who used to say to me, Earl, all you've got to do is get between these. Just get between those. And I went, huh? Right now, Earl, just right now, right now. Get between those, that's where you want to live. You want to leave between those . If you can get in there, you're all good, man. The buzz is fierce. How come? Well, because it's right here, right now, and really anything else, everything else is an illusion. Nothing else is real, just now. Right in there. That's real. That's all there is. Future hasn't happened. I can't, I'm not going to say to you, you know, it's going to be okay. Because I don't know how it's gonna be. I can tell you it's okay right now. It's okay, right? It's fine right now? Everything's all right right now! You all right, right, now? All right, we're right here. We're in this room. We're all together. We're good. You know? Couple guys at the door. Anybody wants to run out and get drunk? Stop them. It's right now. That's where life is. It's here. This is where I'm going to get to know me, is right here, right now, this is where we're going to be together, this is the only place I can have a relationship with God, it's right here right now this is only place I'm gonna be able to have a relationship with you is right there, right here it's the only place I could have that it's only place I could love you it's my only place I could discover the mystery that was mine for most of my life and that was I thought if I came in here and I was honest with you you would be honest with me not my experience if I love If I give you love, you will give me love. It's not my experience. Not my experience, it's better than that. What I found is that if I'm honest with you, what I become is an honest man. Inside job. If I gave you love what I'd become is a loving man. If I show you respect I become a respectful man. What you do is what you do. That ain't my business. Serenity prayer teaches me so much. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I'm an alcoholic, I'm a drug addict. It's the way it is. Right? wasn't courage to change what i can and wisdom to know the difference i can change me i can take these steps i can take the actions that are out given to me in the program in the fellowship i can do all this stuff with you i can't do it by myself you know what the first two words that everybody thinks about the wisdom and the granting of the serenity and the right and knowing of the difference and right first two worlds or first three words are what god grant me i gotta develop a relationship for the power greater than myself i gotta do it I have a tremendous relationship with God that I don't understand. But I see evidence of every single day of my life. Right now, I'm the guy, and I know I'm willing to go to any lengths to be one of you. I know it because I got on a plane and I came here to see you. Because my history, I don' t like getting on planes. I know what can happen. Every time a plane bumps, I see bad, bad pictures. It's bad, man. I don''t like it. It scares the hell out of me. But I do it because i love AA and because i lov e you. If you say you're an alcoholic, I love you. I do because I know what it takes to say that. I know What It Takes To Say That. If you're new, take your turn. I got my turn. Everybody else in here got their turn. Take your turn Don't worry about getting it right. Don't Worry About Look And we The people with us with time We remember We remember I don't take Louie with 90 days to a meeting We go to the meeting We sit down Cliff's talking Cliff's a great speaker Loveless in the cliff Right? He's a kind man He's an honest man He understands what it means to be an alcoholic, and he understands what it takes to be sober. Don't miss him. He's on your little schedule, right? And I can take Louie to go here, Cliff, right, and we'll sit there, and I'll say, this is great. Louie got 90 days. I'm here. Cliff's going to break it down, throw the pearls of wisdom out. We sit down. Cliff'S going crazy, man. It's just going, you know what I mean? I'm sitting there going, isn't this amazing that at 90 days, Louie gets to hear the pearls that Cliff is throwing down tonight. Louie ain't hearing no pearls. Louie is having a fundamentally different meeting than I'm having. And I've got to remember that. I mean, me at 90 Days showing up at Ohio Street was not a pretty picture. You know what I mean? I would drive up in the little Volkswagen banging along and I would go, okay, there it is. There it is, there he is. Park over here, park over here. They don't block you in when you park over here so you can get away if you have to. Parkoverhere, go in put a key on his seat, find his key, find a seat, find a seat and put your key down. Find a seat. Where am I going to sit? There's a guy with a red coat sitting next to the guy with the red coat. You spot the guy with the read coat and you got your seat and get your key. Good, good, good. Put the seat down. How are you doing? Fine. How you doing, fine. Fine. Fine! We're starting. There's a bell ringing. Sit down, sit down, how you doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guy he's up, he's up. He's saying something, he is down. I missed all of that. Here's another guy. He is up. It's a chapter of something. He rarely saw something. I don't know what he rarely saw but he really saw something, I'll find out about that later. 12 things, There's 12 things in an ABC. 12 things, ABC, he's down. You can get a lot of that, but there's 12 things in an A-B-C. I got that, that's good, that'S good. But here's another guy. He got up, he got up. He drank. He drank, he drank. I did that, I did dat, I diD dat. That was great, it was great. He was down. Why didn't we spend more time with that guy? He's down! Alright, alright, alright. Find that guy later. That's good. That was good. That was goOd. He drank it. Another guy, he was up. They're passing a basket, they're passing a basket. Don't take the money. Don't takE tHe mOnY. Okay, we didn't take the money. Very good, very good. We're all, we're getting up. Where are we going? We're going outside to smoke? I smoke, we'll smoke. How you doing? I'm fine, I'm okay. Fine! The bell's ringing, we're going back in. We're in, we'RE in. We're good, we'Re good. This guy, he's reading 12 things. Those aren't the same 12 things, 24 things and ABC. 24 things on ABC. It's very good, very good and he's down. Exhausting. He's in meetings and this guy, he's up, he drank, he drank. I did that, I did it. I did what I did. I felt like that. That guy is in my head. That is amazing. How does he know that? That is absolutely remarkable. I love that guy. Who the hell is that guy? He's down. I've got to find that guy! That was great! It was great. Another guy's up. They're reading, they're reading. They've got me! Oh, we're praying. I know this prayer. And I would walk out of the meeting and people would say, what did you think of the meaning? I'd go, it's great. I get in my car and I cry all the way home. And I pace in my little one-room apartment and get an hour's sleep and get up and work and get tired enough to go to a meeting and try to get another hour of sleep. So that's me, Lou. When I go to A Meeting and I hear Cliff and Louie sitting there and I'm just digging it, right? And we walk out and I looked at Lou and I go, Lou, what'd you think? And Lou looks at me and goes, It's great! I go You win, Lou! You win! You win man! Because that's a 90-day meeting you had right there and you can crack open and be completely vulnerable and exposed and nothing Cliff says is going to hurt you. You're going to be alright. You're safe here with us. I got my eye on you. We're going to be okay. We're all right. I love you. Take your turn, man. You didn't get up and run screaming out of the meeting. You win. That's the beginning. It's those little baby steps and they all count. People get up and they walk out of a meeting and say couldn't hear a damn thing it was a complete waste of time. No, it wasn't. You're an alcoholic. You went to a meeting of alcoholics and you got off your ass got in your car drove to a meet saved yourself a seat got yourself a cup of coffee, sat down, sat there and just ground one out, man. Good for you. You demonstrated very, very sufficiently that you don't want to drink anymore, that you want to be here with us. So it doesn't matter if you like the speaker. It doesn't mater if you had a lovely time. Doesn't matter she just got all excited about it. Doesn' t matter. You're here. We're sober. We' re not out there dying. We are together. This is good. This is very, very good. I'm sure that there are tens of thousands of people in Chicago tonight that are so glad you're here. And I'm glad you are here and I'm glad I'm here. I love you. I do. I Do. Thanks a lot for letting me be here with you tonight. Have a great conference.