The Connection That Levels the Emotions – Charlie C.

Hi, my name is Charlie. I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank my friend Bob for inviting me to speak here again and it's really an honor to do this and I also want to warn you against any unnecessary movement while I'm up here. I'm pretty calm usually but I'll lash out if I see anything that looks that I deem to be unnecessary. That said I bet you newcomers are glad you got here early and got a seat in the back of the room. I'm an alcoholic. I don't have any outside issues. I'm not apologetic about it. I knew drugs were there. I saw them. I just didn't give a damn, you know. I drank because alcohol really solved my problem big time. um it's it was always the uh court of first resort for me when i had problems it was always uh i've heard people say you know i'm i had them it elicits some laughter people say well i'm an alcoholic but my drug of choice was cocaine my drug of no choice was alcohol i had choice over everything else uh alcohol alcohol i had no choice over it just seemed to do the trick and and anything else you put in front of me was sort of indifferent to it. I tried it. It got me loaded, but that wasn't why I was there. And I'm not anonymous in this program either. I appreciate what Rich had to say. My last name is Carney. First name Charles. I live in Burbank. I'm listed in the phone book under Charles Carney. So in case there are any visitors from Massachusetts who need someone to talk to at 3 in the morning. They won't have to go through all the C's trying to figure out which one I am. I appreciate anonymity. Anonymity is really important in AA, and it's one of our most preciously held traditions. However, not amongst each other because I need people, and I need to know where I can get a hold of you, and I'm always happy to get phone calls from people from out of town who come into LA and want to get to an AA meeting. It's always a pleasure to bring them to a meeting and talk to them. I don't go to the gym very often, as you may well guess. My kickboxing days are ahead of me. I was at the gym where I work one morning early, and I was watching Good Morning America. And this is just on the subject of anonymity because it just was odd to me that when we talked about this over dinner, I was listening to Howard Stern the other day and some famous rock guitarist gets on there. He's not on the Howard Stern show for two minutes and he breaks his anonymity purposely says, I know AAs, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I've been an Alcoholics Anonymous for so long. I was, you know, okay, thank you for your hearty boy howdy. But there was a guy on Good Morning America. You know that last year when they had that fight at the basketball game, somebody chucked a chair in the stands and all hell broke loose and everybody got beaten up and they showed it on TV maybe 8,000, 9,000 times. And the guy who threw the chair was on Good Morgen America. And the person asking him the question said, well, you do have – we checked your legal records, and you do have a record of violent outbursts. And he goes, yeah, but, you know, I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous for a year now, and I'm really making some headway on that. I thought up until last week apparently, but don't drag me into that chair-throwing crap. I mean, I can't – I haven't been to – well, I've been to AA meetings where things were thrown but not chairs. But we really cherish our anonymity around here because if there's anything we don't need, it's one more bad example for the outside world to see and roll their eyes at and determine that we don'T work because we do work really well, and we pride ourselves on working with our mouths shut, most of us. The ones who stay do anyway. Now that I've preached, I'll tell you. I knew so much when I was three years sober. Boy, I knew it. I had it down, man. I was like the Elmer Gantry of the San Fernando Valley. And then over the ensuing 20 years, it just leaked out somewhere. I'm just shooting blanks mostly now. I start to hear my own voice, and it sounds like how you listen to the radio, and there's a talk show, and the person's hesitating on the line, and the host has to tell them to turn their radio off. That's how I feel right now. I can hear double things. I think my host is about to tell me to turn the radio off, but I start out slow and rambly, and then I build just a shattering climax, so bear with me for a minute. Did I say I was an alcoholic? I think I got there. Charlie Carney, thank you very much. Our operators are waiting. I hate people as much as I did the last time I was here. That's been my big problem. I'm just not wild about the human race, pretty much, in general. And I have this alcoholic problem in which I demand their approval at the same time, which gives your life a sense of torque. Hate them, love me. Hate you, please love me and approve. Hate you because you love me, but now I feel it's endless. It's the hamster wheel of alcoholism. And I felt that way ever since I can remember. I've always been conflicted in that area. I was an only child. I was used to being alone. I was comfortable being alone and I didn't have to share with anybody at my house. My parents loved me, which was disarming because i know after after being around a while that you can get up a good head of steam when people don't like you you know and they or they they are you can tell they they give you a crap and you smack back but it's really hard when people say we care about you we want the best for you please let us help you ew uh i don't think get away from me i don' t know what to because there's a deal going on here that i'm not sure what my part of it is and i i'm afraid And I'd rather not even enter into the contract at all if it's all the same to you. But I did what most of us do and said, I love you too. And walked away thinking, what was that all about? And I didn't say it so much, but I felt it. And I've always felt that way. I don't know what people want from me. And usually they don't want anything. They just are trying to be polite and be people. But you know how we get. And I was always a loner in school. I never hung out with any one crowd. I always had one friend, and then when that friend got another friend, I felt like I'd been jilted and cheated on, you know? And why do they need another friend? What, am I not enough? What kind of a friend is that, that you go out and get other friends? So then I couldn't trust anybody, and I was always a low-grade, like the pilot light going for resentment and anger and fear all the time, just driven by fear. I was sitting watching a Batman cartoon video of my son a couple of weeks ago and the Joker says, Batman's a wimp. And my son looks at me and goes, what's a whimp? And I said, that's someone who doesn't take any action because he's afraid or he feels inadequate, and he lets people push him around in his life, and he never gets anywhere because he won't take any chances. And I thought, ew, uh-oh. I noticed he kind of held his stare a little longer than he should have. And realizing he must have been talking to his mother. But I take that back. That was cheap and low down and not fair. I take that back, but I don't regret it. But no, that's how I lived my life, was like that always, always afraid to do things, always afraid of doing things. Always afraid to step out because I was afraid, A, that I would fail, and B, thatI wouldn't live up to the potential everyone told me I had, that I was crucified on. That's a tough cross to be lugging around. I know my friend Don G talks about that. Potential is a terrible thing to have, but it's also good in the hip pocket because I heard a guy Wednesday night at my home group meeting say that he had potential and he liked that because he always knew he could do it if he wanted to. He just chose not to do it. I could have done it. I could Have gone out for sports. I would have been a great – I'm 6'2". I would Have made a decent basketball player. I could HAVE done that. Just chose not To. I'm not a team player, really. If basketball was a solo game, I might have tried it. And if it wasn't competitive because someone has to lose and I'm not stepping up for that one. And then I got out of high school and was still uneventful at anything. My friends all went off to college. I stayed home. It was a bad thing to do. It was 1968. It was right at the Tet Offensive. and I turned 18 in 1968 and got a lucky lottery number. You would think someone would take a lucky lottery number when all the kids in my neighborhood were going to Southeast Asia to war and would take that opportunity to try to leave a mark on the world that was positive but, and I was going to. I just didn't want to then you know but I got it right back here I'm going to pull it out whenever I need to And so I went right into the record industry. I was a clerk at a music store, and I couldn't tell you what I ate that morning, but I could tell you the lineup of The Love and Spoonful in 1966. All the gray-haired guys are going, yeah, dude, me too. But I loved music. I hated everything about the 60s except the music. And the girls, I didn't meet many of them, so it wasn't that big a loss. So I got a lucky lottery number. I'm in this record store. I'm waiting for my moment to ignite. And some people came in who were sort of the troublemakers that I'd gone to high school with and asked if I wanted to go to a party with them, which was an unusual request in my world because I've never been to a Party before. I'm not a Party guy. I don't use party as a verb. A party to me is a place where there are people, and I don' t want to go rewind anymore, but I just didn' t wanna go, but my buddy John, my friend du jour, and John said, let' s go to the party, come on, and he drove, you know, and, and Jon was always a rock and roll drummer, always had girls, you kno w, shinnying up his leg, and l was hoping l'd catch some of that runoff, you kno w, but, so we went along to this party, you gno w. We get in this party, and it was exactly what I thought it was going to be. It was a bunch of lowlifes in Santa Ana. Someone doesn't know how to follow direction. Either that or I'm hearing the angels call. Your prayers are working. So I went to this party and I'm standing at the party and I got my hands in my pockets and I'm judging everybody because they all are losers and failures in my life. A bunch of people that are all chatting it up and they're all too hip for the room and everybody's a hippie and half the room is on acid, the other half is drunk and each half thinks they're having a conversation with the other one and the other half and they had a mirror ball and the MC5 on the stereo and I hated every second of standing there. My guts were just grinding And somebody walked by and said, here, have a beer. And it was a malt liquor. And it Was one of those 80, you know, those 84 ounce things that hang down to the ground, you know? Or so it seemed. I had this thing. And I thought, what am I going to do with this? Become like you? You know? Join the fellowship of failure around here? I don't think so. But I was thirsty. And so I started to drink this can of malt liquor, and when I got halfway through that can of malt liquor, I realized very suddenly that I've been way too hard on you people. In fact, I started to feel kind of fond of you. More than that, I was forgiving. I felt the milk of human kindness running through my veins. i felt joy possibly for the very first time in my life i mean real joy like the doors like someone had just pulled the drapes back open the door let some fresh air in and i felt alive better than that i mean i transcended feeling alive after about a half can by the time i got to the bottom of the can i was feeling like a mixture of david niven and errol flynn and john lennon all mixed together in this very smooth concoction, you know, which was hard for me to pull off when you look like Sherman from the Mr. Peabody cartoons. It's a stretch. But I gave it a go and I was alive, you Know, for the first time in my life, I realized that I felt like I was finally present. I was there in the moment where there was, I wasn't worried about all that other stuff that Rich was talking about, about what I think of me and more importantly what you think of me thinking of me thinking of what you thing of me and the layers and layers of self absorption this booze just took that away for me and I was there and I don't mean just in the room I mean I was the point man for life and if you're an alcoholic you know where there is as sure as I do and if your new and you think I've forgotten where there is after 23 years? Guess again. You know, there are guys with 60 years of sobriety in AA. You can ask them, you know, do you remember there? And they'll tell you, I sure do. I remember it as vividly as if it happened this afternoon. I mean, I remember that because you don't get relief like that and forget it. It's not just physical relief. It'S not like taking aspirin and your headache goes away. It gave me a profound change in my view of the way the world was and it made me feel as if finally i had found an entry level place to get into the world i didn't drink to get drunk and get out of the world i drank to get there where everything was just about to be great maybe 20 minutes and it'll it'll be there because if it was great right now it wouldn't be worth it i like that anticipation you know that just that joy of oh my god it's happening it's gonna happen i can smell it it's in the air like like orange blossoms it's gonna happen and uh and i got drunk that night i went into a blackout i wound up coming out of the blackout running alongside of john's car hanging onto the door handle while he was driving down the street and i was throwing up all over myself and just laughing my ass off i was i was there and i am never and i didn't think about this at the time and if you're new and you're not acquainted with Alcoholics Anonymous, I've got to tell you what I'm telling you tonight was not occurring to me in real time. Alcoholics Anonymous is like finding the black box of your life after the impact and you get to take it out piece by piece and reconstruct what the hell happened. And better than that, then you get a recipe of what to try to do differently that I won't ever have to go back and drink again even though I still from time to time want to get there. And I remember when I taught high school when I was sober for a few years and we had to do a segment on alcohol abuse each year because it was during the just say no years. everybody laughs I would give this alcohol we had to do it like five minutes a day just say okay we're going to talk about booze today and drugs let somebody else talk about drugs let me call them one of the kids but you know I'd give them a little run down on alcohol I didn't break my anonymity I didn'T tell them anything about my involvement in AA or the fact that I was alcoholic just told them this is what you know we were told to tell you and the only kids who were really interested I mean really interested in alcoholism and drug abuse were the kids who didn't have a problem it was like watching a freak show for them you mean people dying in the gutter go to a hospital and get better and they go drink leaving the hospital how does that happen that's crazy and they were into it the ones who didn't care, who acted, you know, would look at their watches and look out the window were the kids who had the problem because I wasn't talking about them. You know, it wasn't, that wasn't going to happen to them. It wasn't gonna happen to me either. I'm smart. You know, I'm smarter than my dad. Sort of. Maybe not. But that's how I felt. You know, I'm smart. I consider myself to be smarter than 90% of the public, which was a lie because I realized only later that if you've got a big forehead and glasses, you can pull off smart really easily. But I drank for 12 years after that first night. I was a blackout drinker. I drank at the Humdinger in Anaheim. I love that place. I loved bars. I liked bars for a long time until I found, I drank in beer bars mostly because that's where all the action was, you know, people changing the jukebox with somebody else's face. D5! You're sitting there going, hey, can you hit that Charlie Rich song again for me? I mean, you listen to those really sad ones and you put two bucks in and play behind closed doors 28 times in a row until someone yanked you outside started to hit you with a pool cue um and and um so I just I compromised everything in my life you know and and I and I was and it wasn't going to happen to me like it happened to other people it wasn'T going to happen to me like it happened to um guys that I knew knew who died I had a friend in high school or from high school who, you know, he got drunk one night, took a whole bunch of acid, stepped out on the road up in the canyons, down the canyards in Orange County. And there was a truck coming and he said that he could separate his molecules so the truck could go through him. And it did. It was the reassembly that he hadn't thought out very well. But, you know, we've all known people like that. And you know what? You and I are just just a whisker away from that same fate. We are just one fatal decision away from calling down the gods or whatever it is, the randomness of life that makes things happen bad to people like us and not necessarily to us. It happens to people around us and it makes us even more sickened by ourselves because we see people who don't even deserve to have the kind of pain we inflict in their life affected by our alcoholism and that's exactly what happened in my life i just cut people off shut off disconnected my friendships disconnected my relationship with my mother would not even drive down the 35 miles to see my dad when he was dying of cancer because i couldn't get out of the uh i found it difficult to get outof the ore house in santa monica you know because the pain of facing the reality of my father dying was too hard and i will drink And then when I feel better, then I'll go down and see him. Until my mother finally called and said, you've got to come see him, he wants to see you. And I agreed at that point very helpfully, as I saw it, very selflessly to go down in Dane to visit my dying father. And that's how I lived my life. And when he died, I felt guilt and shame and embarrassment and a sense of futility. and I didn't know where it was going, so I just suck it in and swallow it. I don't act it out. I just inhale it and suck it down into my fiber and put it into every cell of my body and then the alcohol helps wash it all over. It's like repainting a condemned house. You know, alcohol for me is just like putting a new coat of paint on all the rotted out wood and all the termite infested insides. I just color it up and dress it up a different way or dress up the insides of here as to the way things are going to be because alcohol always gave me the satisfaction of a job well done without having to do a damn thing, you know. So why not? I'll take care of it later. Right now I just have to feel better. What I really needed was to try to protect myself from the way I really was inside. I think that's what happens to most alcoholics. We come in here full of shame, degradation, pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, sober, not drunk, sober. And we know we've hurt people. And it's not the big dramatic stuff either. It's that little, tiny, crumb-by-crumb kind of fear that we swallow, and it grows inside of us. And I wound up – I'll tell you what happened with a story. There's a guy who drinks in front of this place called Moe's in Toluca Lake. Every day the guy is there. He's drunk on the bus bench every single day. His name is Bob, and my life has been beset with guys named Bob and Tom. They're all friends. You know, they're all people that I understand one way or another, and Bob sits on this bench, and he drinks, and He's redder than this carpet, and He is dying of alcoholism. He's been sitting there for five years. He's got all of his belongings in a guitar case. He doesn't panhandle. He doesn'T threaten anybody. He doesn' t act up. He doesn''t cause problems. He sits there, he drinks, and he's dying. He's been dying for five years sitting on that same bench, sitting under the sun, burning himself up, and sleeping on that bench. And I'll bet if I came up to Bob with a picture of himself from 30 years, I bet ifI took a pictureof Bob right now, I could get into a time machine and go back 30 years because he's my age and go up to him and say, Bob, look at where you are in 2005. Look at you. Don't go down this path. let people help you let people help you to stop drinking so you won't wind up like this I know he would say it because I know I would say and that is that's not me and I would never turn out that way because I quit before it got that bad but you and I I know i'm speaking for myself but I can include you because I've heard your stories too that you and I accommodate this disease my neighbor across the street from me about a year and a half ago was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer This is a man who was 49 years old, had two toddlers. He and his wife had two little kids just like I do. And he's not an alcoholic guy. He's just a regular working class guy in my neighborhood and a good neighbor. And his name was Tom. And I'm not trying to trivialize what happened to him by telling you this story, but I think it makes a point that's relevant here. And that is that Tom went in for surgery when he first, after he'd been diagnosed and the shock wore down, they offered to do surgery on him. And he went in to have the surgery, and they did it. And I went over to see his wife, and I said, how's Tom doing? And she said, well, he's doing okay. He's recuperating all right. And I said how did the surgery go? Did they get the cancer? And she says, well they weren't in there to get the Cancer. The Cancer is in – you can't get the Cancer. It's done. What they were doing was they were clearing out parts of good organs and moving things around and cutting away pieces of intestine and pieces of his stomach to give the tumor a place to grow so that he won't be too uncomfortable during the holidays so he can have Christmas with the children before he dies. And they're trying to do that so he doesn't have excruciating pain those last things, so they have to move away these other organs to allow the tumor to have a place for him to live. To have a space to grow. And I thought, isn't that exactly in its own way like what we do with alcoholism? We just cut good things out of our way to allow The Disease to grow, and we're shocked when we hear about other people having that happen to them and yet with us it seems like perfectly normal behavior when we're out doing it you know get a smaller apartment and a smaller department till i'm living in what's the equivalent of a cell because it's better rent and i don't have to be in such debt with my rent you know it's not that it's because when i get smaller and smaller apartments i have more control over the environment i need some control because i don'T HAVE ANY CONTROL OVER MY LIFE AT ALL anymore. By the 11th of June in 1981, you know, I was at a meditation retreat and I was going to hang myself there. I was there for, which is certainly, you know, grounds for a refund, but I went there to get spiritual, but you can't get, Rich was talking about spirit and ritual, you can'T get spirit ritual in an afternoon at a meditation retreat it's like you can't stop a head wound with that liquid band-aid stuff uh you got to go for some serious uh treatment and i'm at this meditation retreat thinking and i'M hung over and iM sick and iMP in blood and i had been for some time i was in the middle of my wife had filed for divorce and um which is becoming familiar and uh um and i was a mess i mean a physical mess and an emotional mess and mostly a spiritual mess and i've been in therapy for two years, and therapy wasn't helping me because therapy doesn't, in my opinion, does not work for alcoholism. It works for a lot of things, it works for other things in my life, it is a fantastic thing, and I'm not a therapy basher, but it doesn't work for the thing that kills me, and that's alcoholism, because as I understand it, the prerequisite for therapy to work is truth, and if you are a practicing alcoholic, and i mean no offense to you who are new, you haven't got a clue what the truth is. You haven't even found the black box yet. Your sponsor will bring that baby to you with a bow on it. It comes in the form of what used to be this blue book, you know but um i i was just sick and i wanted to die and i couldn't die i couldn'T kill myself and i sat there thinking well if i can'T kill mySelf and i don'T want to go on living what now there was a man in our fellowship named gene duffy who who died about 15 years ago who was sober a long time and uh gene used to talk about and i understood this immediately when the first time i heard him he said there's a point in an alcoholic's life where you're sitting at a bar and someone slides a drink in front of you and you look at it and say, if I drink this, I'm going to die. But if I don't drink this I'm gonna die. Now what? And I hope, you know, that you are in the same spot that I was in with now what? Because there's no logical way to turn at that point. There is no place that my reason or my intellect or my best judgment could turn me. I couldn't face any other way but forward to this thing and didn't know what to do. And I went home from that retreat, and I was absolutely out of my mind. I thought I had lost my mind, andI didn't knoW what to dO. And I thought, I've got to stop drinking, and, you know, I'Ve got to stOp this. And then I tried to stOP. You know, you stOP drinking,and you think that it's going to get better? Surprise, surprise. I started to get twitchy and detoxy and hearing voices in the backseat of my car driving along in my old beat up Volkswagen that looked sort of like me and would hear in the Backseat, Charlie and the radio would play and it had been broken for months and the car had no reverse I had to park it on a special, you have to park it on the hill with no car in front of you in the morning or night in the evening. These are the kind of things I mean by moving things around in your life to accommodate. Don't just go get the car fixed because that will eat up your drinking money. Park it on the hill. You don't need reverse. Reverse is overrated anyway. And that's exactly how I thought. Everything in my life was like that. I was mailing bills off to the wrong people, because in those days we had something that you don't have today. It's called float. Remember float? You write a check to the gas company, you put it in the phone company's envelope, you mail it to the gaz company, they look at it and send it back with a nice note saying you accidentally put the phone company's blah whatever, and can you please send us a check? You got five days right there, float. And then you send them the right check, and you got another three, four, five days, float there, because they didn't have electronic transfers and all that stuff. There were no ATMs, thank you God. I was on a first name relationship with a lady at Vons, I'll tell you that, but you cashed a check for me. I'd written $400 worth of bad checks to my boss, which is really a bad judgment call, I guess, but I was told that later. I thought he was just being forgiving, but he had his hand on the trap door just ready for that next check and I was gone. And my life was unmanageable. My ex-wife, she was irritated that I'd charged, I'd run up her credit card. Everybody was mad about something. The Internal Revenue Service, well, they weren't mad because I hadn't ever called them. So how could they be mad? They didn't know that any wrong had been done to them. And if it was up to me, I would have just kept it that way. Then I got to AA and got a sponsor. And then that sponsor turned me over to somebody else for my finances because I was a, you know, a disorganized person. I hadn't balanced a checkbook in something like 20 years and well it wasn't that long but it was close and I just was a wreck. I got to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with my sister-in-law which is really lame. I mean some of you came in here in an ambulance, some people came here with the police on either side I love that, believe me. I like you guys who came in here with a leg monitor. You know, that's really cool. I came in here with Debbie. You can't go up to some ex-con and say, hey, what are you in for? I'm here with Debby. I just say, yeah, I had a couple of problems out on the street. I had to clear up. You know. I couldn't tell them it was reverse, And I gave Debbie a ride. I was five days without a drink, and I gave Debbie a drive, which really was probably the most interesting ride of her life to this meeting because she needed a lift. And she asked me if I could give her a ride to a Sunday night meeting. It was about as big as this one at the Tustin City Hall in Orange County. And in the 25-minute ride to that meeting, she 12-stepped me. And she had 22 days of sobriety. And she passed the message along to me that's what this is all about it's not a matter of making people laugh or being funny or cute or having any wisdom it's about sharing a message of hope to people the things get better and at 22 days she looked remarkably better she changed something had changed in this woman because i had been drunk with her before and and she's you know i'm driving her to the meeting i've got the i'm the one it's 120 degrees i've Got a wool jacket a sweater vest you know deerstalker hat shoulder-length hair and mustache, sunglasses on and it's nighttime. I'm twitching away, swatting at imaginary gnats in my peripheral vision and standing in the back of the room getting annoyed as hell when people would come up and go, hi, are you new? Because that would have been the hardest five days of my damn life. I'd appreciate you not patronizing me and asking me if I'm new. I've not new. I've been sober for five freaking days. I thought, you know, I thought So the next time some newcomer tells you they've got a couple of days, don't smirk at them. That's the hardest two days. The fact that some people get to the meeting is the hardest thing in their entire life. I have to remember that because I, wow, and I just was like somebody stuck a power blender in my head. Everything was just swirling around and I couldn't get a beat on anything except those gnats. And they weren't even there. And then I finally, after about, I went to that meeting and I identified as an alcoholic. Oh, God. Oh, Gott. I stood up with the other 35 losers and felt, and this should be a tip-off, they all had hospital wristbands on, and I felt less than because I didn't. that should have been on the 20 questions if you ask me that and uh that and if you did you ever buy wine based on alcohol content if you bought port because it was 19 instead of you know chablis because it's 12 you are definitely an alcoholic but you know i i got to that meeting and i listened to the speaker and i laughed a little bit and I was nervous and I had to thank the speaker because everybody told me to. And I was malleable. They could have me do all kinds of things. And, I was just desperate. I was so desperate. I'd hit that now what so profoundly that I couldn't even hear my own crap even though I was full of crap because I was looking at everybody in the room going, I'm not like you. Not like you. This is a loserama. I still have, remember that potential? Still got it. Got it back here. Once I get this alcoholism thing fired up you know once I get the pilot turned up I'm on my way and I wish you all the best because you seem like really nice people but I'm not an alcoholic like you. I only drank to get there. You drank to get drunk. The fact that I got drunk and there is irrelevant. I just um then I was telling Butch this at the meeting tonight uh I went I went to a meeting when I I was about nine. I finally got a sponsor, by the way. I've had the same sponsor for 23 years. He has taken me through the steps like 89 times, kicking and screaming. I've got toddlers. You try to get them to do something you don't want, like going to the bank. Come on, we're going to The Bank. And my four-year-old would go, no, I don't wanna. And then you go, come on, let's go to The Banks. And then they just go dead weight and spin. That's how I am when my sponsor says, it sounds to me like it's time for you to do another inventory. So I got the sponsor, and he started telling me, you know, go to the meeting early. Go to the meet an hour early. Shake people's hands and ask them their name. You have got to be kidding me. What kind of therapy is that? I don't even like these people. And most of them are worse than I was. I don' t even know where their hands have been. And get a commitment at all your meetings. And when you're done, do not leave the meeting until amen. That's the last word in the meeting. It's not we now have our secretary's announcements. It's time for the traditions. And it's especially not we have a seventh tradition here where we pass the basket. That's when most people go, God, is it that late? I've got to get out of here. you know these are people who pull 65 bucks of cocaine up their nose in eight minutes but won't drop a dollar in the basket you know because now they've become fiscally responsible you know i mean uh but uh and and if that's you shame on you shame on you for not supporting the very thing that's saving all of our lives together you can't stay sober on credit if you've got a quarter drop it in the damn basket nobody's asking for your first born just a couple of bucks you know it's uh it's not a big damn deal you know even in these lean years and um so god i lost my train of thought now i'm gonna have to start over so i had to do all the stuff oh and go out for coffee after the meeting as if the company you've kept for the last six hours might not be enough to keep you sober stay out till one two three in the morning with these people and listen to them talk about themselves and drink coffee you don't need so you cannot sleep the rest of the night then get up at six o'clock fresh and ready to go do your job the next day. Whoa, what fun that's going to be. But you know what? Every day I woke up, I wasn't hung over. And I would wake up and my sponsor would call me. He was a milkman, so he's up at the crack of dawn and he's in the middle of nowhere. And he would phone me at my house in Orange County and he would make me get out of, you know, are you up? Yeah. Okay, have you said your prayers this morning? Not yet. Get on your knees and say your prayers i'll wait i'd put the telephone down and get on my knees i'd pray to the bedspread and then i'd get up and say i did it you know and my prayer was really simple i would say god and i do this every morning i get out of bed but the first thing i do when my feet hit the floor i say good morning father because i got to say good warning to the person that's the most important in my life really and i said good morning Father and I talked to God for a few minutes and my Prayer goes something like this God please bless my children please bless my ex-wife and give her everything in her life that i would want for myself please bless my friends and family and watch out for them today please bring peace in the world and and please let me work your will today but please be really obvious about what your will is because i will miss it if you're not and i mean really damn obvious i don't get subtlety at all and uh and that's my prayer and i get up and go about my day and at night i go thank you you know it was a good day um but uh but i do that and and uh i started at about eight months sober i was in a meeting mopping the floors and i paused and i'm someone who by nature as i said doesn't care for people that much and i resist i resist and dr paul said one time you can resist all you want and drown in the current or you can relax and let the current carry you and see where it takes you. And what I did was I got in a current of my home group like you are in the current of tonight in your home group and I let the home group current carry me and I didn't like it but I and I Didn't know where I was going so I was afraid a lot of the time and I thought that where it was going was wrong and stupid and what I was being asked to do was dumb but one night at eight months sober I was mopping the floor at a meeting and there were about 120 people lined up to thank the speaker, and my eyes, without even any consciousness of it, my eyes went across that row of people standing there to thank the speaker just as I was pausing for a rest. And it occurred to me right down in here that I knew every single one of them by name, and I liked them. I liked him without any prompting. And that, to me, is a moment of grace. you know and i've experienced that a lot and i not as much as i want you know i want more of that and so i'm active in alcoholics anonymous i take commitments where people ask me to go and i you know do what i'm supposed to do and i have a lot of friends who walk the road with me i mean judy here has been we got sober together the same year judy was a mixed up angry secretary uh at our at our tuesday night book study and uh we would commiserate you know we just had we had no sobriety, and we had good sponsors. And we've both been sober, you know, this is our 24th year. And I've got a lot of friends in here that I know for years and years and years. Some of you, I don't know you by name, but I know you from being here. And I think about you, and I care about being here, and my life has changed. You know, I've had career changes. I've heard different things happen to me. I always wanted to be a writer, and when I was new, I went up to a writer in our group named Maurice Zolotow, who's since dead. And Maurice was a really well, he was a well-heeled writer. He'd written several biographies of people, famous people. And I go up to shuffle out to Maurice and said, he's talking to another writer in the group. And i'm listening, you know, i'm gonna soak in some of this because i'm going to be a writer. I work at a bookstore, why not? And Maurice looks over at me and Maurice is this big gruff old guy, New York talk like this. he looks over yes and i said i'm just listening i've always wanted to be a writer and he goes well then write something and he turned around and walked away where's the love you know so i had to go and do things you know and i i went out and started writing actually imagine that actually wanting to be a writer and writing something. This is something I could never figure out myself until I started teaching, and then I taught how to write, and then I started writing with my students, and then I got an opportunity to be a full-time writer, and I took it, you know, and it was luck and grace, and it could turn tomorrow because my life isn't contingent. The success and the joy in my life is not contingent on what I do for a living or what's in my bank account it's what connections i have to other people in the world because that's all i'm going to have when i'm dying and i'm gonna be gone someday and everybody here is going to be gone some day and and all we have left is what we do while we're here with amongst each other and then out there in the World and I have to have the comfort of my people this is my tribe you know I've heard that spoken of a lot of times these are my people in here. And I get it. The first guy I identified with in my heart, right in my guts, was a guy who had spent 20 years in Folsom Prison. You know? And he spoke and I sat there and thought, I understand everything this guy is talking about and I've never been arrested. But he wasn't talking about being arrested. He was talking about fear. He Was talking about sadness. Hewas talking about hurting people, and he was talking about destroying his life to drink so they didn't have to feel those feelings. And I got it. I got it big time from Don N in my group. And wow, it just went right through me. I thought if I can relate to Don, I can relate to everybody. It doesn't matter if you're gender or your race or your sexual orientation. If you're an alcoholic, we understand because we understand what's at stake. That's why I identify as an alcoholic. I took drugs but I'm an alcoholic. This is Alcoholics Anonymous, you know? And I have to know that the person I'm talking to understands what's at stake with me because if I'm going to drink, I got to talk to somebody who understands that, not somebody who goes, I know how you must feel because I'm that way with candy. No, you're not that way avecandy. No. You've never been pulled over for an open container of nuts and chews in a car, all right? Ever. I appreciate the sentiment, but it's not my, and I mean no disrespect to people who have that problem, but it is not my problem. And you don't understand what is really at stake. But if I talk to someone who does, if I can talk to a new person who understands that, or if I could talk to somebody who has got a lot more time than I do, then it is that connection that levels me out to where those emotions don't hurt anymore and I don't have to relieve them anymore because the relief has been in the connection that's why i come to alcoholics anonymous and i hope it stays that way because i have two little children now i got married as i'll run through this real quickly do i have to get down now the lights haven't gone on yet so i'm just going by the lights uh okay um but uh and i'm sure many of you have blocks to get home but uh um i uh i was single for 16 years sober and i fell in love head over heels with a woman in my group and I adored her. And we got married and we had two children and then our marriage fell apart. And I won't say anything, that was a cheap shot before, I didn't mean that. But because she is alcoholic and she's not going to meetings and she she's going to need somebody's help at some point, I believe. And she's going to needs maybe a woman this room tonight and I don't want to sully up the pool for her to get help that she would need as a fellow alcoholic and I hope that maybe somebody in this room will have some time to run into her and talk to her and have her relate to them. I hope that, I don't know if that's going to happen, but it's not my problem. But I have my two children now. I have a six-year-old son who's almost six and a four-year old daughter. And these kids are the joy of my life. And I would never have been able to enjoy them without the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, without the inventories and the amends and the 12-step work and the spiritual connection of the 11th step to guide me along in dealing with these two impatient, energetic little critters. And they are go, go, go. But I would not want anything different than what I've got from them. You know, my kids are amazing to me. I'm sure your kids are Amazing to you, but they're not as amazing as mine. And when my marriage fell apart, it really, really grieved me. I went through such a period of and believe me, I had people, I had a neighbor who was a woman I work with who had been one of my bosses a few years ago, and I moved over to a different department. And she came into my office one day, and she's not an alcoholic, but she knew what I was going through. She walked in my office and dropped her key of her house on my desk and said, I got a single bedroom at my house with an attached bathroom. You can stay there as long as you like. And I thanked her, and went there and stayed at her house for about a month and house sat her cats. And then a woman in my group said, come stay up at my home for a few months. stay as long as you need, you know. So I went up there and people were kind and they came out of the woodwork and I got to be with my children. I listened to the single men, the single fathers in AA, the guys who are divorced dads, I shouldn't say single, but divorced dads in AA who are completely devoted to their children, who taught me how to be consistent with them and be loving with them, and to never say an unkind word about their mother to them. And I've kept to that, you know and and i've been able to be with my children on a consistent basis and have them in my life and i know that they care about me i don't know if they love me i don't think they know what love is but they're there and they know their father loves them and just as as people in aa have loved me i'm really i've gotten more than i could ever pay back in alcoholics anonymous from aa people um i went through a depression during those two years that i wound up going to the doctor i was getting dizzy spells i was having in trouble driving. I was just, I went to see the doctor. He gave me a whole checkup, took blood tests, took head checks, everything and said, I got some good news and some bad news. I said, what's the bad news? And he goes, there's nothing wrong with you. And I said well, what's the good news? He goes, There's nothing Wrong With You. He said, What's going on in your life? And I so I'm going through a divorce. And he said, Do you ever think about killing yourself? and i thought you know not today but it's it's 11 so i've got a long time to no but you know you know how we are i listen to this they ask us stupid questions but you know alcoholics i think about killing myself all the time it's not serious i just walk along an overpass and think wonder what would happen if i just jumped over I'm not, now listen I'm not going to do it just out of courtesy to my fellow drivers, I'm nicht going to du it I don't want to have the last moment of my life spent having people drive by and go asshole out the window I don' t want to end my life that way but but people, I had jury duty a few years ago, and I dress exactly like I'm dressed tonight. I get called into the box, I'm sitting in the box. The guy in front of me has these big prison guns on him, and he's got dreadlocks on his head, but his head's shaved on the sides, and he's tough looking. I mean, this guy's tough. And I'm sittin' right behind him, an they said, is there anybody on this jury, potential jury, who is acquainted with any felons? his hand went up too you know and uh then they asked okay juror number six which was me uh how do you how are you acquainted with felons and i said well some of my best friends are felons they're ex-felons they are no longer in that business but they uh really how many i said maybe a hundred i'm not i'm telling the truth i'm going to embarrass you in here but then say how many of you how many of you in there are ex-felons don't raise your hand but i just because you'll scare the hell out of the person next to you possibly but uh you see visitors take their purses and pull them up closer. But anyway, they excused me from this. She said, how do you know these felons? And I said, well, I'm in a fellowship with them. I didn't want to break my anonymity for that cheap shot. But she said, really, how often do you attend this fellowship? And I thought, oh, you're going to be smart with me, are you? I said maybe four or five times a week for the last 17 years because that's that's how long it was at the time she goes your honor i would like to ask a juror number six be excused from duty and i said fine and i got up and because we were told all the way through that don't take it personally if they boot you out of the jury but i was pissed you know i walk out of there and i go over and check in with the jury room and they said we can just go and have lunch and come back later this afternoon so i go off and i'm walking down to starbucks and i call my sponsor you know because i'm irritated they booted me off the jury because i said i knew felons how am i ever going to get on a jury i know everybody in here that's not possible so i'm talking to him and i look up and here comes the guy with the dreadlocks and the big guns you know and he's walking up and and i said goodbye to bill and i hung up the phone i look at the guy and he goes you're a friend of bills yeah i am and he says let's go get some coffee as you wish my brother and um so we went in we sat down we sat down for an hour and had had coffee talked and watched the people come in looking at us wondering how we knew each other you know uh and we're sitting there laughing and chatting and having a good time you know and uh and and i felt i felt better because there was somebody else who got rejected for the exact same reason i did you know and so we are you know this is a fellowship it's not a 12-step program we're here to help each other we're Here to be to see recovery in action not recovery by workbook or by remote control or recovery by internet. We're here to see Recovery eye-to-eye to shore each other up and have a place where newcomers can come and hear the message of AA. I want to thank Bob again for having me thank you for being in my life and I hope for the best for all of you Thanks.