Step 4 and the Committee That Meets in His Head – Clancy I.

Jerry asked me to chair this on Saturday night and he called me off to the side and said Kenny said you know we've had pretty good luck the last two or three years having well-known speakers to come and speak you know and he said but this year said we didn't do too good said want you to go up and chair and and bring your little following from the sainthood I see some of them here tonight and then tells me that Clancy is gonna speak at everything and the only cute little story that I know about Clancy as I went up to the Evansville Tri-State Convention one year he was talking and we sat there and my my tape run out it was 90 minutes and I noticed people were kind of drifting on out you know and Jack S from Louisville was sitting on a the front row and everybody had gone but Jack. Clancy looked down and said, what are you waiting on? Jack said, I'm the next speaker. So without any further ado, Clancy, the eye in the sky. No pictures. My name is Clancy Immersland, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm very glad to be here to fill in the last few minutes of tonight's meeting. Certainly enjoyed Kenny's and Gabby's remarks. I guess that's about it for tonight, folks. And I want to thank Don a lot for having me down here. But I really am glad to be here for many reasons. I'm glad to being in Nashville. I was here last year, just came through a couple friends of mine and I came to Nashville and spent a couple days at the Hermitage and down at Franklin and Murfreesboro because we're kind of historical buffs and we had a wonderful time and Don came over and had dinner with us and took us to a meeting one night and I didn't know that I'd be back at Nashville so soon, and I'm glad to be here for probably the most outstanding reason. I was thinking about it on the airplane today, coming in. I wanted to be hier last night to hear the assorted wisdoms of Lake Whitney, Texas, the sobriety capital of the world. All six of them say so. I was thinking about it because this is my first real AA talk for some time. And I don't know if I can remember what to talk about. I can always get these boobs over here. but i uh all spring my voice has been getting hoarser and hoarsier and hoarse and i finally when all else failed i went to the doctor and he told me i had a tumor in my vocal cords and that kind of that catches your attention i'll tell you it isn't so much i don't think the fear of dying is so bad, but it's the inconvenience. I know wherever I go, I'll be with my friends. If I go to heaven, I will be with AA friends and if I don't, I go with my pre-AA friends. but uh so i had to go to the hospital a few weeks ago and uh have surgery on my have a biopsy and they took went in and cut it out and we didn't know for a couple days whether i'd have to have my larynx out or whether i'd just have to let it heal and it turned out it was benign and so i haven't been able to talk yet because they cut deeply into the vocal cords you can't talk at all for a week or two which is just hideous for me you know just it's like taking Wyatt Earp and stripping him of his gun he just and then recently for the last couple weeks I've had to speak in a modulated tone of voice a moderate modulated tone of noise a lot of people unfortunately have have come to the conclusion that I've matured but that's that's not true I'm just biding my times and so I'm really glad to be here and I've had a chance to go to a lot of meetings and listen and I I've heard a cancel I canceled I guess 15 talks or something like that and and you get into such a swing of talking and always being active that really puts you in a different frame of reference and i've been sober quite a while uh 27 years and and i'd been active all that time this is the longest i've ever gone without being participating somewhere so it really was kind of a uh i anticipated coming here the doctor said i should come down here and talk and then call him next week and see how i feel but i'm sure it's going to be all right but i don't think you'll have the taper won't have to worry about running out of tape tonight I hope to get done in 89 and a half minutes, just. I enjoyed Neva's talk this afternoon. I've always been, Neva and I have been friends for many years. We hardly ever see each other, maybe two or three times, but we've been friends from many years, and she was very, she did a very nice thing today. She invited all the people that came with her from Illinois to stand up, and it was really touching. I was kind of waiting for the night so I could... They usually stay a little longer than that. Usually I'm well into my story before they come on the line. I guess he doesn't know I'm easily rejected. But I, uh... She had quite a... She had two rows about people from Illinois who came here with her tonight. And I... I'd like to ask the people from California... Yay! Have you noticed, Neva, none of your people had a cane? There are two dummies here from Missouri, but I hate to ask them to stand up because they forget where they're sitting. And a couple old-timers there from Pittsburgh, and if they get up, they start to talk, so you just... I want to thank Don for having me here and I want to thank Don and Ken and Jerry for coming out to the airport and meeting me this afternoon and it was very pleasant of them and I is there anything else I want to say yes so one more thing I should mention this I used to drink I sometimes get lost in my lecture here i used to drink and i drank for a long time and i stopped and started drinking again and i did that a lot of times or one other thing i should say because of this thing in my throat i've had to do something that i just hated to do i uh i stopped smoking now you know the reason i oh don't clap i'm ashamed of it for christ's sake for the last 20 years i've been watching people with little thin blue lips say you should really stop smoking do you know what you're doing to your lungs look at this picture here i get out of here when i'm getting on airplanes i go through that non-smoking section i just gotta go And now I'm sitting up there with those pukes. I turn to people next to me, well, how are you today? Little thin blue lips and they... And they told me, they said if you stop smoking, you'll sleep like a baby. and I can tell you that's true I woke up three times last night crying but I I've got about 15 weeks in now it's just been I don't have a craving for cigarette I chew this hideous Nicorette gum that's just dreadful but I hate to admit it but I feel better but I wish I didn't people always used to ask me if any of you are still smoking which i assume you are if i can see you through the smoke i know you're smoking all this people ask you why do you smoke where you smoke i found an answer many years ago and i don't know if it satisfies you but they never ask you again they here's the answer that is a very effective answer why do you smoke I'll tell you why I have a secret feeling that someday there's going to be a market for phlegm and I'll be rich I'll Tell you they never ask you again But the one thing that stopping smoking has done, did for me in a sense it gave me a deeper appreciation for Alcoholics Anonymous because I smoked a couple packs a day at least for since 1942 that's a long I'm what you call your basic smoker and I never thought much about it When I stopped, I stopped because I couldn't swallow or breathe, which I thought was... My sponsor, Chuck Sieg, in 1965, he stopped smoking. And as many of you know, he was a great spiritual leader of men. And I was just in terror. I thought, oh God, this is some new spiritual breakthrough this old man's made. he's going to insist everyone everywhere stop smoking and I'm going to have to I don't know what I'm gonna do I said Chuck does this mean we're all supposed to stop now he said no he said I smoked till I couldn't swallow or breathe he says in knowing you I assume you will smoke till you can't swallow or breathe I said you guessed it Chuck well one day I couldnít swallow or breath shit So there it went. But I'll tell you what it did for me. A few times, a few times in the first couple of weeks without smoking, I'd be overcome by just a terrible craving, just like it blotted out my mind. I wanted a cigarette and my body cried out for a cigarette. I want a cigarette! And that's no big deal, but I'll tell you how it did it for me, it reminded me that once upon a time I felt that way about alcohol and I had forgotten all about it I had forgot what a physical craving was like I talk so much I mean I've been sober for so many years I can't remember really what it feels like to be drunk I can associate it and I couldn't ever remember the physical craving and I'll tell you I spent a lot of years lately talking to new people they say I got this terrible craving I say oh it's all in your head for Christ's sake come on, just go to meetings and work the steps you'll be alright but I had those cravings a couple of times and suddenly remember, that's what it's like when you have that terrible craving for alcohol not only a little craving for what it does for you but your body cries out for it I want it and I don't care what happens or if you lose your family or your job just give me a drink and it helped me to appreciate what a miracle has happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous because I really craved to drink for some time after I was sober intermittently and I desired to drink for a long time after that not constantly I'll tell you who I feel sorry for I don't know how it ever happened but old Dr. Bob, the co-founder of AA for years he craved drinks after he was sober Bill didn't, most of the people didn't but he did, he had to fight the desire for alcohol again and again and again that must have been awful tough on him, that's why you remember very few pictures of him smiling much, I mean he was kind of a somber conservative guy and he didn't get outside of himself a great deal Bill was a little more flamboyant and a little more outgoing. There's an old saying that if Dr. Bob had been the only founder of A.A., he'd never really got across the street in Akron, Ohio, just on his block. If Bill Wilson had been the only Founder of A."A., he would have sold it in 1938. And between them, they had an exquisite balance that kept us going. But alcohol to me has always been a great backup for what I conceive to be highly unusual feelings. I remember a few years ago, I was talking one time, and suddenly it struck me. I can talk about rage and anger and upset and love and frustration and anxiety, but probably the number one emotion of my life was none of these big things. it was a small thing that I had so long I didn't even notice anymore, you took it for granted that's a low level ongoing feeling of unease just kind of a this isn't quite it either everything, not quite it occasionally brief breaks in that when something new, new job, new woman new car, new something or something different, exciting but pretty soon you get back to normal again just that low level of unease this kind of a life without salt almost, a kind of tasteless life and I always felt there's something different about me other people don't seem to have this I look at them and they don't seems to have it and I fell into the trap again and again which all of us fall into but you never know you're falling into it and I used to think it only happened to alcoholics then as I've been sober a while and working back in corporations and in radio and television and big places I watch people, now that I know what I'm looking for I watch very, very successful people fall into it because every human falls into it from time to time and it's a very common trap people like us fall into a lot because it hits you when you are feeling different or when you're feeling less than or when your feeling put upon and those are the great symptoms of our illness and this trap is feeling bad and starting to check out the people around you to see how you're doing compared to them and you only do it when you feel bad as a rule and everybody does it and there's nothing wrong with it except for one thing you never are aware while you're doing it that you're getting the wrong answers the answers are always incorrect because while you are doing it without being aware of it you are comparing your insides against other people's outsides to see how you are you're comparing your own raw meat against their defense mechanisms they've spent 30 years building to conceal their raw meat so i think it's safe to say whatever you get one of these moods and you start comparing or you feel different or you're off your feed and you start comparing you will never see anyone who looks as sensitive as you feel ever you will never see anyone who seems to be troubled by the same type of anxiety that troubles you they have anxiety of course, they say they have anxiety but not for the intensity I have it and if they do have anxiety they have anxiety over something that they can talk about I sometimes have great waves of anxiety and I don't know what the hell I'm anxious about that really is embarrassing i remember working many years ago at a big advertising agency in dallas firm called tracy lott my drinking days and the head of that agency was a guy named morris height and he was a national legend in the field of advertising everybody knew and loved morris heights and he always dressed perfectly for every occasion everyone loved him and everywhere he went oh hi morris he knew everybody from the president to the sweepers just one of the guys you just want a punch in the face every time you see him just but he'd come through our offices and he was always kind of gracious he's always gracious to everybody and I and a bunch of other guys were sitting in what was known as the Borden bullpen we were trying to create things for Elsie to say to Elmer and all the cows and she says how would you like to spend your life as a voice in a cow well Payne and he'd come through and slap him in the back how you doing today Clancy and I don't know how many times I thought someday I'm going to get up the courage to tell this old fool just how I feel just to watch him jump once you know just screw up my courage he'd say how you done Clancy oh I'm afraid and then he'd say, well, what are you afraid of? Beat the shit out of me, Morris. I never could quite screw it up in time. I was given the same answer. How are you doing? Fine, fine. But sometimes when he left, when he's out of sight, I could do things like just take it out some tired blood, Morris. Yeah. Fool. Is this water here to taunt me or is there a glass? Maybe the next time you're on one of your talking kicks, Gabby, you could shout for some glasses for the water could you bring me a paper cup or a plastic cup back there anyone are there no brown nosers back there anywhere for christ's sake i guess they have their own their own meeting going on back here gabby why don't you go back and open it never mind we have one thank you thank you took you long enough dummy You will ever see anyone who seems to have the feelings of inadequacy you have. I'll tell you that. Other people just don't look, ever, as though they have the secret feelings of inadequate that I have sometimes. you won't see people who seem to resent unfairness as much as you do they seem to go along with it they don't understand it or they go along they offend me a lot of feelings in fact one of the great feelings of all time is when you get so many feelings you wind up with no feelings I don't know how to explain that exactly it's kind of like a feeling of emptiness like there has been said a hole in your gut with just cold wind blowing through and there's no great feeling at all it's just everything is just ugh and other people don't seem to have that you can tell by looking at them and the more you compare yourself in order to feel like people the more you wind up alienated and feeling different and it seemed all my life in intermittent bursts it wasn't constant but in intermittent bursts there was something missing i seem to have holes in me somewhere that other people didn't have and things they liked i didn't like and i remember trying years ago to play cards with the people next door and uh and about two and a half hours of listening to their crap i just tried to leap out of the bedroom and other people said well just hold on over play cards and i'm going to work on the flowers. I'd take vows. I'm going to get up early, maybe do a little exercise, maybe do some sit-ups. Go to work, get there early. Do my work, come home, play with the kids. Maybe I'll whip up a little dinner. Maybe some salad. Then we'll have the neighbors over and we'll sit and chat. Then I'll read the paper. Jesus, you do that for two days you just want to scream it's just hideous I don't know what's wrong with you but this isn't the answer to anything I have wrong with me I need something else remember some years ago coming to a conclusion for some reason or another I seem to need color in my life I guess other people can stand grayness but there are certain creative sensitive people who are cursed for the ability to notice that there's no color and I need color because my life has a tendency to gray out three or four years ago I was talking up in Portland and they were talking about the Mount St. Helens explosion very dull discussion I had nothing to contribute I had to sit and listen for an hour I tried to explain to them something happened to me in Wisconsin they didn't want to hear it but the thing about the Mount St. Helens it wasn't like Hawaii where lava came rolling down the hill it just blew up and for weeks there was a very fine ash and you didn't even notice it except one day you noticed that little by little your lawn is turning gray and the house is gray and the children come in and they're gray and the car is gray and everything one guy up there said I just went up to the outside and he said, stop it, stop it. Which worked as good as anything else. It just couldn't work out. And it's a wet, sludgy type of ash. You couldn't blow it off. You have to wipe it off. It's just hideous. I got to think on the plane on the way back. That's the story of my life. Time after time, I've gone to places where there's going to be some color, a new job, new situation, new people, new something. And I get along fine and then somehow an invisible Mount St. helens goes off somewhere and one day that damn job starts to get gray and that house gets to get gray in that town gets gray and the people get gray now what about the hell am i doing here i need color and i can't stand this i went to aaa for years intermittently and drank think, one of the great arguments ahead against AA. There's no color in AA. It's just an endless goddamn gray tunnel. And you listen to those old fools and they go, well, you just get up in the morning and trudge this wonderful world. And then you walk in that endless gray tunneling. Maybe there'll be something up there, huh? Anything. You see people ahead of you. It's a year sobriety. Oh boy. Maybe that's going to turn better. Nothing happens. A hatch opens. Skinny arm drops a 39 cent cake. Is that all there is? That's all Some of us need more than that I think about that to this day When my grandchildren come and visit At Christmas time And we sit over the years I've sat with Olive for years now Watched The Wizard of Oz that runs every Christmas. At the end of that, no matter how long I've been sober, no matter what spiritual values I've tried to achieve, when they get to the end of that movie, Dorothy wants to go back to Kansas and I just want to shriek, don't go back to goddamn Kansas. You know. Just that old gray sepia tone And here it's, you know, wicked witches, but you get used to them. I did, shit, you don't know. I love you, Auntie Em and Toto, but that's one of the great reasons I always thought I drank. Drinking adds color to my life. things take on a little color with a few drinks just there's an NFL football movie that traces the history of the NFL right in the middle of a Packer game about 1962 right in middle of play it changes from black and white to color the guy goes into the line in black and white and it turns into color I need you come that's just the way a drink does for me, I start, and that's why I drink. I don't drink because I'm a drinker. I'm not some old fool. I drink because it fills my holes. It reinforces me. It does things for me. And it always had. And I've tried other therapies to deal with the other problems because I know that drinking is not an answer. It is merely a stopgap. and I've gone to psych I spent thousands of dollars in psychoanalysis many, many years ago discovered many things that would have helped to me I discovered I'd been deprived as a child I'd never known that discovered that I'd lived in a very repressive religious environment I didn't know that Norwegian Lutherans they talk about the Southern Baptists they're liberal Norwegian Lutherans today I guess there's a movement I hear about it occasionally on the peripheries of AA something called the adult children of alcoholics how tragic it was to be living I guess it must be sad but I'd like to tell them you should be an adult child of a Norwegian Lutheran You know, at least alcoholics pass out and leave the house once in a while. Goddamn Lutherans never let up. I discovered I'd been deprived, as I say. I remember one day the doctor talked to me and he said, you mean to say, Mr. Emerson, at this time in 1935, you say you didn't even have a bicycle? I said, no. But I got thinking about it on the way home. I began to remember I never had anything. For two months after that, I had a mental picture. Any time I wanted to throw myself into a depression, all I had to do was think of a... visualize a street corner in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. and on it standing a little tousled-haired, apple-cheeked, blue-eyed little tyke watching his little friends ride their bicycles to and fro. Don't worry about me. I'll go into analysis later. God, tears rolled down my cheeks. took me almost two months to remember that nobody in Eau Claire had a bicycle in 1934 one kid did, we thought he was a freak we beat him up and broke his bicycle but by then it was too late I'd already come to the realization I was deprived the best analogy I know for people like me I've said it many times but I haven't said it for a while is the trouble with psychoanalysis for people like me is that I keep thinking I'm going to find out why I feel this way and then it's going to be all right. I've spent my life on that pursuit, much of my early life. I read Nietzsche, I read Schopenhauer, I went to metaphysics. At one time, I don't like to gloat, but at one time to the best of my knowledge I was one of six people in the state of Texas who knew truth. And that's a terribly unhealthy attitude to have in Texas. I've done a lot of things. I've always thought, if I could just find out why. And I found out why several times. And I'll tell you something. I guess they've never heard truth down here before. I got it ain't safe around here. You're bringing the house down, Daddy. That's right, Gabby. Kill that sumbitch. you'll break up our meeting won't you you sumbitch I'll tell you something about finding out why you will discover this as you go along someday if you're kind of young and still trying to let me explain something finding out why you feel bad serves no purpose at all you just know why you still feel bad but now you know why the only possible use is maybe in a bar somewhere and the guy says what the hell's wrong with you and you can tell him but they don't want to hear it as I say psychoanalysis for people like me it's like getting on the Titanic and you ride across the ocean you hit an iceberg and the ship goes down and everybody rolls away as fast as they can and people like me say I'm not getting off this baby till I find out why this happened and you may find out wine is very ego gratifying you dummies in the ship on On the boats out there, I know why. One of the great lessons of life you'll have to learn is knowing why you're going down is of no value unless you have a way to get off your own personal sinking ship. Knowing why you are going down won't help. I spent years using alcohol to buttress the emotions I could not learn to deal with, the intensities and the quantities. And as happens to people like me, and I presume like you because you're here, alcohol brings its own set of problems. And then you really start to get in a crack because you need the few drinks to keep going, but drinking is starting to be a problem. and people who don't understand you think your drinking is your problem I remember thinking years ago I wish god damn it I wish the highway patrol if there were any fairness in the world the highway control or some other equivalent that have tests for emotional people you could blow up a balloon and say oh you're feeling very bad today that's what's wrong or take a drop of blood out of your ear and say gee you need a lot of love pal or you walk a white line and say, You really feel different today, don't you? But instead, there's no test. You're just supposed to be all right. And if you have a few extra drinks for these feelings and they give you these tests, they say, Your problem is drinking. And down deep in my heart, and I'm sure in yours, you just want to shriek, It isn't my problem. You don't understand. I don't really understand either. All I know is I'm being screwed around. and you find reasons reasons and causes I sponsor four black guys in Los Angeles we sometimes joke about that I tell them at least you can say you're being put upon because you're black it isn't true but you can believe it what does a wasp do to blame because they're screwing me that's why you know i look all right but they don't nobody understands so i fell into a pattern for a long time i had a wife and i had children a part of me wants to be square and a part of me just can't stand being square we always say that alcoholism is very similar to schizophrenia and it really is true i was thinking when neva was talking today she couldn't remember how she got back to a certain place and that really is the way it is with schizophrenics They change personalities. They don't remember the alcohol, but they just bomb out. When I was on the faculty of the University of Texas at El Paso, and I got into such a hideous depression that I tried to commit suicide once. The reason I got in that depression is they made me stop drinking and I had nothing to fill my holes. And one day I just parked my car in my garage and hooked up a hose and turned the motor and went to sleep and died. And the neighbor heard the motor running and he pulled me out dead and they got me started again in my heart and put me in the psych ward to examine me for a while and committed me to the state insane asylum. But that, my commitment there was schizophrenia. Intense schizophrenia. Dual personality. I thought about that later. That psychiatrist was a goof. I should have gone back and told him some years later by the time he got old and feeble that I could move him around pretty good. I should have said you idiot you don't understand people like me at all Christ if I could have got my personalities down to two I would have made it my problem has always been the committee that meets in my head at the slightest whisper of conflict okay let's get together what do you think we ought to do let's just get our ass out of here I don't think we can and whatever decision they make you do it and it's wrong and they say we didn't tell you to do that I hear people in IA say they think they needed group therapy I never have just go for a ride alone in my car that's right that's another reason I drink to still those voices to give me a purpose and now people, well-intentioned people think my problem is alcohol and it isn't and I went to AA and it seemed to me they said your problem is alcohol and it isn't and I went to a lot of therapies my problem isn't alcohol maybe my case is absolutely unusual wasn't until I was in AA sometime this time but I discovered in the book Alcoholics Anonymous an absolute recitation of my case not even in the stories but in the text for Christ's sake and I've come to believe it's the absolute recitation of all of us what do we all have in common in this room I'm sure there are some new people here tonight or people who are a little jaded or people that are a lot younger people who feel a little different who wonder, what do I really have in comment with these people how much you drank you find a wide disparity of that whether or not I've been in jail some of these people have been in prison 30 times have I ever been in jail? whether I've ever been to the insane asylum? nope whether I stayed drunk all the time? nope what the hell do you got in common with these people? nothing you have one thing in common with these people really and there's a reason for it But the one thing we all have in common is that we have all been pushed into a situation, psychologically and physically, where we have been forced into the obsession that somehow, someday, I will control and enjoy my drinking. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing, the book says. many of us pursue it into the gates of insanity and death why doesn't say it there goes on to say brief recoveries we've all had those brief recoverries followed always by still worse relapse until you get to a point of what where you lose your family sometimes where you loose your job sometimes where you run away sometimes but those aren't the reason you get to a point, again another point of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization where your life is going down around you and you think, well, I'd really be drunk to get like that that isn't how you get when you're drunk that's how you gets when you've sobered up that's what makes it so brutal we talk a lot about drunks trying to commit suicide about 95% of successful alcoholic suicides take place in sobriety very few are successful while drunk people who are psychiatrists are always puzzled but that seems quite obvious to me what that would be drunken people are very emotional and they usually try to commit suicide to punish someone and then as you start right in the middle of it you think Jesus, I won't be here to see them be sorry. Then sometimes you wind up making calls like I just called up to say I've taken an overdose of pills and I'm going to die. I don't want anyone to bother me at 1410 Third Street. The sad cases of alcoholism suicides are the people who do it pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized very rarely leave notes no big splash just go somewhere and kill themselves insanity has taken over now you'd think when you get to that point you stop drinking but the nice thing about it is if you weather that a little scab forms you can start the whole pattern over again the one thing we all have in common is that everyone here apparently drank when other people thought they shouldn't because they thought that I've got to drink I can control it why do I have to control it? because I need it to replenish emptiness that I find in me without it and that's why to this day Alcoholics Anonymous last week the day after Neva's birthday it was Alcoholics Anonymous's birthday it was 51 years old and in 1932 there was no answer to alcoholism in the world according to Dr. Jung and now there's Alcoholics Anonymous everywhere every corner in Christalmost and there's meeting lists and books of meetings all kinds of answers all sorts of treatment centers available incidentally Neva was talking today about the Betty Ford Foundation all these outstanding treatment centers I'll tell you you better tell your friends to get in on it quick because the highly placed friends of mine in the insurance industry say they are getting very tired of the amount of double and triple and quadruple treatments to their policy holders they're going to start discontinuing alcoholism treatments on insurance when that happens you will find a lot of dedicated people suddenly lose their dedication they'll stop making commercials on how to cure alcoholism and that making commercials and how to turn lead into gold. I don't judge. It's a little different around where I live. My home group, I guess is the largest weekly meeting in the world between six and seven hundred people every Wednesday night. And that whole group we checked it was there were four people who came through a treatment center. That means there are 696 who didn't. So in case anybody tells you different, I'm not against treatment centers. They're fine to keep you off the street. But they don't really keep you sober. There are good treatment centers who will tell you that. The bad treatment centers lead you to believe that you're now cured and you go out and die. but the great problem was answers to alcoholism all over so there's really no need for anyone to die from alcoholism anymore and here's something to think about in america today about 95 percent of alcoholics will die drunk and that's with all the answers i'll tell you something more frightening than that a number of people in this room tonight you are sober will die drunk maybe me and maybe you there's been a difference I'm not threatening you it's just the way it is people who might not even think they'll ever get drunk how can that be for Christ's sake I know I can't drink I know I never drink there's nothing to do with it I'll tell you what it's based on that book also says it I've come to believe in that book because over the years I've watched it come true a thousand times it's based on somewhere someday up ahead I don't know where or when I'll be tested and my sobriety will be based on how I have maintained my spiritual condition that doesn't mean I have to become holy and saint-like it means I have to do something to keep to keep a perception and perspective on the need I seem to have to replenish these holes. Now, alcohol has always done it. I went to jail 30-some times. I was committed once to a state in St. Adam's in Texas for the rest of my life. I've been locked down. I've be chained down in veterans' hospitals. I've lost my family. I've loss everything I had. I've lose my front teeth. Let me tell you, you can get new families. you can get new jobs you can get new homes but front teeth are irreplaceable it's like the book says we are like men who have lost their front teeth we never grow new ones so whatever it says I don't know who listens but if you're new tonight and you have some trouble with teeth let me give you some hope that I found out in AA if you become spiritual they grow back I'll have your sponsor explain that to you sometime the irony of my life is I knew all about Alcoholics Anonymous the day I walked in I had been slipping for nine years and I just came here to get off the street briefly one more time and I was so desperate and so sick that somehow my ability to withstand their goddamn B.S. slipped, and they got screwing around with my mind. And when they got screwed around with mine, little by little my life changed. And now it's been almost 28 years since I've had a drink. And I've run through some terrible times, I'll tell you. I miss Thunderbird. They brought Thunderbird out right after I was sober, and my tongue used to dart out at billboards. I missed Ripple. I've always wanted to drink a wine that's never seen a grape. My early sobriety was very difficult. I lived in the backseat of an abandoned car in the A-Club parking lot, but that's extraneous. What I'm trying to say is this. Eventually I discovered, it's what I must remember and you must remember I think, come to learn and understand, the nature of my illness, the reason people still die from this illness is because they do not understand the nature of it and i watch it every day unlike most of you i'm in a position today where i see alcoholics die every day i don't mean die figuratively i mean die where they come and put a sheet of them and take them away to the morgue and i see alcoolics every day going across the edge into irreversible brain damage alcoholic insanity alcoholic insanity you know a lot of us have in moments of depression and fear think maybe I've got alcoholic insanity or maybe I'm going too far, I can't seem to get it together I don't mean when you're drinking I mean when your sober let me tell you alcoholic insanity is not an emotional condition it is a physical condition and if you're worrying about it you haven't got it It sounds kind of funny to say that, but the physical problem is that enough brain cells have been dried out or desiccated so that you can no longer function. People with alcoholic insanity, you don't see them acting silly in a meeting. You don't seem talking dumb at a coffee shop. Most of you have never seen a case of alcoholic insanity nor will you ever or do you want to. I see them too much. alcoholic insanity, sit on their bed or sit in a chair next to their bed and people come along and change their diapers three times a day and feed them and put them to bed and get them up and change Their diapers and feed him. And they can never get better. It's very similar to the last stages of syphilis, except for one thing. Syphilис has the decency to kill the patient. In alcoholic insanity you can be like that for 40 years. Your whole body just stays healthy. You don't know who you are or why you are. Once in a while, if it's really sad, you come out of it and you call for your loved ones. What am I doing here? Look how old I am. And they rush down and put on their hair that you don't owe them anymore. It really is hideous. But that doesn't scare anybody. Won't scare you, won't scare me. What alcohol does won't scar me any more than pictures of diseased lungs made me stop smoking. that may be but not me baby I have to have a viable alternative now how can there be a viable alternate if their alternative they offer me is to stop drinking here's what we're going to do we're gonna leave your holes just be unfilled isn't that going to be wonderful no way and you go to AA for a little while and every so often it turns gray on you and the people turn gray and the information gets goofy and you wonder what the hell you're doing here and God damn it, this is not what I need and there's something terribly important missing in my life that's why people like you and me die if we do not somehow impose upon ourselves certain commitments to sobriety that keep us going until those things go away commitments to sobrietry including such things as maybe finding a sponsor that you cannot fool finding someone that you can trust enough to tell the truth to they say how do you find a sponsor you find your best friend no best friends are never good sponsors because friends don't tell you unpleasant things. You have to find someone who is willing to sacrifice your friendship momentarily to save your bacon. Nobody likes that. I'll tell you. But you do it and you make these commitments. It turns out the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous is not to make you holy. If you think it does, if you're new I'll be holy be careful whenever anyone gets holy around here they're just on the way to deep trouble they rise right out of AA don't you go to meetings anymore no I don't I walk hand in hand with my father pretty touching one day their father gives them a drink and here they come people. I don't think any human being has been appointed God's spokesman on the earth. We are all error-prone human beings. No matter how hard you work the program, you never rise above human being. And some, the trouble is, the ice cream and the crap comes out of the same hole in front of you. Boy, I can tell this is ice cream. I can tell that is. No, I guess it isn't. So most of us have to have tasters around us from time to time saying, no, no. And the reason to stay in alcoholics anonymous is just the peer pressure. One of the great things to do here is to work with others. I'll tell you, I learned more about AA in teaching it than I ever did in learning it. You can learn it and just nod your head, but you've got to teach it to some idiot. You've gotto think what it's about. And also, it gets you out of yourself. I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm running out of time and I'm runnin' out of throat and I've runnin', but I want to... A few years ago, many years ago we used to, in marketing, when I was in marketing and we had tools to help people learn a product. We'd bring in some specialists and teach them our product and we'd give them really a product shot. There was a five-way methodology of doing this and this methodology was how to get the guy to really learn the product. He comes in, he's a sharpie, he's successful in some other field and now we're going to teach you. Okay, there's a five-step program. One, shut up. Now, we wouldn't say that to him because he was important, but you're nothing, so that's what's... In other words, we don't want to hear how it looks to you because you don't know as much as we do. Shut up. Just shut up with care. Shut up secondly listen now you say how can you help but listen to these god damn meetings people talk easy there isn't a person in this room who hasn't been to meetings and meetings where you just turn off the meeting and your body is there and you're thinking I don't know if they'll send me that god damn rent check this week or not or they're getting close to me to participate I'm done it's like I've heard chapter 5 maybe 10,000 times I would like to say that I've hung on every word every time and I'd like to but I don't sometimes I find myself thinking jeez I better tune in B there's probably no human body because human beings are not able to maintain perfect intense listen so listen listen to what's going on listen for things that you can identify with it would your what you already know do not listen for differences but listen for what you could identify them third remember now you could leave meetings and I'll leave meetings I mean well you've been entertained you walk out and say boy that's a funny speaker wasn't there a good and let's get on get to my screamer try to remember something germane you heard in that meeting that you listened to that oh yes i see because there's a lot of times you let me see hear a little nubbin or something yeah then you walk out the door and forget it as though it was all in that room you gotta shut up and you gotta listen and you got to remember then the fourth step you got to practice it you got to do what they're talking about just saying uh-huh don't get it you got a practice it you got practice not stealing the paper out of the rack that was one of the first things I practiced and I said I see you stealing my paper every day I said Jesus I worked in papers all my life and I'm down and out they can give me a couple of god damn papers one day I got a paper someone told me about this later I walked away and went back and put it back and walked away and came back and got it he said he thought that was picketing the newspaper I finally left it there took two the next day but progress but you practice it practice things like being pleasant when you don't feel like being pleasant. Practice things like not taking out your hostilities on people who can't answer back. Waitresses, waiters your kids, your family. A guy told me one time if you really got to take this stuff out find some guy about 6'3 who's really tough and take it out of that son of a bitch. He said you'll be surprised how easy it is to stuff it then don't take it out on people that can't answer back so that's a great spiritual principle learn things like practice things like one of the hardest lessons one ofthe deepest spiritual lessons do what I said I would do be where I said I would be when I said I would be there and if I can't be there to call him and let him know that doesn't sound like very much I worked on that for a long time and I'd grind that into new people today but that's what you do you shut up and you listen and you remember and you practice it and then comes the most important aspect of learning the subject teach it to someone else and as you teach it neither did you have God as you understand her just say amen you teach it to someone else and in so teaching all these things begin to make sense that's the great value there when all else fails what do you do? pray? nope when all others fail do you meditate? nope when all else fails do you make amends no when all els fails do ya think if you do have your pistol right there say when all elses fails you work with another alcoholic you get that mind out I'm very fortunate eventually my family came back and that's more another child and I feel like a really feel a little bit old because my wife is my granddaughter graduated from high school a couple weeks ago and my wife and she are in Dublin this evening Dublin, Ireland and then they're going to Paris and then to Rome and then back to London and using the ticket that I traveled 150,000 miles on United Airlines so I could go to New Zealand you wouldn't deny Katie a chance to go to Europe would you honey she said you're going to die from that throat anyway she didn't say it but she meant it I could see when I see my friend Marty L come all the way down here from Pittsburgh he didn't know that it was benign he came down to get my watch through these doing these things I've not become wonderful but over the years more than not my holes have been filled more than that more than what sobriety has been full of color most of the time I have come to believe in a God that I have prayed to earnestly for well over a quarter of a century I live at peace thursday afternoon i sat at my desk i had a new guy there and he was coming apart i got a phone call from a hospital up wisconsin they wanted me to make a decision shall we let your mother die or not god that's a tough decision we talked for a while and she's feeble i was just up there a week ago but she's people and she sick and she can't get better they can do heroic things and keep her alive but you know and she's in pain she's depressed and she said I want to bring the psychic let me tell you they wanted to give her electric shock therapy one of the things to bring out of the depression and I don't do I had a great many of those and they uh they depressed me but a little old lady in her late 80s to give electric shock therapist really and I finally had to make the decision I thought about it I said you know I said, I don't want you to do anything heroic. God damn it, the last time I talked to her, she's the last survivor of all her brothers and sisters and everybody's dead. She just wants to go to sleep and wake up. I don' want to kill her, but why don't you just let her go to sleeping? And actually, I think that's wonderful. I'm glad you said that, but we have to ask you. And this new guy there, he said, how could you let your mother die? And I had to explain to him at length, I'm not letting my mother die. He was thinking of his mother and somebody else. But time comes for all of us, and it's part of the responsibility of living. Last year I had to make that same decision for my father, and he thanked me for it just before he died. He said, thanks, son. And it makes it sound as though, well, sobriety should be wonderful, but it isn't. What sobrietry gives you is the ability to live in the world with relatively full holds, make reasonably balanced decisions, live with some degree of integrity, some degree or strength, face things without having to run away and die, face things about having to drink, face things that having to just turn off the world and try to get off. What AA offers you is not being sober. AA offers you a lasting way to feel the way you drank to feel most of the time I am glad that through the grace of God and the power of Alcoholics Anonymous and the intensity of people who loved me when I hated them that I stand here tonight safe and sane and sober with a certain degree of hope and idea that I will live tomorrow a better life slightly than I live today that's what I can also have I'm glad to be here I'm happy to be able I'm so glad that Don asked me I'm very glad that I was able to come down here and talk again for the first time in a long time now that I've heard my own voice talk about what I believe and it helped me thank you I know everybody's hot and sweaty and all that good stuff, so I'm going to turn this thing back over to Gabby, and he's got about another hour's worth of announcements.