The Discipline of Sublimating His Judgment to a Sponsor – Bill M.

message. And I also know that the reason he is so loved is because what you give away comes back to you. And Bill gives an awful lot of way to the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. So may I proudly introduce to you Bill Mason. Hi, I'm Bill Mason and I'm an alcoholic. Yeah, you know, I think I know half the people here. True, I do. I know an awful lot of them. You know, it's really an honor to be asked to speak at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and it's a signal honor to me to be able to speak to you. I'd be happy to be ask to speak in this meeting. It's the biggest meeting in our area for sure. And, God, I don't know why I feel so nervous, except I'm up here. Anyway, you know, I do know an awful lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's good now my daughter Mary's in the program and Ann's in the program, and you get out around, you know, that Tri-Valley Fellowship and Annie. Oh, you know him, yeah, that's Mary and Annie's dad, you know, so. And I've been in the car business around here since 1958, you know, selling and buying and doing different things, and my son is now running a store, and my daughter's known, and a lot of people know her, so I go into stores I haven't been in in a while, and I see somebody, oh yeah, well, you know him, that's Bill's dad, you know. That's his father. Oh, hi, Mr. Mason, you know. So you know you're getting fat and old been great, so. But it's a lot better than the alternative. You know, this is really an impressive group and an impressive meeting, I'll tell you. And I hope that something that I say tonight helps people out there, helps the new people out here. Because I can tell You know, I've been sober 28 years, five months, and one day. And until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I could lay claim to very few 30 days or 40 days or 60 days. I could not drink. I could want to not drink, and I could desperately wish to not drank. And I always ended up drinking again. And, you know, I really believe that the finger of God is on each of us if we get to this program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The power that's greater than myself, for some reason it's unknown to me because I've done very little before, nothing before in very little sense to deserve this gift, you now, because we are among the fortunate few. I don't know what the population is now of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I know that its rate of recovering from the disease of alcoholism is 3% nationwide. Now, that's been a constant. I came in in 1967. That statistic was there then, and it's there now. Maybe they can pump it a half a point or something because of the earlier recovery, more in addictions, etc. But, you know, when you think about it, 3% recovery. It's not a horse I'd bet on, I'll tell you. But I told Nick before the meeting, if this was a horse race and I was getting up here, they'd scratch me for kidney sweat, you know. Well, the guys out there, they're better to know that one, huh? But anyway, everybody gets here in a different manner. Our commonality is not in our drunkenness or in our travels to get to Alcoholics Anonymous. Our commonalty comes in our recovery, you know, comes through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we are the blessed few, you know. AlcoholicsAnonymous has given so much to me, I feel a deep well of gratitude to AA as a whole, because it is the unity of Alcoholics Anonymous that prevents us to recover. And my daughter here is seven years sober, and I remember that one. And I've got another gal here, Ann. She's been sober, she'll be six years in December, and Mary will be eight years in April or March because they stay active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, that's what it's all about. You want to stay sober, you stay active. And if you don't, you don' t. And get a home group and get busy in Alcoholics Anonymous and work in the steps. You know, and it's difficult for me to do and I'm sure it's different for new people to do. I'd like to think, or I have a feeling that I was alcoholic, you know, just coming out of the gate. I was just destined to be alcoholic. I liked alcohol right from the start. I can remember when I was a kid, maybe seven, eight, nine years old, going in my closet in my dad's bedroom and getting that whiskey bottle, which was only brought out on, you know, festive occasions, and having a couple of pops, and it burned like hell. Jesus, it was terrible stuff, you I went back very often until they caught on and moved it, you know. And I always liked alcohol. I liked what it did for me. And that's, you knows, it gave me a feeling of being at ease, you Know. When I had a few pops, all was okay with the world, you Now. Alcohol did for you the same thing it did For you. It made me something that I was not, You Know. Whatever that was, I don't know. And whatever it was, I didn't want to be me. Whatever that was all about, I don't have any idea anyway. It just seems to be part of the alcoholic nature. So then I started drinking when I was peddling papers. I probably had a fairly normal childhood. My father was from Ireland. My mother was from Scotland. We were raised Catholic in the southeast section of Detroit. And it was right after the war. I'm 62 years old, so in 1946, I was like 13 years old. Not quite 14. And Detroit was going around the clock. I mean, just, you know, every car that was being built was sold. Nash-Kelvinator was there. They were building refrigerators. They were all sold. This tremendous pent-up demand from World War II had to be satisfied. You know, and Detroit was wild. I mean, we had a good time. And drinking was so much an accepted part of the culture that I was raised in. Not in my house, not at home. Drunkenness, my father was from Ireland and he knew about drunkenness. And my mother was from Scotland. And they knew about drunkeness or alcoholism. And so it wasn't permitted. And my lifestyle did not fit in with theirs. And they tried as well as they could to correct me. But I was on that course that we take, you know. I was going to keep on going until I couldn't go anymore. And I started getting in trouble when I was 14 years old, getting in travel with the police and getting in fights and having police chase me and wrecking cars and getting kicked out of school and then losing jobs. And that was in my teens. And, you Know, I had guys talk to me about drinking and the effect it was having on my life. I mean, like booking sergeants. You know, guys at Juvenile Hall. Guys that, you know, police on the beat. And my uncles, my father, my mother, the priest, my sisters, my cousins. You know. Christ, they get tired of hearing about it. Lay off, will you? You know? And continue on my merry way. And I just progressed. Look how many drunk arrests I had. Drunk and disorderly and fighting and drunk and driving and all that. In the Korean War, they took everybody. I took basic training with guys when they put hats on, their hairs fell out. You know, one guy was blind in one eye and the other guy deaf in one ear. One guy had both of them, you know. He's in. Guys with feet too big for shoes, he's in。 Guys with necks so big they can't get a shirt for them. Just everybody went. They almost wouldn't take me because they're looking at that rap sheet, you know, stupid things. But anyway, they took me, you And then I became a periodic alcoholic when I was in the service because they really frowned on the things that I would do drinking. I mean, they got serious and I had some really close calls. And I didn't want to be doing some serious time or getting a bad conduct or a dishonorable discharge for something just totally ignorant. And I think this is the beginnings of trying to control my drinking. You see, I'd stop drinking. I wasn't going to drink until, of course, the next time that I drank. And I got a lot of trouble in the service. You know, they did a 16-week basic training, and I was always a scofflaw. Me and this Italian kid from Philadelphia, we were selling whiskey. The cook would bring it in. We'd give him $2 for a half pint and sell it for $5. And we sold a lot of it. And, of course, once you've got them rolling, you're down in supply. The price of that half pint went up to $10. None of your guys are getting paid $80 a month. They didn't like us. But that's the way I thought. I had a car on post in basic training. I had my civilian clothes down there. I'd come back and go to lunch. I'd break that M1 down to the three-component parts and put on somebody else's brass and sneak off to the PX and start drinking beer. And that was my attitude, you know, through everything, toward everything. The last eight weeks of basic training, I was lucky I wasn't court-martialed, but I was on company punishment the whole time. You guys were in the service. You know what that is. You can't go here, you can't do that. You can go there. All that stuff. So we got drunk in the barracks is what we did. Until he went to town and got caught and wrecked a car and Jesus, you know. And it went on and on like that. And I really did become a periodic because I did not want to go to the stockade. And Army prisons aren't any fun. I've been in enough jails and no jails aren't anything fun, but stockades are a little worse than Army prisons or even federal prisons at that time at least were much worse. So anyway, that was the beginning of trying to control my drinking and I was never able to do it, you know, never able for me to be able to drink and never able to do them. That persisted up until the time I was 34 years old And when I started to drink, that's what I was doing, you know. I relate my drinking to the way that Herb Cain was talking about not smoking a few years ago. The guy called him up and he said, What are you doing, Herb? And he said I am not smoking. That's what i am doing. And that's when I was not drinking, that is what I am doing, not drinking. And God has been really good to me all my life before Alcoholics Anonymous. I came within hairbreadths of dying in automobile accidents. I rolled cars and had the windshield land, and the guy next to me landed in his lap. And this was before seatbelts and all kinds of stuff. God's always been very good to me. And he put people in my life. As I went along, there were lessons to be learned. My friend Nick says that when the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear. And that happened. It happened before drinking, before alcoholics announced that I was still drinking. at it, these little bits and pieces that you learn, you know. See, for many years, as you can tell from what I'm talking about, for money years, I knew that I could not control my drinking. There wasn't any way. I knew I was alcoholic. I don't care how many, you know, you can only get fired from so many jobs. You can only wreck so many cars. You can only have your wife and take the kids and leave so many times. You could only go through that sobering up in a jail so many time or at home because most of the time after I got a little older, I had to clean up, you know, and I didn't like going to jail anymore. So the last few years of my drinking, I only went once or twice. But there was no way that I could not not drink. And I can remember my wife was gone again, you Know, and bless her, she's just a marvelous person. I'll talk a little bit about her in a minute. And I was in an apartment in Hayward, a two-bedroom apartment. And I Was up there, you know, drinking is what I do the best, you Know. The ambulance is down below. And there's a family there, two young men and a husband and wife. And they're there, and they were heavy drinkers. And she's strapped down on a gurney, and They're pushing her out, And she'S babbling away, you Know. And they've got a thing in her mouth so She doesn't bite her tongue. And I remember I'm up there and I'm drinking because I have come that close to convulsions. I remember one time I was just starting to go back, and I got a shot down. I got slug of booze down and knocked off the incipient convulsiones. And I looked down and I thought to myself, well, sooner or later it's going to happen to me. I just hope there's somebody around to call the police, you know, to call an ambulance because you don't know what's goingto happen to you. And that's the way I thought I was, just going to keep on going until I wasn't going anymore because there didn't seem to be a solution. Everybody talked to me about my drinking, and the first time my wife took the kids and left, she was pregnant with my boy, and she had to get out of there. Living with a psychotic alcoholic has never been any fun, and she finally had enough. And she left, and I drank myself. I was going to quit drinking. I had an uncle who passed away. God rest him. He was a real big shot with the UAW. He helped start the UAV, got in all the fights and organizing the plants and all that stuff for you fellows that are old enough to remember it. Buick sat down, strike, he was a leader and all. Any reason, he came out and I met him and we went around and got, he liked to drink and I took him on a tour of the bay and we stopped and drank and blah, blah, and I drank myself out of my voice. And he was on a plane back to Detroit, I took them to the airport And my voice is gone, you know. And that's not the first time it had happened because I used to drink. I'd get a glass of whiskey and I would drink it. A glass of vodka and then I would just drink it, so bring my voice out or something. And anyway, I couldn't talk. And I knew it was the end of the road. I was staying with a friend of mine who didn't want me. He was the best man at my wedding. And you look at this, you see, you don't want to be around. You know, I was one of those persons you do not want around. and just because the old friends and the families are friends, etc., I was there sleeping on the couch and I called Alcoholics Anonymous because I'd been talking. People talked to me about AlcoholicsAnonymous. A guy came over and gave me a pitch over in Marin County a few months before. Anyway, a guy met me at Fruitvale and we sat and had a cup of coffee and I croaked out my sad little tail and I'm sipping that cup of tea and he came and got me We went to a meeting in Oakland, and I had quick recoveries at that time. You know, I knew about vitamin B and honey. I knew About Honey and Milk and more vitamin B. I had a friend of mine, God bless him, I saw him recently. He took me up to a pharmacy because I was really good at my trade. I drifted into used cars because I never paid for a car, and if you were selling them, they'd give you one to drive, see? So anyway, I'm hustling used cars because you've got to have wheels, you know. The buses are a pain in the ass. But everybody around me knows what a terrible drinker I am. And I'm shaking. I come back to work and I'm shaken like this. And Bob takes me up to this fellow. He's been a doctor in Hungary. This is just shortly after that Hungarian Revolution and he could only be a pharmacist. He was in Oakland. So anyway, Bob takes us up to him. He takes me in there. Bob's a health nut. He tells the guy what I need. So the guy makes up these horse pills, vitamin B horse pills. Yeah, $3, $4, $5, $6. And he tells me now you just take one and then four or five hours take one more because if you take more than that, you're just going to waste it. Your body will just pass it off. Ah, right, Doc. So I took two or three of them, you know. And sure enough, you knows, those pills, you stop shaking. You know, those pillows and one glass of beer and you didn't shake at all. But, you know, many times I had the shakes after that and I'd have maybe $10, $6, $12, $15. You think I'd go back and get more of those pills? No, no, no. Go get three beers and that'll stop this. But anyway, that's the type of drinking that I was always into and I did not know that there was a solution. And that guy, he took me to the meeting and I got out and I was in, had to go get a job. I'd gotten fired again. And so I went out and got a job and he called me and wanted me to go to the meeting the next day and I didn't go and he caught me two or three times and I kept on sloughing him off and he did what you do or what I do. He just, well, the guy ain't ready yet and he went on his merry way. So, but I quit drinking. I didn' t drink anything and I din' t drank anything for, I don' t know, about three months, four months which is, you know, that's a long time. and I went back east and I got Susie and she was pregnant and I had Mary and Betsy and we came back out to California and unfortunately I started drinking back in Detroit. I got off the plane and I lasted all the way nobody ever came to the airport to get me drunk or sober so I had to take a bus into downtown Detroit and then I was taking a cab out to my dad's place where my kids and wife were and I didn't and I wouldn't buy a the cab wouldn't buy a place where my buddy was tending bars. His brother owned a couple of bars, Big Jack Brosnan, great guy. Lefty's tending bar and so I made the caddy make a U-turn. I made it all the way past there, you know, but I went back to see if Lefty was there and he was there. So what's happening? Lefty says, Nah, Bill, I'm leading the league in doubles and he puts that whiskey bottle up on the bar. So we led the league in doubles that afternoon, you Know. And that was the beginning of the next five years of my drinking was just incredibly bad, not so much physically, although it always got worse. They tell you that in Alcoholics Anonymous, that the disease is always going to get worse. It's never going to getting any better. Now, it got worse physically, and I'm sure it got worst spiritually. I didn't think of things like that at that time, but it got wors mentally. I mean, my head was even getting worse and worse, and trying to live in that neurotic head was getting harder and harder. And it became impossible to live in that head, you know. So I was drinking more and suffering more, and I couldn't stay sober very long. I used to be able to clean it up and get out there and last a couple of months and get some money put together and get all the fires put out, you know, and start coasting in and start on another one. You know, things would get too good, I guess. I don't know. The obsession with alcohol never did die with me. And so I was, you know, that was the status of where I was at. I was in that goddamn department and I was drunk and then not drunk and the fellow that I was working for got a year and a half sober now, God bless him. And he brought a guy over to talk to me because I was becoming almost useless to him. He told me, he said, you're just the last couple of months, Bill, and things will be okay. He says, you don't do that anymore. He says, you'll even make 30 days anymore. He says it's two weeks and three weeks, you're off on another one. He was a wonderful guy. He'd owe me money, but he couldn't give it to me because I'd be out drinking up. They'd be gone. And I used to send my wife checks. I'd have money come and he'd say, well, I'll send Susie some. But he made me down to Coronado. And he'd take me up and get me a haircut. He'd pay the barber. He'd buy me a deal, a meal, and he paid for everything. and get my clothes out of the cleaners, paid the rent, give me two dollars, put somebody with me and send me out. Yeah. So anyway, I'd done it again. I'd just sobered up, just come off a drunk and just went to the Oakland auction and I collected some money and they did that terrible bad thing for me. They tempted me with alcohol. I can resist everything but temptation. You know, they had a free pour when the auction's over and I cannot resist it. I just, you know, it's there. People, they know I drink. They'll think it's funny if I don't. Whatever ran through my head, I started pounding them down again. So I took what money I had and I'd been sober, you know, a little while and I had a few bucks and I went up, holed up in my apartment, got a bunch of booze on the way home, had a guy drive me home because I didn't have a driver's license. I didn' t want another drunk driving ticket. I was losing coordination and wrecking cars, minor things, you kno w, knocking one fender off and stuff like that. And I was holed up in that apartment and a guy came up from Los Angeles. Now here's what I talk about, the finger of God. I never met this man. I never meet him before. He'd come to Alcoholics Anonymous two years and four months before because his brother had gotten sober. And if his brother could get sober, God damn it, so could he, right? So he came, sobered up, lasted two years and four weeks and he started drinking again. So he became up to escape his dilemma to see my buddy Clay, and he was going to either get sober or he was gonna go jump off the bridge. And believe me, Nick knows him, he probably would have jumped off the Bridge. And I got some funny stories about him. He jumped out of a building one time. Guy was gonna hire him, run a big store. He's a fabulous car man. The guy was gonna fire him. He says, hi Bobby. He says I didn't know if you'd remember me. He goes, remember you? He says who could forget you? You're the guy that jumped out of a three-story building. and he did and he broke his fall on the way down he hit the canopy on an apartment house and then he went back upstairs to see the girl he jumped off the building over and she opened the door and screamed so the finger of God said David you come here Bill you go there anyway I had some checks that I collected and Clay needed the money and he came to me and I told David to come over and talk to him. And David says, I don't want to talk to him, God damn it. I'm the one that needs help. You know, I'm drinking, blah, blah, blah. Clay's like an old bull, you know, pretty soon there's David he's sitting across from me and he shared his experience, strength, and hope with me, you know. And I think even as drunk as I was and I drank while he was talking to me, he said, he asked me questions, you know about different things, you know he'd say, do you know what it is? He says, If you come to Alcoholics Anonymous and follow our path, you won't have to take another drink. Do you ever feel like you have to have a drink? Oh, wow. Geez. Yes, I know that feeling so well. Oh, so well, so Well. Every fiber of your being screams for a drink. And I kind of bet. He told me, he said, he asked me if I would go to a meeting with him the next day. By this time it's about 10 or 10.30 And he's talking. I'd get up and go in the kitchen, excuse me a minute, and have a little talk and then go back and sit down, you know. And I said, yeah, I'll go. And he says, you Know what I'm going to do if you don't go to that meeting with me? I said no, what are you going to David? He says, I'm gonna break your goddamn arm. Now, David was a professional fighter, you know, and I know, you know, devout coward, devoult coward. If you're gonna be smaller and weaker and long hair and wear high heels and then I'll just beat the hell out of you, you you know, but you fellas are going to get back. I said, okay, you know. But he came to get me. You know something? I quit in the middle of a drunk because I still had $70, $80 in my pocket. I got up in the morning and I had plenty of booze at the place because I took it back from that auction. This was on Friday morning. I'd been drinking since Tuesday. I still have booze left because I always like to lay in a good supply if you've got a few bucks. And I went down and I ate some ham and eggs and drank a couple of beers at a bowling alley on Mission Street and Hayward. And I went from there, I went down to the bar, the Mission Lounge, and I was in there, and the lot wasn't open yet. I'm sitting there drinking. We're playing the jukebox, having a good old time. I must have had four or five drinks when he came in to get me. It was raining. I was drizzly out, and he's got a raincoat on. He's got a pork pie hat, and you've got those eyes, you know, that could open a safe with it. He says, yeah, you going to go to that meeting with me? Well, wow, he might break my arm, you know. But that glimmer of hope was there, you know, that thought that perhaps I don't have to be the drunk that I am. Perhaps I don' t have to do it. I don''t have to drink to be the drunk that I am. Because I knew little bits about him before he came over. And I said, yeah. And I said, is it okay if I finish my drink because I didn' t know etiquette, you know. and he said, yeah, go ahead. It might be your last one. And I can remember thinking, last one, yeah. I'm going to go to this meeting, blow him off and sit down and punish that bottle. And that's not what happened, you know. He took me over to San Francisco and David likes to go and do things. He's a tremendously energetic man and he's coming off the heat. So we're running all over the place with the central office. We went all over. We went to Chinatown. We ate lunch, and I threw up on the sidewalk. And all the time, you know, I'm starting to go into withdrawals. You know, it's not good to take an elk away from his booze. We don't like that. But there's no way in the world I'm going to get a drink with this big mooch, you know. So it's getting worse as we go along, you know. So then, you know, we're still there, and there's a meeting that night, and there's a little black gal gets up to talking. By this time, I him, doing a little shaking, you know. They get one of them ashtrays, sounds like a tambourine on the table, you know. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm looking around, you know, you can't really trust these people. You know, they can't even drink, you know. Keep an eye on them. And then again, I think, good God, what am I doing here? What am I doing here, you know? And then I've got to drive back across the bridge and I know I'm not going to get to drink. You always, Bay Bridge is three martinis. Golden Gate Bridge is four. Don't like height, don't like open spaces, don' t like, you know, you re going to fall, the earthquake s going to hit me, you kno, whatever reason it is I know I m going to get to drink if I got to go over that bridge. I don t know how many neuroses I had but anyway, Robbie Dee got up to talking and I believe she s still active in the program and she started talking just the same thing we do at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She starts sharing her experience, strength, and hope with us. You know, telling us what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. And she talked about things, and you know, she's talking about emotions. We are equipped by our emotions, at least I was, driven by my feelings. And she started talking a bunch of stuff about coming back from the grocery store with the booze on the bottom and the groceries on top. Well, I had a roommate for a while in that Hayward place that had in the back of his parole papers, he could not be with anyone that drank or associated with drinking, couldn't go in a bar, couldn't have a drink. He was a little sort of a badass. But here I am, and I'd go in my... just get drunk, you know. I didn't know what I was doing. This parole officer came over one time and I threatened him, you now. He moved. But she started talking about those things because that's the way I used to get the booze in the house when Lou was there. I didn' t want him to know. He didn't want to imperil his, you know, his freedom. So all of these things, all these identifications come in, you know, and all the things that David was talking about, these other alcoholics I was meeting were talking about. You know, all of this stuff. All these little points of identification. You know? You come to a meeting like this and you look around, you know, these are not, you people are not dressed like my normal run-of-the-mill folks, you Know, that I drank with. I mean, my, you Now, the house there, the apartment house that I had, most of the cars had fenders missing, dented, you know, flat tires, sat there all day. I mean, it was, I was not in a upper strata situation, you know. In fact, you know, I lived in Alameda five years and the second meeting I went to in Almeda, I went to a speaker meeting on Saturday night and I walked in there and there must have been maybe a hundred people and I looked around and I lived over there for five years and I didn't think there was a hundred people and all of AlamedA didn't get as drunk as I did. At least I never saw them. They weren't in my bars. When she got through talking, all these little things start to come together. You look around and you go into places like this, maybe not as many people, there's quite a few people, and they're all not drinking And, you know, they're going to do it a day at a time. And this happy chatter you get. You know, did you notice when you came in here today, everybody's laughing, smiling, and having a good time? I mean, everybody is having a great time. And that was not my state of being. My good time was when I was drinking. Happiness was having a couple of quarts of whiskey. It's Saturday night, and I don't have to go to work until Monday. That's, you Know, that's, You've got plenty you're going To carry over. You can get as drunk as you want and still don't Have to go To work. And I can stay home alone and talk to the smartest man I know. And that was the status of it. But when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and started coming to these meetings, all the wondrous things begin to happen for you. You know, the certain knowledge that if I do not pick up that first drink, I can't get drunk. I remember a guy named Cactus Pete told me that. He said, Remember, Bill, if you don't have a drink, you can't gets drunk. I thought I ought to have a tattoo on my hand somewhere with that. Because it was something, you know, it's a new thought came to me. And I can tell you that I don't think that staying sober is any easier for me than it is for you. I think each of us fight our own individual battle with it. Now, the battle is all my sincerity. And I Can Tell You That When I work with new people and they go out and they're drinking again, I do not doubt their sincerity when they come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I know the many times that I desperately did not want to drink, and I ended up drinking again. And it wasn't until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous that I found out about the obsession with alcohol. I'd known about the physical addiction to alcohol for many years. I mean, it was just, if I was going to have a drink, I was gonna be drinking. I can remember one time I sobered up right around Thanksgiving, a few days after Thanksgiving, and I had to put Christmas together, so I soberied up and I was working like hell, and it's a bad time in the car business, and I was wholesaling, nobody wants to buy, and I'm working like hell. Finally we get it done and it's the day before Christmas and John takes me across the street and I want to buy him a drink. I'm not going to have one. The guy that owed me 10 or 12 bucks or something for about a year or so was buying around and I had to get in. Got to get some of my money back. Double brandy. A little water. And I turned around and I saw myself in the mirror and I'd already drank and I thought, oh God, God, when is this one going to end? Well, it ended just like the rest of them did about two weeks later. Just about two months later. And I think back on those things and I had no idea about the obsession with alcohol. You know, for my money that is what we treat here in Alcoholics Anonymous is our obsession with alcohol. And that's very true for me. I did not stop thinking about it. I did NOT stop thinking about it." But, you know, when David came up and he went to work with me and we did okay, and then he got a job down in Oxnard. He's a high-powered guy, and he wanted me to come down and work for him. I felt like I'm still in that same apartment, and I felt Alcoholics Anonymous was leaving me. I was losing it. When I was with Dave, we went to a meeting every day. We went to grasses. We went into a meeting just every day, and we took him one day off. He wanted to go see Dr. Zhivago, and so we went and saw Dr. Dzhivago and then we cut the midnight meeting on the way home. It just was hard not to go somewhere without going to a meet. And I can remember the things that he told me, because he knew how desperate it was. See, my surface mind, my superficial little mind, everything was okay. I'm in AA now, everything's going to be fine. I don't have to keep repeating these things. We'll go to a meeting a week, blah, blah. We'll do this or that. I remember I was sitting there one time, and I was reading the examiner. I still do it, read newspapers. And he said, read me parts of the big book. That wasn't for him. He probably had the damn thing memorized. It was for me, you know. And I looked at him and I said, I'm reading the paper. I'm readng the paper and he said, Oh yeah? Well, the next time you want a drink call William Randolph Hearst. All right. I'll read you chapter two. You know, there I was in chapter two, page 21, insanely drunk most of the time. Nobody understands why he does it. He doesn't understand why he doesn't. You ask him why he says that, he doesn' t know. He'll either laugh at you on a rare occasion or he'll tell you the truth. I don't know. How can you get out of jail in Oakland, walk across the street to the top hat because you know Ernie the bartender at 6.30, he only got four or five dollars but he'll tab you. No, it's insane, you don't even know where your car is. It's insane. So anyway, just those habits had to be replaced you see and when I had somebody pushing me, cajoling me, leading me, everything was okay, everything was alright and I went to those meetings and I got a lot of stuff out of it And I was very nervous, you know. I stuttered a lot. I could not talk in front of a group. It was very difficult for me to go to sales meetings unless I had a couple of pops, you know. Very difficult for Me to get out of bed if I didn't know there was a couple of pops to get up to. But we went to a meeting at A7A and David was going to chair the meeting and he said, why don't you, I want you to read chapter 5. And I said, well, I can't. I get up in front Of a group and I stutter. And he looked at me and said, we've got a lot of time. I got up there and I stuttered, you know. And I can't tell you that I really liked it at the time, but I look back on it now and it's the beginnings of discipline in your life is sublimating my judgment to someone else. It is not necessary that he was right. Who knows? He may have damaged my psyche. Yes. Yeah. But it didn't seem to bother him. But, and those things happen. And when he left and went down, I was there and I was not going to the meetings that I needed to be going to. You know, and I'm talking, I got like 45 days sober. And I can tell you now, I know how much you need in those meetings, 90 meetings in 90 days. I know what you need them. That's why you're told to do those things, because the people that are ahead of you know. Anyway, I went out there and a party is going on. I mean, it was summertime, and that was a nice place to live if you liked to party. And I got in the car. It was about 10 o'clock at night, and I knew I felt I was losing my grip on Alcoholics Anonymous. I felt like I was loosing that thread, that connection. And I get in my car, and drove down to see him. He was down in Oxnard. and I drove all night and saw I slept in front of the dealership and he opened up they opened up around 9 o'clock or something he came in and I started talking we spent some time together and he asked me to go to work for him and I told him I can't go to Work for you you've got me doing too many things now I'm paying child support yeah I paid the rent I got my clothes out of the cleaners I have a driver's license now and I've got insurance And, you know, all of these things when you've got these. And I've got too many holes to fill. You know, I've Got all this stuff I've GOT to do. I can't do it. And he told me to go back up. He bought the car I was driving, took me to the airport, and he says, Come on back up to California, up to Oakland. And he said, Put one foot in front of the other. Just do the footwork. And if you're supposed to come down here, you'll be down here. And I thought to myself, Well, okay, you Know, it sounds logical. So I got off, and a guy picked me up at the airport. and an incredible series of events happened. You know, everything I touched turned my way. Everything I touched turn my way I was, you know, peddling cars and guys were coming up buying cars guys paid me money that owed me for you never expected to see it if it had been me they wouldn't have seen mine so and just everything broke my ways that was on Tuesday on Saturday morning I was ready to pull out a Hayward and I got $2,000 in my pocket and it wasn't even dangerous because I knew where I was going. And I went down to Oxnard and I went to work for David and he was a hard man to work for, full of kinetic energy, much more aggressive than I was in the daycare fair. Well, you want to come back tomorrow? Goodbye. You know, go away. Give me another one. And he doesn't think like that. But anyway, we worked a lot of hours and I was tired of him. He's a grinder and I have insensitive little soul. And we got in a big argument, and I quit him and went down to Coronado. And then I flew back up here. But all that time I was down there, you know, we went to a meeting every day. And he taught me so many things. I heard so many wonderful guys talk, you Know, because I was at the level of my self-centeredness. I was not able to share much at discussion meetings. So we went on. David liked speaker meetings. He went to A Lot of Speaker Meetings. And I heard guys, I heard Norm Alpey talk a half a dozen times. You ever get a chance to get his tapes? Get his tapes. I heard Clancy. I heard a lot of times. I heard Chamberlain a lot OF times. I heard all these guys that really know what they're talking about about Alcoholics Anonymous. And Dave would have me making two AA phone calls every day. You know, sometimes I'd screw off on it. I wouldn't be doing it. And he called me up one night and he said, when I had my day off and he calls me at home, you know, and he says, did you make your two phone calls today? I said, no, God damn it. I didn't make my two phone calls today. And he said, well, you hang up and call me back, and that's one. Oh, he was a great guy. He was a super guy. But I had those things. You know something about making those phone calls? I was standing, and I wanted to get back together with my wife. And I come down, and she's down in Coronado, and I'm like, do you want to get out of here? Do you have the kids back? And blah, blah, bla. And she told me that it didn't seem to work. She'd already saw my act, and I could keep that show on the road. And so I was really hurt. Things were bad, andI was torn up inside, rejection, anger. She had a window seat where she kept the alcohol, and I looked in that window seat, and I picked up there's about this much in a bottle of vodka and about this mucho in a bottle of gin and about that much ina bottle of whiskey. And I looked, and there wasn't enough. And I knew there wasn' t enough. And I picked up that bottle, and I looked at it, and I look over at the clock, and that second hand is sweeping past 2 o'clock. I don't know any cab drivers. I don' t know anybody in Coronado that I can go get a bottle from. So I'm standing there, and got this bottle in my hand. So I got it in this hand, and I looking as soon as he had a wall phone. Ding, phone, ding. Now if the phone had been in a cabinet somewhere, it would be a different speaker. and I went over and I called Hamza and I'm telling him what's going on and he said oh yeah yeah and I told him I got a bottle of whiskey on my hand he goes oh he says have you taken a drink yet and I said no David I didn't take a drink yet so then he said put that god damn bottle down and get out of there and call me in 20 minutes all the way back from Coronado to Oxnard, about an hour and a half drive. I called him every 20 minutes. And he sat up all night waiting for me to get back there. Actually, it was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive. But those are the things that happened for me in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, just, you know, fortuitous happenstance, you knows, whatever. I think it's a spiritual type thing for me. You know, for me, in this room tonight, there's so much spiritual energy, it's incredible. You know? I don't know if you went to the World Conference, but if you have the chance to go to the next one, go to it. The spiritual energy at large gatherings of Alcoholics Anonymous is absolutely phenomenal. It's absolutely phenomenal, and that's why I love to go to AlcoholicsAnonymous meetings. Number one, many years ago, I discovered for me it was mental health. It's mental health, whatever's going on in my life, if I am active in Alcoholicsanonymous, if I'm trying with the 10, 11, and 12 step, if I got those things going in my wife, things are okay with me, And when I don't, things are not okay with me. And I get jealous about things being okay. I like to feel good. And if going to a meeting every day, and I've been sober 28 years, if that's what it takes for me to feel better, hey, that's cheap. Some of the places I've Been and I Don't Want to Go Back To. That's incredibly, you know, that'S a very small price to pay. I heard a guy talk in one of those meetings in Southern California, and he said they were talking about how many meetings do you go to. And he said he'd been to places he never wanted to go back to. And what put him back in there was taking a drink. And if he went to an AA meeting, he didn't take a drink, it took about an hour and a half, and when he left his house, but when he got home, he threw a dollar in the basket, he never had a drunk that lasted an hour-and-a-half and cost him a dollar. You know, that made so much sense to me, it stuck in my head. I heard other things talking, you know, my friend Clancy up there talking about impending doom, he said, you don't know what impending doom is? No, Clancy, we don't. It's impending doomed! Oh! That's what that feeling is. You've got another court case. You wrecked another car. You're looking for another job. You know, the things that alcoholics happen. And I'll tell you something else, and I knew this for years. Alcohol is just a temporary stimulant. It's a permanent depressant. No wonder we're depressed and, you know, screwed up and stressed. I like that word stress. That's a lot better than F-ed up, you Know? Now I can have stress. And Alcoholics Anonymous takes me out of that life And out of that spiritual light, out of that good road. And I love them. I just love being here. I love talking about Alcoholics Anonymous. I could rattle on for a number of hours. But you know, certain things happen as you go along in life, you know. And AA has always been a constant for me, has always bene a constant for me. I was 13 to 12 and a half years ago, my wife had a terrible stroke. And she's bedridden and she's one sides paralyzed and she has very, very little vision left in one eye and she's speech aphasic. And she is just indomitable cheer. She is always of good cheer. And I don't know what I would do if she wasn't, but it's such a blessing to be around her. And that's just like, it's another lesson to be learned because the first couple of years it happened, you're first in shock, the second you're angry about it. You don't even know what you've been through for a while, you know? And Susan was the same way and it was tough sledding, you know? But there was always Alcoholics Anonymous. And while that was going on, while that was happening for me, Big Don and Jay came over and put an air conditioner in the room that Susie and I sleep in. Added an air conditioning so she would have more comfort. And he just told me, he said, okay, we come over on Tuesday. Yeah, well, I come home and ding, ding, look at this, you've got air conditioning, you know. People bringing food over when Susie was in the hospital. I mean, it was just the outpouring of care and concern that came from Alcoholics Anonymous. Perhaps it comes in church groups, I don't know. But it came out of AlcoholicsAnonymous for me. And that feeling of support and the love that you get from Alcoholic Anonymous when you're in trouble is there for us, you know. It is there voor us. As of 1991, I had a big cancer operation. And Alcoholics Anonymous again is there. Again it's there. And you know what? It's the love that's shown and the care knowing that that spiritual support is there and it's just an enormous thing. When my friend Nick was in the hospital there they thought he was a gypsy king or something He had so many people coming in, they had to hide him. Alcoholics are anonymous people because we love and care. And, you know, that's something that the rest of the world doesn't have. That's why we're so damn fortunate. That's Why We're So Fortunate. I'm really happy and grateful to be an alcoholic. I'm grateful and happy that I was permitted to partake of this program. And anyway, it's time to end, and I'm certainly glad you asked me, and thank you very much. Thank you.