The Fear Killer – Earl H: Dead Man Talking – a Serious Yet Funny Workshop – Part 1 of 3 – Earl H.

My name's Earl and I'm an alcoholic. I was ready for you guys. I want to thank Dick for asking me to come share here. It's always an honor and a privilege to do so. I want thank my friend Dick M, the other Dick M for picking us up at the airport with my wife and I and getting us here. Where is he? There you are. goodness sake take a bow Dick and here we go alright it's we've had a great time here we get to see Dick and Peggy got to see Clancy got to hear Don speak this afternoon and heard Peggy this morning you should have been there this morning 9 o'clock there's a couple of thousand people in here at 9 o'clock in the morning. And Peg made many references to SpongeBob. I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but she actually had a little figurine of SpongeBob, and it was an excellent, outstanding talk about responsibility, being responsible. And from now on, you are SpongePeg. at least to me this is a great talk oh god so I I didn't stop I didn' t start drinking until I was 12 years old I held off as long as I possibly could I had been restless, irritable and discontented for quite some time prior to that But when I was four years old, as told to me by my mother, I would get up and I would sleepwalk through the house and I'd turn the lights on as I'd go. And I'd stand at the foot of their bed and talk to them, scare the hell out of my parents, turn around, walk through the House, turn the light off as I go and get back in bed. Immediately off to the psychiatrist age four. It was a good start. And they ran a bunch of tests on me and the solution they came up with was every night when I would go to bed they'd give me a tablespoon of this liquid and I'd drink this stuff and it knocked me out. No more sleepwalking, no more sleep talking, no more problem. So I think very early in my life I got the information that if things aren't going the way you want them to, take something. And I kind of followed that away for future use and at age 12 they ran a bunch more tests on me and it turned out I had a very high IQ. I don't have it anymore so I'm not bragging. That's been gone for quite a while. But they decided, my father decided it was time for me to become a man, which was, I think, clear to everyone. I was five feet tall, 104 pounds, scared of my own shadow. Manhood was right around the corner. And so they shipped me off to boarding school. How I found out I was going to boarding School was I was in my room doing whatever the hell I was doing then and my father walked in and said, Get in the car. I got in the car and a bunch of relatives showed up and we drove and drove and pulled up to this place and I got out of the car, my father got out and nobody else got out and he put a suitcase down next to me shook my hand and said this will make a man out of you got inthe car and they all drove off welcome to boarding school and the fact was I was being given an opportunity for a wonderful education which has held me in good stead to this very day the feeling was that I had just been thrown away by the people who knew me best in the world. And I didn't know what I'd done wrong. So I went into this three-day meltdown and pretty much turned my back on my family and never went back. Started walking around this campus with my books under my arm, kind of not making eye contact with anybody. And Tiny found me. Every high school's got a guy named Tiny who's like 6'4", 240. Plays guard on the football team. And Tiny said, how you doing, punk? And he walked up and he slapped me in the back of the head as hard as he could, sent my books flying. And I walked up and hit him as hard as I could, which had no effect on Tiny whatsoever. And Tiny said, you got a lot of guts, kid, and you beat the crap out of me right on the spot. And as I'm taking this beating, I'm thinking, this is going pretty well. my heart is just pounding I'm overwhelmed with Alcoholics Anonymous is what it is I mean, I was just sitting here and I was just doing what I do all the time which is come to these conferences and I sit down and they do the deal and we go through the drill and you get up and you tell your story and then you sit back down and we all go on about our business and I was just sitting here and I saw all the different people from all the states I wish you could see this from up here all these people a room full of dead people sitting up looking at me I'm listening to Peggy this morning and listening to Don and having dinner and Clancy was there and talking it's an overwhelming thing of the power of this thing. It's just an absolutely remarkable thing. When I start talking about my childhood and my particular story and the steps that I took and how my life led me and God led me to you, I'm just completely overwhelmed with how something like that happens. I'm so overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed by it. So anyway, I took this beating from Tiny which I thought went pretty well and I went back to my room, you know, with knots all over my head waiting for the bleeding to stop and word spread across this campus like wildfire, watch out for this little Hightower kid he's a maniac, he attacked Arnie laughter laughter so now I got this reputation that has absolutely nothing to do with who I am I'm just a frightened child and now I'm a madman right, so, the cool guys started coming around and Matt and Steve rolled by and Matt came by and he stuck his head in my room and he said, do you want to smoke a joint? And I said, yes, I do. And I didn't even know what he was talking about. All I heard was, do you want to come with us? Do you want a hookup with us ? And the answer was, yeah, I feel like I'm alone in the universe. I'll go with you. Imagine what he said. He could have said, listen, we're going to go kill the Spanish teacher. Do you wanna come? Yeah, I'm with you . So we went around behind the dorm, two 13-year-olds and a 12-year old, total strangers, and Matt fired up the joint and handed it to me and I just did what he did and that burned my lungs. That's nasty. And then here came this little Tupperware container full of cheap red wine. I took a pull on the wine and that burnt my throat and my stomach. That's messy. And I'm standing there 12 years old thinking my life sucks, man. A week ago I was fine. All right? And in a week's time I got large people that are out there beating the hell out of me. My family's throwing me away. My lungs are burning. I'm seeing these two total strangers. I hate this. And I mean, it happened. That thing that makes me bodily different from my fellows occurred. You know what I mean? That warm feeling just kind of wafted up over me, and suddenly I was comfortable standing where I was standing, doing what I was doing with the people I was dealing with. And I never felt like that before in my life. And I don't know, is it the pot? Is it the wine? Is it that fact that I'm standing here with my two very close personal friends, because I'm feeling that connection. I don' t know it. I don''t care. My experience in the beginning was, feel better than you've ever felt before in your life, nothing bad happens. Because I got a little loaded with my friends, my new best friends. We had a nice time. I got up the next morning. I went to school. No harm, no foul. Nobody died that night. No blood was drawn. Nobody went to the nut house. Nobody Went to prison. All those things were going to happen, but that wasn't my experience at that point. So based on my experience, I figured I got to go with this and I did. I Went with that every day for the next 16 years no matter what. I hung in there, I made a I had singleness of purpose it was to be loaded that was my thing and it was humble beginnings, a little pot and a little wine and I think that the fact that I they have this little saying in my neck of the woods they tell newcomers just don't drink or use no matter what, period and I hate that I mean if I could do that I guarantee you I wouldn't be here tonight, I'd be home not drinking or using no matter why, because I could doing that I would not get on an airplane. One of my least favorite things in life, to get on an airplane, two of them to get here, two of them get back, four. I wouldn't do it. I'd be home not drinking and using no matter what. I'm the flip side of that coin. I drink and use no matter what. Given a good reason, I don't stop. Problem drinker goes for the judge one more time and is told you get another 502, another drunk driving charge, you're going to do a year in county. No more conversation. You just do it and we'll talk when you're done. Problem drinker hears that and says to himself, I don't want to go to jail. Makes the decision to stop drinking and driving and can act upon that decision. Can carry that out. Stops doing it. Me? I start wondering what it's going to be like in jail because I'm going. I just appreciate the information. Given a good reason, I don' t stop. And that was the beginning for me. And the first time I drank I got drunk. Because for me, I like the effect produced by alcohol. That's why I drank. I drank because I loved the effect produced by alcohol. And the effect that I get is it's the fear killer. If I can get enough alcohol in me, it kills the fear and I can talk to you. And I can be involved with you and I can measure up and I stop comparing my insides to your outsides and losing every time. I stop the self-centered fear on me just seems to slip away and I'm able to come out and be in the world with the rest of you. That is what alcohol does for me. Unfortunately, I've got this big barrel of emotions inside me and there's all kinds of emotions swimming around up on top of this barrel. But way down at the bottom of the barrel, that deep undercurrent of my emotional life is fear. And that's the last thing I feel. So in order to kill it, I've gotta drink through it all. I've Gotta Get Drunk to Kill the Fear. So when I drink, I get drunk. There's a thing called social drinking. I really shouldn't even comment on it. I have no experience with it at all. I have seen it done, I find it bizarre. Let's just leave it at that. But it's not my experience. So it was, it's humble beginnings for me. A little pot of wine, 13 pills, the only reason I took a pill is because I was hanging out with these guys and this guy said, would you like a couple of pills? And I said, well yes I would. A couple of bills, 20 minutes later I'm laying on the floor very happy then. I like Phil. Second all to one on Placid Hill. Got strong on all that stuff. Fourteen was psychedelics. Only reason I took a psychedelic was the girl named... I went on a ten-hour pass from this boarding school and I was hanging out with Debbie. Debbie was a bad girl. And an older woman, she was fifteen and a half. Yeah, I got respect for Debbie to this day, man. Debbie said, do you want to drop some acid? And I said, well, of course I would, Debbie. So she pulled out this little lipstick tube thing and she spun it up and there was a little pill on the end. I just took it and popped it in my mouth and swallowed it. She said, did you take that whole thing? I said why yes, I did, Debbie but very small pill and she said, oh, that's three hits of wild lightning. Nope. Yeah. Next two days were very interesting. what i remember of them um 650 hits later i got classified legally insane by the military but that's a whole other story 15 i started shooting dope and the only reason i did that is i was on a boat in marina del rey with cammy and cammy said would you like me to stick this in your body and And I said, yes, I would. And she did. It was one of those shots where you just go. And on the way down, all I remember thinking was, if I'm not dead, I'm doing that again. Excellent. Now, I identify as an alcoholic and I mean to show respect. I'm a child of the 60s we were very very focused on the drugs our parents were the alcoholics we were not going to drink ourselves to death like our parents were doing, we were going to carve out our own identity, kill ourselves in a whole new way we were really focused on the drug, but the fact of the matter is this, my drug of choice is what do you got, I'm not a specialist it's all anti-errol medication, if I can get enough of what you got in my body, it'll kill the fear and we can all go on forward the problem with all of that any information I have about my life is in retrospect I never know what's going on when it's going back then and the drugs would come and go you know what I mean the only thing that stayed on the table every single day was alcohol there was always a fifth on the tab and the reason for that in my opinion was that alcohol is reliable drugs are completely unreliable there's no quality control going on out there you do not know what you've got until you get it in your body you don't know you get yourself a fifth of Jack Daniels you will get yourself a quart of gin you know what you got here you're gonna be okay I could relax into whatever else was going on as long as I knew there was a bottle there that was my best friend friend that was the thing that I relied upon you've done so much cocaine you can't get your mouth open anymore and it's 7 30 and you you know completely overshot the mark one more time you suck a little gin through your teeth to loosen your eye up and you can go on with the party you're all right alcohol is reliable it's the big dog and in the end for me it was all about alcohol all about alcohol because in the End I was dying in the And it was I needed my medicine I needed now and I needed to work and I didn't have time to play around so in the In for me alcohol was all it was about. I just used three or four grams of cocaine a day just to keep me on my feet so I could drink the way I needed to drink. That's what it was all about. So anyway, all through that 16 years old, dropped out of high school got committed to my first mental institution always a nice experience. The first time is the best usually. Ended up at my first nut house they wanted me for three months of observation and a year of rehabilitation. I thought that was a little excessive. But when they started talking shock treatment I got a little compliant you know what I mean what did you want to know again that's me thanks and you know just did this like you know I tried to escape every place has got the I'm an idiot I tried to escape from the nut house they had the exercise it reminded me of it they're red here but they had the green exercise in the place so I'm shuffling around in this joint taking my three cups of pills a day and getting my shot you know just cruising around and they're having all my meals I had my meals with this woman named Kilday. Loved KildAY. KildAy was nuts, all right? And all you had to do to flip KildA was just sit down and have your meal where then you sit down and say, KildEy, how you doing? KildY, wow! So every meal was like dinner and a show. You know? Eat a little food and flip KldAY out, right? So I decided I'm going to make my big break out of this joint. I'm getting ready. I'm gonna use KildADay as my diversion, right?" so I get everything I'm going to make my break for that door and I get killed they flip killed they out and hit her that way and I'm ready ready go and I don't know I'm hauling ass that's all I got yeah that's a shocking moment man when you realize those three little cups of pills man all you've got slow and stopped from the nurse over the loudspeaker from the nurses station you hear uh Ed you got a minute do you want to grab Earl he's making a break for the door Ed's in there having a sandwich going yeah I'll get him in a minute he ain't got no money oh man that's demoralizing second time I got thrown in the night house I escaped the first day before they got the Thorazine in me you know what I mean I'm really, really glad to be back in. Man, it's tough out on the streets. Hey, look at that. I take off and the whistles are going and there's a guy chasing me and I hit this back door and I'm running along this lawn. There's an ivy-covered 12-foot chain-link fence and I got a little theme song playing in my head. You know? Na-na-na. I'm heading for this fence and at that point, I'm a high school dropout. I'm not a drug addict. I'm an alcoholic. I'm at any moment, hopefully, an escaped mental patient. That's like my resume. But at the same time, If I make that fence, I'll be drunk in 20 minutes. I don't have any problems if I'm drinking. 20 minutes, my life is already, I've been called an alcoholic at 16 and a half years old and my reaction to that was what's your point? This is me, this is how I live, this is what works for me. I don' t know how to be any other way. I watch TV, I know it's not going quite like they got it going on Father Knows Best. I know this doesn't look like Ozzie and Harriet but it's the best I can do and I'm doing, three years out on the street doing what you do to stay, you know, drunk for three years on the street. Met a woman at a party, talked for 20 minutes, went really, really well, so we were in love. And we decided that we needed to build a life around this 20-minute conversation. And, you Know, things weren't looking real good, so I went on an interview to a good business college in Northern California. Did the personal interview. End of the interview, I had been accepted to that establishment. Thinking to myself, how am I going to pull this off? Went back to my father, said, look, I got accepted to the business college. Don't ask. Give me a year's tuition, I'll leave town. He said, beautiful. Gave me the money. Rosemary and I piled eight pounds of hash in all our belongings in the back of this truck and drove to Northern California for higher learning. And she got a straight job, and I went to college, and I wanted to get my high school diploma while I was in college. It's amazing when you hand them a year of tuition. You say, here's your year of intuition. The transcripts are in the mail. They say, no problem. So I'm doing this deal, and I've become a drug dealer, and I have absolutely no problem being a drug dealer because I have no morals. I have not ethics. I have a sense of family. I have sense of community. I am just out there on the loose like this little maniac running around. And I got this drug business going and I am studying marketing and production and distribution. Business college. I am applying it to my business. Business is booming. I think this is terrific. Rosemary lives with me for about six months and she starts saying things like I am too high. In my opinion, if you can say it It's not true. So we ship her back to L.A. I'm doing my thing. Turn 20 years old, it turns out I have malignant cancer. Of course I do. So I fly back to LA. They do major surgery on my back. They prepare me to die. They prepare my family for me to Die. And I remember thinking, you don't even know who you're talking to. The way I'm using this is coming up like twice a week. You know, this could die. Yeah, whatever. so I do the little nuclear medicine thing and that's boring so I leave and I go home and I just get loaded the way I get loaded and I believed it and I beat the cancer thing and I basically believed that the way I was using it in those days my body was so toxic cancer could not live in my body this cancer just nope we're not doing this guy and I'm a long term cancer survivor and next year I ended up oh thanks I'd love to take credit for that but as you can tell, I can't I was contrary to everything everybody had to say so I end up back in school my mother calls me, I'm 21 years old now I've got a high school diploma I'm a junior in college I got an early acceptance to go to USC Law School my business is booming and I'm figuring, gonna need an attorney I'm gonna go to law school my mother called me and said look, we haven't been anywhere as a family in 10 years and we've got to put this family back together, all right? And I said, fine. So I flew back to L.A., and on my 22nd birthday, we took off to fly to Guadalajara, and on the way there, the plane crashed. And my mother, my father, my little sister all died in the crash, and I didn't. And I woke up on a mountain in Mexico. My skull was fractured. My back was broken in three places. I had a lot of internal injuries, paralyzed from the waist down. Everything was crushed. The only thing I could move was my right arm. and I was awake. And my mother was laying around over there and my little sister Kimberly was over there and my father was laying right over there and I couldn't get too many of them to help them. So I laid there and I watched them all bleed to death in front of me. And I had a little talk with God and I said, you know what God, any God that would take somebody like Kimberly and leave me here, I had no use for a God of this type. And I renounced God. Some guys came up and they scavenged the plane wreck and I took my wallet out because I wanted to know my name. I knew I was dying, but I wanted my name for some reason. This is just who I am. The guy took my wallet and took the money out of it and threw it back on my chest and went through scavenge direct and went back down and left me there to die. And I had no more love for you either. I was out of the game. I had not love of God. I had the love of my fellow man. I was just an angry, frightened, insane alcoholic laying there. Some guys finally came up and they took me and put me in the back of a flatbed truck with my mother and they drove us to an aid station and they tagged my mother dead and they tag me dead and they sat there smoking cigarettes waiting for me to die and I didn't die so they finally took me to a hospital Hospital Fatima in Los Mochos, Mexico and they found out who I was so the federales show up. We don't need to get into that. Man, they interrogated me for three and a half days wouldn't give me anything for paying one to know what I was doing back in Mexico So I finally called some friends in Northern California, called some guys in Mexico City, flew in a plane, plastered me from the neck down and got me out of Mexico. Stayed in a hospital in Southern California for quite a while. Told me my mirror man on the walk could probably have a withered left hand and be blind in my left eye. And I remember thinking, you don't even know who you're talking to, man. I'll get out of here. And I got a special brace made for myself and a friend of mine brought me a cane and I had hair out like this, beard, psychotic. And I got out of that hospital and I went on my last run and it lasted for six years. And I'm talking a six-year run where I didn't have any of those anchors. I mean, Don talked about it this afternoon. I didn' t have a family to hold it together for. I didn''t have a career to hold it together for a wife or kids any particular goals or anything. I didn ''t have anything to hold it together for so I just let it rip. And I was loaded like a madman for six years. I was sober on three different occasions. They were for 72 hours each when I would go into a little bootleg sanitarium in Hollywood and pay them 150 cash, give them all your stuff. They'd strap you to a gurney, shoot you full anticonvulsants and let you rock. At the end of 72 hours, they either sent you home or to the morgue and they didn't really care which way you went. They had their money. And the last time I did that was in 1978 and I said, I reintroduced myself to God. I's just kicking like a dog And I was so sick and beat down. I said, you know what, God? You get me out of this sane and alive and I will never, ever, ever drink or use again as long as I live. I can't take the pain. I can' t take the madness. I can''t live like this. I don''t know how I got here. I don' t know how to get out of it. But I know it's the drinking. I swear on everything I hold dear. And I meant it with every fiber of my being. And I got up off that bed and I drank for two more years because I could not stop drinking. I couldn''t do it. When I came out of my last blackout, I was 215 pounds. I was yellow. Heart was swollen. Kidneys messed up. Couldn't touch the liver. Thyroid shut down. I had broken 74 bones. I had over 650 stitches in me. My family was dead. I had no friends. I had nowhere to go. I had nobody to place to live. Both my hands were broken. They were deciding whether or not to charge me with attempted murder. And I had what they call around here a moment of clarity where I saw it for what it was. That the cops didn't do this to me. The DEA and the FBI my father, God. They didn't do this to me. This is on me. I'm an alcoholic and if I don't want to die, I've got to find a way to live free of this beast. And I threw up my hands and I said, help me. And they took me by ambulance to a place and they pumped my stomach and said, just get him out of here. He's going to die. I was just a pathetic, drunken boy. And they put me in another place, kept me five days. I got worse. And then they took me by the ambulance to the place down in Long Beach under the care of a doctor, Vicky Fox, who saved a lot of alcoholics like me. And I stayed there for 17 days of detox and then 30 days on a free bed. And how you earned your cot was you stayed in it. There were 21 cots on each side of the room with sheets thrown between them, and you kicked. And if you threw a seizure, they'd just hit you up, shoot you full of anti-convulsants and throw you back in the cot. You know what I mean? And if he didn't want to do it, just get up and leave. There's a line of guys literally dying to get one of those cots. And I hung onto that cot for everything it was worth. And when I left there, they said, if you don't wantto die, you better go to alcoholics anonymous because it's the only place a guy like you has got a shot. And I had been beaten into a state of reasonableness by alcoholism and I said okay and I walked into the basement of a church on a Friday night, I was just talking to Clancy about it at dinner the Tri-Guide group in Culver City and I worked in the basement church Friday night 830 meeting and I sat in the back of the room with my arms folded, my best tough guy look on my face, mad dogging everybody because I was physically stone cold sober but my alcoholism was in full effect in my mind. I was still thinking like the guy that was out there on the street. So I sat in the back of the room with my arms folded and I checked the doors and the windows. I looked around the room trying to find out who's got the juice in here, who's Got The Power. I'm going to slide up on you. I'm gonna burglarize your conversations. I'm wanna find out what the deal is in here and then I'm out. That was my plan. And I sat on the back and people looking at me it was just, you know, what? What do you want? But every meeting he's got a new guy who's just caught fire with Alcoholics Anonymous and he's gonna give it away tonight. he didn't see the looks I was giving him and here came Vegas Vegas N with nine months coming right at me hand out, smiling excited to just see new guy right and I'm he's not having it he just comes up and says hi my name is Vegas I'm an alcoholic and I said so what ain't exactly the highlight of my life pal I don't know what you're so happy about get away from me and he looked at me and he said keep coming back and a couple of guys over there went yeah yeah see that Vegas told the new guy keep coming back very cool very powerful and I'm sitting there well my reaction was okay keep coming back I get it not I don't know what you're talking about apparently you all know what that means you understand the deep spiritual significance of keep coming back I don t you win I lose once again love and AA so far thanks Vegas. I'm sure when I'm at home pacing, getting my hour of sleep a night, I get tonight. It's about 3.30 in the morning. I'm losing my mind. I am sure that keep coming back thing is going to be real handy. Thank you. And if you are new and they do that to you, if they do that to you. If they do that, keep coming back. One day at a time. Hey! Just turn it over. I hope you have more guts than I had. Just step up and say, excuse me, don't understand the deep spiritual significance of one day at a time. Would you mind expanding on that for me a little bit? Where I got sober, if they were honest, about 70% of them would say, you know, I don't know what it means either. They said it to me when I came in. I'm just saying it to you. Hey, there's a guy over there who reads the big book. Let's go ask him. Maybe he knows. Just a little opinion of mine. So I'm sitting in the back and this old timer gets up. And he's an ex-boxer, a wino, and a skid row guy. So I immediately knew, this guy's got nothing for me. I'm none of those things. Because I could spot the difference between you and me in a heartbeat. You're a woman, you don't know about me. Five years older, five years younger, you Don't Know About Me. It's not better or worse, it's just different. You come up through something different than I do. You're black, you're gay, you Hispanic, you Asian, whatever you may be. I mean, I got the wagon circle so tight by the time I got here, man. If you're not Earl, you know about Maine. So I don't got to listen to you. But the beautiful thing about the way I got to Alcoholics Anonymous was, this old-timer gets up and says his name's whatever and he's an alcoholic, I didn't have anywhere to go. I had absolutely no place to go, so I just sat there, and this guy talked openly and honestly about his feelings as a man, and he did it with this grace and this dignity that I had never seen before. I'd never seen anybody do that when it was profound for me. This guy, the way he talked and what he was talking about was profound for me. None of it was sticking, but just the experience of him was remarkable for me and then it was like he looked right at me and said, you know what, I don't care whether you like what I got to say or not. You don't like it? Go to another meeting and I loved that because it made it clear to me he's not selling me something, he's sharing it with me. Why am I going to have it? It's for free. Don't like? No problem. Go to a meeting or go to another meeting, maybe we'll hear somebody you can identify with and I thought, that's cool. Now I thought that with a look of absolute disdain on my face thinking, Right. Inside thinking, cool. I'm coming back. I'm coming back but I can't let anybody know how I'm feeling and I've never left you. One day at a time I've been coming back and I'm over 22 and a half years sober now. And I couldn't stay sober for a while. You're clapping for yourselves because I guarantee none of the success of my being able to stay sober for over 22 years has anything to do with as Earl sees it there isn't everything that I have that's of value I got from the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous who came before me so I started back and I kept coming to meetings and y'all suggest things to us newcomers when we're in the meetings they go you got a sponsor no you need to get a sponsor okay what the hell is it sponsor somebody who's got what you want I would like to drink maybe it's a little early to be throwing the ball back in my court what I have since come to believe is that I want a sponsor who's Got What He Wants it's good definition of happiness wanting what you've got I didn't want the guy with the flashy car or the big bank account or all that stuff, that outside stuff. I'd had stuff and stayed miserable. I wanted the guy with the light beams coming out of his head. I wanted a guy with a passion for living. I wanted somebody who could feel strongly about something because that lost the fire inside me. All the passion in me was gone. It was just the pilot lights flickering inside. And I've met this insane madman, the late great Donald Madden, who was my original sponsor. Sorry to talk about it tonight. Donald Madden didn't tell me about Alcoholics Anonymous. He showed me. He didn't ask me to become a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I went to him destroyed and I asked him to be my sponsor. And he said, you don't have to like what I tell you and you don' t have to think it's a good idea, you just have to do it. Don talked a lot about that this afternoon. That this is a program of action. I've come to understand that it is not what I know that will keep me sober, it is what I do that will keeps me sober. I must take these actions. It's the chop wood and carry water plan, man. You've got to chop the wood and carry the water of AA. I can sit in meetings until kingdom comes sitting there waiting for the words and the wisdom of the men and women who've gone before me to just wash over me and somehow stick inside me. But if I want what they got I've got do what they did to get it. I've gotta do what they did do get it and I wanted to be a free man. I've been a slave to alcohol and drugs since I was 12 years old and I want to be free man and I was sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous with alcoholism in full effect. The obsession of my mind was in full effect. And I went to this guy Donald Madden and he said he'd call me up and he'd say we're meeting at Ohio Street we're taking over the meeting be there at 730 click. He never called them and said Earl would you like to go to a meeting? How do you feel about a meeting? If you have a little extra free time would you pick Ed up on the corner of 6th and Santa Monica? He'd appreciate it. If not just let me know we'll get somebody else. He just said, go to the meeting. Pick Ed up and bring him to the meeting. Nobody ever asks me anything around here. Nobody wants to know what I think. I actually said that to him once, and he just looked at me and smiled and he said, that is correct. he was great and I talked to him every day until the day he died July 25th last July 25rd was 9 years and it broke my heart when Donald Madden died because he was the original for me everybody's got their original he was my original he's the one that showed me how to get the fire he's shown me how he's showed me how to catch the buzz the buzz that I thought was gone forever He showed me there's a new way in here and Alcoholics Anonymous, you can get free. You can catch a buzz. You can be in life. You can have it. We were waiting for them to come get the body. A few of us that were sponsored by him. And I heard his voice in my head. I thought he was dead. And I hear his voice say, Get a sponsor, you little son of a bitch. And then I thought, okay, who? And then the first name that rolled through was the guy that I knew Donald loved and I knew Love Donald was like another guy sitting at the same table just a different chair called up Al S and I said Al Donaldsdale will you sponsor me he said yes and I went and I met with him I said what do you want me to do he says you're doing everything you're supposed to do you understand the difference between the program and the fellowship you go to the meetings you have commitments you sponsor people you speak you're willing to be sponsored and take direction you're doin' all that stuff but you also understand that that's the fellowship that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is found in this book and that you've been reading this book you have worked these steps, I would suggest you a little light on one aspect of step 11, the meditation aspect. And I said, okay, what do you want me to do? And he goes, here's the number call it and do what they say. And I say, yes sir. And I called them and it was a meditation school. And they said, come here for this series of things and you're going to know how to meditate. And i said, okay. And we showed up and did it. And he's the guy that told me, all you got to do is get between these. And I thought, cute. possibly even clever he said Earl just get right in there it's all you're after I said what are you talking about he goes it's just right here right now there isn't anything else there's nothing else but right here and right now you know there's a dance after this maybe we don't know yet you know we don' t know We don't know, right? There are some good speakers. It's done. It's down. It's on. There's now. This is all we got. This is the only place I can know any dignity as a man. This is he only place that I can love and be loved. That thing I swore on that mountain in Mexico, I would never do again as long as I live. I would not let you love me. I'm never going to tell you who I am. There's no way you're going to love me, and I'm not gonna love you. I'm out. I'm OUT! And I carried that well into Alcoholics Anonymous. You guys picked my pocket like a thief in the night. You told me that coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and working these 12 steps and being involved in the fellowship and working with newcomers, despite what my head said, taking the action of doing that and getting out of stuff and being of service to others. You told Me if I did this that I would have a pretty good chance of not drinking or using anymore. You toldMe in the first sentence of chapter 5 which we read tonight, rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. And I thought, okay, I will roll the dice in my life on your game and all I want is to not drink or use anymore. Just make it so I don't have to go back into madness. That's what I want from you. Would you give me that? And you said, sure. You didn't tell me that you were going to do so much more. You didn' t tell me that. You didn''t tell me you'd give me right here, right now back. You didn ''t tell that you'd give me life, the only place I can live it, back. And you did. It was rude of you not to mention it. That that's what would happen. I mean, my whole thing was I like heroin. I like alcohol. I like barbiturates. These are a few of my favorite things, all right? My idea of a good night is sitting around checking my pulse. That's a good knife. But if you don't have that, I'll take the cocaine. I'll think a big bag of the cocaine, sure, let's shoot the cocaine up and drive around the freeways decoding license plates, sure. That's fine. The point is, up or down, irrelevant. I just got to get out of right here, right now, because right here right now I'm self-centered and I'm afraid. Right here right Now I'm comparing my insides to your outsides and I am losing every single time. I can't live in the pain and the isolation and the loneliness of that so I must get out of here Alcoholics Anonymous gave it back where I get to live my life, I getto be in this room with you, something I could never ever do, this is the only place of life for me like this is going to happen what's fascinating about that for me is that I get right here right now, it's this duality of life that I worked through the 12th, there's this triangle with a circle, ancient spiritual symbol, mind, body and spirit brought together as a whole human being and therein lies the balance I've sought my whole life and never had drunk or sober. Ever. Alcoholics Anonymous adopted that symbol. It's the same thing. Unity, service, and recovery. Unity is the body. I bring it here. I could not get sober, but we can together. If I'm with my fellows, I seem to do okay. I can't know that I'm changing, but I can see it in you all the time. Wow, this guy's changing. That's really remarkable. I seem To Be Doing the Same Thing He's Doing. Possibly I'm Changing as Well. I certainly seem to have a better class of problems today than I used to the recoveries of the mind the greater aspect of my disease this isn't about stopping drinking and using yes we do not drink and use here if we weren't so stringent upon that one particular item I think A might be a much bigger outfit but this isn' t just about stopping drinking How do I stay soft? The only way I can stay soft is to be comfortable sober. If I can't get comfortable sober, planets are going to line up one day just right and I'm going to get drunk. So I have to be relieved of the thing that makes it impossible for me to be comfortably sober. The obsessive nature of my mind as it relates to alcoholism. This voice in my head, this book tells me the persistence of this illusion, this belief in a lie that I can drink like a normal man is astonishing. Many of us pursue it to the gates of insanity and death. I'm a gate guy. I've got to stay here. I've Got to get comfortable sober. And how do you get relieved of the obsession of mine? Work the steps. Step four. Step one, what's the problem? Lack of power. What's the solution to that? Power. Step two, a power greater than myself that will restore me to sanity and soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsessive mind, and give me the obsession to drink. What should I do about that? Step three, get on my knees and turn my will and my life over to the care of a God I may or may not understand. My understanding is irrelevant. My approval is not required. Just do it. I do it, 4 and 5 is me, 6 and 7 is God, and 8 and 9 is you, nobody else to play with. 4 and 9, I swallow large chunks of truth about myself. Me, notice the order of these. Get it straight here, where am I standing today? I want to get from A to Z, got to determine A first. If you can't call somebody up and say, how do I get to Burger King? Well, where are you currently? I don't know. They're going to have a little problem telling you how to get the Burger King. I got to do four and five. I got a little more on standing. Six and seven, hook it back up with God. Ask God to remove the defects of character because I'll remove the wrong stuff. I'll get into a little negotiation on that. Eight and nine, hook them back up. I'll hook them up with you. Very, very sorry back in the house. None of these big long, you know, hey, wait, you're goingto love me. I'm on a spiritual journey I'm making amends have a seat I'm going to wow you now with this no very very sorry here's your money back in the house 10, 11 and 12 keep me in a process I had just scratched the surface on 10 me 11 God and 12 you same thing I continue to take personal inventory when I'm wrong promptly admit it because I'll create resentments left and right I'll fester and I'll die sitting in a meeting Alcoholics Anonymous 11 seek God how? through prayer and meditation. What do I pray for? Knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. Why do I meditate? To quiet the mind so that when the answers come I can hear them. Having had a spiritual awakening is the result of doing that, having been restored to sanity, soundness of mind, relieved of the obsession to drink and use, the beast no longer whispering in my ear as I'm cleaning up Ohio Street. You know? Third side of the triangle, service you. I can be a service. How can I help? Not because I'm a good guy because I don't want to die drunk. I don'T want to DIE DRUNK. So I'm of service to other people. And suddenly, as I'm focusing on not drinking and using and I'm helping this guy out and going there, this life seems to happen. And suddenly I call my sponsor one day and I say, Donald, something terrible has happened. And he says, what is it? And I said, I love you. And I was serious. This is not good. Because now if he's there, if he're not there, I care. I mean, I care the hell happened and he just said oh i know click and then i got friends and i got a job and a job turned into a career and i'm just showing up i'm calling up my sponsor i'm talking to the guys that i'm hanging with sober i got clear minds around me now instead of these maniacs i'm running with right life starts to happen because I'm out of the way. I'm not in the way and this life starts to happen. Now I've got this amazing life. I sponsor a legion of guys who sponsor a ridiculous number of other human beings. Right? I mean, I have this life it's like I talk to my wife all the time it's just like my life seems to have set up I cannot escape you now. I don't know how it would happen but I'll be thinking you know what I'm sick I'm tired I've had it I need to take a few days off the phone rings. Yeah right Louie how are you? Alright. Well here's what we're going to do. I mean, you're just always around. You're always there. And I have to be with you all the time. It's how I tricked myself into this life. And if you're new, congratulations. We're glad you're here. We understand. I know you think, no way they could understand. Way. We do. We understand better than you do. We understand more than you can. We understand much better than we do. And we're really glad. When we say we're glad you're here, we're not lying. We're not glad you'RE here because, you know, we're going to now get 10% of your income. Or we got one more guy to stand at the airport handing out big books. It's not what we do. We really, really are glad youRE here. And we remember what it's like to be new. I have to remember what it'S like to BE new. I remember me driving up to Ohio Street brand new just a few months of sobriety and then pulling up and it was just the inside of your head when you're new and thinking, all right, it's Ohio Street, it's a high street family building, family buildings, Park the car, go in there, put the key on the seat, put the key in the seat. Find a guy to sit next to you. Find the guy. Sit next to the guy with the red coat. The guy with a red coat, that's great. Sit next to him. You find the guy with red coat and you see this guy. How you doing? Fine! How you doing? FINE! How are you doing. FINE. They start demeaning. They start to meaning and you're sitting in your little chair, you know. The guy is up. He's up. What's he doing? I don't know what he's doing. he's gone. I didn't get any of that thing. There's another guy. He's up. He rarely saw something. Rarely saw something, okay. He really saw something 12 steps in A 12 things in A, 12 things, oh ABC 12 things on ABC, he's down. I hear a lot of that 12 things ABC, 12 thanks ABC. I gotta hang on to that, I gotta try to hang on. He said he's up he drank, he drank. I drank like that I drink like that. I love that guy. That guy was great. Where is he going? I like that guy I like the guy. We're back, we're back They're passing a basket, they're passing a basket. Don't take the money, don't take Don't take the money. Good, good, good. Don't takethe money. Don'ttakethe money. Okay, we're up. We're up where are we going? We're going to smoke, smoke, and smoke. We'll go. Smoke, smoke. Ring a bell, ring a bell. What are we doing? We're goin' back inside. Where's the guy with the red coat? Red coat, red coat, where's the guy with red coat. Sit down, how you doin'? I'm fine, I said I was fine. All right, I'm Fine. They're readin' 12 things. Those aren't the same 12 things, 24 things ABC, 24 things, ABC. There's another guy, he's up. He's up. He's saying, I drank like that. I drank it like that, I drink like that forget that other guy. I love this guy. This guy is terrific. Who was that guy? What does he talking? I felt like that I felt like that I felt Like that. How does this guy know how I feel? This is amazing. Be calm, be calm. Guy's amazing. He said, I love that man. I love That man. He's down. He's the on another guys up. He said we're up. They got me. We're up, we're praying. All right. We're praying Yeah. I know this prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer. And then I would walk out of the meeting and somebody He said, what did you think of the meeting? I said, it was great. And I would cry all the way home and try to figure out what the hell ABC was and the 24 things and get an hour of sleep and I'd get up and I would go do it two or three more times the next day trying to find and that was me in the beginning so when I take a newcomer to a meeting to hear Al S talk or Clancy talk or Don talk or any number of amazing speakers on Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm thinking look at this this is really cool this guy's breaking it down and this guy is here and I am a chain and the human thing and the whole thing's going it's great and we walk out of the meeting and Louie looks up and I say what do you think I think this is unbelievable and Loui looks at me and says I look at him and he says how you doing Louie and he goes how was the meeting fine he gets his turn you get your turn if you're new in here we're cool with it this goes way past not drinking or using there is a buzz to be caught here and the cool thing about it is I used to for me to feel I had an exciting evening then I heard a bullet go by that was exciting I could feel that But I was so dead inside it took something like that for me to get excited. Now, I get to marvel in the ordinary. I get the marvel in the course of my day. My wife and I got a house in Studio City. Got this house. Her first home for me since I was 12 years old. And we were there and it's like this huge moving experience but of course can't let anybody know that. So I'm standing out on the front lawn looking at the other houses and we got a front lawn. Front lawn. Plants and stuff growing everywhere. And there's like a hose and everything out front and people are driving the neighbors are coming to the fence going, how you doing? Good. Good to see you neighbor. Good to see your neighbor. I know the lingo. I got it. Neighbor. Right? Thinking to myself, they don't know. Let's keep it that way. You're just going along and I think, I see people watering their front lawns. You don't want to have the dead lawn out front so everybody knows where the dope fiends live. You don't want to add that. So you get the hose out and you turn the water on and you know all of a sudden I'm having this little moment you know the lights coming through the trees on our street these beautiful sycamore trees and there's water on the leaves and they kind of do a little prismatic effect and it's just looking very cool and I'm just kind of settling into this and I think this is cool this is very cool I'm liking this and suddenly it occurs to me if I'm not mistaken plants are alive and if I am also not mistaken Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and out oxygen. I'm standing right over here, breathing in the oxygen and breathing out the carbon dioxide. We got a little thing going here. This is nice. This is a little more water for you, my brother. This is just a little water for me, my sister. I'm catching a buzz on the front lawn. I run in the house to my wife and go, honey, they're alive. She says, I know, darling. You got some more friends in the backyard. Why don't you go play with them? Yeah! I'm in the back yard. Guy driving down the street sees man on front lawn watering plants. Now what's happening? Alcoholic on front line catching big, big buzz. That's what's going on. You may have to stand in line. I get to. The power of choice has been given back to me. I get the decision. I decide the way it's going to be. I get caught in traffic on the freeway more music for me get on the cell phone start talking to my friends what are you doing? hanging out in the car why? do I need a reason? I'm just here there's cars in front cars in back I'm here it's alright none of these people behind me are after me All that. You're new? All that, Alcoholics Anonymous. Buzz. All you can do, you meditate, you breathe in, you breath out, you're coming out of your skull from a different angle. AlcoholicsAnonymous. Right between those. Big buzz. Today. Now. Peace. Joy. Purpose. Value. Friends. Loving. Being loved. Hope for the hopeless man. It's an absolutely phenomenal deal. If you're new, come on. Just come on. Find yourself somebody in here with a light on in their eyes, somebody who's caught the buzz. And just follow them. And you don't have to like what they tell you and you don' t have to think it's a good idea. You just have to do it. If you just take the action, you might find a life beyond your wildest dreams. You might find that here. I did. And I'm a hopeless, hopeless man. I couldn't do anything. I've done two things right my whole life. I drank because if I hadn't have drunk it, I'd have blown my head off long before I ever got through yet. And the second thing I did right was I got beaten down enough to come in here and when you said go left, I just said okay. And I went left. Out of that, a life beyond my wildest dreams. Outof that I'm standing, me, I'm standing up here looking at you. Very strange. It's a very strange thing for a self-centered frightened person like me. What's happened is that I'm sitting in front of about 3,000 people and I can honestly tell you, you alcoholics and drug addicts I love you, I do I don't know you but I do because we're here together room full of dead people sitting up pretending they're paying attention to me it's an absolutely remarkable thing I wish you the hardest thing I think for people like us to find, I wish your peace, thanks a lot Thanks for listening