The Bondage of Self and the Loving Action – Cliff R.

Thanks for choosing Dykobe Tapes. If you enjoy this tape, you can order other titles from us by calling 1-800-999-3381 or visit our website at www.dykobe.com. Hi there, my name is Cliff Roach and I'm an alcoholic And how much do I owe you now? They are dear friends And they're wonderful hosts, I'll guarantee you It's just an absolute honor and pleasure to be here I'd like to thank the committee You knocked yourself out, you did a great job It's a beautiful place here, isn't it? Wow. And we've had a wonderful time. Your weather. I'm really sorry that, again, I do this every once, about once a year I do this. I'll get somewhere and I get the suit out and get the shirt out, and I have no tie. Must be something in here that I don't want to wear a tie. So I came, I was going to strip him of his, but he had to be up here too. And I said something about, I need a tie. This guy, J.C., he leaps up, whips off his tie, hands it to me. He's a wonderful guy, but he's got crappy taste in ties. But he's a wonderful guy. He saved my life. My sponsor's been dead 15 years, but if I came up here without a tie he'd come back and get me. I believe that. I can't ever hear a countdown without thinking of this guy that I picked up, some newcomer. I took him to a meeting every night for 12 nights in a row. And every night in California they probably do that here too. They always say, is there anyone here your first 30 days of sobriety? Will you raise your hand or will you stand up or something? And this goof would just sit. But I'm very patient and tolerant. You don't have to have trouble saying that, tolerant. But the twelfth night I finally had enough. I turned to this guy and said, why in the hell don't you raise your hand? He said, I'm not sober. I said, oh wow, what the hell, okay, I understand that. I didn't take any more meetings either out there. Can I work alone here? Yeah, thanks. Guys think it's a group meeting here. The chorus in the Greek plays. Anyway, I love the way you read the promises. A lot of meetings read them at the end and that's fine too but to read them at the beginning to kind of set us off, especially the newer people. I don't know what the new people here are like, but I know what I was like. I was sober a year and a half. And on my second inventory, and I was sitting up late one night. I couldn't sleep. Oh, really? Yeah. And I was reading the big book as I had been instructed to do. I'd read it. I was a loser for many years. I'll explain that later and I read it several times there, but I was an English teacher and I thought it was very poorly written But it was reading a lot better this time You know what I mean? And I had been through it at least three times since I've been sober But it maybe two or three o'clock in the morning I was all alone as everybody house was asleep and I was reading I got to the you know bottom of page 83 in the top of H 84 and I saw the promises I I had never seen them before. The reason I saw them was they had started to come true in my life. That's the only reason I could see them. We're going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. See, I'd already started to feel the new freedom because my idea of freedom and happiness before I got here would curdle your hair. I mean, whoo, had something to do with me running amok in the world and everybody smiling, you know. And it said I was going to comprehend the word serenity. That's the one that got me because I don't know what you were like, but I always thought serenety was some kind of a hot flash experience, something on the top of a mountain, something with wind blowing through you or something like that. what I had come to comprehend was serenity is walking around loose in the world comfortably in my own skin that's, you know, I comprehend and to no peace oh my god you know I'd only had like this much but I knew what peace felt like and all the rest of it of course it had the solution in there too. It had all these things that were going to happen to me. No matter how far down the scale I've gone, I can see how my experience can benefit others. My favorite line in the whole book, that feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. Isn't that interesting? Grammar. And Bill was a grammarian. Bill Wilson loved grammar and practice grammar. You know, he didn't say he knew exactly what in there. He didn't say these feelings of uselessness and self-pity. He said that feeling of uselessess and self pity will disappear. It's the same feeling. Look around at the losers. Look around the losers, they're all full of self pity because they're useless! You know I've been hearing the plea for a committee for next year. I don't see any useless people here. I didn't see anything useless either greeting at the door and the people serving coffee and the People Registering people like that. I didn'T see any Useless people, the guy that leaped up and whipped this ugly tie off. Those are the happy. Did you ever notice that? All my life I've always wanted mine and I wanted yours too. And I never knew that by giving away something I would have more of it. I never new that. I had to learn that from that vicious rotten little sponsor the little Nazi and by the way when I got up we don't do it in California but I honor when in Rome, fiddle my sobriety date is the 13th of January 1970 and my home group is the Carlsbad AA Workshop, which meets on Thursday nights in Carlsband, California. If you're ever out that way, give a holler, I'll take you. I meet there every Thursday with 250 or 300 of my closest friends. It's a great meeting. Best one in Wichita. Should have seen him when Ann said hers was the best meeting in Wicita. I thought, ah-ah! Oh, I really enjoyed Ross's talk. The guy's a poet, isn't he? He's a real poet. Beautiful, beautiful one. I like Anne's talk too. I like those people who got married a lot. The Al-Anon speaker and I this morning have been married 50 years. I sponsor all these young guys, you know, and their problem is relationships. The only time they're worse off is when they don't have a relationship. I tell them, don't come to me. What the hell do I know about a relationship? I've married this same woman for 50 years. She leaves me alone, I'll leave her alone. What the heck? But Ann, what she had, I think she had six names within the talk. I only heard five husbands, so I don't know what the hell. I can talk to her later. She lost one there. Well, my sponsor, I was sober almost a year, and he had been married seven times, my sponsor, Bill. And we're driving to L.A., I'm sober a year. We're riding up to L!A. to his sponsor meeting, and all of a sudden he's talking about these wives, and he says, eight? I had eight wives! He forgot a whole wife! Oh, man! I took my hat off how could you forget a whole wife safety in numbers I guess I don't know but my like and my sponsor got sober and then and he kept the same wife for 25 years dead. And his lawyer went out of business. Wiped the guy out. I love to drink, that's why I'm up here. I don't know about the rest of you. I, I love drinking. I love the taste of alcohol. I hear these weenies come up here and say, I never cared for the taste of alcohol I always want to say would you care for the taste of these because I love the taste alcohol don't you I love sour mash bourbon whiskey the best my daddy taught me how to drink that one's out when I was young and you get a little bit of water just enough to rinse your mouth you know and then you like a triple shot of Yellowstone was our favorite Yellowstone. IW Harper's good, and there's other good ones, but Yellowstone And you just drop that shooter, remember that? Just swallow it And it burns! Oh, I love the burning I got going one night at that at home And we lost three newcomers These three guys just said, oh, to hell with this I kind of try to hold back on that now uh but you know then you just take the you take the water rinse your mouth then if you want to you swallow the water in a really nice restaurant like we were tonight i used to like to say i made a rainbow oh that'll put it down under the table oh that puts them under there real fast what the hell are you doing under there you married guys remember that don't you think you had a few too many they say you had a few too few that's your problem lady have a couple of them loosen up baby what the hell and counting oh gosh you should count that's your fifth one today so will you just shut up and eat your breakfast for Christ's sake and I'm talking about pre-Alanons I'm not talking about she's my Alanon now but I'm telling about pre alanons because when you're talking about Al-Anon's you're not talking about people who don't do that anymore just the same as when you talk about a member of AA you're now talking about a drunk person I've seen great miracles happen in the program of Al-Alan you heard one this morning my oldest daughter Kitty is another miracle they work the same steps as we do can you imagine and they get the same results from those steps as they do their lives change, they become different people And so I'm not an Al-Anon basher. I have great respect for the program of Al-Alanon, great respect. They drink funny, but a lot of people do, you know. So-and-so drinkers annoy the crap out of me anyway. Did you ever drink with those weenies? Oh, God, you take the cap off you. They say, I'll get it. I don't trust people like that. I simply don't trust people. Because, man, I drink as much as I can as fast as I can get as drunk as I can. And I got in a lot of trouble drinking. I liked to fight. That was the biggest problem. I just loved fighting. I liked fighting better than anything. Better than sex. That's called step two. And, you know, unfortunately I had not much success with it because I was no good at it in my case a minute that I would get enough booze you know to become brave I'd lose my muscle coordination you can get seriously damaged doing that I'll guarantee and I used to take these legendary beatings and I was proud of them. And I did a lot of wild and crazy things and when I'm in a blackout, I always get in big trouble. I like to come selling these in blackouts. It's just a hobby. But I never got caught and that's the only difference between me and these guys you see coming in with the big muscles. I just never got caught. But I became a schoolteacher after I met my wife in college, San Jose State. I had just won World War II, and we were attending San Jose. I'd met her there. She was down on Skid Row looking for an alcoholic to abuse her. And you're looking to be abused. You've got your boy here. And we entered this 20-year suicide pact together. I don't know if any of you understand, but we had a dual disease. We did. We had alcoholism and Catholicism. Consequently, we had a kid every nine months and 20 minutes. What does it seem like to me? Every time I come out of a blackout, what the hell is that they're alright when they're little you know like kittens but as Ann was saying this afternoon they grow and the older our kids got the weirder they got I became a school teacher the guy that does felonies in blackouts becomes a schoolteacher And as the older we got, the weirder she got. She had one of those pre-Alanon tics in the eye, you know. Had her sense of humor surgically removed many years ago. And I was the weirdest one of all. I was a head nut. And we moved to Oceanside, California in 1961 and we still live there. Now that's where I'm going to die. And I loved the city, right on the Blue Pacific. And I got a job at Oceanside High where I was a relatively successful teacher. When you say teacher, you've got a relatively successfully high-paid job. But anyway, I was very good teacher and I worked very hard. And I go in some trouble because they told me I had a bad temperament. You know, hitting people at school and that kind of thing. But they're narrow-minded bigots, so what the hell. I became a surfer. I mean, I'm a surfrer dude, baby. I was almost 33 years old before I ever learned to surf, but I fell in love with surfing. Oh man, I loved to surf. You might say I'm obsessed with surfing, you know. I had a five-way heart bypass. A couple months later, I was still out there. Kids love me now. Help Mr. Roach back on his board. there you go but unfortunately for me I have another allergy I'm allergic to the sun can you imagine and if I stay in the sun these things grow on me and there's a dermatologist down in Solana Beach has built a house just off me he calls me his annuity and so I love surfing I'm obsessed with surfing yet I can't be in the sun. Hmm, a puzzlement. So you know what I'd do? I'd get up at dawn, go out there before the sun comes up and catch some waves. About the time the sun started getting warm I'd go home. I controlled my surfing. I didn't need any goddamn sponsor for that either. oh no book son never helped me dance either but the last few years of my drinking I became very very paranoid because I did not want to have any blackouts because when I have blackouts it's trouble there's always blood wrecked cars and all this nonsense and they have a tendency to call you to Sacramento when you do these things and take your teaching license away from you. So I became very paranoid, and I stopped to a great extent. I stopped having blackouts. It's almost said I stopped. But I became a daily drinker. I don't know when you did that. I became an alcoholic. I became the daily drinkers maybe 10 years before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. This time, which would lead you to believe, I came other times. actually the first time I came this other surfer dude and I we'd gotten a surf shop down on the beach actually he had the surf shop and I worked there and Woody, my pal Woody the mayor of the town donated us this little building right down on the Beach, can you imagine on the water, it was all beat up but we fixed it up we painted it, put windows in we got a refrigerator a few months later we got some surfboards too oh we loved that place and we did well we had these two chaise lounge chairs we sat out there in the sand right on the beach we became sunset connoisseurs we used to measure sunsets by martinis I used to mix them it looks like about an 8 tonight Woody we had these two chaise lounge chairs somebody would come down in the evening and say I'd like to rent a surfboard screw off Charlie, we're watching the sunset now best one we ever had was a 15 martini sunset oh you should have seen it, it was glorious glorious and the sun and Woody and I went right together they found us in the morning with sunburned mouths do you remember that that should be on the 20 questions do you ever have a sunburn mouth no get the hell out of here you're not ready but as I said we did well but in February of 1965 it was cold and windy and damp and rainy you know what it's like and I went down to the surf shop to fix a board we were of course back teaching again we weren't working at the shop and it was this Sunday morning and I was gonna repair this board and I had a hangover really yes and I was really thirsty oh no yes and i went to the refrigerator see if there's a coke or something in there because I was not a morning drinker but I opened the refrigerator and Woody had been there the night before and he left about this much vodka in a half pint bottle just that little lick and there was some orange juice in there and I thought well you know that it put the fire out so I just mixed up this little dinky drink and drank it went on about my business and for you newer guys you know I worked around that shop for about 20 minutes and that booze kind of circulated as it will do all around my little system and my mind talked to me newcomers know how do you know that hey I know all about that my mind talks to me today 30 years later every day all day the trick is today I will listen see I have met the enemy he lives right here the only enemy I have in the world lives right in there and he wants to kill me that morning my mind said shame on you Cliff shame, shame, that was Woody's booze you drank people get way ahead of me here I said, why don't you go up to the liquor store and get old Woody a pint? That's the kind of guy I am. That afternoon, I got Woody a fifth. And I ended up just drunk, just falling down resin all over me. The shop was screwed. The board was ruined. I mean, drunk. and I crawled home 11 blocks on my hands and knees the next morning I got up and said to my wife Pat I gotta do something about my drinking I'm getting drunk when I don't even mean to usually I mean to and she had cut this little thing out of the paper about the AMA I don' t know why she thought to do that and it said what our little ad has always said the only ad we've ever had If you want to drink, that's your business. If you wanna quit, call Alcoholics Anonymous in case you would mix us up with some other kind of treatment program or something. That's how we feel about it. If you wanna drink that's your business but if you wanna quit and if you're new here tonight and you wanna quit. This room is full of people that will go to the ends of the earth for you if you want to quit. I'm standing right up here by one of them who would go to the end of the Earth for you. If you want it quick, they'll never tire. And so I called the AMA and old Stan came and got me stand died a few years ago with 53 years of sobriety. Never went to a microphone in his life. He was a big gentle giant, just a quiet guy who saved half the world. And he took me to meetings and all the meetings would have fit around the table. This bunch over here looks about right. Little meetings, they weren't very many meetings in 1965, very few meetings in the Carlsbad Oceanside area. I realized right away I'd made a grievous error in judgment. I had been hasty. See, I'm highly educated. I have degrees, you know. My sponsor used to say he's educated far beyond his intelligence. Correctly, he used to say that. But these people, to me, seem to have the collective IQ of an orange. I mean I tried to help him and about the third night this guy says hey, we keep it simple here I said no shit you could have fooled me Hiram and i would whine and snivel in the meetings when i was new i they don't do that out here do they i thought maybe the prairie and everything uh but i i would i would whine a little and then after about 10 minutes somebody in the meeting would say hey you're whining and sniveling well they didn't know that i was sensitive too and they'd hurt my feelings so i'd punish that meeting, I would not go back there again. And after a short period of time, I ran out of meetings to punish it. But they had a meeting in Oceanside there on Sunday night. They still have the meeting only announced in Carlsbad. A little speaker meeting, maybe 30-40 people and somebody come down from LA or somewhere. I would go to that meeting. I'd hide out in the car until the meeting started, you know I didn't want to hang around with you. So I'd skulk in the back door and get the losers chair, you're the one where you keep one foot outside. Somebody else had it, I said, gee that chair, I'm the loser here. And being highly educated and a teacher, I'd sit in the back of the room and judge the speakers. You can imagine what I learned huh? Sound to me like everybody's name was Clem. Been out of Bibbleralls about an hour and a half. Shit, I'm in Kansas. Sorry about that. His wife's name is Martha. And Clem and Martha had been good, decent, sincere, worthwhile, happy folk their whole lives it sounded like to me but they had drunk too much and after they'd drunk too much for a few years it started interfering with their lives so they'd come here to the A&A that's why they always said it and they had put the and they have returned they had returned to being good decent happy sincere worthwhile folk again sounded to me like they had been rehabilitated you know the word rehabilitated my hero in 1965 was a guy named eldridge cleaver he was a black militant terrorist that was my hero my politics in 1965 were blow it up or burn it down i didn't really give a I was for peace and if you weren't for peace I'd kill ya and Eldridge had given this fantastic speech a couple of months earlier he was talking that night about the prison system about how they're always trying to rehabilitate him he said you know what they'd never known he had never been habilitated and you can't rehabilitate somebody who's never been habilitated that's how I felt in the A&A and man was I identifying with Ross today on the outside looking in no chance because I'm not like them when I was four years old cut it out Who's the engineer here that's whistling at me? Oh, me. I'm the only one who can hear it? I hate it when they do the lights too when I'm talking. But anyway, I talk too loud probably. I'll stand farther from the mic. How's that? But when I was four years old, I lived in Venice, California, and we lived on the speedway. And I was this cute little kid who had a lot of hair. And I would stand there with my little tricycle sitting there, and I'd wait for a car. Four years old. And when a car would come, I'd go. That's how I felt. And like a little soldier's post, I would wait for another one. Didn't know how to do this yet. Oh, if I don't know how to do that, I'd have done that. That would have been better. People drive along and say, look at the little boy. I don' t know about you, but that's how I lived the rest of my life. I had in my gut a great big black rock. It wasn' t a ball, it was like a rock. It had jagged edges. On a good day, it wa s about the size of a softball. and on a bad day it was about the size of a basketball but the size was immaterial that black ball, that black rock ruled my life I never had a thought or an action or a reaction or an emotion in my life that wasn't generated and controlled by that blackball in the middle of my belly and if you didn't experience it then you don't know but it's a horrible way to live. It's a terrible, painful, rotten way to live and that's the way I live and I didn't choose that way to life, that's the way of life I got. But I found a great secret when I was 16 years old. I found out that after I drank about 40 minutes something happened to me. It was like I would disengage whatever lobe of the brain was connected to that black ball. And then for like eight minutes, everything in my life was okay. For about eight minutes I was fine. If you would have stopped me on the street and said what's serenity? I would have said it's about eight minutes. Forty minutes into my drink. For eight minutes a day, and this is important, I was enough. And I was willing to die for that eight minutes. Because a person like me in a 24-hour period, I've got to have some relief somehow. And the eight minutes saved my life. It kept me alive until I got to you. I'm so glad I'm an alcoholic. I could have just been crazy. I know people that are just crazy. I feel so sorry for them. They have no place to finally end up. And my insanity finally drove me to you, which is what saved my life. But I'm telling you, without the eight minutes, I would have killed you or you'd have had to kill me. I would never have made it here alive. And in and out of AA. In and out and in and in. I remember sitting there one night thinking, they want me to give up the eight months to hang around with Clem and Martha. Ha, ha, ha. And so for five years, I was a loser's loser. I would come to AA for 30 days and then be drunk for two years. Now that's a slip. Then I would go for 40 days and be drunk for a year and a half, just in and out, just a jerk. And when I was here I was an overeducated pompous ass pointing out your deficiencies while I was there. See, I almost died of alcoholism because I'm a functioning alcoholic. I would say probably most of you in this room are just like me. Only 3% to 5% of us die on Skid Row, the experts say, whoever they are. Expert is a guy who's still drinking who has a PhD. Okay. But the experts, I think they all live in Fresno, California. They say that 95% to 97% of those who die of the disease of alcoholism are just like me, people get up every day and go to work and do the job and do it better than you. I have to do it ten times better to prove I'm half as good. Does anybody identify with that? I'm a goer and an achiever. I'm not a go-getter. I'm going to be a functioning alcoholic. The guy out on the coast says a functioning alcoholic is one whose wife works. Don't tell that one in the album I'm meeting either. On and on and on it went. The week I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I weighed 163 pounds, 4% body fat, used to surf like 3 hours, and then get out and run 5 miles. I could bench 285, took me 20 minutes to pass a mirror. a mirror my daughters used to get money from me they waited I didn't have a shirt on they'd say V up daddy V up oh can I have $10 yeah sure yeah I was over two years before I figured that out and I was you know very well respected as a teacher I was one of the top three debate coaches in the western United States the week I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's a biggie. That's roughly equivalent to being one of the top three prostitutes in Elko, Nevada. But among speech coaches it's a bit different. I became a top speech coach by accident. The principal called me in one day which he was wont to do and he'd gotten a flyer in the mail about a debate and a speech tournament which was being held 30 miles down the road at San Diego State College and I was teaching a speech class, and he said, why don't you get some kids and go to that? I'll bet you it'd really be good for them. And, you know, I was in big trouble, so I said, what a good idea. And I didn't know Jack. I didn' t know anything. I took a half an hour and taught him everything I knew, and we got in the old station wagon. We went down the road to this debate and speech tournament. We were amazed when we got there. There were like 50 schools competing in this thing, like 500 contestants. And all the boys wore three-piece suits and ties not like this ungrateful jerk uh you know the vest and all the girls wore these business suits very attractive we're in levi's and sweatshirts what the hell do we know and we got killed we didn't win a round not one round they slaughtered us they butchered us they grabbed us and that's what they did i'm kind of drunk you are but it ticks me off to lose i'm a bad loser she says he's the worst winner and so i went in the coach's room maybe 20 of them in there they're all buddies they've been doing this for years they're pals and i'm steamed already and they snubbed me the newcomer you know you know how we are hung around all day so they get snubby longer one guy there really pissed me off he had a lot of hair bothered me right away beautiful hair that's steel gray hair you know great shocking way nine barbers to get it right you know and about a thousand dollar suit on the other coaches did this when they went in front of him and nobody had spoken to me about two in the afternoon this guy turns to me and says, where are you from? And I said, I'm grateful to be spoken to. I said Oceanside. And he said, oh, where's that? 30 miles up the road? Where's that? Now I don't know what kind of drunk you are but he gave me a resentment. And that guy didn't leave my mind for the next four or five years i thought about him every day and i went back to oceanside high and i built a speech team i didn't just build i build a juggernaut speech team is what i did a powerhouse speech team is when i built and i did it with sheer hatred tell you the kind of drunk i am i get up early in the morning i get to school at seven and I work like a pig all day and their face is screaming and yelling, coaching! Guy next door said, I'd love to watch them leave in your room wiping the spit off their glasses. I have nothing to do with that. Reporter said to my captain, what's the secret of your coach's success? Kid said, terror. She's the chairman of the speech department at San Francisco State College and the chancellor of women's studies so we didn't do her a hell of an alarm. scared the shit out of her and I'm just in their faces screaming, yelling, coaching all day and I don't eat all day either it's better that way and I drink 400 cups of coffee and I stay pissed off and in the glove compartment of the car waiting for me this is the kind of drunk I am I don' t know about you I don''t have to drink all day all I have to know is waiting for me in the car in the glove compartment is a half a pint of hot vodka I love talking about hot vodka at Al-Anon meetings they go, hey, but you and I know, don't we that hot vodka will be there call to me all day, go get him Cliff baby, I'm waiting darling I'd finish at 9.30, 10 o'clock I'd finished with that last kid and at night Mr. Roach, get the hell out of here lurch out to that car and open up that hot vodka like the cheap cigars I smoked in those days and I'd drink half the half pint just oh just burn its way down there just make me all better disengage the lobe of the brain from the black ball and I puff on that cigar and think god damn you're a good coach and I'd finish that half pint and hide the bottle like I thought somebody was going to fingerprint it or something and I would sit there in my 58 Chevy surfing wagon one time I painted it with house paint when I was drunk it was all bashed in I'd come to a four way stop sign everybody went hey go right alcoholics car but I'd sit in an alcoholic car and have my eight minutes and this is the part I don't like to talk about now I would drive home then and destroy my family in the last seven or eight years I drank I drank every day and I drank ever night at home and we had those five kids and I'm a violent drunk, a real violent drunk and a sarcastic, mean, contemptuous, violent man. And I got drunk every night at home. And everybody in that house was crazy. Some of my kids were even taking drugs. I had to take an extra load of Valium because of that. And we were all just lost. every time they read chapter 5 ABC so I say no human power could have relieved my family but God could and would have sought and we sought God through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the program of Al-Anon and I'll put my family against any family in the face of the earth right tonight we're all okay now thanks to you we're not well I'm certainly not. But we're okay, thanks to you and this magnificent, God-given program. And I ruined my family, destroyed my family. Those experts say that every man's alcoholism every woman's alcoholism destroys seven lives. And we had five kids right on the median, and it always surprises me when there's six AA speakers on a weekend and one Al-Anon speaker that the smallest meeting in the room is the Al-anon meeting. Six of those seven lives were destroyed weren't even alcoholic. It's amazing to me. But I built that speech team. Dying of alcoholism, but I built that speak team and after a couple of years we won one of those speech tournaments. I didn't say anything to the gray-haired guy. Wasn't time yet. We know when it's time, don't we? The next year there were 14 or 12 or 14 tournaments my team took first place in every single tournament I can wait the next year there was a tournament there were 25 schools competing in the tournament 25 schools and my team scored more sweepstakes points than the other 24 schools combined then I went up to the gray-haired guy and I put my nose right against his and I said do you know where Oceanside is now and he just looked blank he said what are you talking about I said don't you remember about four or five years ago you said to me Oceansid where's that and he said we just moved here from Nebraska I didn't know where it was. The story of my life. For four or five years, this guy's in his bed down in San Diego every night. I'm up in Oceanside. I get you! He didn't even know it. He didn't even know it. God, I wish I could tell you I'm so much different today. I wish I could tell you that. I wish I could tell you. A couple of years ago, oh 19, 20 months ago, I had a little surgery, a little prostate trim. And this butcher really screwed it up. Pat's nodding. I don't usually tell this story, but I've got to tell you guys. You're wonderful. You'll understand me. And I was having all this trouble with it and then this doctor wasn't doing anything about it. And then I shut up for a few months and let it build up. And so finally I just picked up the phone and I called his quack. And the girl came on and said to the doctor something. I said I told her, I'm in pain lady. That butcher screwed this thing up. And I told him where the pain was exactly and described it in great detail. And I must have done 10 minutes of yelling and bellowing. Finally, I wound up and I said, God, I pissed the bed a couple times. I didn't even do that when I was drunk, for Christ's sakes. She said, Mr. Roach, this is your eye doctor's office. one thing i have grown i laughed and she laughed and we laughed for 20 minutes you know when i went in there to get my eyes checked i said where's helen this is right when i said helen i'm mr roach he said oh hi mr and everybody else the office went i said you think you told you went well what the hell Hey, I can live with it. I can love it. Right after that guy told me that he's from Nebraska, Pat and I had one of our main events which the neighbors have come to miss so much. Our neighbors never got television until after I got sober. You know, we were the neighborhood entertainment. Remember? They all had those Venetian blind marks on their forehead, you know. and we had this big beef and so I moved out by popular request well she told you this morning it was like I said well I'm going to move out and everybody went yeah go for it dad and I got my surfboard and lived down at the beach with this weirdo and his girlfriend and I have said for years if I could unload that witch I'm gonna clean that one up for you and if I can unload those long haired dope fiend children I could drink like a gentleman again and I'd unloaded them and it wasn't working out and I was drunk all the time I was missing work which I'd never done my life was slipping between my fingers you know Ross I identified with you so much I mean you were down in the skid row but we're the same weren't we we wouldn't buy it we couldn't buy we couldn' accept it and I went by the house one afternoon and I was haranguing Pat about money as I remember and the hashy salesman she talked about this morning the oldest son, the haschy salesman he looked like one of those dolls in the back of a car called his mother man, hey man, what's for dinner? He was bobbing in the background there humming a tune from the planet at Pluto, I think. And I turned to him and I said, Dave, what's it like not to have your old man around the house? Dumb question. Because he looked me right in the eye and he said, it's beautiful. And then I went back to that dump on the beach and I ranted and raved and sniveled and whined and pissed and moaned. But I did not take a drink that afternoon. It had been a long time since I hadn't taken a drink that afternoon. And I went out and sat on the screen porch and I watched, which is still today, the most beautiful sunset that I ever saw. And about the time that the sun was going down into the water, I had what our big book calls the moment of clarity. My friend Polly from Seal Beach says she calls it the moment of grace I really like that grace the gift and I went back in the bedroom and dug out this book this blessed book and I read it for three days and three nights I called in sick I didn't go to work I read the big book I read cover to cover if you're new I read all the stories I read the appendix in the back and on the third time through the book on the 13th of January 1970 I was on page 63 again and for you brand new guys on page 64 there's a little prayer and we call it step 3 the formal terms of surrender and I knelt down on that filthy linoleum floor on the dump on the beach and I read that prayer out loud to myself I read God to offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self. And when I was new, I looked up the word bondage. It means slavery. Relive me of The Bondage of Self. And that's what AA has been doing with me. I don't know about you for 30 years it's trying to get me out of clit and I've heard I don't know hundreds and hundreds of fifth steps through the years and every fifth step from every man I've ever heard a fist up from the number one defective character is self obsession which leads to all the other self and in the book three times that mentioned self delusion which will take me out the door and that night I was at Bill Blake's house my wife talked about him this morning a crazy little wino he was an AA fanatic come off skid row and you know when he died we had a meeting for him there are more people than in this room tonight first thing I said was, how many of you here loved Bill? Every hand in the room shot up. I said, how many of in here had a resentment against Bill? Everything. He never had a resentment he was a carrier. When I'm at their house that night knocking on the door this loser this five-year loser this overeducated pompous ass loser and I stood on that porch i always want to remember that night standing there in the darkness all alone no family no friends nobody gave a rat's behind for cliff roach i was alone and the door opened and the light came on my life's been different ever since here i am this loser margie looked at me margie's bill's wife when the woman saw me she just lit up I have never seen anyone so glad to see me in my life. Can you imagine? She said, Cliff! Cliff! Oh, come in! And how's that go? Pours me a cup of coffee. She said oh this is wonderful. She said Bill's been crazy lately. He said nobody would work with him. Oh, this is so good! And then Bill comes in and goes, Cliff!! Oh, hot dogs, Cliff!!! About a half an hour I'm thinking anything else I'm here to help you folks out. I'll be glad to help any way I can. Cliff's here, we can start AA now. But three weeks later, I was in a newcomer meeting, being a newcomor, and one of the other newcomers said, what do you mean this is a selfish program? And I knew the answer. I learned it the night I got here. See, those two people that had been praying for me for five years. But they were more delighted for Bill and Margie because they know the great secret. You can't have it unless you give it away. You can keep this thing. It's been said by two or three other speakers this weekend. You can' t keep it unless you give if away. I can't stay alive unless I give it way. And my little sponsor believed to the bottom of his heart that everybody who comes to AA has alcoholism, we'll take care of that. He also believed everybody who comes to AA has their own particular brand of insanity, and we can take care of that. He used to say, we've got a wrench that will fit any nut. He also believe that everybody who comes to AAA has some kind of gift or gifts, something that they do really well that will make the program better. And he believed if you didn't bring your gifts that you had to go back out there and die. And I believe him. Now my speaker was the worst, my sponsor was the worse speaker in the history of AA. Pat will be glad to testify to that. He used to say, I've talked everywhere at AA once. But oh, you put him in the front seat of a car with a newcomer. He was the greatest 12-stepper in the history of the world. You could not escape the guy. It was magnificent. He had a great story. I just couldn't tell it up here. And I look around and I see people with these gifts that cook for people. I see people that, you know, I go to a lot of these things and I see the people. It's really funny. I'll go to one of these roundups and there's the people that are putting it on like those we're going to volunteer for next year. And, uh, and you know I'll see them and I'll make friends with them. And i'll come back 10 years later and they're the people who are still here and still sober and still happy because just like to promise they will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in their fellows they're so busy giving it away they don't have any self-pity time and I don't know what your gifts are well you got Carlos in my group if you're new you cannot escape him he has some kind of antenna that's a huge group and he'll find you if you trying to hide he'll find you are you new and i'm sure you know other people people will pick people up and but my sponsor was very cruel to me he wasn't as bad as some of the other guys but he was oh god he was cruel tome when he was dying he's dying of emphysema and i went to the hospital and i leaned over to bed i said i got to go up to alaska bill i'm going to talk at a convention up in Alaska. I'll be gone for four days. This guy's dying. He says, yeah, they told me and I told you this. I told them to send you as far away as possible. Right to the end. I thought that the nicest thing he said to me for the first four or five years was, shut up! Can you imagine? I told him, I have degrees, you know. He says so does a thermometer. You know where they stick out sometimes, don't you? I thought the first step was shut up and get in the god damn car now after 30 years I realize that is the first stop of alcoholics at earners shut up and get into the car shut up and get int he car I've been glad to pass it on there's a guy Lanny out in our area and I got him on his first, took him to his first few meetings. Shut up and get in that car. If you haven't heard anything from me, we'll point to you. You don't know nothing, so until you learn something, shut up. And he says the only reason Cliff Roach is alive today, he had a gun in this boot and a knife in this one and he couldn't decide whether to shoot me or stab me. The only reason I'm alive today. So I'd love to pass it on. We have these guys come in, these crack cocaine guys come in. I love them, you know, I always wait till they get a cup of coffee and I come up behind them and say, hey, how are you today? Mine went higher than yours. We had this one guy, I was sitting in the back of the room and I slid in beside him and just as the meeting was starting I leaned over and I says, was that guy looking in the window looking at you? God, he wore his clothes out from the inside. Welcome newcomers. But Bill took me to a meeting every night for two years. They talk about 90 meetings in 90 days. He took me all over Southern California. His sponsor is Clancy. We had to go up there twice a week. We went everywhere. He took me to meetings where people were laughing because he knew I couldn't stay here unless I could laugh. To me, the spiritual part of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is the laughter. That's the best thing about roundups and conventions and whatever you have you do. We get together and just laugh our asses off. And whenever I'm like, when you were talking last night and I'm sitting over there, and we're all roaring, laughing together. God always comes and whispers in my ear and says, It's going to be okay, Cliff. We're laughing. Now I get me a newcomer. I take him to meeting after meeting. Then one night he goes, Ha ha ha, ha ha ha. Gotcha now. We take new little Al-Anons, Pat and I, to speaker meetings. AA speaker meetings, new Al-Ans, you know, and she's sitting there and the guy's up here and he said, I fell on the Christmas tree and smashed all the presents. Ha ha. You know, we all go, Yeah! This new little Al-Anon's going, not funny to her. So we take her into another meeting the next night. One night she throws her head back and laughs. And when you start laughing, we gotcha. If you're new tonight and you've been laughing, you're screwed. You aren't ever going to go back in that bar and pretend like you're having a good time. you've heard the real laughter of Alcoholics Anonymous in Alabama it's spiritual when I told you about reading Step 3 on my knees in that dump on the beach I've always tried to describe how I felt for 30 years plus I've been trying to describe it and this month in the grapevine this little girl named Tammy in Cleveland, Ohio talked about when she did that when she knelt down in some treatment center and turned it over she said something came into my life and permeated my whole being it was a great laughing love a great laughing love and i went whoa i finally found out the words for it and i've been living within that great laughing love ever since when i hear you laugh and when i'm sitting with you and we're laughing. Life's going to be okay. The only thing I ever knew about myself for sure, well I didn't start right at 9 o'clock. It was 10 after. He'll verify that. Is there overtime on the tally? Time and a half. I'll be through in a minute. In a minute, uh, only thing I ever really knew for sure about myself. I don't know what you knew about you. I was sure that I had never been loved enough. And I hadn't ever been loved enough. But what my sponsor knew about me that I didn't know about me, and he never told me because he knew I was too stupid or too brilliant. What's the difference? You're just as dead. He knew my problem had never been i wasn't loved my problem had always been i never loved when you're self-obsessed to the max you don't know how to love you don'T KNOW WHERE TO START so what my little sponsor did to me is he made me take loving actions against my better judgment he mademe stand at the door like that sweet people there tonight and greeted people he madememe mop floors and clean up he He made me take this jerk Al to meetings all the time, plus he had no driver's license, the big blowhard. He never even knew that I hated Al. He didn't care that I hate it out. And when I was new, we used to have wall talkers. Some of you old guys remember that? Guys, they drank too long, they'd sit in the back of the room . Soon as a meeting was over, he'd say, go talk to the wall talker. Oh, that's it. I'd go back there and say, how are you tonight? Guy go, hey, good, I'll see you later. loving action after loving action after loving action after loving action and over a period of time I started to see you and when I asked how you were I really gave a damn and Al got drunk once more and I went to help him well you say whatever you say when you go to help a guy hey it's one day at a time Al we'll go to a meeting tonight you and I baby we'll start over and out of my mouth I didn't even know it was coming. I said, I love you, Al. And it was true. I did. I wanted him to be sober as much as I wanted to be sober myself. And that's how we define love around here, newcomers. We want you to be sober as long as we want to be. Sober as much as we want to be sober ourselves and we'll go to the end of the earth for you if you want us to. And Al and I became a great 12-step team. And we used to double team everybody. You know, the good guy, bad guy, turns. We used to almost get in fist fights. Whose turn was it to be the good guy? One guy would say, you got to shut your mouth, quit your goddamn whining and get your ass to meeting. The other guy'd say, never mind him. Come here. Always works. Always works. And then I grew to love newcomers. Isn't that something? I grew to love newcomers for fun and for free and one night clancy was talking and he said treat your kids like newcomers what a concept huh and i went home and knelt down and turned my kids over to god my wife had already been in al-hanan for a long time or for a while then and she'd turn them over you know god took really good care of our kids pat said this morning all three of my kids that need to be sober are sober today. And the one eldest daughter really went wrong. She's been an Al-Anon about 17 years. And she's a beautiful example of the program. She's a dear person. Our youngest daughter, I always say, grew up straight in a crooked family. She's fine. She comes to everybody's cakes, yeah, happy. And so a family that there's no school of psychiatry. There is no school of psychiatry that have done for my family what A.A. and Alvin have done for our family. And the thing is, our dark past is our greatest asset. When anybody has trouble with kids in our area they say, go see the roaches. And we can pass on what was given to us. We can give it away to keep it. I don't know if anybody in this room really needs me, but I want to tell you something for sure. I sure as hell need you. Thank you.