The Body Lowers an Iron Curtain When Alcohol Gets High Enough – Clancy I.

My name is Clancy Emerson, and I'm an alcoholic. I wanted to wait for the tape to start, because I wouldn't want my talk credited to someone else. I'm happy to be here tonight, safe and sane and sober, because I haven't always been, and the nature of my disease is such that I may not be again sometime. I often say this, not for any instruction or edification of any of the listeners, but so I remember it, because I have seen people who have been sober much longer than I have been, who have forgotten that and have drifted away and eventually wound up drunk. I've watched people who, to the best of my ability to judge, have had a better quality of sobriety than I have found thus far, who have somehow been able to move back, back and back, and back and back. And eventually out the back door, and not to be seen for a while, and then one day be reported drunk. In fact, it's kind of interesting, if I'm sure most of us here have attended groups, attend groups, it's kind of an interesting thing. Have you ever noticed this? Sometimes somebody will come in and say, gee, Louie is drunk. And somebody says, Louie is drunk, my God. But most of the group won't know Louie, because they've all come since he was attending meetings years ago. And it's kind of funny, but it isn't really funny, but it's a good tip-off. Again, people just don't go off and get drunk, usually, when they're well. They just kind of withdraw. And then they, sometime that something happens, and they have forgotten that they can get drunk. And they get drunk. And I don't, I would choose not to have it happen to me if I could help it. It may happen to me. A year from today, I might be the drunkest thing going. Months from today. But I would try to remind myself that it can happen to me. And then the chances are considerably less. I've had, gosh, I guess this must be my sixth or seventh year that I've come to Las Vegas. I guess I talked at the first intergroup meeting held here in this room some years ago. And some of the patterns are just about the same. Some things have been added, nice things. I had a very splendid time this afternoon at the Crafts playing water polo. Drowned, being drowned by people who I've saved from drink. People who I've spent hours with, guiding them on the path of righteousness. And they get their old sponsor in the pool and try to drown him. But I forgive them. I've got their names right here. And, uh... It's been a very lovely, a pleasant afternoon. And then, as with all trips, I've spent my semi-annual hourly argument. One of your bleeding beacons in this area. My arguments have helped him grow. He's grown from being a lousy newcomer the first time I came up here. Now he's a state delegate. And you don't know any more now than he did then. If you've known how I've tried to help this man. And guide him. And shape him. And get the same answers. Huh? I, uh... I feel kind of strange tonight myself. I've had kind of a strange day. Not today, but yesterday. Because that's something else that has kind of evolved. The first time I came here I was sober a couple years, I guess. And I, uh... My talk was a brave, truthful talk, but brave. I talked about my wife and four children. Who I had lost. And might never see again. And they were thousands of miles away. In fact, I sent them postcards from here. And little pennants that said Las Vegas. So they could see where Daddy was. You understand, ma'am. And the next year I talked partially on that same subject. The next year I talked partially on that same subject. And then... Things got more complicated. My loved ones joined me. Now I can't get any sympathy anymore. Now I can't get any sympathy anymore. Now I need it. But, uh... Then for a couple years I talked about the problems of being a father. And, uh, last night I had a new one added to my crown. I, uh... I gave my oldest daughter in marriage. I didn't mind the marriage or the cost of the thing. But it was kind of a funny feeling. Because I'm really too young for that sort of thing. I really am too young to be giving a daughter in marriage. And I just dread a year from now. Because young people being what they are... What if they have a little baby? And I'll have to come up here again and tell you that I'm not... I'm no longer living with my family. Because I'll tell you this. I'm too young to be living with a grandmother. Three other daughters. Who I can look forward to feeling the same feeling with. And a little boy who is only two years old now. And I, uh... At least that provides a consolation for the daughter leaving. We have a little boy who is nice. And it's, uh... I have kind of evolved. You kind of lose track of where you are, where you came from. That's why it's kind of good for... At least for me. For, like, AA birthdays. Not that AA birthdays are so tremendously significant. Because, in truth, they're only one day. But at least they allow you to... They make you stop and think about where you have come from. You can remember where you were on a specific day X years ago. It's hard to remember where you might be on January 19th, 1955. Or where you were on February 6th, 1962. But I remember where I was on October 31st, 1958. I remember... Because I was coming out of an all-night theater. And I remember that clearly. I'd come out of an all-night theater many times. But I remember that morning more particularly. Because that was the morning I got sober. And I didn't even intend to get sober. Because my indications for sobriety were very limited. Because before that, I'd been in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous for nine years. And I knew all about Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd lived in a lot of states. And I'd been to a lot of meetings. And I knew about the program. And there was... It no longer was a magic thrill to me when some old lady in white tennis shoes would shuffle up and say, Keep the cart in the jug. You know. Or I would go to a meeting and say, I'm being evicted tomorrow. Someone would say, First things first. All right. All right. Or I've got $73 in hot checks out. You know. Turn it over. Turn it over. Don't have to. The merchants are doing that. I really didn't intend to stay sober that morning. It was a surprise to me even today that I did. Because I knew about AA. I'd had long experience in AA. I could quote the book better than most people who were 12-stepping me. Some people are of the illusion that the ability to quote the book or to describe a page is what brings sobriety. Because to some people like me, it takes a while. Almost takes my life. But you come to discover a funny fact. You discover a fact known as that you can know the book Alcoholics Anonymous back and forth and die drunk. In fact, one of the sad things that I sometimes see. And I have nothing against it, really. There's nothing in the dogma if we have any dogma against it. But it's something that smacks of something bad within me. I've always used to be a great book-quoter. It makes me sad now when I see someone get up and, with the best of intentions and best of motives, recite chapter 5 instead of read it. Raleigh, have we seen a person fail who's totally followed our... You know. There's nothing wrong with that. Come in. I'll start over. My name is Clancy. I'm a slave. I can sell you two seats in the back. Because I have a great tendency to hide behind facts. Or a great tendency to do the surface thing. It's a hard lesson that I had to learn. That this book is not Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the title of it. But this is not Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a hard fact to learn that this meeting is not Alcoholics Anonymous. It helps a great deal. And you can stay sober a long time in meetings. But eventually, most people discover that the meetings are not enough. Meetings and reading the book are not enough. Meetings and reading the book and using people, although that helps, is not enough. Because these things are not Alcoholics Anonymous. But I thought they were. What is Alcoholics Anonymous? Meetings and books and people. There are three things everybody knows about AA. Even before they come to AA, they know it. And you know it after you get here. AA is a place where you go to get sober. Everybody knows that. You don't have to be any wizard to know that. It's also a place you come to learn where you return to God. It also is a place where, out of gratitude, you help others to find this way of living. Now, everybody knows that that's been around at all. That's nothing surprising. And I always knew it. And it really wasn't until I found out that each of these things were incorrect that I ever was able to stay sober. AA is not a place to go and get sober. Don't need it. Nobody needs AA to get sober. It's not a place where you return to God. Nothing in the literature of AA or its instructions nor implied instructions asks that I return to God. Or even return to a higher power. Doesn't ask that at all. And it certainly doesn't ask me, out of gratitude, to take actions in AA. But yet, I died because I thought it did. I died because I thought it did. In fact, I have kind of a sentimental journey next weekend. Next weekend in September will be September. I got to talk in El Paso at a meeting. And that's going to be kind of touching because 11 years ago this September, although they don't remember it there, I do, I died in El Paso in a little garage. I committed suicide. Baffled and afraid. And they had to get my heart going in order to get me well enough to get me to the city psych ward in order to examine me. When I say examine me, I don't mean with instruments. I mean through the slit in the door. And pick up on my pattern and commit me to the Texas State Nuthouse. And I went to the Texas State Nuthouse. I wish I'd have been there as an alcoholic. But I wasn't. I was there as a nut. I was there as a suicidal depressive. As a schizophrenic. As a wrong-o. They didn't use that term, but I got that impression. You're a wrong-o. And it's not surprising. And it's not surprising because when you go through life and you feel as though the word tilt is on your forehead lighting up like a pinball machine. Tilt. Every time there's pressure. Tilt. You know. And I went to that Nuthouse and I had a terrible time. I've mentioned it many times, but I'm going to mention it next week in El Paso. I felt very depressed. I felt, first of all, depressed that I had sunk to the point of going to live in Texas. I left San Francisco and hitchhiked to El Paso to make a new start. And I went up north and got my family where I'd planted them briefly during another one of my runaways. And I brought them down. And I did a wonderful sprint in Texas. I did a wonderful spurt. Worked in the paper and then on the advertising agency. Directed an opera at Texas Western University. Just wonderful. Just keep winding up in the Nuthouse. It loses a little of its excellence. But I felt depressed that I'd gone to Texas. In other words, that's like seeking lower companions. And I was really going to make a start. And have them nuts put me away. You know. That hurt. And I was in that Nuthouse about two weeks and I determined that I was too smart. These guys make about $60 a month, these big attendants. They've got to be six foot six. They've got to be kind of dumb to be working for that kind of money. And a sharp kid like me ought to be able to outsmart them. And I did. And I escaped after two weeks. And it wasn't until after I escaped that I discovered that hospital is an escape-proof institution. It truly is. It's more escape-proof than Alcatraz. It's more escape-proof than any place. But you don't know it until you escape. After you get out, it becomes escape-proof. Because they can see you running for three days. Just nothing. Just a straight, flat shot. Just nothing out there. And you feel like kind of a clown in your white jacket. Like a clown in your white bathrobe. Nothing ever gets any smaller. Every once in a while you just know that those field glasses are, Well, there goes the little Yankee son of a bitch now. And as a result of that run, I was put into intensive electric shock and bombed out of my mind for months. And it was supposed to recreate my personality, I understand. It at least made me averse to ever trying to run away. I never tried to run away again. I became a company fink of the worst nature, baby. When they said mop, I said, I, I. You know. And when I got out, I finally, I had some good times in the nuthouse, finally. I got to be a trustee. First I started off as a mailman. And then I got, founded the hospital newspaper, which is still running. Got into some trouble there, briefly. I had kind of a wry sense of humor that the doctor didn't appreciate always. I remember talking to him. And I said, gee, on this newspaper, doctor, I got a great idea for a slogan on our front page. You know, like the New York Times says, All the news that's fit to print. And the Chicago Tribune says the world's greatest newspaper. How about this on ours? We're all here because we're not all there. I tell you, the electrodes danced in his eyes right then. And I, I got to be, I got to be a test case in that hospital. I was one of the first, I guess I was one of the first three in the history of that hospital, whoever were taking off, taken off the psychotic ward to go to the AA meetings in the alcoholic ward. And I got to be quite active in AA, as I should. I'd been around AA seven years. I knew AA better, I'd been around AA longer than the counselor. He'd been in AA five years. And I'd been around AA seven years. And I could just razzmatazz that guy. I was the best newcomer they ever had in that group, you know. I would like to find a new way of life. Is there anything I can do to do it? I'm willing to go to any length of it. Christ, his eyes glistened every time he saw me. Hi. I wound up going out, representing the hospital of the local groups around there. Talking at AA meetings in Midland and other places. You know, the type of talks that inmates make, when inmates are not as sincere as they might be, but want to conceal it. The type of talk that gets through to listeners so well, who want the inmates to get it, you know. Friends, many of us in the hospital have found a new way of living through your wonderful program of Alcoholics Anonymous, which many of you have been great enough and good enough to bring into our hospital. You've given us 12 stairs of recovery that have brought us the only serenity for many of us in our unhappy and troubled lives. And it's only through the kindness of many people such as yourself and your unselfish attitudes and your wonderful ways that we have found this new happiness. And on behalf of all of we at the hospital, we want to say, God love you. And you could laugh at that, but that got me out of that nut house. And back to drinking. It sounds terribly cynical, but you've got to do the best you can. And I was doing the best I could. And I went back to El Paso, and I had kind of a bad name around town, because I was a nut, legally now. And so soon I got a job in Dallas, and I brought my family in there, finally, after a few months. And had another new baby in another new town. Most of our children represent reconciliations in different parts of the country. That's really true. Even our little boy now. That's the California reconciliation. That's the reason I'm staying there. I can't afford any more kids. But in a few months, my family was gone. For the first time, they ever really left me. And they left me really good that time. I came home from a weekend of being drunk and sick. And I just wanted to get in that house and throw up a little while and get my strength. I'd just spent my severance check for my last job. And I got in that house, and there wasn't... They were gone. They were gone. When I say they were gone, I mean the family, the furniture, the rugs, the refrigerator, just everything. In two days, they... And I never knew where they went. Never found out. Never found out. To this day, I don't know where they moved to. I know that they moved in a certain place. I found out, you know, they moved in one room. Four little girls and a mother moved into one room and sold all that furniture just to get away from me. Just to keep out of my way. But I don't know where that one room was. And I... When I got in there, I felt a strange mixed feeling. I had a feeling kind of sadness that I was being persecuted in my moment of need. And a feeling of relief. I was glad that they got away from me. And maybe they wouldn't hold me back anymore. Maybe they wouldn't drown me with responsibility. Maybe I could make something of my life at last. Might be too late. And so I floated around. And went to Wichita Falls. And went to El Paso where I called up a couple guys who'd been my sponsors. Called them up drunk and denounced them for being phony rotten finks. And went to Juarez, back to Juarez and got in trouble there. And next thing I knew, I was in the Phoenix tank. Which is no place to be in August. Because it's like 115 on the street and you're up in the third floor in the county courthouse or whatever it is. And it's hot. And I got out of there. And I was sick and disgusted and rotten and lost and afraid. And in a strange town. What do you do? I'll tell you what I do. I always look up the AA club. Lay a little story. Get a couple bucks. Get moving. So I tried to look like an eccentric millionaire. And I scurried over to the AA club. So I wouldn't get busted for vagrancy on the way over there. And I sat there a couple days. And I must have smelled pretty bad. And looked pretty bad. And I weighed about 50 pounds less than I weigh now. So I wasn't exactly fat. Maybe they didn't know I was there. I didn't cast a shadow. What's that piece of paper doing on that chair? And I smelled bad. And really, I don't know if I ever mentioned this. But one of the memories I have there. Nobody was talking to me. And I couldn't do anything. And somebody just donated a set of books. So for two days, I stayed cool. Stayed cool as I could. And I sat there and read the complete works of Horatio Alger, Jr. Sink or swim. Fill the fiddler. Pluck and luck. You know, just Jesus. Just making the time go. And an old lady was looking. One day an old lady came in. And she looked like such a nice old lady. And she came over. And she said, young man, are you sick? And I said, yes, I am, ma'am. And I've just been sitting there thinking. Boy, I've got to be the sickest man inside and out in the world. I look back upon many years of being different and a failure and afraid. And having new starts. Looking back on a life of alienation of people and places. My parents hadn't talked to me for many years. I didn't know what state for sure my children were in. One son, I'd wandered away and left him dying in his crib years before when I was drunk. And he was buried in still another state. And I had with my best friend one night, a guy who was trying to help me in a different state. I had so hurt him in my living room. My wife sat there. I so hurt him that he just got up and went home and killed himself. A sick animal loose on the streets with no hope. And wretched and bitter and hostile and afraid. And the lady said, are you sick? And I said, yes, I'm sick. And I thought, what a nice lady. And she's the only one great enough. And I said, I won't hustle her. I'll just be nice to her. And then she said a line that made it all different. She said a very famous line. She said, it's so wonderful that you young people are getting to AA before you had to suffer. That cost her $4.85. Which isn't much in the big scheme of things, but it's a lot when you're tap city. And so I wound up in Los Angeles. And I went to the AA club there. And I hustled around there. And I finally got banned out of the AA club, the 6300 club. And I went and lived in Synanon briefly. And I didn't like it there. It was just open. It was a bad place in my book. And it seemed bad to me. It must have been pretty bad. And I went back downtown on Skid Row. And I remember mornings, some mornings, standing in the cold drizzle, quarter to six, waiting for the blood bank to open up on East 4th Street to get in and sell that pint of blood for $4. And hope that this $4 would somehow give me a start so I could change my life. Get me to Seattle where I could get a job maybe on a paper. Or do something. And if I had two consecutive thoughts in Los Angeles at that moment, in that line, or coming out of that all-night theater, sick and afraid, I only knew two things for sure. One. I knew I was not really an alcoholic. Not really. Smell like an alcoholic sometimes. Looked like an alcoholic sometimes. Even drank like an alcoholic sometimes. But not really an alcoholic. Because of one very, very excellent reason. Deep in my heart I knew, based on all I knew, alcoholics are people whose problem is basically alcohol. And alcohol was not really an alcoholic. It was really my basic problem. Alcohol for some time had been an answer, the best answer I ever found to my basic problem. And then alcohol too had become a problem. But it was not my basic problem. And I didn't know what my basic problem was. And if I had a second thought, I knew the symptoms of my basic problem. One of the symptoms is that somehow or other I was emotionally disturbed. Not all the time, but sometimes. Like a light flickering on and off. I could always do well in the 50-yard dash. I was always great in spurts. But sure as God made green apples, I'd blow it. I couldn't keep it up. I knew that I was one of those people that the book described. And I could quote it from the book. People who are constitutionally incapable. People who can't, even no matter how hard they try, can't sustain it. People who, there's something out of focus inside of them. The best description I ever heard was given by kind of an untutored guy many years ago, but it's so true. He said, all my life, he said, I've been feeling like, just when I was coming off the assembly line, I got right to the end and somebody said, hey God. And God said, yeah. And I got by without my last screw being tightened somewhere. Just... Not much, but just enough. Just enough. So when the pressure was on, I rattled. And I certainly know that feeling. As long as the world goes all right, I get along all right. But when the pressure's on, the screw starts to rattle, baby. And I don't know where it is. And I've spent many, many dollars with analysts to try to find out. I have tried AA in conjunction with psychiatry to find out. And it wasn't. I couldn't. I've tried AA in conjunction with medications, some to pull me down when I was too tense and some to pull me up when I was depressed. And they weren't enough. And I've tried AA in later years in conjunction with philosophy. When I wasn't working so much, I could read more. And I read Nietzsche and Kant and some Schopenhauer. I'd like to discuss these at 2 o'clock in the morning. All right. I'll be back in the morning over a nice dry red wine on a rugless floor. And think about those Philistines out there who don't know what's happening. And it's too bad that the intellectual is doomed to rejection by the bourgeois. But that wasn't enough for me. And I tried some fringe religions, and that wasn't enough for me. What do you do for a guy like this? Try AA in conjunction with therapies to affect his emotions? Stopping drinking. Just didn't do it. AA was not enough. And I knew it as sure as I knew anything. I wasn't really alcoholic because when I stopped drinking, my problems didn't get better. Not the real problems. They may lay there waiting for a while, but sooner or later they came back, and the hole appeared in the pit of the gut, and the wind started blowing through, and the secret fears come in. And when these come, baby, you got nowhere to go. It's nice to go to the AA meeting and talk about where you drank, and how you got sober, and how nice it is to be sober now. Who do you go and talk to when you're just afraid? Who do you go talk to? Can you go down, get up in the morning, and say to your wife, say, I'm afraid this morning. You're crazy again. I'll put you away. Somebody meets you on the street, how are you feeling? Oh, I've got a sense of impending doom. Can't go that way, you know. Or you tell people you're afraid, and they ask, one question that just crushes you. What are you afraid of? Oh, I don't know. Something. I don't know. Pretty soon you get the reputation of being strange in your group. Don't ask that flake to come over. And really, when I look back, I really see that there's, I can truly understand. There's no prognosis of recovery for me, coming out of that all-night theater on October 31, 1958. There's no prognosis of recovery for October 30, standing on the bloodline. There's no prognosis of recovery for people like me, because not only am I too sick for AA, but I already know about AA, and have built up a rejection complex to it, based on logic and fact. And that's why it's kind of amazing to me, to find myself standing at this podium and saying, well, Halloween, if I'm still here, God allows me to be here, it'll be nine years since that morning. And of all things, I attribute, whatever I have, to Alcoholics Anonymous, pure and simple. Not even AA plus Therapy X, or Medication Y, or Philosophy Z, or Fringe Religions, or Better Ways, but just this same old crud that wasn't enough for me 18 years ago, when I went to my first meeting. And I got considerably sicker after that. So that's kind of an amazing thing to me. Beautiful. Hit that ashtray at four yards. I just do these things for my own amazement. Gotta have a lot of security to be able to do that. And if you miss, you pretend you made it anyway, so it doesn't make a difference, you know. No newcomer would dare point out you're wrong. But here I am, sober nine, almost nine years, eight years and ten months, perhaps, and still, oddly enough, enthusiastic, enthusiastic enough, so that last night, after having a wedding for my daughter and having everybody over to my house, their family and mine, and sitting there and pouring champagne like some sort of a crazy fool, and finally putting the corks back in the bottles, empty bottles, I might say. They drank like a bunch of pigs. A couple of my women whispered to me, live and let live. Couldn't phase them. At then, at 11 o'clock, when everybody went to bed, I was just looking forward to jumping in my car and with my friends from AA and zipping up here, driving all night so we could come up here, and for no particular reason, just so I could stand at this podium and say, in a real sense, that I, Alcoholics Anonymous enables me to live in the world. It enables me to live more comfortably in the world than anything I have ever known or found. And I tell you this, not as a naive individual who came to AA and in the traditional wonderful sense walked through that door and the desire to drink left me instantly, but rather as a cruddy, cynical, bitter, pseudo-intellectual punk saying, Screw you! I know I've done better because every once in a while somebody comes up to me at a meeting and says, It's easy for you to be for AA. You don't know what it feels like not to have faith. Well, yes, I do, baby. I know what it feels like not to have faith. I know what it feels like not to have hope. I know what it feels like not to have honesty or open-mindedness or willingness. Incidentally, you know, that's kind of a funny thing. As people get sober a little while, they keep wanting to have newcomers bring better and better qualities to the program. You know, all we ask of the newcomer is complete honesty and open-mindedness and willingness. Somebody should tell them if they had those things they wouldn't be coming to AA, baby. These are not the characteristics of practicing alcoholics. It would be more likely if we could ask them to be unwilling or, say, admit you're unwilling and dishonest and close-minded because at least that's a step forward when you admit it. But these hallmarks of alcoholism are not the virtues that we want people to come here with. That's what we are here to try to find out. And yet I find myself doing that. I sometimes tell newcomers, without thinking, I get mad at some dink I'm working with and I say, God damn it, when I was new, we wanted to do these things. I have the same problem with my children. I tell them what I did when I was their age. And now as they get a little older, I can't. But I was young. When I was your age, I ran away from home and stayed there and starved in San Francisco. Yeah, why don't you do that, kid? Yeah. People come here, I have found, at least the people I know well enough to speak about, in all parts of the country, are here for one kind of good reason. It isn't that they are so thrilled with Alcoholics Anonymous coming in. It's that right then, it's getting pretty bad out there. People, I believe, are driven to AA. Very few people come here on a whim. Very few people join in, get up one morning and say, well, what do we do today? Let's all get on and join that wonderful program. You know, forget it. When the bricks get too hot, we dance in. And then when it looks like they cool off, we dance out sometimes. And little by little, I have come to discover those three facts that have saved my life. Because they've told me what AA is and which has enabled me to live in the world out there. One, thank God I learned that I wasn't in AA to get sober. I always thought that. And it killed me once and almost killed me a number of other times. I am not in AA to get sober for one very good reason. I didn't know that reason until I was sober a couple of years. The best reason of all. But that's this. Because nobody in the world can stay drunk. It's physically impossible. You can't stay drunk. Despite what you may hear from me, despite what you may hear from a podium of a person talking about their drinking career, nobody ever stayed drunk for 20 years or 10 years or 5 years or 1 year or 6 months or 3 months. It's physically impossible. Your body won't let you stay drunk. You may want to be drunk but you can't because your body fights for survival. You keep getting sober again and again and again and again. That's one of the bad things about being a drunk is that goddamn sobering up all the time. Hmm. Coming back to your loved ones? Well, let me tell you what you did this time. You know, I don't mean my loved ones, your loved ones. My loved ones were much more gracious than that. Hmm. I have to be... This is the first time I haven't brought my wife with me. She's busy cleaning the house today. I remember now I can speak as it is. I don't have to keep excusing that she was not that way. She was. She was terrible to me. Trove me. Trove me to drink over and over. Give you a little ammunition, Les. But everybody gets sober again and again. And I'm sure a good many people, good many people I know personally, have always had kind of a nagging sense of inadequacy about whether or not they are truly alcoholic when they hear, when they hear someone who's really an alcoholic, who never sobered up between nineteen and eight and nineteen and forty-one. Not one day was I sober. I've lost my job twice. Everybody gets sober. You don't need AA to get sober. Your body does it for you. There are techniques of getting sober, some more comfortable than others, but you don't have to worry about them. You'll get sober one way or another. If you've got money, you can go to a sanitarium, as I have done several times. There is a good way to get sober. No, nobody haranguing you or reading to you out of that book or nothing. You just, when you hurt, you say, Nurse, God love you. But if you haven't got money for a sanitarium, you get just as sober under your bed barking like a fox as you will in any sanitarium in the world. You get sober in the backseat of a car crying. You get sober crawling around the lawn. You get sober in traditional places with your face against the cold tile. That's the best place I know. Or at morning vespers. Very few of us, very few of us have not made a few morning vespers. That's where you kneel in silent meditation and gaze into the shimmering waters of eternity. And then you say, God. Barely thought of it at the time, since I've been sober and done some work in the medical field, and had some access to medical information, I discover that what I thought was sick, throwing up, is not really sick. It is sick, but not as sick as I thought. That's one of the ways my body fights for its survival against alcohol. It expels toxic fluids. It expels things that endanger it. Some days when you're terrifically sick, your body makes it come out through the pores. You sweat it out. Try to chew a little sen sen for that. You know. Some mornings, your body needs to expel more than it can get out through your throat. And it expels it all over at once. And then you are confronted by a decision you really don't need right then. That's the classic AA phrase. I just didn't know which way to turn this one. But you rarely think of this as the body's defense mechanism to expel alcohol, which is threatening it. You rarely think. One of the classic ways that the body physically protects itself is when the blood alcohol level rises sufficiently and therefore in the area of your control functions to affect speech, sight, balance, various motor elements, when it gets high enough, about a little after the time when you lose your ability to see well. You know, there's a lot of jokes about drunks seeing four or five of something coming at them down the sidewalk and wondering which one is the real one. You never see four or five. You only can see two. And the reason you see two is the same reason you slur your words a little bit and you kind of lose your balance a little bit. Because that motor area has been affected and your body is unable to quite triangulate on an object. So it gets off just a hair and it feeds two different images that don't go together in your brain so you see two of it. That's all. Very simple. If you only had one eye, you could only see one. That's why people like us when we're driving home drunk don't know why you do it. You just cover an eye. That's the defense mechanism. But there's... You know what happens to the body? It fights to protect itself. The next thing it does, it lowers an iron curtain that prevents intake of any more alcohol. It's a physiological last gas defense mechanism. Because it's fighting to protect itself. But you never think of it. Think of it, well, I just passed out. Just passed out. But passing out is what the body does because the next motor area to be affected is breathing. If it gets there, you die. That's all. Very simple. Can be charted on a big chart. Nothing to it. But the body will make you get sober again and again and again and again. If we all should get drunk following this meeting tonight, we'll all be sober again. Whether or not we ever go to another AA meeting or hear AA. Those of us that survive will be sober again and again and again. Some of us may have lost our spark to stay sober but we'll get sober and keep getting sober again. In fact, the saddest things that I know in the world are people, some of my friends here in Las Vegas because there's such people in every group in the world who in possession of their faculties go out to drink a little bit knowing that they'll get back. And when the time comes to get back, they come back physically but the spark has gone out and they are doomed to go again and again. I'm sure all of you know people like that. I do. My friend Carl, who died since the last time I was here, somehow that time out lost that spark and although he came back in body he could not come back in mind therefore could not come back and died. And my friend who entertained me at his home last year when I was here is out there amongst them. He got back in body but not in mind. He's out there. The world is full of them. The mere fact of getting back physically doesn't do it. Somehow the spark goes out and nobody knows when that's going to go. But you always get sober again and again. Now, somehow the impression has been disseminated to people, jerks like me or I hear it that way that that's what the point of AA is. To help me get sober. And so I come here and get sober and wonder why I have problems. And if I am lucky to survive enough perhaps I will discover what my problem is. The most fortunate thing that has ever happened to me I guess in my life more than anything is to discover that I suffer from alcoholism. Not alcohol. Alcoholism. Alcoholism is not centered in alcohol. Oddly enough. Who would ever think such heresy? Yet it's in this book and it's in all our literature and it's in everything we talk about. But you don't think of it that way because going in my preconception is that alcoholism deals with alcohol and alcoholism deals with alcohol and Alcoholics Anonymous deals with how you stop drinking alcohol. And I can hear other facts for five months and it never gets through because my preconception is stronger than what I'm hearing. But that isn't the point. There's nothing deadly really in the physical disease of alcoholism. It's the slowest working killer disease. Ever. You have more warning signs in alcohol than you do any other functional disorder of its type. Deadly functional disorders are the ones where you don't have much warning like what a strong penicillin allergy. Now that's a deadly functional disorder because the first time you discover you got it it kills you sometimes. Because you're already sick and they give you a massive dose of penicillin and you die. Now that's a way to go. There are some disorders to which some bodies are prey where if you inhale certain substances it closes off your mucus membrane. In other words your throat closes off unless there has to be somebody standing there with a hollow metal tube to jam down your throat and there usually isn't. You'll fall down and die from suffocation on the sidewalk. Just like that. Now that's a deadly functional disorder. Not booze. Have another one. Get sick. Swear off. Swear on. Get sick. Swear off. Do better. Change brands. No! Yeah! House is gone. Screw them all! Ha ha! Yeah! Just a lot of time. And there's a way to beat alcohol. And I have come here at tremendous expense and no little inconvenience. Driving all night in one of the pluckiest exhibitions I've ever seen to tell you this. Alcohol in the alcoholic is a functional disorder. A functional disorder is characterized by the fact that the body responds to a substance which has been introduced into it. When the substance is removed from the body apart from lingering minor, mostly residual effects, your body goes back to the way it was. It is not affected when the substance is not in it. So the medical answer I am pleased to present to you is this. Don't drink. Now if you'll just keep those dollars and dimes rolling in. And that truly is a true and accurate response to a functional disorder. If you have a penicillin allergy, do not take penicillin. You only have to say that once to someone who's got a penicillin allergy. You only have to tell a guy whose eyes are puffed shut from sniffing strawberries, don't sniff strawberries. And you can leave him alone in a market and he'll never go over and sniff strawberries. They're all gone now. You find someone who a bee sting makes their whole arm turn black and puts them on their deathbed. They are very careful about bees. And yet, some gink comes up to me and says, your drinking is killing you. I know it. I can't bear to think about it. It's funny when thought of that way, but it isn't funny when I think of the reasons why I do it. Because alcoholism, the deadly part of alcoholism, the thing that transforms alcoholism from a fairly safe functional disorder, which eventually will kill you, but after many, many warnings, what transforms it into a disease that kills more people every year than all other functional disorders combined, all the more deadly ones, that kills, has traditionally been the third greatest cause of death in the United States, and according to figures issued in 1966 by the AMA, when connected with the barbiturates and the depressants, other depressants, and the amphetamines and pep pills, when taken with them, this little corner has become the number one killer in the United States, passing cancer and heart disease. Why should this be? We've had all kinds of warnings. We know about it. We've even taken steps about it at times, here and there. How can this be? And this is something that you've got to be lucky to find out, or at least lucky to believe, because you've got to come to believe it, or else you're going to have a lot of problems, I think, and that is this. What makes alcoholism deadly is the one thing that I would never in the world connect with alcoholism, sobriety. That is the curse of alcoholism, sobriety, because unlike any other functional disorder, in this functional disorder, it is coupled with an inability to cope with unsedated reality indefinitely. And there's a very good medical reason for that, because all human beings have conflicts up and down. Alcoholics are very lucky. Booze resolves conflicts a little bit better and a little bit faster than booze does for most people. I think alcohol is the greatest thing in the world. When you think about how it must be to have problems, and to have some poor gink staggering with problems about to drive him out of his head, and he says, I'm going to have a drink, and it goes, and he'll never know the feeling of going, I've got problems. Who needs advice? That's a great thing. It sure does help. But it does a little bit more for you. There's no question about that. The question is how physiologically this comes about, whether it's caused by an endocrine gland imbalance, or the malfunctioning of these glands, or whether it's caused by an overactive pancreas, or whether it's caused by enzyme deficiency, nobody knows. Alcohol is in the same stage of physical research as cancer. Nobody knows what causes it, therefore nobody knows what to do about it. And that includes your sister-in-law who's married to a pharmacist, and that includes your mother, and that includes your family doctor. If he knows, then he should communicate his information, because nobody else does. Nobody does. The AMA is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in research, and they don't know. Just isolated examples. A guy at the yoga church in Los Angeles knows, but I haven't been able to reach him. He's been put away. As soon as he comes out, I'm going to get him. Dr. Seymour knew, and he prescribed medical medications and prescriptions. Because with medical prescriptions and his lectures, people could meet alcohol. But Dr. Seymour, I can't even reach him. He was committed to UCLA Hospital for being an addict on his own goddamn pills, you know. So I'm going to have Dr., the New York doctor who, Dr. Cain, my old friend, who found a cure for alcoholism a couple of years ago, is having a bad time because one of his cured alcoholics got drunk one night and knocked his teeth out. He can't breathe. He can't talk very well. But he'll be back soon, as soon as he can find a dentist that can do the job on the cuff. Nobody seems to know what causes it. But there's one answer. You don't drink. But you can't, it's easy to tell that to someone until you remember what his problem is. His problem is that over the years, as alcohol has become a conflict resolver, gradually, being more and more used as a conflict resolver. It has nothing to do with your level of living or your income or anything else. It's just when the emotion's out of whack, you have a few drinks. Maybe drink a little too much sometimes. But it's the greatest thing in the world. It's like eating at Perino's. Perino's is the greatest place I've ever eaten in Los Angeles. The hors d'oeuvres are better than most entrees out of the place. Just great. And I'd just love to go to Perino's. But like Perino's, and booze did something similarly good for me or better. It made them all right. It made them all right, little by little. But like Perino's, the same reason I don't eat at Perino's is now the reason I don't drink. Because when you're all done, baby, there comes a tab. And the tab at Perino's is about 49 bucks for lunch. And the tab in alcoholism is booze becomes a problem to you. And now you can't drink anymore. But unfortunately, your psychological profile has become such that you can't stay sober anymore either. Beautiful. You're really screwed right then. And you can take vows, and you can take pledges, and you can go out in that street and make up for lost time and show them, maybe for a day, maybe for a week, maybe for six months, maybe for a year. But the mark of alcoholism is not that you can't get sober, but it's something else. You can't stay sober in what has become a primarily hostile environment. They are going to hell, and sooner or later, I got a drink to stand. And guys with tears of sincerity running down their cheeks a week from then can be drunk. The most sincere person in the world, if he forgets that little fact, sooner or later will drink. That's what makes alcoholism deadly. Because everybody knows what booze does to them, but eventually you get to a point where it's less bad than what's happening to you sober. And the words are, what's the use of staying sober? What's the use of trying? I can't get a break. These situations, these people are ridiculous. At least when I drink, I have some fun. At least when I drink, I get away for a while. And so people like us troop to one another's funerals every year or to the hospital or to the nut houses and watch other people whose intentions are good say, why don't you just be a man? Why don't you straighten up? Why don't you shape up? Why don't you get along with people? What makes you such a crud? I envy those people in AA who say, whenever I was sober, I always got along beautifully with people. It was only when I drunk I had problems. Not me. When I was sober, I didn't get along with people very well. I did for a while, like all 50-yard dash people do, but eventually I didn't get along with them. That's why I always drank. That's why most alcoholics always drink. Maybe in retrospect, it looks like I always got along with people. Then why do you keep starting drinking again when everything's so wonderful? I was happy all the time until I drank. Why drink? Maybe two or three times out, but after you've proved yourself, you can't. Because whether we like it or not, again, this is a medically charitable thing. You cannot stay drunk. You cannot stay sober. And that's what alcoholism is. Boom, boom, boom. And most people who die, if they die from alcoholism, die assured of one thing. I'm not an alcoholic because I didn't get drunk. I didn't get drunk that much. I didn't stay drunk all the time. It was truly the situations in my case. It was the people in my case. It was them. And that's why it is incumbent upon me to remember that I am not here to get sober, because if that's the case, I need take no further action. I don't have to drive to Las Vegas. I don't have to listen to some dink call me up at 3 in the morning and tell me his story. I don't want to hear his story. I'm returning to normal living. I want to be like so many people I've seen with furrows between their eyes around here. I want to learn to say no. I want to... I'm sober. I'm getting along good. I'm executive now. Executive. Yeah. And, you know, really, is it normal living to go to meetings all the time? Is it normal living to worry whether I'm being honest in my expense account when nobody else is? Is it normal living to make amends to some old landlady in Dallas, Texas that I made she break her arms and legs? You know. Is this... The book says return to normal living. And I'm here to get sober and I'm getting along good. I got mine, Jack! Now flake off! And if I carry that tattered flag a little too long, somebody comes in and says, Jesus, that nut in the glasses is drunk. That Clancy. And half the group will say, Clancy? Who's he? Oh, he used to be around here a couple years ago. And it's not because I'm not a wonderful, devoted to sobriety, but my job is not to learn to get sober. There isn't anybody in this room who hasn't got sober countless times before they came to AA with or without AA. The impossible task, medically speaking, is to go out there and live sober so that you don't have to drink. And that's the purpose of AA. That's what these cruddy, no-account steps are about. You know. I don't mind a few steps as long as they don't get in my way. You know. But they want me to work. I don't see any therapy for me in writing down the rotten things I did. You know. I'm trying to forget them. I'm... I used to have eyes for my aunt in Dubuque, Iowa. That won't help my sobriety. Won't help my sobriety. I'd write down rotten things that I'd join the Foreign Legion to forget. But they say, Take your inventory. Take your inventory. And you don't have to until you're just forced. I took... You know how I took my inventory? I'll tell you how I did it in the old days. When we were sincere unlike this present crop. I had just lost my job at the Gaty Delicatessen after six wonderful months of sobriety because I couldn't... I was a dishwasher and I couldn't get along with a goddamn busboy. And so I was punishing them by not washing many dishes. And I was kind of sitting there how spiritual I was. A man of my education and background washing dishes. Beautiful. That guy fired me. I said, But you can't fire me. I'm finding a new way of life. I'm trying to... I'm living right in the parking lot next to the AA Club in an old abandoned car and I'm sacrificing everything. He says, Jesus, kid, I don't know about that. You just don't wash enough goddamn dishes. That's all. Which in years to come was a great lesson that's helped me on many jobs. I have stopped coming to work saying I can't work today because I was at a meeting last night. They don't care. They just want me to wash my dishes. And flake off at five. You know. They don't care how spiritual I am at night. They're not paying me for that. They're paying me to be there and work in the morning. Kind of hard to accept that in that cold world. I could tell them about my inner beauty to just make them cry. But what I did that day, I took it like a man. I took it like a man. I went off to kill myself. So this was the final clincher. AA couldn't work for me. And I tried to find the ocean to drown myself. And I couldn't even find the ocean because I wasn't that familiar with Los Angeles. And I finally found out I was in the western half of Beverly Hills. The ocean was another ten miles or so. And I didn't mind killing myself but I wasn't going to walk ten miles. So I called up a guy in agony. And I said, Bob, AA doesn't work for me. You told me to call you. I don't know what state my kids are in. I'm hungry. I haven't eaten today. I got so mad when I got fired I didn't eat my meal. I'm sick and I'm disgusted. I can't think of anything. I can't think of my check till tomorrow. Everything is going to hell. My parents haven't talked to me for years. I haven't got a friend that I can think of. Nobody cares about me. I'm sleeping in the back end of an abandoned car now for six months. What can I do? And you know what he said? Why don't you take your inventory? And I said, Why don't you? I forget what it was, but he cursed me that day. I said, In my judgment, baby, the last thing I need is an inventory. He said, In your judgment, hey, why, you listen to me, punk. And there wasn't anybody on the line he could have been talking to. He says, Punk, you've been using your judgment now, you tell me, for nine and a half years. And you're flat on your can and you're nothing. And now you lose your rotten job as a dishwasher because you haven't got enough guts to do that right. And you tell me how things look in your sick rotten judgment. Who cares? Now, that's no way to talk to a newcomer, I'll tell you that. And I know, because I've been a newcomer a long time. But to make it fast, that whole thing resolved, I went and took an inventory that day in the sixth year and a half. I just went and got some paper and said, Give me some pencil, paper, paper. I wrote down things I didn't even know I knew. When I got done taking that inventory, nothing changed. I went to sleep that night in the backseat of an abandoned car. Half a day hungrier, sick, rotten, mad, cross. I had one sense of relief. I'd proved to that old fool that taking an inventory didn't work. And that made me sleep. It wasn't for two months after that, it wasn't until I looked back in retrospect that I realized what an important thing that had done in my life, that it had changed direction. But left to my judgment, I would still not have taken an inventory to this day. Pain and anxiety, forced me to do it, superimposed by guidance, as most of the things in AAR. One thing I boggled on was returning to God. I know about God. Unlike many people, I know about God. Some people say they've been searching for God for 30 years. Not me. I was raised with God. I talked to God in Norwegian when I was three years old. And God slowly circled the spire of the Norwegian Lutheran Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And he gave it to sinners, and he gave it to Catholics. Everybody knew that. As I grew older, I had a definite aversion for God because I discovered I was going to hell. If what they said was true, I was going to hell. I was lost at seven or eight. There was no way out. So I got to disbelieve in God. I want to go over it very quickly. I don't have much time and I've been asked not to speak overtime by the authorities here after all this long trip to get here. But later on in AA, just a few months after my inventory, I discovered that I didn't have to return to God. I never had to return to a higher power. He said, don't you see that punk? He says, what that stuff says, you come to believe in a power greater than yourself. You come to believe. And he says, you're here asking me, so you come to believe in me. And as a result of coming to believe in him and giving up on God entirely, I came to believe in a couple more guys. And as a result of them, I came to believe in one particular group. And as a result of coming to believe in a particular group, I came to believe in AA finally. And I know there are people who say, AA is not enough to believe in. You have to have more. Well, I'll tell you, I know guys believed in AA only for 30 years and he stayed sober and he's a wonderful man. I don't care what your sister-in-law thinks about it. It says you come to believe in a power greater than yourself, whatever that power may be. A God as you understand it. I have been very fortunate as a result of having a belief in AA over a period of time, I have come to believe in God, a God that I pray to, a God that we say grace to at our meals at home, a God that I try to please as best I can. I did not return to that God because the God I would have had to return to was a God composed by my mind when I was 8 or 10. I have to come to believe in a God that I live with at 40. But I have come to believe in God. And the easiest thing in the world for me to do tonight or any night is to say, you've got to believe in God if you want to feel good. Newcomer, find God. But that is not what AA says. AA never says that. And I mustn't say it. Because if that's what I would have had to find, I would be dead tonight. I had to come to believe in a power greater than myself. And if all you can believe in tonight is an arm of the guy that you're talking to and you can grab that arm, grab it. That is a higher power. And if you can believe in a group, believe in a group. Believe in whatever you can. Because you've got to start from where you are, not where I am or where somebody else is. You start from where you are. And you come to believe little by little. And if you're very fallible like I am, occasionally when you're over your head in emotionally murky waters, your belief will waver sometimes. And you think, God damn it, maybe I've just been kidding myself and things are so tough. Then sometimes you have to go back and start all over again. I call up my sponsor and say, God damn it, they're after me. You wouldn't want me to say it in Las Vegas. And, you know, instead of taking four years to get back to it, I can get back to it sometimes in three hours. But I have to remember that I'm a fallible human being. I am not divinely motivated. I am a very fallible person. And I must remember that I am not to do the steps of AA out of gratitude. That's a poor motivation. When I'm grateful is the time I least need to do them. It's when I'm ungrateful. It's when they're all a bunch of crubs and I've got to do AA. You know. It's when I'm mad at that meeting. Oh, that meeting. I'm not going there ever again. They're just a bunch of crubs. That's the meeting I'll have to go to and smile. Wonderful to be here. And somebody will say, Nice to see you. And I'll say, Oh, the meeting's changed. Good. I would hate to depend upon gratitude to motivate me. Because I'm too flaky. I am still technically an outpatient from the Texas State Nuthouse in Big Spring, Texas. Some of you people are well, but not me. In fact, the only way I can get off of that commitment is to have a certificate signed by a psychiatrist saying that I've been examined and found to be legally sane. And I haven't been quite ready to go and take that exam. I'd hate to get a flunking mark. But I'm very close to it. In 19 days, I think I'll be able to do that. Because right now I'm seeing a psychiatrist two or three nights a week. Two nights a week recently. And I'm happy to say that in just 15th of next month, he'll get his first birthday cake. Now, if he has any gratitude towards his sponsor, I should be able to take that paper and say, Don't read it. Sign it, Norm! Sign it! A little gratitude offering to your betters, you know. But he probably won't. But I have that chance, and I'll be free. And I can't wait for him to straighten me out as soon as I get him well. God, I'll... That's what I've got to remember. I am not here to speak to you tonight as an example of perfection in Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe some of you would be helped by that. But if I were sitting there, I wouldn't be. Because I know I am not perfect. I've always been kind of turned off by perfect people. Or what I used to think were perfect people. People who simulated perfection because they thought that was the role they should play from the podium in an AA meeting. People aren't perfect. The world out there has ups and downs. I could lay a story on you. Just spend my whole talk night and tell you about wonderful things and give you an impression that I'm perfect. I live with my family. I hold, you know, the hostile, rebellious, dirty, rotten fink like I. You know what I do for a living? I'm a public relations executive. All I do is go around and make friends all week long. Hi, here's Clancy. Some days, I'll admit, I don't feel like it. But that's where my dishwashing training comes in handy. I don't have to feel like it. I just have to do it, you know. They don't care whether I feel like it. They just say, go out there and wash some dishes, you know. Much of life is like that. Sometimes when I'm in a hurry, I don't feel like stopping at red lights. But trial and error has taught me that that's the thing to do. Whether I like it or not, I find myself doing it now in the meantime. I find myself doing it now in the middle of the night when nobody's looking. God, I'm scared. I'm afraid the angels will get jealous and come down and seize me. Little by little, I am learning to live. Now, I could, you know, I've got a good job. I'm not sleeping in the backseat of an abandoned car anymore, as I did my first year sober. I have a couple cars. I've got a daughter married to a nice young man last night. My life has never been truly more comfortable inside. Now, I could say that this is due to the fact that I have attended AA, and I have. I have worked at AA, and I have. And I have gotten infinitely better. But I have not gotten infinitely better. Sometimes I'm so discouraged at my lack of progress, no matter what I do, how many things I try to do, I just don't seem to get better faster. I'm as kooky as a dink some days. All I need in the morning, is to have somebody give me a zinger as I leave the door, which isn't enough. But when I get on the freeway, and I just see them all saying, Here he comes, Clyde. Block her off. All the lanes. I turn my St. Jude in the car around and pace him and scowl at him. Scowl at him, St. Jude! I don't tell St. Jude I'm a Lutheran. I just leave him there. Some days, I just wonder if I've made any progress at all. And this is what makes people drink. So how can I stay sober? I would tell you that the greatest miracle I know about Alcoholics Anonymous is this. Alcoholics Anonymous, I cannot emotionally say, has made me much better. Really, it has made me some better, I guess. I stop at red lights and I try not to be mean. But you know the greatest thing about AA? The more meetings I go to, and the more I try, and sometimes the more inconvenient things I do, you know what happens? They get better out there. Little by little, those fools have been shaping up for nine years. Not very fast. They certainly need guidance, I'll tell you that. But if they didn't shape up, I couldn't be living out there for nine years, because I can't make it. Intellectually, I know that this is not correct. Intellectually, I know that no matter how many meetings I go to, or how many 12-step calls I do, or how much I listen, or talk, that they don't, you know, their life goes on the same, and they're not really changing. Intellectually, I know this. But emotionally, down where I live, it doesn't look that way. Emotionally, I am many times glad that little by little, they're getting better. The bosses are getting better. The drivers are getting better. My kids are getting better. My wife is getting better. My friends are getting better. My friends are getting better. My parents are getting better. People I don't know are getting better. Because if they don't, it's going to be nip and tuck, because I ain't getting well that fast. Some of us have to get going, you know. If you feel weak and heavy laden sometimes, and you feel inadequate as a result of that, don't. That's why we're here. It isn't because we're big and strong and wonderful people. We're here to tell you that fallible, weak people can stay sober and get progressively more comfortable. And not only that, but maybe if you're lucky, have the greatest gift I ever got. Somehow, for nine years, I've been able to maintain the same enthusiasm towards the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I feel as enthusiastic about it tonight as I did in the den right on my first birthday when I cried. And it's not because I'm a good man. It's not because I'm a wonderful man. It's because I've been fortunate enough to remember that I need help. And I'm not here to do you a favor. I am not here to impress you. I'm not here to flash my wallet in your face. I am here because I am Clancy Emersland, and I am an alcoholic. I cannot stay drunk, and scientifically, I cannot stay sober. And something has to break that pattern, or I've got to go back to slashing my wrists, and hostility, and fear, and inadequacy, and rebellion all my life, drunk or sober, and that drives me insane. And I must return to sanity, and sanity for me is living in such a manner that I do not have to induce a chemical psychosis that will make me bear it. I am glad to be here tonight, safe and sane and sober. I am glad that I am a father, and a husband, and an employee, but more importantly than that, I am so glad for one thing. Tonight, in five minutes or so, when I walk out that door, I am going to be walking into something that I have never been given, nor been able to buy, or have my parents give to me, or love give to me, or nothing give to me. I'm going to walk into what has become a predominantly friendly environment, one that I, most of the time, enjoy living in. And that's something that you can't get any other way that I know of. Thank you.