The Functioning Alcoholic Who Almost Died of Alcoholism – Cliff R.

Hi I'm Cliff Roach and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm absolutely delighted to be here. I'd like to thank Bob for inviting me and picking me up at the airport today. As soon as I got off the plane he says, you want to go to a noon meeting? I said hey why not? He said at detox I said even better! He did not tell me it was in purgatory however. I just left the coast and the meetings outside in a concrete cubicle and he said call on Cliff I went then he took me to the Bates Motel so Bob I'd really like to thank you. Oh, you guys, when you start a meeting, you don't screw around, do you? My home group, we started with 12. It took us about five years to get 100. You guys start right off the bat. Of course, the first week you have Johnny, you know, in prison and gangster there dying in prison. The next week you Have Clancy, huh? down and out on skid row selling his blood with it with his teeth all kicked out. This week we have Cliff, the little fat school teacher that drank too much. I'll do the best I can with what I got, Tom Savers. It's about time you had a functioning alcoholic here anyway, huh? Two losers in a row. Now you've got a real alcoholic, a functioning alcoholic. The experts, whoever the hell they are, I think an expert is a guy who has a PhD who's still drinking and I think they all live in Fresno California that's my personal opinion but anyway the experts whomever they say that the 95 to 97 percent of the people who die of the disease of alcoholism who become dead from alcoholism are people just like me functioning alcoholics. One guy out on the coast said a functioning alcoholic is one whose wife works. Don't tell that to an alum I'm meeting. You've got to go over where they sit. You married guys remember that? Don't you think you had a few too many? That's to say, you had a few too few. That's your goddamn problem. Have a couple and loosen up, baby. What the hell? All right, counting. Remember the counting? Oh, that's your fifth one today. Will you just shut up and eat your breakfast for Christ's sake? But I'm a function. I go to work every day. My old man told me if you eat breakfast and go to work, you're not an alcoholic. Made sense to me. He never said a word about puking breakfast back up again, but, you know. So I go to the bathroom, I go back to work every day, and I do the job. I got to do ten times more than you to prove I'm half as good. Anybody identify with that? You're in the right place. You're on the right track. A goer, and a doer, and an achiever. No skid row bum. Prison. the week I came to Alcoholics Anonymous the week I came to Alcoholic Anonymous I weighed 163 pounds I used to surf for like three hours on the week and then get out and run 10 miles used to bench 285 took me 25 minutes to pass a mirror sometimes had to be forcibly dragged away wait I'm not through My daughters used to get money from me real easy. They'd come up, and I wouldn't have any shirt on most of the time. And shirts they really didn't know. But anyway, my daughters would come up and say, Vee up, Daddy, vee up! You know, and that's it. Oh, can I have some money? Yeah, sure. I was two years sober before I figured that out. But I mean, andI want to say that A.A. has made me twice the man I used to be. but I was a functioning alcoholic, and I almost died of alcoholism because I could say that I'm not one of them. I don't look like that. When I was in college, I was the freshman in college many years ago. I had just won World War II, as a matter of fact. And I'm going to college at San Jose State there in California, and my buddy and I used to walk to school every morning briskly. And we were cutting through St. James Park in San Jose there early one morning on our way to class and we heard some noises as we walked by this bench and there was this derelict lying on the bench. That's the filthiest thing I ever saw. I mean, I won't even describe the whole thing. I used to describe the whole things when people would run out of me. I mean it was horrible. You couldn't believe the stench and the sounds and everything and as we walk down through the park my friend said that guy was an alcoholic and that picture in my brain almost killed me because I know what an alcoholic looks like he's a sorry mess lying on a bench in a park and I'm one of the top three debate coaches in the United States that's like one of the top three prostitutes in Elko, Nevada you know so I've always loved to drink I really love the two 10 minute speakers you didn't really need me tonight but we'll just add another story another school teacher thank God I thought I was the only one no that's not true they're both attendance speakers sold it beautifully and that's the kind of person I was both of them were a lot like me I really enjoyed drinking I loved the taste of booze I can't identify with people can you get up here in an AAV and say I never cared for the taste of alcohol I always want to say would you care for the tastes of these I love the taste alcohol. I love it all. I like sour mash bourbon the best, but I like scotch too. I'm not knocking scotch and rum. Oh, I adore rum, rum and coke. Vanilla extract, I'm not real crazy about, but if that's what you're drinking, hey, okay, let's go. Pour me one baby if you're buying you have to admit it has bouquet and i you know you notice i'm the third speaker tonight and i uh oh by the way uh marnie i come from an alcoholic family too and uh mine was much more violent than yours uh and nobody had then we never tried to hide anything when people are flying through windows and you know guns being shot that's kind of hard to hide as my wife married me she had her mother was an alcoholic and she could her mother was this little four foot eleven foot lady they could hide her you know you don't hide moi I'll tell ya but anyway I'm going wild here tonight but anyway my family was alcoholic and so I came by alcoholic drinking all of us tonight have talked about our first drink huh isn't that a naivety that's a sure fire deal you know everybody might not be paying attention but when you say I took my first drink have you ever noticed that everybody said go up to some non-alcoholic and say when was your first drink what the hell do I care I don't know it's like saying when was your first taco but it costs it's a big deal because it was the beginning and it was the beginning of the end. Clancy says, It can't do it to you unless it does it for you. And I'm just like the other two speakers tonight. Hollow, empty, lonely, whatever. And you're not enough, never enough. Had a drink. I was 16, 4 foot 11, 89 pounds. 12 pounds of that was pimples. I'm going to a high school dance and I'm a hell of a dancer, see? I'm the hell of an dancer. My sister taught me to dance and great jitterbug in those days but there were only two girls in school I could dance with so we're small enough, you know. But I choked down a half of a half a pint, a ten high and I went to that dance and I danced with all of them. Come on baby, let's go. I didn't care where my face was. And I had the time of my life, and I said, now I know why my folks drink. And I couldn't wait to do it again. The second time I drank was three weeks later. I drank a fifth of port wine. I figured that would do it better, and it did. And I was like, I'm going to do this again. And I never had a blackout. You've never had those in the desert here, I don't imagine. But over on the coast you have blackouts. And I've had, from now on, most of my wife is hearsay. I just spent most of my life saying I did oh shit I'm sorry your mother huh oh god I might have been the father of Marnie's child who knows I've been to Reno they tell me I've been to Reno and after I got married it became per se I met my wife when we were in college and she was down on Skid Row looking for an alcoholic to abuse her and you want to be abused here's your boy right here I'll tell you and we entered this 20 year suicide pact together it was wild it was crazy crazy crazy and we had that dreaded dual disease alcoholism and Catholicism and we had a kid every 9 months and 20 minutes seemed like to me every time I'm coming off of blackout who in the hell is that and then they grow you know how they grow when they're kittens they're alright but when they grow and I became a school teacher we moved to Oceanside and and I began I became a very good teacher a very well respected teacher and you know a highly successful teacher if that's not a contradiction and anyway my drinking got worse oh really yes But I became very paranoid about blackouts You know, Marty, when you're a school teacher You kind of hate those blackouts Because they, you know, especially I commit felonies in blackouts It's kind of a hobby with me Are there any felonious blackout drinkers here? Oh, I'm a fighting fool and I'm in a blackout I love to fight Oh, fighting's good Better than sex anytime Better than six Makes you a real man, you Know and unfortunately for me at the very precise millisecond that I would get enough booze to be brave I would lose my muscle coordination ah you can get hurt doing that you can really get hurt doing that but I became terrified of blackouts because I do those felonies and you know when you're a teacher they call you up to Sacramento and take your license away so I try to stay away from blackouts but I came more and more and more andmore andmore andmore a daily drinker and that's my part of my alcoholism I like to talk about that's what I like to remember that getting up every day every day and saying I'm not going to do it again today I'm saying that as I'm kneeling at the porcelain altar calling Ralph Ralph remember Ralph I hate that part when you're just down with you and Ralph oh I hate that part eat breakfast call Ralph go to work go in there and teach school these kids that adored me talk about love and honor and truth and justice dying dying of alcoholism talking about honor and I was working for this jerk principal that was out to get me and he'd get me he'd got me and got me and got be and got b and I'd go home huh and I's married to her and I had all these long haired dope themed children and uh life was bad it was really bad and I'd go in the bedroom in the evening get out my pistol I always had a pistol you guys pistol carriers do I just wanted to check and see if the barrel was still cold and just then old Bob would come by and say hey Cliff let's go have some fun remember fun getting the crap out of you and going to jail fun finding your car at the bottom of a ravine in the morning remember that would you win it fun when Bob would say that I always had the same reply hooray For you new guys tonight, welcome. Welcome. If it's never been defined for you before, that's called alcoholism. Unable to remember with sufficient force the tragedy of the night before. Tonight, it's going to be different. And that's the way it was. Well, in 1965, before most of you were born probably, but I judge no man, I was a surfer dude and another surfer dude and I decided in the summer to open up this surfboard shop down at the beach, guy donated us this building right on the water old building been vandalized and we're going to open this surf shop and give surf lessons and rent surfboards and fix surfboards, make a fortune never have to teach school again the guy gave us this building, we fixed it up, painted it put windows in and we got a refrigerator a couple months later we got some surfboards too what the hell and we had these two chaise lounge chairs sitting right on the beach I mean on the water we were on the ocean these two chaises we became sunset connoisseurs people come down to you and say I'd like to rent a surfboard get the hell out of here we're watching the sunset now and we used to measure sunsets by martinis I was the mixer. It looks like about an 8 tonight, Woody. The best one we ever had was a 15 martini sunset. Oh you should have seen it. It was glorious. And the sun and Woody and I went right together. They found us in the morning with sunburned mouths. You remember that? I think that ought to be on the 20 questions, don't you? You ever had a sunburned mouth? Nah, get the hell out of here. You're not ready. Come back when you're ready, for God's sake. I talked with this old guy Bill B. down in Texas. This old Texan guy, he said that on the 20 questions he wants put, have you ever been run over by your own car while you were driving it? I've done that twice. I belong here. But in February of 1965, I went down to repair a surfboard. It was a Sunday morning. I went back to the shop and I had a hell of a hangover. Really? Yeah, Sunday morning and I know you'll find that hard to believe and I was really thirsty and I went to the refrigerator. I was not a morning drinker in 1965. I was a weekend drinker, remember? Take Thursday off. I only drink on the weekends get off my back and uh I opened the refrigerator and I was just looking for a coke or something to slake my thirst and Woody had been there the night before and he left about this much vodka in a half pint and there was some orange juice in the refrigerator and i said that would put the fire out you know because i felt crappy and i mixed up that little bitty drink and i drank it and went on about my business and i was standing and on this board and the resin was cooking there and that little bit of vodka, you know, circulated all around my system. Pretty soon it went and my mind talked to me. My mind said, shame on you Cliff. Shame, shame, shame. That was Woody's booze you drink. Why don't you go up to the liquor store and get your old pal Woody a pint? That's the kind of guy I am. you know. Matter of fact, that afternoon I got woody a fifth and just ended up borey-eyed drunk my dad used to say. Just falling down resin all over me. The board was a mess. The shop was screwed. Crawled home on my hands and knees about 11 blocks and got up the next morning sick and said to my wife, I got to do something about my drinking. I get drunk now and I don't even mean to. And my wife had one of those pre-Al-Anon tics at the time where I was like Had her sense of humor surgically removed many years before. And she'd cut this little thing out of the paper about the A&A. I don't know why she thought to do that. And it said what it has always said since we started if you want a drink that's your business if you want to quit call Alcoholics Anonymous I love it it's just perfect as far as I'm concerned that's just how I feel about it and the people that I love feel about if you wanna drink I would not stand in the way of you drinking for a second but if you gonna quit there are people in this room I'll guarantee ya who go to the end of the earth for you if you Wanna Quit and I called A and went to a couple meetings and realized right away I'd made a grievous error in judgment. I wasn't really that bad. These people seem to have the collective IQ of an orange. I'm highly educated, you know. I have degrees, you now. My sponsor always said you're educated far beyond your intelligence. that hurts well and i said i have degrees you know he says so does the thermometer you know they stick that sometimes uh narrow man narrow and uh i tried to help them have you done that ever i try after explaining nietzsche to them one night and uh so I don't know they were I quit going to meetings they were just too boring and once in a while I would go to the speaker meeting there in Oceanside at 6 30 on Sunday evening at that time had maybe 30 40 people and I I would wait in the car any other losers here I should be in the losers hall of fame uh hall of shame I would Wait in the Car for the meeting to start because I didn't want to hang around with you you know and after the meeting started I would skulk in the back door, get the loser's chair you know, you know the one somebody else had it, I'd say, I'm the loser here give me that god damn chair and uh, I would sit in the back of the room, in all my majesty and judge the speakers fat chance I had, huh? sounded to me like everybody's name was Clem been out of bib overalls about an hour and a half and uh wife's name is Martha and I heard them say this if you're new tonight and there are new ones here not what they said this is what I heard them say there's a lot of difference here self delusion is in the book and I I heard them say that they had been good decent happy sincere worthwhile folk their whole lives but they had drunk too much and after they drank too much for a few years it started interfering with their lives so they'd come here to the ANA and put the plug and they had returned to being good, decent, happy sincere, worthwhile folk again it sounded to me like they had been rehabilitated you know rehabilitated my hero in 65 was a guy named Eldridge Cleaver who was a black militant terrorist, that was my hero that was my politics in 65 blow it up or burn it down I didn't really give a shit which. I was for peace. And if you weren't for peace, I'd kill you. Or at least hurt your body. And Eldridge had given this incredible speech a few months earlier. He was talking that night about the prison system, about how they were always trying to rehabilitate him. He says, you know what they never know? He had never been habilitated. and you can't rehabilitate somebody who's never been habilitated I don't know about you but that's how I felt in the a&a I have always been crazy I've been nuts since I was born on the earliest recollection of my life I was four years old we lived in Venice California I used to stand by the speedway there in Venice when I'm four years old wait for cars and a car would come i'd go didn't know how to do this yet you know i'd wait for another one people drive along say look at the little that's how i felt when i was four years old it never changed i had this big black rock right there i heard these people talk about the hole in the belly to me it was this black rock right there jagged edges to it like a piece of volcanic rock right here on a good day it's about the size of a tennis ball and on a bad day it was the sizeof a basketball but it ruled my life it was an absolute control of my life that black ball i never had a thought or a reaction or an emotion in my life that wasn't generated and controlled by a black ball right in the middle of my belly. That's a horrible way to live. I can't think of a more painful way to try to go through life. But when I was 16, I found a great secret. I found that after I drank about 40 minutes, something happened to me. Looking back on it now in AA, It was like I would disengage whatever lobe of the brain was connected to the black ball. And then for like eight minutes, everything in my life was all right. There wasn't a thing wrong with me for about eight minutes. I was enough for eight minutes and we do PI talks, you guys do that too probably. when I go to the Lions Club I don't tell them about the eight minutes they look at you funny you know I can tell you because there's people in this room whose head is going like this you know what it's like to live without the eight minuets thank God I'm an alcoholic I could have just been crazy thank God I'm not an alcoholic if it hadn't been for that eight minutes I would have killed you or you would have had to kill me one of the two I could not have stayed alive in the world without that eight minuts thank God for it it got me here to you but I'm sitting in that Sunday night meeting one night listening to those clowns and I thought they want me to give up the eight minutes to hang around with Clem and Martha and for the next five years I'm in and out of AA gets worse every time I'm drunk most of the time I'd come to AA for 30 days or 40 days or one day or whatever and I always got drunk again and it always got worse and my life was falling apart but I kept functioning. I became one of the top speech coaches in the United States by accident. I was teaching an A speech class among other classes. The principal called me in one day and he got this flyer in the mail about a debate in a speech tournament down at San Diego State just 30 miles down the road. He said, oh, this looks like something your students would get a lot out of. Well, you ought to do that. You ought to be able to do it. You oughta do that." So being in the trouble I was in, I said, what a good idea! And got about six or eight dummies wanting to give it a go and we went 30 miles down the road to San Diego State. We were astounded when we got there. There were like 500 contestants in these debate speech contests. 50 schools. They're all dressed up. Boys had three-piece suits, vests, ties. Girls in these lovely business... We're in Levi's. What the hell do we know? And they killed us. They slaughtered us. We didn't win one round. Not one. The crowd is... That's what they did to us. I know what kind of drunk you are, but I don't care for losing. Kicks me off to lose. And I went in the coach's room. There were about 20 of them in there. They were buddies. They're pals. They've been doing this for years. And they just snubbed me, it seemed to me. So I hung around all day. You know, we can be snubged longer that way. One guy really pissed me off. He had a lot of hair. That bothered me right away. Beautiful gray hair. Steel gray hair, I'm looking at him right now. beautiful, nine barbers to get it right. He had about a thousand dollar suit on and the other coaches did this when they went in front of him. In the afternoon this guy turns to me and says, where are you from? God, I was grateful to be spoken to finally. I said, Oceanside. And he said, oh, where's that? 30 miles up the road where's that the guy gave me a resentment and I went back to Oceanside High and I built a speech team and I did it with sheer hatred I built a juggernaut speech team is what I did I built powerhouse speech team and I dit it with your anger. Get up at seven in the morning, go all day, all day in their faces, screaming and yelling and coaching till 930 at night. In their faces. Coaching! Guy next door said, I'd love to watch them leave in your room wiping the spit off their glasses. The reporter said to my captain one time, what's the secret of your coach's success? The kid said, terror. She wasn't lying. I will tell you that kid's the chairman of the speech department in San Francisco State and the chancellor of women's studies so it didn't do her any harm you know she was in sheer terror for four years too I'll tell you and I go all day see I don't drink all day that's kind of alcoholic I'm a functioning alcoholic all I have to know is in the glove compartment of the car when I get through here tonight there's a half a pint of hot vodka waiting there in the globe compartment calling to me go get them Cliff baby I'm waiting for you darling oh I'd love to talk about hot vodka at Al-Anon meetings they go but we know huh huh oh anything getting the bloodstream faster than that I don't know and I finished with that lurch out to the car 9.30 at night 10 o'clock at night open up that hot vodka light up one of those cheap stogies I smoked in those days and I always drank half the half pint just and it would go down there just into the bloodstream I'd puff on that cigar and think God damn you're a good coach and then I'd go home and destroy my family I'd have my eight minutes in the car then I'll go home and destroy my family we had three kids in the late 60's now we have three kids in high school now in the later 60's My oldest son is working his way through high school as a Heshy salesman. Oh, you should have seen him. He's a pep boy. He had hair down on his ass. You know, his head went like this all the time. Call his mother man. Hey, man, what's for dinner? Oh, he loved LSD. Some of you probably have had that stuff. Oh, they see things all the times. It would scare the hell out of me, you know. I'd be right in the middle of a sentence and he'd say, what was that? What was that?! Of course, the shape I was in, I'd say I don't know, what? What was it? Where? My drunken mother-in-law lived with us and she would lean on her walker and say I'll explain it. And all these years later I think, we used to listen to the goddamn explanation. We used to understand her and listen to her explain it to us. And my daughters had boyfriends, looked exactly like my son. The three of them used to get on the couch together. The place was a zoo. Outside of a locked ward, you will never find several loonier tunes in the history of the world. Crazy people, all of us crazy. Whenever they do the ABCs, I always say, no human power could have relieved my family. But God could and would have sought. And we sought God through AA and Al-Anon. And I put my family against any family in the world today. And the only therapy we've ever had Is AA and Al-Anon And I tease Al-A-Nons But I adore them They have a great program I've seen miracles just as great as ours Maybe greater That have happened in the Al-Al-Anal program They're magnificent people And I hate people who sneer at them And tell Al-AL-Anan jokes I'll tell you an Al-ANON joke I'll show you a real Al-AMAN joke Now this is an AL-ALAN joke What's the difference between a dog and an alcoholic? If you let the dog back in the house, he quits whining. Now that's an Al-Anon joke. My wife's a 22nd degree black belt. Ha! Al-A-Non. She has the smile down. I'm releasing you. I always said the Mona Lisa was an Al-Anon we were all totally insane but I built that speech team thought I forgot didn't you Bob after a couple years one of my teams won one of those speech tournaments did I say anything to the gray haired guy it wasn't time yet we know when it's time don't we the next year there were 12 or 14 tournaments 30 schools in each tournament. My team took first place in every single tournament. I can wait. The next year there was a tournament there were 25 schools competing in the tournament and my team scored more sweepstakes points than the other 24 schools combined. Then I went up to the gray haired guy and I put my nose right against his and I said, do you know where Oceanside is now? And he just looked blank. He said, what are you talking about? I said don't you remember four or five years ago you said to me, Oceansite, where's that? And He said, we just moved here from Nebraska. I didn't know where it was. That's the story of my life. This guy for four years is in his bed every night in San Diego. I'm up and out. He says, I got you. A couple of months ago, my wife and I were driving in L.A., and some guy came over nine lanes just to cut me off. You know what I mean. I said, you see that? The guy was nine, and he came clear over here. And she said, they all got up this morning and said, let's go on the freeway and get Cliff. So right after that Pat and I had one of our main events Which the neighbors have come to miss so much And our neighbors never had television Until after I got sober They didn't need it You know what I mean? We were the entertainment You know What I Mean? They all had those Venetian blind marks On their foreheads And I moved out Living down at the beach where I wanted to live anyway with my surfboard and this dump with a couple other guy and his girlfriend and I had said for years didn't you if I get rid of them I can drink like a gentleman again and I couldn't it was awful I was missing work I was drunk all the time and I went by the house one afternoon was ringing my wife about money as I remember and the hashy salesman was kind of bobbing in the background humming a tune from the planet Pluto and thinking back It's maybe the dumbest thing I ever did. I turned to him and I said, Dave, what's it like not to have your old man around the house? And old Dave looked me right in the eye and he said, It's beautiful. And I didn't know it for a couple hours but that was my bottom. That's as far as I'm going. I lost the respect of a 16-year-old kid and I realized myself later that afternoon that I had lost my own self-respect a long time before that. and I sat out in a screen porch in that dump where I was living down at the beach and I watched the most beautiful sunset that I've ever seen to this day the sky and the water and the wet sand, everything was just magenta about the time that the sun sat down into the water I had what our big book calls a moment of clarity Polly my friend, your friend calls it the moment of grace I like that I said, I like that. It's all a gift, isn't it? It's always just a gift. But you can't receive the gift until you're empty. It has to whip you. And when the sun went down that day, I was just out of answers of my own. I was all out of excuses and rationalizations, theories. And I went in the bedroom and I dug out the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous which is offered to newcomers tonight. when I came in they used to say steal the son of bitch you'll get on us later and I recommend that to you if you're embarrassed about asking for credit just steal it Bob doesn't mind a bit there's plenty of money left over from the hotel room and then I read the book for three days and three nights I called in sick I didn't go to work I just read the big book I read it if you're new I read a cover-to-cover I read all the stories I read The Appendix at the end and in the second edition which I was reading was a story called the professor and the paradox and that's the man that saved my life he's another egotistical schoolteacher and he rang my bell and on the third time through the book on the 13th of January 1970 at 3 o'clock in the morning I was on page 63 again and if you're new on page 62 there's a little prayer and it is step three I've always called it the formal terms of surrender and in my befuddled condition I knelt down on that filthy linoleum floor on that dump on the beach where I was living and I read that prayer out loud to myself I read God I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as you will relieve me of the bondage of self and when I was new I looked up the word bondage you know what it means it means slavery relieve me of the bondage of self for more than 30 years now that's what AA has been doing for me it's been getting cliff out of cliff I've learned a great lesson you can't have it unless you give it away I was sober maybe two years when I was reading the promises again and I'd read the book about five times I'm reading along it's about two o'clock in the morning I can't sleep I'm up reading and after two years of sobriety and two separate inventories I saw the promises you know why I could see them then because they had started to come true a little bit in my life and so I saw them it says you're going to know a new freedom and a new happiness why would it say new because my old ideas of freedom and happiness suck and tells me all these other wonderful things are going to happen to it. And right in the middle, right in the middle of the promises, Bill Wilson sneaks in the solution too. And I saw it because I had already been doing it. It says no matter how far down the scale you've gone. And a lot of people like to read that to say well all the way to the bottom. No matter how far down this scale we've gone, whether we were functioning alcoholics or prison inmates, doesn't make any difference. No matter however far down on the scale you've gone, we'll see how my experience can benefit others and my favorite sentence in the whole book that feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear bill was a grammarian why did he spike and he say these feelings of useless and self but why didn't he say that you know what he was doing he said that feeling of useless nests and self pity will disappear it's the same feeling for people like me. As long as I'm living for Cliff, I'm a dead man. As long as I am walking around the world seeing what you are going to give me, I am screwed. And I still do it. A lot of the time. But not nearly as much as I used to. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. I have a meeting every month. One of the guys' house or my house, we had it at my house this month. Of all the guys I sponsor. and I said somebody leads the meeting they take something out of the book and we go around the room and talk and I get to sit there and remember what they looked like when they got here to see the miracle after miracle after miracle has happened in my life I could have missed that all together if I'd have been useless and I learned everything from a guy named Bill Blake and that night I was at his house five year loser over educated pompous obnoxious loser and I Margie Bill's wife opened the door and I'm standing there in the porch big L on the forehead loser for you new guys let me tell you what happened I have never seen anyone so glad to see me in my life can you imagine this loser She just lit up. Mark, he said, oh, Cliff. Oh, come in, Cliff, come on. In the house I go, pours me a cup of coffee. This is wonderful, she said. Bill's been nuts lately. He's had nobody to work with. He's just been crazy. Oh, this is so nice. Then Bill comes in and says, Cliff! Ah, damn, Cliff's here! In about a half an hour I'm thinking, anything else I can do to help you folks out? Be glad to help any way I can. They made me feel like Cliff's here. We can start AA now, you know? But three weeks later, I was in a meeting with newcomers, all newcomers. Me too, three weeks late. By the way, you read better than I did after 12 years, so... And one of the guys, one of these people, one of them says, what do you mean this is a selfish program? And I knew the answer when he asked the question. I knew the answer. See, Bill and Margie were tickled to death for me. They'd been praying for me for five years. But Bill and Margie knew the great secret. You can't have it unless you give it away. You can keep it unless you give if away. And boy those two gave it away Margie just celebrated Monday 37 years. Bill's dead now for about 11 years. I miss him every day of my life. He was my sponsor for 20 years. And by the way, that was the last nice thing the man ever said to me. I hear people talk in the program, but they had a kind sponsor. I don't argue with anybody. It works for you. It wouldn't work for me. I was too obnoxious and too overeducated and too much of a jerk. So I thought the first step was shut up and get in the goddamn car. Maybe it is. My sponsor, he took me to a meeting every night for two years. Every night for three years. For two years, he put me up to Clancy's. meeting every Tuesday night in those days. Then we had to go up there on Saturday and play volleyball, which is a sissy game anyway. Except the way they play it. And then we shower and go to the Saturday night meeting there. And I found out in Clancy's group about how much fun Alcoholics Anonymous is. I heard the laughter. See, I can't live without the laughter. I don't know about you. I mean, I sponsor guys that love those great tunnel meetings, you know. You have to have the hemorrhoids to get the expression right. But I like to go where people are laughing. Because to me, it's my personal opinion, the most spiritual thing that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon is the laughter. I get me a newcomer and I'll take him to a meeting and I'm sitting beside him and he goes, gotcha now you son of a bitch. I gotcha now. If you're new tonight and you've been laughing, you're screwed. Because you can't go back in that bar and think you're having a good time. Because you've heard the laughter of Alex and Hans. Oh, I love to sit like in a convention right in the middle of the room when we're all laughing together, just screaming with tears running down our face. That's some real sick thing. We love the sick stuff. And God comes and whispers in my ear when we'RE all laughing together. He says, it's going to be okay, Cliff, because we'RE laughing. Nothing I laugh at will ever come back and haunt me again. Nothing I laugh at will ever come back and bite me in the butt. I'm through with it because it's funny now. It was the most horrible part of my life but now it's fun. And we laugh about it and the spiritual comes in and away we go. My wife is kind of mean like me. We get brand new little Al-Anons. We take them to AA speaker meetings like this. I recommend that by the way. did. And the guy's up here and he says, and I fell on the Christmas tree and smashed all the presents. And we're all going, ah! And this new little Al-Anon's going, not funny to her! And we just take her to another meeting, you know. One night she throws her head back and laughs, and we got her. We're laughing together, aren't we now? All those tears are gone. we love to laugh I don't know what you were like all your life but in my life I knew exactly what was the matter of me I always knew what was wrong with me I wasn't loved enough and that's true it's absolutely true a lot of people tried see but my little sponsor knew about me what I didn't know about myself he knew that it had never been my problem he knew my problem had always been I never loved enough I had a philosophy minor in college I took so many units in philosophy trying to find a spiritual answer, I guess and every one of those philosophers every one, when I went back over and looked them over again said the way to be happy is to love not one of them said the way for me to be loved the way you can be happy is to be beloved and I never saw that I never heard that I had from an electrician but he knew how to put it Shut up and get in the goddamn car. Shut up, you don't know nothing. If you knew something, you wouldn't be in the backseat of this car, so shut up! Oh, cruel man. Stands at the door and greets people. Oh God, I hated that. Because I'm a snob. I don't like greeting people. Hi, what's your name? Like I really... Mop floors and go on all the 12-step calls with me and do this and do that. What he was doing and I didn't realize it was he knew I was incapable of giving love I didn't know how, I didn'y know where to start, I lived in a prison completely self-obsessed and by the way if you're new or old I've heard I don't know many hundred footsteps in my career every single one of those footsteps that I've heard the primary defective character was self obsession which leads to self delusion and that's when you die and so he just made me take loving actions, which I thought were stupid things to do. It didn't make any sense to me. So I took loving action after loving action, after loving action, not knowing, just obeying orders because I was out of ideas of my own and I told God I was of ideas on my own, and he gave me sobriety and so I was willing to go and then all of a sudden I started to see you. I'll never forget the first 12 step call I went on by myself and saw the guy take a 90-day token I'll never forget that feeling as long as I live and I started to see you and I start to care about how you felt and how you did and alcohol being of service in Alcoholics Anonymous I've done it all man I've been a coffee maker I've in the New York delegate I've done it off I was telling somebody tonight after I was delegate I was really depressed because I had been a big shot and we had this huge hall like this you know old filthy carpeting and so the day i got back from the conference my sponsor brought over this old beat-up vacuum cleaner in a hundred yards of extension cord so that's ought to cheer you up and it did that's what's funny being of service and both the 10 minute speakers tonight god bless them talked about the steps and we took the steps because my little sponsor believed in those steps. He didn't believe in studying them or meditating on them or put them in your navel or anything. He said we had to do them. We had to do them. We had to act out the actions and adopt the attitudes. We had to do the steps. I hear these guys talking about the steps now they drive me crazy. It reminds me of that old priest is back in the sack the young priest has been out in front and he comes running back Father you'll never guess what happened. He says there was a young man came in the back of the church he was on two crutches two crutches he took some holy water and he threw it on the left crutch and he throw away the crutch and he took some holy I threw it on the right and he threw away the crotch and the old priest said my god it's a miracle where is the young man he said flatten his ass I'm not holding they won't work unless you do them do them and they have changed my life those promises have all come true in my life all of them in spades you know I love so many people today I can't keep track of them I just I love some people there's so many people I can even keep but when I see them my heart always jumps to them really love people and I know they love me but that's not important it's not importan what you do for me what's important is what I do for you I found a new freedom and a new happiness. Sister, what was her name? Mother Teresa was in our area four or five years ago before she was dead. Oh really, yes. I always thought she was an alcoholic. She sure liked to hang around with Laura Companion so I'll tell you for sure. But she had a heart attack in our region in San Diego and she was in the hospital and my buddy, a cardiologist was one of the guys taking care of her and all those doctors said it was true. She was just a magic person. She was so spiritual you could feel it when you walked in the room some reporter asked her her philosophy or whatever it was and it was in the paper I carried it around until it yellowed and fell apart she said to this reporter the fruit of faith is love and the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is peace I will comprehend the word serenity and I will know peace the fruit of service is peace if you're here tonight you don't have to believe anything that I taught is going to happen to you all you have to belief is that it happened to me that a sick angry miserable human being as a result of the steps in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous I live just how the book promised me I live almost every day of my life happy and joyous and free and I hope you do too