Step 7: The Moral Leper – Barney M.

Good evening, my name is Barney and I'm an alcoholic. And yes, I am from Alderson, West, by God, Virginia. And it's nice to be here tonight. I come back to, I retired about five years ago and bought a piece of property back in West Virginia, so I'm back there most of the time. But I come black out to California in the wintertime because I'm crazy but I'm not stupid. and so I get the hell away from all that snow and ice and everything. But it's nice to be here again. I haven't been in this club for a long time. It's been, I guess, about five years or so since I was here. I think Tim was saying that he was here with me the last time I was hier. And I remember coming to Laguna Beach to the Canyon Club when I was about six months sober. The man who was sponsoring me was coming down here. They used to have people come down to the Canyon Club, and this is the old Canyon Club and bring a panel and they would come down with six or seven speakers from L.A. or wherever they were coming from and he asked me if I'd go to the Laguna Canyon Club and participate in the meeting down there and I did he allowed me to talk about I think he said I could have two minutes and so and that was just about 29 years ago and so I've been coming to the Canyon Club for a long time and I remember when they built this new club and it's very nice very fancy place it's nice and so it's nice to see all of you again. I, if you're new here tonight, and there were quite a few people that raised their hands, and and there are quite a number of people here I suspect who have a year or less. How many have a years or less? A year or less, yeah I'm glad to see you all. I don't know how you feel if you are new but I know that when I was new my sense was that I was in the wrong place that i was here by mistake that i was not really an alcoholic uh that somebody had made a terrible mistake in my namely my ex-wife and because she was divorcing me she called me an alcoholic and and i knew that i wasn't an alcoholic i i didn't like being an aa i didn'T like being in aa meetings i thought they were boring and I thought the people were kind of goofy, and I wasn't interested in whatever was going on here. I knew that I did not have a disease, and I was willing to admit that my drinking was a little peculiar sometimes, but I didn't really think that I was hooked that badly. Like Tim, I thought there had to be some way that I could get my drinking under control. Um, and, uh, but I, you know, here I was being divorced and, and I didn't want to get divorced. We had six children and, and we had played a lot of Vatican roulette. And so, uh. So we had these six kids. We were living in Woodland Hills, California at the time. And, um, uh and I was a rather successful guy, I thought. and it seemed to me that you couldn't be an alcoholic and be as successful as I was. I was a television news anchorman and I was making a lot of money and I had this nice home and I said, I had six kids and I Had a swimming pool and I HAD two cars and I hAD a lot Of very fancy clothes and my kids HAD fancy clothes and my wife HAD Fancy clothes And I couldn't imagine that anybody like me could possibly be an alcoholic. I didn't know anything about the disease of alcoholism, but I just imagined what an alcoholic was like, and I just didn't see myself that way. And so I knew that there was no possible way that Alcoholics Anonymous could help me. The main reason I knewthat I was not an alcoholic is because when I drink, I feel better. So I knew that you couldn't be an alcoholic. I thought alcoholics were people who drank and started seeing rats coming out of the walls and cockroaches coming out of the chandeliers and hiding bottles and couldn't hold down a job and, you know, wearing long coats and just kind of huddling in doorways and sleeping in cardboard boxes. And indeed that is true of a lot of alcoholics that I have met. I sponsor a couple of guys that slept in cardboard box I mean, that is true of some people here but it is certainly not true of everybody in AA but I just had this vision of alcoholic that was very screwed up and I grew up in the south side of Chicago in an Irish Catholic neighborhood where you didn't have to be Irish but it sure helped and my father was Welsh but my mother was very Irish she was one of 16 children in an Iris family and she was a Flannery that was her name and so I considered myself Irish and I told everybody that I was Irish and the Monsignor who ran that church was Monsigneur Patrick J. Maguire and his feast day of course was St. Patrick's Day which became the most important day of the year and that's the kind of place it was and the Dominican nuns ran that school that I went to and in those days you could go to a private school for almost nothing. As a matter of fact, it was a dollar a month. That's what we paid tuition in that school. And we had these wonderful nuns teaching. And my memory of the nuns is not... I hear people talk about nuns in a negative way. I don't have a negative feeling about those nuns. I think they tried as hard as they could to teach us some values and some standards in addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, which they were very good at, to teach you some values and some standard to live by so that we could live as a happy people, that I could be a happy man and I could have a good life. And then I went on to Catholic high school in Chicago, Mount Carmel High School on the south side of Chicago and I had the Carmelite priests there and I think these men worked very hard to try to give us a set of standards and values to live by so that they would be happy, contented, peaceful people in our lives and uh and then my mother used my dad died when i was 14 and and my mom used the last of the insurance money to send me to the university of notre dame and i had the holy cross fathers and and i know that they worked very hard to try to give us a set of standards and values to live by so that we could live to be contented happy people and and grow to be fine men and standards of the community. And they all failed. These people screwed up something terrible because when I was 21, I was a mess. When I was21, I was afraid and frightened, inadequate, terrified little boy who was mentally still on the south side of Chicago, mentally still poor, mentally still not with it, mentally not knowing what the hell to do for a living, just absolutely lost in a world that I didn't understand and that I was scared to death. And I was a sinner. And I knew that I Was a Sinner. I knew I Was A Sinner when I was seven years old. matter of fact I knew that I was a moral leper that's not only somebody who sins a lot that's somebody who enjoys it thoroughly and I knew you were supposed to like it that much I was supposed to feel guilty and I was suppose to feel a lot of remorse and the only time I felt guilty is when somebody caught me because I love sin, I mean sin is really fun and I found a lot of things to sin about. But I was a very confused young man. I really had a lot of confusion about everything you could imagine, and I didn't know how men behaved. I didn' t know what you were supposed to do to be a man. I thought it had something to do with being tough. I thought it had something to do with being willing to throw the first punch. I thought it had something to do with talking loud and being aggressive. And I thought it had something to do with pretending that you were okay even when you weren't. And I know how to do that. And I now have a job and I know what I'm doing. I know who I am. I know where I'm going to pretend as they say. I know to pretend I got my shit together. I can pretend that. I can look pretty good. I can act sophisticated and worldly. And I'm just this little Irish kid from the south side of Chicago who doesn't know what the hell to do with himself. I didn't do any drinking in my younger years to speak of. I had a little bit of drinking. I didn' t like beer and the taste of whiskey. My mother was an alcoholic. She wasn' t drunk all the time. She was just drunk part of the time, and we didn' d know what an alcoholic was. We certainly didn' l know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. We didn' ll know any of that stuff. but I you know she sometimes she got very drunk and she'd roll around on the floor and cry and carry on and I've embarrassed me and I didn't know what the hell to do about that but it never dawned on me never occurred to me that I would ever do anything like that I mean people don't behave that way and through a series of really odd coincidences I ended up in the radio broadcasting business i had learned a little bit about it at notre dame and and then i got a little job at a little radio station in monroe michigan when i came out of school and and i uh did that and then i went to toledo and i became a news director in toledо and then I was the news director of a radio station in detroit and uh I had for some reason or another I had I was 22 23 years old and I had guys working for me who were 45 and 50. And I was still scared to death. And I thought somebody was going to catch on pretty soon, but I'm still bullshitting my way through and I, you know, I'm looking good. I know how to, I know how to look good. I know how to look like I got it together. And now I'm, I am scared and I feel inadequate and I feel like I'm not, I'm not, I don't have, I don know what to do and and uh i got married when i was 21 i guess and started having these kids and and uh uh i don't know what's much about that either i don'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT BEING A HUSBAND I DON'T KNOW Much About Being A Father I DONT KNOW Much ABOUT ANYTHING I'M SO DUMB JUST SO Dumb AND AND I'M THE NEWS DIRECTOR OF A MAJOR RADIO STATION IN DETROIT BY NOW and then I went into television and I started doing TV work and a lot of changes took place in television right at that period in the middle 60s everybody went full color from black and white to color we went from magnetic optical sound to magnetic striped film ultimately we went to minicam and videotape real fast and satellite trucks and Jesus, everything changed Within a period of about 10 years, everything rolled around. And God had all changed. The electronics changed and everything changed. And I was there. I was working through all of that process. And we went from typewriters to computers. And Jesus, I mean, it was just nutsy. And I Was So Frightened Little Boy. Now, somewhere in my early 20s, I made a magic discovery. and I think it's a discovery that sooner or later every alcoholic has to make and it's such a simple thing nobody ever pays much attention to it when it happens somebody ought to put a plaque on the wall but nobody ever does it's just one night it happens and it just goes by and here it is no matter how I feel no matter what's going on in my life if I'm up or down if I feel bright or stupid whatever is going on in my life when I drink I feel better it is such a simple it's just nobody ever notices it just happens now it turns out I feel so good when I drink that I want a lot because I somehow am convinced in my own mind that if I drink more it's going to get better and better and better and better well it doesn't as we all know but it does get pretty good and it's a lot of fun and I somehow I feel like a million dollars A few drinks and I'm right on top of the world. A few drinks that I am brighter than you. A few drink that I'm the most intelligent guy in the room. A few drinking that I certainly am the most handsome. A few drank that I was the slickest guy going. A few, I mean it just magically turns me into something really marvelous in my own brain. And so, I drink a lot. and I get drunk of course and here's the thing when I get drunk I have a tendency to move around a lot I travel quite a bit I go from bar to bar I go from city to city I go from country to country I just move around a lot I don't remember things I have a tendency to forget I forget where my car is I forget what I'm doing I forget who I'm with I forget I just can't remember I go through these periods of time that I kind of lose time I lose a day I lose two days well, just as an example I can remember. I woke up in the airport in Kingston, Jamaica. On a... Turns out it was a Saturday afternoon. And the last thing I can think of that I can't remember was having a couple of drinks in a bar in Detroit Friday night. Now that would be alright if it happened once. But it happened to me a lot. and you wake up in all these strange places and you can't remember where the hell you are it's embarrassing you don't want to ask and you finally figure it out you manage to get home and of course the first question is where have you been they've been calling from work if you anchor the news and you don' t show up they notice they just expect you to be there every god damn day I mean you're under pressure that way and it's just God it's awful and I don't know how to explain my behavior I don' t know what to say because I ain't going on these trips alone most of the time I have company and my only hope, of course, most of the time is that she's got her own credit card. But I spend huge amounts of money trying to impress people I don't even know and it turns out I spend, most ofthe time I spend about 10% more than I make and it doesn't make any difference how much I make because I'll tell you what, by the time I was 27 or 28 years old I was making a lot of money. And I was having a good time. And ABC was flying this other guy and I into New York, and we were being wined and dined in the Leonard Goldenson suite at the New York Hilton Hotel, and we Were Being Taken Up to the Top of the Black Tower there on the Avenue of the Americas, and they put us in this big auditorium. I'm 27 years old, 28 years old and we're lecturing the suits we used to call them the suits these are the guys who are sales guys and advertising guys from all over the country would come in and they'd sit in this auditorium and we would lecture these guys on how we got such great ratings in Detroit and we had no idea but we would tell them anyway we made stuff up and they took notes and those were wild times and it was that's my bookie tell them I'm giving the 14 points done and other Super Bowls over so that's why I was and uh so we're working hard the ratings are great we're making a ton of money and i'm drunk all the time just drunk night after night after nine after nine and just roaring around having a hell of a time and uh i can only tell you that by the time i was 30 i began to get very tired and it became harder and harder to function it became harder and harder to go down and sit in that studio and have them turn those goddamn lights on you and you just want to melt and it was good it got harder and harder to read the copy it got hard and harder to convince people that I was okay because by this time I'm getting a reputation for being a real bad drunk but the ratings are good So they're not going to fire me. They just lectured me a lot. And when I'm 35, my wife divorces me because she thinks I'm an alcoholic. And I know that I'm not an alcoholic, I'm too successful to be an alcoholic I got underwear with my initials on it. How can I be an alcoholic? and uh i i went on got drunk one night and i called this guy and uh this is a guy that i that had told me some months before that he was an alcoholic he said it right out like he was real proud of it and uh and he said uh you call me if you ever think you got a problem so i called him not because i thought i had a problem I got to get this woman to drop the divorce I got a bullshitter and she ain't buying my bullshit too much anymore I've been married to her 14 years she now knows all the stories and I don't know what to say to her to get her to drop this divorce and I called this guy and I said, I'm not an alcoholic that's not why I'm calling you and he said, yes I know social drinkers call me all the time at 3 in the morning he said what do you want? I said well, I've Been Thinking and what i'm thinking is if i don't drink for about six months that uh she'll drop this divorce and i can get back to what i consider normal living and but i got a bullshitter pretty good here for about 6 months now i can stay sober for about a week when i'm really pushing it but after that i get real nervous see i have this problem it's not drinking problem when I drink I feel better it's when I quit drinking and I go on the wagon that's when I get nervous I get nervous and edgy and irritable and crazy and I can't function and that's when I ain't drinking I have what I would describe as a horrible sobriety problem I don't know what the hell you're supposed to do with that and the guy said well he said I'll tell you what we just do this thing a day at a time I said no I need about six months one day she's not going to buy that ship six months and he said well barney i haven't had a drink actually in four and a half years i said well my problem's not quite that severe i don't need that kind of time i need about six months this was the first conversation i was to have with this man of many conversations because he became my sponsor and we were to have many conversations that were the same as that that is i would talk to him about what i was feeling and thinking and he would say something back to me that would indicate he hadn't been listening and he did it all the time he starts taking me to these stupid meetings which were just god awful we'd go to these meetings and it was the same crap every night somebody get up there and lead the meeting be real happy and joyful and free and and then they would, oh, call on people to read. And they'd read the same crap out of that book every night, like they couldn't remember it. Chapter 5 and how it works. And then they'd call on People to Read who weren't very good at it. and then they would applaud oh George is going to read chapter 5 isn't that wonderful Jesus and then the church they read these traditions I had no idea what the hell that was all about but they seemed really important to these people every night they read them I thought they must do that to see if the newcomers can pronounce anonymity I don't know and then when they can't they laugh at them You know, it's the same. I don't know. I don' t understand. I don''t have the slightest idea what's going on. They're reading all these steps. They're talking about God. I don ''t know. And then you get people getting up to podium and they talk about all their marriages and their divorces and their jails and their hospitals and their institutions. Jesus! It just goes on and on and on. This litany of horrible things that happen to these people. And I don'T identify with any of that crap. And people are saying have you identified yet and i'd say no and i don't expect to i'm not like these people there wasn't an anchorman in the bunch nobody liked me and we go to these meetings we go to these means and they go to the meetings. And then I said to this man who was my sponsor, oh one night I thought I could help these people a little bit and I went up to this woman who seemed to be in charge of this meeting and I said you know I notice you folks read out of your blue book there every night. You seem to read pretty much the same stuff. And there is a lot of great literature that's been written over the centuries, prose and poetry. Things that would be very inspirational to these people, I'm sure. And I could bring it in here for you. And I know it's a lot of the people that are reading are not very good at it. On the other hand, I am. So I could read this stuff and be something new for these folks, you know, because they must get off of board with this crap and she said how long have you been sober I said about two weeks she said well I'll tell you what I need a floor mopper I said do you need a what we need somebody to mop the floors after the meeting I said oh god And I went back to my sponsor and I said, how do we write to New York to report that bitch? She's trying to kill newcomers. He said, what are you talking about? I said she wants me to mop the goddamn floors. He said that would be a good thing for you. I said why? He said well I don't think you should ever ask me that question. Just do what I'm telling you to do and mopping the floors will help you stay sober. I said I don'T understand how. He says, just do it. So I started mopping the floors there on the left side of Ohio Street every Tuesday night. Actually, I got pretty good at it. And I was finishing my side quicker than the guy on the other side. And my side was cleaner. So every Tuesday Night, I'd finish, you know, and I'd go, I've got you again, you son of a bitch. I never told them there was a race but you got to keep an edge that's the way I used to amuse myself I'd sit in the back of meetings and mock speakers and make fun of everybody I thought the birthday cakes were really ridiculous and then after I'd been hanging around here about six months the thought occurred to me because I hadn't had a drink in six months and I thought I wonder if I could get one of them cakes if I could get a year, I could get a cake and I could make a speech and I could tell these people what a bullshit thing this is and that I don't like their book it's badly written, it's a bunch of crap I don't work their steps. I don' t believe in God. And I've studied theology for 16 hours at Notre Dame, and I don''t believe in god. So I can tell them why I don ''t believe in god.'' I could lay that one on them. But I could tell them I stayed sober anyway. And they could stick that. So I sat in the back plotting my speech. night after night after night I sat there and I thought about that speech and I kept adding things and subtracting things and I'm really going to tell these people and then I had this spiritual experience I was sitting in a meeting one night and this tall redhead walked by and she had this gorgeous long red hair and she has these long legs, she had the greatest legs in North America. And I knew she could help me. So I started chasing her around the meetings and I went to a lot of meetings just to see those legs. I hated meetings, but I would go to see these legs. And you know, I'd walk a mile for a camel, I would walk a mile to see this legs. And I kept trying to get her to go out with me and she wouldn't go out with me she had three years sobriety and she said i don't date newcomers and i said well i'm new now but i'll be old later how about coffee trial something here and uh one night she said how many children do you have i said i have six but they're very small you'd hardly notice them See, I, in a way, trying to threaten my wife I had said to her one night If you don't drop this divorce I'm going to get the best lawyer in Beverly Hills And I'm gonna demand custody of the six children I thought that would scare her a little bit She said, you can have them And she left so i'm living in this apartment in santa monica with my six kids the oldest of whom was 12 and the little one was about a year and i'm trying to go to meetings and i'M TRYING TO WORK AND I'M TR YING TO FUNCTION AND I'M HALF CRAZY AND I HIRED A LADY TO TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS AND I DIDN'T SPEAK VERY GOOD SPANISH AND HER ENGLISH WASN'T VERY GOOD SO I COULDN'T EXPLAIN TO HER THAT I COOULDN'T PAY HER But I figured, you know, a couple of weeks and she'll leave and I'll get another woman and that's the way it'll go. But she stayed. I don't know if she wouldn't go away, that woman. And finally after about a month, I came up with some money and I paid her and her sister came over and her brother and sister spoke pretty good English and I said, ask her how come she stayed when I didn't pay her? And she asked her and she said, because she really likes your kids. I said God, that's amazing. and so that woman stayed with us for a long time and I went to meetings and I hated the meetings and the book to me was just so stodgy and so, God, it had been written in 1939 and I thought, you know, this is old fashioned stuff it read a little bit, I thought like it had be written by an Episcopalian from Vermont turns out it was written by an Episcopalian from Vermont but I just I hated the meetings and I hated the book and I hate everything that was going on some of the speakers were kind of funny and I really was attracted to this redhead that's why I don't think motivations matter see I don' t care what your motives are if you're in here for all the wrong motives, that's fine. The trick here is, listen to me if you're new, okay? Put your ass in the chair and leave your head outside every night. That's it. There is no other advice. I'm going to talk here for 45 minutes. That is the most important thing I am going to tell you. Put your ass on the chair and put your head on the bed. Put your head in the chair. And leave your hat outside because your motives don't matter here. And in my opinion, this is not an intellectual exercise there's nothing to be learned here there there is it's not like you're going to come in here take notes and learn something intellectually and then know something we do not have a chapter entitled into thinking we got one called into action what does that mean it means my floors it means make coffee it means stack chairs, it means participate. It means if somebody asks you to read or participate in an AA meeting, say yes. That's all. You don't have to like it. Just say yes because you're saving your own ass. I mean, I see people all the time in AA meetings. We have a La Jolla meeting on Saturday nights and we have two 10-minute speakers and we have a hell of a time trying to get two people to talk for ten minutes. Oh, I don't think I want to do that. Who gives a shit what you want? You do it anyway. You don't have to be you know it doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't care It doesn' t matter what you thing. Thinking got you here. Action will keep you here Chuck Chamberlain was a wonderful guy in AA used to say I don't believe that you can think your way to good actions and I certainly don't think you can Think Your Way sober he said but you can act your way to better behavior you can act your away to better thinking ultimately but action is the magic word you just got to do it it's like my sponsor used to say don't come to a meeting and tell me how you feel. Don't come to a meeting and tell Me what you think. Come to the meeting and tellMe what you did today to participate in your own sobriety. Did you call an alcoholic? Did you read the book? Did you go to a meet-up? Did you try to help some newcomer? Well, I'm a newcomer. So what? Somebody's newer than you. If you got one day, you tell the guy that just walked in the door how you got the one day that's what you do we share our experience strength and hope that's what we do here so if you're new you turn around and get the person that's newer and give them your phone number and get them to call you