The Disease of Alcoholism and the World Turning Black and White – Clancy

About This Speaker Tape

A Norwegian Lutheran upbringing in a strict household left Clancy I. feeling like a permanent outsider a void he eventually filled with whiskey on a merchant marine ship at fifteen. He spent decades as a high-flying advertising executive and sports writer masking a volatile internal world with booze until a series of crashes—losing his home his family and his front teeth in a jail cell—landed him on the streets of Los Angeles.

After a period of homelessness and sleeping in an abandoned 1949 Mercury he found a sponsor in Bob a former actor who taught him that he wasn't just fighting a drink but a perception-distorting disease. Now nearly fifty years sober Clancy I. serves as the managing director of the Midnight Mission on Skid Row the very place that once threw him out as a drunk.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Clancy I. opens with a joke about Woodstock and his background in Hollywood radio.
• 12:15 Recounts the trauma of his parents' divorce at age twelve and the start of his cynical behavior.
• 22:40 Describes his first drink of whiskey on a ship and the subsequent public humiliation.
• 35:10 Discusses the 'invisible spring' of restlessness and the failure of psychoanalysis.
• 48:20 Laughter: Story about his first AA meeting and being told he's 'too sensitive'.
• 55:15 The tragedy of losing his son and his subsequent suicide attempt via car exhaust.
• 1:12:00 Detailed experience with his sponsor Bob and the definition of alcoholism vs. alcohol.
• 1:28:30 Mentions the Third Tradition (only requirement is the desire to stop drinking).
• 1:42:10 The 'cowpox' analogy for how the program works.
• 1:55:00 Applause: Clancy I. reflects on his 49 years of sobriety and his work at the Midnight Mission.