The Jealousies and Feelings of a South Side Chicago Kid – Barney M.

My name is Barney, and I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank Mark and Matt and the committee and the folks who were involved in asking me to come over here and talk. This is my second visit to your state. I was in Omaha three years ago, and that occasion is memorable to me for a couple of reasons. I was talking to somebody about it yesterday. I had been off cigarettes about three weeks when I went over there to talk, and I will never forget how I felt. But it was an exciting weekend for me that way. But it's nice to be here tonight, this morning actually. And nights run into days for me sometimes. I forget what... If you close the windows, I can't remember what time it is. but it is nice to be here and I want to thank Scott very much for having picked me up at the airport and been such a nice host showed me around some of Lincoln yesterday the university and so on I'm from the University of Notre Dame so I'm always interested in seeing these universities that have the great football teams and I was at the University of Alabama here about a month ago and the guy that was taking me around and showing me the university was, he showed me two buildings there on the campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa that are pre-war, pre-Civil War buildings. And he said, yeah, that's all they left us. He said, the Yankees burned everything else. I said, you guys still fight the war, aren't you? They said, yep, sure, I said okay. But that's a beautiful campus there, and I enjoyed coming here and seeing this campus at the University of Nebraska and seeing your really very unusual and, I think, architecturally interesting and beautiful Capitol building over here. I like it a lot. And I like the Middle West a lot, but I grew up in the Middle East in Chicago and lived in Detroit for a number of years. And Detroit is in the eastern time zone, but I always think of it as still a midwestern kind of a city. And went to school, of course, in South Bend, Indiana and spent a lot of time in southern Illinois when I was a kid. We had some relatives that had lived down in southern Illinois, and we had some other relatives that lived over near the Iowa border, near Davenport and Moline. so I spent a lot of time in those areas, in the farm areas and so on. And I think of myself as a Midwesterner even though I have now lived in California for the better part of 22 years and everybody's leaving California now. It used to be everybody was coming into Southern California and now they're all leaving. Jobs are leaving and the state economically is really feeling the pinch of the economy because of aerospace and so forth. So it's not as pleasant a place, in my opinion, to live in as it used to be. But still, the weather's pretty good. Never snows. And so it has that advantage. If any of you are ever in California, be sure you call me and I'll take you to the largest AA meeting in the world, which is my home group in Brentwood, California. A meeting started some 30 years ago by a guy a lot of you know. His name is Clancy. And it is his group there in Brentwood, California that meets every Wednesday night. It's the largest regular weekly meeting of AA in the world. They get up to 1,200 people there every week. And it's like a mini-convention. And so it's kind of a wild group and very active, like many of you, very active in Alcoholics Anonymous. They believe in action. They believe In Strong Sponsorship, like Many of You. I know that Dick does he and I were talking about that earlier as a matter of fact Clancy is his sponsor I don't know whether you know that or not but he is we were talking about strong sponsorship and that ethic my sponsor is a guy named Johnny H and he has a group called the Big Book Group in Bellflower, California also very strong ethic of sponsorship which is so fundamental in my opinion to my sobriety had it not been for strong sponsorship in Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm sure I would not be here today. I could not have survived and would not have stayed in AA because I'm one of those people who came here with a really bad attitude. And I did not want to be here. I was not interested in Alcoholic Anonymous. I did now want what you had. I did believe in God. I had no interest in matters spiritual. I was really not interested in staying sober much longer than about six months. That's what I was after. And that's what I brought here. And had it not been for people like Keith See, who was my original sponsor, and Clancy, and later my sponsor now, Johnny, and many other people who believe in this strong ethic of Alcoholics Anonymous, this business of strong direction in Alcoholics Anonymous, I would not be here. I know a lot of people in AA like to say, hey, baby, you do your own thing. Well, if I were doing my own thing, I'd be dropped because that's what I do. So I wish people liked that well, but I think for me nothing but strong sponsorship would have worked because I'm a very strong-willed, egotistical, self-centered, no-good jerk. and I am not interested in participating in anybody's sobriety, and I'm not interested in participating in anybody and I don't like to be together with anybody and I hide and I isolate and I withdraw and I stay away from people because that's my nature. So I have had to go against my nature for much of the time that I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous in order to grow, in order to get better, in ordered to feel better in order get to a place where I could not only be sober but reasonably comfortable in sobriety and I'm happy to report to you this morning that I am reasonably comfortable in sobrietty today. I'm reasonably comfortable in my own skin. I'm here to report to that I'm reasonable happy even about standing here talking to a group of people in Lincoln, Nebraska. there was a time when I would not have wanted to do this particularly there was a time when I had no interest in trying to share anything with anybody there was a time when I you know I am very extraordinary please believe what I tell you if you're new I am a self-centered egotistical man left to my own devices I am not a giving person I have no interest in helping you that is not the first thought that springs into my head in the morning. So I have had to learn in Alcoholics Anonymous from other people how to take those actions and how to do those things so that ultimately my sense of giving becomes somewhat generous, but it never really is very much. It's always a matter of selfishness for me. It' s always a matter saying, I must do these things or I will go back to where I was 20 years ago when I got to AA and I'll be in the same lousy pocket that I was in then, the same terrible depression that I were in then. The same position that I would be drinking again and my life would just absolutely disintegrate as it was disintegrating then. And I simply do not want to return to that. I don't want to go back to that. I prefer what I have today, no matter what's going on. Hell, I'm older now. I'm not healthy like I was then. You know, I have all kinds of physical problems now. I'm way overweight. I have a lot of things going on in my life. I have these things going up. But I still would prefer to be where I am today at the age of 56 than where I was when I was 35 and dying mentally and emotionally and ultimately physically from a disease called alcoholism, even though I did not. know at the age of 35 that I was dying from a disease called alcoholism. I didn't know that. It seemed that I had just been victimized by a series of bad breaks and misunderstandings, and it would all work itself out. So what I tell you today, I tellyou from perspective of 20 years of sobriety. I tellya that from a perspective... I used to sit and listen to people like Chuck C., for example, who's dead now, but a man who was a well-known speaker in AA for many, many years and who, when I got here, was 20-some years sober. And I can remember sitting and listening to him and thinking, what in the hell is he talking about? I don't understand this old guy. What is he saying here? I don' t get it. I understood the words, but I did not understand what he meant by them. And I'm a wordsmith. I've been a wordssmith all my life. I'm good with words. I know what they mean. But I had difficulty understanding the concepts that he was trying to convey. Why? Because he was 20-some years sober and I was a green newcomer, that's why. Because I had not lived as long as he, because I certainly had not lived sober as long. So there were concepts that I got from him later, even after the man was dead, listening to his tapes. When I was 10 and 15 years sober, I was able to hear what I could not hear when I was a year or two. And of course what I feel today is, God, I wish Chuck were alive now. Because he used to say to me, back in those early days, he'd say, hey boy, come and see me. Come out and see us. He used to live in Laguna Beach and he used invite me to come. I finally went and I told Clancy one day, I said, I'm going to go out and see Chuck. He said, well, what you're going to get is his pitch. Because that's what he'll do. He'll sit in the living room and he'll give you his pitch. And he did. But I went to see him finally, and I sat and talked to him for a while, and I was trying to get what he was saying because he was a very spiritual man. Sunday morning in Alcoholics Anonymous traditionally is thought of as the so-called spiritual meeting, which is interesting that you have me here talking today. I mean, I can think of a lot of better speakers for that philosophy. But I think every meeting in Alcoholic Anonymous is spiritual. I think everything we do in AA is spiritual. I think if you go get your sponsor a cup of coffee, that's spiritual. It's also mandatory, but it's spiritual." You know, I'm married to a woman who's three years sober longer than I am. And in our group, if somebody's got more sobriety than you, you get them coffee. Period. And she says that to me. She says, you know, if I wanted you to get me a cup o' coffee, you'd have to. then she wonders why I hate her so much that's not really true but I'll get into that too spiritual meeting Sunday morning well, I can report to you I think that there are certain spiritual qualities to my life today that would not have been there had it not been for very strong direction very strong sponsorship, and a lot of actions in AA that I did not believe in, that I didn't want to take, and that I knew would not work. But because of a sponsor, I took the actions because the sponsors I have had insist that I do. The philosophy always has been with my sponsors, and I've had two of them, if they ask you to do it in AA, and you could possibly do it, do it. The answer is yes. Somebody calls, the answer is yes. They ask you to lead a meeting, yes. I got a group in La Jolla, California down in San Diego that we started about five years ago and it's a speaker meeting and we catch a fair number of people. We get 350 people in that meeting but the ethic and the philosophy of strong sponsorship is not there the way I would like it to be except among the people that I sponsor because I just hammer on them all the time but you go up and ask somebody to talk we have two ten minute speakers and a main speaker and you go out and ask someone to do ten minutes and they'll say oh no I don't think so I don' t feel well or no I dont believe I care to do that who cares what you care to do that has never been an issue in AA in my life my sponsors never asked me if I wanted to they just said do it if they tell you to do it, do it if somebody comes up and says please make coffee at our meeting do it if somebody says stack the chairs, do It So that's the action ethic that I've learned in AA. And if you're new, relatively new in AA, how many people here have a year or less of sobriety? How many in here? I'm glad to see you. So that is really what I need to share, I suppose, with you more than anything and to share with me because my head most of the time tells me still that I don't want to do a lot of this stuff. My head still tells me there are better things to do. I was just looking tonight and thinking, Wednesday night is a World Series night. My home group meets on Wednesday night. And my first thought was, I think I'll skip the meeting. My second thought was my sponsor won't be there. He likes baseball better than I do but he'll be there so I'd better go to the meeting and my next thought was I wonder how empty the meeting will be. I wonder what will happen So, see, that's where my head goes. My head always goes to things like that. How can I get out of it? How can i avoid doing it? How can keep from being imposed upon by Alcoholics Anonymous and the people in AA? So the things that I do, I do because I have been taught to do them and because I believe today, I have come to believe that they contribute an awful lot to how I feel. And the fact is that I feel pretty good. Oh, thank you. We have a watch. We won't go more than four hours now. Let me tell you a little bit about where I came from. Actually, I identify quite a bit with your speaker from last night, Ray. Irish Catholic background. I had an Irish Catholic background. Grew up in the south side of Chicago in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. A neighborhood of six flat apartment buildings where nobody really had very much of anything. We were relatively poor, although none of us knew that we were poor because everybody was in pretty much the same boat. So you don't know that you're poor unless you've got something to compare it to. And if everybody looks the same, then you don'T have those jealousies and those feelings. And it was only later on as I got into my teens that I began to see people who actually had some things that I got pissed off. But I grew up, I was a pretty good student. I was an altar boy. I went to church on a regular basis. I served mass. I was a kid who tried very hard to look good with the Dominican nuns because they seemed to insist somehow that we perform up to their standards. And I tried, and I was fairly successful at it. I was, I guess, a pretty good kid. I don't know. At least I appeared to be on the outside. Inside was a whole different story Because I can remember as a child feeling, well, maybe by the time I was nine or ten or eleven years old, feeling very strongly that I really didn't belong with these people in church because they were good people and I knew down deep inside that I wasn't. I knew there was something evil about me, something sort of corrupt about me. The things that you can, I mean, as corrupt as you can be when you're eleven, but just the sense of not being a very good person. That began to creep into my life, that sense of being a sinner. As a matter of fact, it was more of a sense of being a moral leper. A moral leaper is one who not only sins a lot, that's somebody who enjoys it thoroughly. And I knew you weren't supposed to like it that much. But I didn't want to tell anybody that I felt that way because they only give you good marks for being good. You know, if you tell them you're a sinner, God, just terrible things happen. So you don't ever tell anybody what you're like, really, or what you'RE thinking about. I was thinking things you could go to hell for. And so I don't want to tell anybody that. But I felt fear. I felt really kind of goofy going to confession and confessing sins on a weekly basis and then going right out and doing the same things over and over and over again, and being a terrible sinner, and being an evil person, and being a bad person. So I carry that with me through my teens. I went to a high school, Catholic high school run by the Carmelite priests who were wonderful men. I mean, great guys. And I know that the Dominican nuns and the Caramelite priests, and later a daughter named the Holy Cross Fathers, did the best that they could to give me a set of standards and values to live by that ultimately would make my life more comfortable and make me feel better. Now, I didn't know that, but that's what they were doing, I'm convinced, today. Then it just seemed to me that they were trying to put rules on top of me, that they Were laying rules and regulations on me that I didn' t want, that I'm not interested in somebody telling me what to do. I'm sure there's nobody here that feels that way. But I was just a rebellious kind of a soul in that way, Now, not outwardly rebellious, because if you're outwardly rebellious they take things away from you. If you're inwardly rebellous they punish you. So I'm inwardly rebelious. I just hate them all. I'm doing what they tell me to do but I don't like it. So the minute I get an opportunity to do something else that's what I do. Well, that opportunity comes after I'm kicked out of Notre Dame after three years for non-attendance at classes. They suspended me for a semester and I just never went back. another sense of failure in my life, because my life is spotted with these moments of failure, these feelings of, God, I screwed up again. I just, what the hell's the matter with me? Why do I have to be this way? I do well for a while and then I just seem to screw it up. Why am I that way? What the hell is it in me that makes me that way and I'm just struggling with myself all the time about that. That I just do well and thenI fall And then I do well and then I fall. My life just seems to be a series of things like that. I don't know why. I can't figure it out. I'm blaming bad breaks. I'm claiming other people. I'm saying it's them. Or maybe it's just that I don' t belong here. I don''t fit in here. What the hell is it? Maybe I'm on the wrong damn planet. I don ''t know. Sometimes there's a sense that I have That a spaceship is going to land. Maybe out here right in front of the Ramada Inn. Maybe today. And three guys are going to get out that look just like me. And they're going to say, come on Barney, we're going home now. And there would be this great sense of relief. And I can say to them, oh God, I thought you'd never come because I've been here with these aliens all these years and I... I knew something was wrong. I just never could figure it out. I don't fit here, do I? I don' t belong here. That's it. That's the sense that I had, this sense of what the hell is the matter here? Maybe it will be better over there. This is not quite it here. I'll go with those people. I'll got to that place. In AA we talk about geographics all the time. Why the hell do alcoholics move around so much? I think it's that sense of it's going to get better over here because the heat's on here, baby. I go over there. I've got to move to the next place, to the new place. To the next group of people. To the saloon. To the whatever it is. There I'll fit in. There I belong because this one's getting kind of stale and kind of old and these people are catching on now. These people have got me figured. I finally, they know. They know what a phony I am. They know I've been laying a line on them. They know that I'm not a phoney artist. They know how I've gotten caught in them. I gotta get out of here makes me too uncomfortable I can't stand this anymore the nice thing about AA and my home group is they know everything and I don't have to run cause they love me anyway at least they say they do sometimes I don' t know cause they're mean to me sometimes but at least I can stand still and I can stay in place and I open the zipper and let people see what's inside and I say look at me look at all of me this is the way I am and that's the way it is and I've got to stay here and try to get better because I can only do it with you because it's the only place I found where I have an opportunity to do that, because nobody runs and nobody hides and nobody shrinks from me because of my failings. And I can admit them here. I can say, yeah, I screw up. I sure do. And my sponsor can say well, okay, you're a screw-up. We understand that. We're all screw-ups. None of us have lived our lives 100% the way we thought that we should. But here at AA, we have an opportunity to try to get things right. We have an opportunity to show up at meetings on time. Maybe get here a little early so we can talk to some people before the meeting starts. Maybe you get a newcomer and talk to the newcomer. Maybe we can do that. And then maybe we can carry that philosophy to the outside world. Maybe then, if we do that long enough in AA, we'll actually show up for work on time. Maybe we'll actual show up to the dentist on time! Maybe we will actually begin to show up for other appointments on time because as my sponsor pointed out to me one time he said the reason you're late all the time, Barney. It's very simple. It gives you power over people. It's a power issue with you. It just a simple matter that you're making people wait for you and you like that. So he said, if you're going to be late, at least you got to understand why you're doing it. Your ego is in charge here, baby. So let's just, my sponsor had a funny way of putting it. He said, we're going leave for the meeting at such and such you time, and if you're five minutes late, all you're going to do is smell exhaust. If you call me 15 minutes after I tell you to call me, you're gonna hear a dial tone, buddy! Because I want you to do things on time. Well, I've learned how to do things on time in Alcoholics Anonymous. And therefore, I get to work early now. I never used to do that. I used to be five or ten minutes late for work all the time. Now I get to make appointments early. I get there actually ten minutes early. Dentists, doctors, whoever it is. I still can't get to where I can make an appointment with a barber. It's something about that. So I go to Barber's where I don't have to make appointments. But I'm getting pretty good in that area. AA has taught me that. AA has brought me an opportunity to change how I am. But it all begins by opening the zipper and letting people see inside. To let them see how I was and how I really am and to be honest about it. By the time I was 21 years old, several things were going on in my head. One, that I wanted to be rich and famous. Somehow, someway, I wanted to be enormously successful. Not just successful, enormously successful! Huge amounts of money. I decided somewhere along the line, and I don't know where this definition came from in my head, but I accumulated the notion that if I could just get a lot of stuff, I'd feel okay. If I could get a big house and I could Get the cars and I can get the clothes and I could get the TVs and I couldn't get the stereo and just accumulate a lot of stuff, I would know I was successful, and better yet, you would know I was success. And you'd treat me better. Because people treat rich people nice. That's true. Hardly anybody tells the Rockefellers to screw off. I mean, it just doesn't... So I began this drive that was in me to accumulate a lot of stuff. I ended up accidentally in a business that allowed me to do that. I fell into the radio broadcasting business in college by accident and then continued on after I left Notre Dame, got a job at a little radio station in Monroe, Michigan, and then went from there to a station in Toledo where I became a news director, very young. Went from there to a radio station in Detroit where I became a news director for a 50,000-watt radio station, which is as big as you can get, and went from there to television. And by the time I was 26 years old, I was the anchorman for a television station owned by ABC in Detroit. I had met and married a very nice girl. Poor kid, she had no idea what she was in for. We began having children. By the time it was over, we had six. Identify with Ray that way too. Prolific Catholics, you know. Irish is not very good at many things, but we have a lot of kids. And I was very successful. And I was making a lot of money and I was accumulating a lot of stuff. By the time I was 27, I had a home of my own. I had an nice big home. I Had a couple of cars. I Had clothes. I HAD the stereos and the TVs and all the wonderful things. And I Was getting all this stuff and I had a really good job and I Was successful and I Was well known in Detroit and I I Was beginning to get all of the things that I always thought that I wanted. I was getting attention. I was getting a lot of this oh yeah in one way or another because I feed on that because I my ego needs to be approved of I just got constantly get approval and I don't just not just a little approval a lot so I'll know I'm okay for me to feel here you gotta applaud me here it's like it's a peculiar thing but I'm doing fine I'm moving right along I got this nice family I got home I got a great job everything's looking good unfortunately I am walking around with a mind that tells me that I'm not being treated well enough that I'm somehow not being given enough money, that I am not being given enough credit for what's going on. The ratings were up. Other people seem to be getting the credit more than me. I have a wife who doesn't really understand me very well. I'm a kind of a guy who's always felt kind of frightened about life and I don't know how even to label that, because psychiatry was not real big in my neighborhood where I grew up. So I don't know that I'm frightened. I just know that I'm uncomfortable. It was only in AA later when I began to hear people talk about fear that I identified the emotion. I said, oh God, that's what I was. I was just afraid. But you can't admit that. You can't admit that if you're really going to be a man you can't admit you're afraid. If you're really going to be a man you can't admit that you're feeling things. If you are really going to be a man, you know, men work hard men drink hard, men fight hard. Those are the things men do. You can't, there's certain things you can't admit because they're not manly things. You can feel things deeply and be sensitive because it's not a manly thing to do. I later, of course, have learned in AA that those are perfectly manly things. I know some very strong, powerful men in AA that I admire enormously who are extraordinarily sensitive people and who, when they're really telling you the truth, will tell you that they're frightened a fair amount, you know, part of the time. That they feel that they are inadequate a good part of their life. But they can't seem to measure up those standards that people are putting on them out there. But in the early days and in my 20s, you know I just couldn't admit those kind of things and I couldn't be everything that I thought I should be. And I felt sometimes like I wasn't quite making it and that I wasn'T quite successful enough and maybe if I were in New York or maybe if Iím in L.A., then Iím going to feel better. Iím goingto be in a big market. Maybe then Iíll be all right. If I could just make enough money, if I couldjust be successful enough, then Iímgoing to be okay. Maybe I need more stuff. Maybe I married the wrong woman. What the hell's the matter here? Why isn't she more supportive of me? Now, you've got two things going here. You have this enormous success story going on, coupled with these emotions that are absolutely tearing me apart. And the two things don't seem to blend very well. This guy looks like he's doing great and this wimp is just terrified. And it's the same man. Somewhere in my early 20s, I found the magic elixir that allowed all that to work in the same body. That made all of that somehow blend together and allowed me to keep breathing and walking and functioning. because somewhere in my early 20s I made the magic discovery that sooner or later every alcoholic must make. And it's such a simple discovery. Nobody ever writes it on a wall or puts a plaque down or anything. They should. But none of us ever really think much about it. It just happens. It does not happen to social drinkers. It only happens to alcoholics, but we don't know that because it looks like we're all doing the same thing. They're drinking, I'm drinking. My discovery was, and the discovery of every alcoholic as far as I know, according to the book, the discovery of every alcoholics is so simple. No matter what's going on in my life, if I drink, I feel better. Oh really? Yeah. It's so simple. I don't know that social drinkers don't have that experience. They don't happen with the intensity I do. Social drinkers apparently get a little giddy and a little goofy and a whole silly and they go home. Social drinker as it turns out, oddly enough apparently don't like the feeling that I'm after. They don't get it. Social drinkers say things like, oh, I better not have another when I'm beginning to feel it. And I say, yeah, right! Now it's getting good, huh? I say no, no, I have to drive home. And actually, I have to be at work in the morning. I mean, these are never things that occur to me. If at two o'clock in the morning somebody screams, let's go to Tijuana! Social drinkers say, oh my God, that's so far. Why would we do that? I'm saying, I'll drive! Because alcohol is apparently doing something very special for me that it's not doing for them. And it turns out statistically that about one out of ten maybe of us who drink have that very special experience with alcohol. and yet we spend much of our time waste a lot of our time in those drinking years trying to explain to social drinkers why we're doing this they're never going to get it because they don't have the same experience that we do so they don' t understand they just look at you funny you try to explain to them why you went to Tijuana and disappeared for three days, they don''t understand You come into Alcoholics Anonymous and you tell somebody, I went to Tijuana and disappeared for three days. And the alcoholic says, well, sure. Something different happens in AA for that reason. Try to explain it to the drinker. I tried to explain to my wife. I triedto explain itto my bosses. I tried to explain my bizarre behavior to a lot of people. They never understood. But I know this. Whenever I drink, baby, it feels good. And I'll tell you something else. When the pressure's on and the heat's on and they're driving me crazy because of my drinking and I quit drinking for a little while, I go in the wagon and I don't have a drop for a week. Something very bad happens. I get nervous, I get crazy, I feel pressure. The fear begins to choke me to death. The anxiety that I feel just makes me absolutely nuts. I can't function, I can' t work, I ca' n't think, I hate everybody. That's after a week of sobriety. and well-meaning people who really cared about me would say from time to time my God, it just looks like you have a drinking problem and I know that's not true no, no I don't what I have is more of a sobriety problem when I drink I feel better if I stay sober too long I get really crazy what are you going to do with that what are You going to do when Your real problem is that You're overly sensitive what Are You going do when your real problem Is that You just feel just all this god damn fear all the time that just chokes You what Are you going do with the pressure of living the pressure being a husband the pressure Being a father the pressure Of Being an employee absolutely kills You sometimes and You just want to get up from under and run what do you do with that well I know what I do after about a week or a week and a half of no drinking I go out and have a couple drinks because I figure I've been good long enough they got theirs now I'm going to get mine I went home I took the garbage out I cut the grass I showed up I took the kids to Little League and Y Indian Guide. I simulated interest in their goddamn homework. Now I'm going to have some fun. So I go in and have a couple of drinks, just a couple of drinks. No big time. Just going to have a couple of drinks. I'm going home. A couple of drinks. Unfortunately, there's this peculiarity about my drinking. It's the damnedest thing. Really puzzling. Hard to figure. Can't explain it. Once I begin to drink, as a matter of fact, it turns out once I've had one drink, one drink! I seem unable to stop. Isn't that weird? I can't quit! Think about who's that anyway! I don't know! Maybe I ought to quit drinking scotch. I'll just stick with beer. Then it becomes wine. Then it become something else. Then it became something else, this is all in chapter 3. Have a little club soda between drinks, you know. Nothing works, by drink I get drunk. I do bizarre things and I spend huge amounts of money and I get in a lot of trouble, I do all the things that drunks do. I have to spell those out for you, everybody in this room has got a story. except for the Al-Anons. They have a different story. They had to go through all that crap sober. I don't know how they do it. How do you do it, buddy? Oh, well. She told you yesterday. People do not understand my drinking. I don't understand my drinking. I can't stand sobriety. I don' t know what to do. When I was 35 years old, my wife divorced me. She's had enough. I told her that I didn' t understand that. We'd been married 15 years. 14 or 15 years and I said, I don''t understand why you're doing this but I'll tell you one thing I'm going to do I'm going to demand custody of the six children. She said, oh, you can have them. And she left. She'd gone to some Allen on me. And I took the six kids because the court ordered my house sold and the equity that was left these two lawyers in the divorce figured out how much money there was and they split it. One of them was an AA. Not mine, hers. And I took the kids and I rented an apartment over in Santa Monica and I was really destroyed. I didn't know what the hell had happened to my life. I was 35 and I felt very old. I felt Very Tired. I felt Verily Used and Abused. I felt that I had been misunderstood by an awful lot of people. I knew that there were people who thought that I Had a Drinking Problem, and I knew That I Did Not. And so I did the only thing that I can do when things are that rough and my life is in that bad a shape. I go out and get drunk, and that's what I did. and I came to in the middle of the night and I realized that my kids were home alone those six kids, the oldest one was 12 and the youngest one was a year and I left them alone and I thought God, I can't do this anymore and I realized because I was sitting in an apartment in Marina Del Rey that belonged to a friend of mine and I was surrounded by telephone numbers and cards that I'd pulled out of my wallet because I tend to call a lot of people when I'm drunk. And I realized, look, I've been calling people here. And I spotted one card in the middle of the pile there and it belonged to a guy that I had met a few months earlier who had told me that he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Seemed very proud of the fact. And he said that he used to drink a lot and that he didn't drink anymore. so I thought well those people like to talk to drunks so I called them and I said I'm not an alcoholic you have to know that right away that's not why I'm calling you you see I know social drinkers call me all the time at three o'clock in the morning where are you going I said well I've just had a lot of bad things happening in my life my wife left me I've lost my money I owe a tremendous amount of money, it turns out. My job's a little shaky right now. Things are not going so good. And the truth is I have been drinking a lot, but I'm not really alcoholic. Not like you people talk about alcoholism. I didn't have any idea what they meant about alcohol. But I'm trying to con my way through this thing. And I said, I'm nicht wirklich alkoholik, but I thought it would be best if I didn' t drink for about six months. And so I thought I'd call you and find out how you do that. He said, well, I haven't had a drink in four and a half years. I said, Well, my case is not that severe. I need about six months. He said Well, we'll go to these meetings. And I didn't want to do that. I said I don't really want to go to any of your meetings because I'm a television newscaster and I can't really handle the exposure. he said well I don't know any other way to do it and he said if you want my help that's what we're going to have to do and he seemed to leave very little room to run so I okay so we went to this men's stag in Beverly Hills it was about 60 guys and they all got up and talked about their horrible stories and they had little three minute talks and I didn't understand what the hell was going on, it seemed kind of crazy to me and everybody just seemed so enthusiastic about all these terrible stories, and I thought, what the hell's going on here? And they gave me this book, that blue book that Ray was holding up last night that some of you are familiar with. It's got Alcoholics Anonymous scrawled all over it. There's one above the door back there. But they gave be that book, and they're giving me their literature. I'm not interested in joining this outfit. but I just want to hang out for a while and see what they're doing. Because I think I'm going to learn something intellectual here. It's the way it has been all my life. You learn it, and then you put it to use, and then você fica muito longe dessas pessoas. Porque eu não quero ficar em esses basamentos de igrejas e casas de clubes grumos e lugares como esse com essas pessoas grumosas. Eu não quero fazer isso. Essas pessoas são drogas. E eu sou um televisor e noticiário sucesso. I'm a cut above most of what's going on here. So I just am going to kind of hang out here for a little while. But I took their book because they gave it to me. If I had to buy it, I wouldn't have bought it. That's the truth. It was $3.50 in those days. I would not have spent the money. I'm not sure if I had it. Went to a coffee shop after the meeting and they continued talking about the same things they'd been talking at at the meeting. And I'm waiting to hear the secret. I'm waiting to here intellectually what is it that's going on here so I can get an intellectual understanding of it and I don't have to go to these meetings because it's silly to go these meetings all the time. Meetings, I thought, were for people who weren't too quick. So they had to keep going back and it turned out I went back to these meetings and they did say keep coming back and I'd go back every night. I'd listen and they did the same damn thing. They read the same crap out of the book every night like they couldn't remember it. Chapter 5 and how it works. And now here are the traditions. I understand that stuff. And it made no sense to me. There's some God stuff in there that I didn't want to hear. But I want to know intellectually what is it these people are doing? What the hell is it they're doing to keep from drinking? And I told this guy, I said, look, I can make about a week and a half on my own, okay? So it's that period, about a weak and a halftime now where I'm in trouble. So what can I do a week from a half from now to keep from drinking? Because that's when I'm going to really want to drink. And he said dumb things to me. He didn't understand my problem. He said, if you're in AA for a week-and-a-half and you go to a meeting every night, you probably won't want to dink. I know he's wrong about that. but if you want to drink in a week and a half yeah, you'll probably drink well that's no solution I don't understand he says well I'll tell you what we'll put you into some special therapy here and maybe it will help I said good, what's that He said, you go see Bill over there at the Tuesday night meeting and he'll give you some therapy. So I went to see Bill and he said, okay, pick up that mop and mop the left side of the floor after the meeting. I said, I've never done that in my life. He said it was a good time to start. I said I don't know how to do that. He said we'll teach you. So they taught me how to mop the floor. I never did that. Learned how to use one of those things? Amazing. And then I got pretty good at it. Then I got to where I was mopping my side cleaner and quicker than the guy who was doing the right side. Every Tuesday night, quicker and better. The old competitive thing, and I'm beating him every week. Now he doesn't know there's a race, but you've got to keep an edge. So I'm doing that, and everything's... But I still felt crazy, and I still felt weird, and i still felt nervous, and I was really crazy because I knew I was going to have to drink. And it was starting to get to me. And then he made me a coffee maker on Saturday night. And then he had me be a greeter on Thursday night. He kept giving me all these actions to take in AA, and he kept saying, action is the magic word. Get involved in AA. He said, Barney, you're not going to become a member of Alcoholics Anonymous by just coming in the door and sitting in the middle of the meeting. That's not going make you a full-bore member of AA any more than going and sitting in a chicken coop every night is going to make you chicken. You got to do what the chickens do including lay eggs if you want to be a chicken. You want to be a member of AA, you've got to do what the AA members do. The real AA members. The activists. The people that are involved. Otherwise, you'd probably fall off the edges. A lot of people do that. I said, okay. So I'm mopping floors. I'm making coffee. And I'm greeting people. I hated that. People come in the door. Hi, my name is Barney and I'm an alcoholic, which I don't believe for a minute. But I'm telling them that because they get mad at you if you don't. Every night a meeting, every night a meeting, the same crap. A month goes by, two months go by, I'm just getting crazy. And I still owe money and I still got these kids to take care of and the wife is still gone and my life hasn't gotten any better. And people are saying, oh well you keep coming back because it does get better. And I'm saying, when? It was awful. I hated Alcoholics Anonymous. I hated your lousy steps. I hated you're lousie book. I didn't read it, but I hated it. I did check into the co-founders. I found out they weren't much. A couple of losers. Had their pictures hanging on the wall everywhere. Broken down stockbroker from New York who never even got rich after he got sober. an Akron proctologist. Please. Not much there. I wasn't impressed. But I went to meetings, and I went to meetings. And I mopped floors, and I made coffee, and I did these things. And one night I was sitting in a meeting on the west side of Los Angeles, and I had a spiritual experience. This redhead walked by, and I saw a few guys around here last night having some spiritual experiences maybe I'll stay in the area a little longer that's what happened to me I started chasing this redhead and I couldn't get her to date me and it became a real challenge And she said, well, I don't date newcomers. And I'd say, well I'm new now but I'll be old later. How about coffee? We'll do something here. No. She's three years sober when I got here. She was real heavyweight sobriety. She's still three years sober longer than I am. And never lets me forget it. She looked at me one night and I was just begging her to go out with me. I was obsessed with this woman. Begging her to come out with me, and she said, how many children do you have? I said, well, I have six, but they're very small. You'll hardly notice them. They're just little... One day, on a Saturday morning, she came over to my apartment because she couldn't believe I had these six children in this little apartment. And she came over. Now, the night before, I had picked up a guy who was sleeping in the bushes at the Glendale Public Library. He had been an old cameraman from Disney and he'd fought on hard times. And they kicked him out of the library so he was sleeping on the bushes. And so he had called me and he said, could you take me to a meeting? And I didn't want to, to be honest with you, because I don't like newcomers and I especially don't like guys that smell bad and I don't want any part of that and I'm not going to be here long anyway. I mean, that was really my attitude but he was an old cameraman and I thought, oh, what the hell? The guy had a great reputation. He shot some of the great Disney stuff and so I felt, well, what in the world? What the hell. So I picked him up in the bushes. Nice address. And I took him to the meeting and after the meeting he said, I have nowhere to stay. I said, well, I could take you back to the bushes. Jesus. I tried a few of these 12-step houses. Nobody had room for them. Finally, I said okay. So I took him home, put him on the couch, and I slept on the other couch. And Carol came over to the apartment that Saturday morning. For some reason, she came over just to see what was going on. Because, you know, I have these four daughters there, little daughters. and two sons. And so she came over, and she's crazy about kids, just crazy about children. So she came in, and she said, where are the children? I was sleeping on the couch, and there's Ken over on the other couch. And I said, they're upstairs. So she went up, and I got up kind of and kind of moved around a little bit and made some coffee. And I, you know, what the hell is she doing here? And about 15 minutes later, he sure came down the stairs, and here's the four girls like ducks behind her. I said, where are you going? And she said, we're leaving here, I'll tell you that. She said, you can't keep these girls in these conditions. I said why not? She said because it's unsanitary. Look at that man! I said well that's Ken. She said where did Ken come from? I said he's a newcomer. She said oh I can tell that. Could the newcomer take a little bath maybe? that's why we have a lot of time to discuss it anyway, Ken took a bath he later got drunk several times and then died but she took my kids so I had to go over to her house to see my daughters really is what happened we began dating she was just crazy about these girls she had a lot room in her house and her house was like three blocks from my apartment. So what happened was that her son came over and he liked my boys so they lived together in my apartment and the girls lived at her apartment at her house. And we kind of did that for a while and then we started dating quite a bit and finally when a year and a half sober, she married me. And we began trudging the road of happiness. Because she had two sons, one of whom lived with her from time to time, the older boy. And he was the real alcoholic. And then the other guy. So she had two boys and I had six kids. So we put these eight kids together. That's what we did when we got married. While I was seven months sober, however, a very significant event occurred in my life. And that was, I heard a guy talk one night and I identified with him. Now, I didn't mean to. And as a matter of fact, I was on my way out of AA. I was ready to leave. And I heard this guy talk, and I identified, I heard him. I knew what he was talking about. I understood the emotions he was describing. It was a guy named Clancy, and I was listening to him, and I didn't like the guy, but I understood what he'm saying. And I went up to him after the meeting, and I said, God, if what you're saying is true, I may be alcoholic. He said, aren't you the guy that mops the floors on Tuesday night? I said yeah. He says, God you're a quick study, aren' t you? So I started following him around the meetings and listening to what he had to say. And he was the only one I identified with for a while. And then there would be another one, and I would identify with somebody else and somebody else and having accepted the fact that I was alcoholic and I was condemned to this stuff for the rest of my life, I began then to take a little different attitude and I picked up the book and started reading it. Didn't like it, but I read it. Didn't Like the God Stuff. Wasn't comfortable with that. I'll tell you very quickly that I in the first six years of my sobriety I went through a whole process of trying to adjust to this new marriage trying to adapt to the idea that we had these eight kids trying to make a living and trying to be successful I went back to Philadelphia when I was two and a half years sober went to work there for a while for CBS trying to do something and I was nothing and I didn't even recognize that and I failed in Philadelphia. And I left Philadelphia and I went back to San Diego and I'm trying to put it together there and trying to be somebody, trying to figure out what to do with my career. By this time, this woman I married is starting to look at me funny because I quit the job and I was going to meetings and I Was trying to work with newcomers and I was doing all these things, I was even saying a prayer a guy had taught me. It made me feel like a terrible phony, but he said it's okay because you are a phony. So I said this phony prayer to a phoney God all the time. And I prayed and I went to meetings and I worked with newcomers, but I was unemployed. And I couldn't bring myself to function anymore. Now I was six years sober and I'm trying to figure out what the hell's the matter? What does it all mean? What is life all about? And I had no answers. and I'm walking around in meetings like some kind of a lunatic trying to look okay because when you're six years sober you don't want to look too crazy but if somebody had walked up to me, some newcomer and said how do you work the third step I'll tell you what an honest answer would have been I don't know, I've never tried that one and I one night I was desperate This woman told me she was divorcing me. The bank was taking the house. I was losing everything again. And I sat on a beach in La Jolla one night, and I cried, and I cried because I was such a failure, and I hated it. I hate being a failure. I hate doing nothing. I want to be something. I want to be successful. I want to be rich and famous, and I'm never going to make it. I will never be the richest man in the cemetery. That's depressing. I used to tell my sponsor, I'd say, have you ever seen Al Jolson's monument? He'd say the son of a bitch is dead. I'd see, oh, that's true. I sat on that beach and I cried and I cry and I crying. finally I out of desperation I guess or something I looked up that night and I because that's where he's supposed to be I said okay I give up I give it up I can't I can make it I can be successful I'm never going to be rich I'm just not making it I can seem to get a good job I can see I can do anything right I just seem to be such a appealed zero I can stand it that's less than nothing and I just thought okay if you exist it's your problem it ain't mine anymore I can't do anything right you just gotta help me here if you're there and I didn't think he was listening and shortly thereafter two or three days later I got a call from a guy and he said hey I got the job for you in L.A. And I said, oh, really? What is the job? He said, well, it's probably not up to your standards. I know that you were an anchorman for a lot of years, made a lot of money. Well, this job is a reporter's job and it doesn't pay all that much. And I almost said, do you know who I am? But for some reason, I was desperate enough and tired enough and exhausted enough that I just said, okay, fine. He said, well good, why don't you come on up and we'll negotiate a deal. I said, well I really don't negotiate anymore. I don't know where that was coming from. He said well how are we going to reach an agreement on money? I said I I don' t think how much I make is any of my business. And he said, I don't understand. I said, well, just put a number on the piece of paper and I'll sign it. I don' t care. I need a job. Well, that is not me. And that is n ot the way I operate. And that i s not the way i function. But that night, that's what I said. And I went up and he put a much bigger number on th e piece of pa per than I ever would have asked him for. And I laughed and I signed it. and subsequent to that they have given me contracts and they have been good to me and I make a very good living today and I did not lose my home and it turns out my wife didn't even leave and I thought sure she was gonna because we fought for years we just struggled constantly two alcoholics in the same house and on any given day there's a serious question as to who's in charge but I decided that's all I had left couldn't be successful couldn't prove anything to anybody just show up and look alert and hope they don't fire you well, I applied the same thing at home I'd just go home and show up and look alerty because I don't know how to make her happy and I don' t know how to make here love me I don''t know how to do nothing with this woman she is absolutely impossible so I just go hom my sponsor told me he says why don't you go home Because I work up in L.A., and we live in San Diego. So I'm gone during the week, and I go home on the weekend. And he said, why don't you go home on Friday night and look at her and say, how are you? And then the hard part, listen for the answer. And he says, you don't have to tell her how you feel unless she asks. And that's hard, because sometimes you just don't ask. And I'm really ready to tell Her what's going on in my life. I'm just not all that prepared to listen to what's going on with her. But the children have been raised, the oldest boy after many years of real insanity, sobered up finally. He's been sober 11 years now. He doesn't go to meetings like I'd like him to, but he's sober 11 year. Married a girl in AA. They got a couple little alcoholic babies. Our oldest granddaughter, his daughter, she's real suspect. She's five years old. She was walking with her grandmother the other day in La Jolla, and they walked past the 31 Flavors. And she said, Grandmother, have I ever told you that chocolate ice cream makes me feel very, very good? I told Carol, I said, take her to a meeting. That kid is... What's happened in my life is, finally, that I have come to believe over a long period of time, come to belief that a power greater than myself, all, can restore me to sanity. I don't think he's done it yet, but I think he can. Because there are plenty of days when I feel crazy, plenty of ways when I want to throw it all away and go to Hawaii, plenty of things when I'm just not ready for all this. Work and responsibility and all that. There are a lot of days where I don't like the fact that I'm 56 years old. I'd rather be 30. But on the other hand, I stop and think what it was like when I was 30. I'd better be 56. It's the damnedest thing. I finally have accepted in my life the notion of a higher power that Chuck C. talks about in some of his tapes if you ever can get Chuck C.'s tapes and Dick's got some here listen especially that new pair of glasses just sit down and listen to it the man's dead but what he had to offer and what he said what he has to say is marvelous he was sober 36, 37 years when he died his concept, he said, of a higher power is kind of a father figure he used to say I believe that the first two words of the Our Father mean exactly what they say we say it at every meeting, don't we? we stand around, we hold hands and we say the Lord's Prayer and all he said was I think the first few words of the our father mean exactly what he says I believe that God is a father figure and he said and then I try to think of what are the worst things that my children my children could do and I've applied that to me what are they what are one of the worst possible things that my children could do to make me hate them to make not love them anymore and I can't think of a single thing I've tried to think of the worse possible things if one of my children was on death row because they murdered somebody would I stop loving them I don't think so I may not like what they did I might hate what they do I might not like their behavior that's certainly been true many times but I have never stopped loving one of my children that's still there no matter what well I'm finite if God is an infinite human being and if the God of my understanding is capable of having created everything around us. If the Big Bang Theory is really baloney, if the order and design of the universe was somebody's idea, and how many times do you have to throw up the parts of a bicycle for them to come down a bicycle? Then I believe that God has forgiven me if he's my father. I don't think he likes what I have done all my life but I think he has forgiven me and I think that he loves me so I believe today that he's my father and I'm his kid and I am beginning to believe as Chuck used to say we are all God's kids and so I have to love you too I have no choice if he is my father then we are brothers and sisters this, because as we said last night, I think that he's our father and we're his kids. And I think in AA, we have learned to treat one another for the most part that way. And I'm grateful for that, and I'm grateful for the fact that I've now had over 20 years of my life without anything stronger than an aspirin. May 25th, 1972. It's a long time between ranks. I'm very grateful for that. I're grateful for you. I'M grateful that you are here. I' m glad that we were able to have this weekend in Lincoln, Nebraska. Because Monday we'll all go about our business. We'll all back out there and do our thing. As Clancy likes to say, these events are sort of like pit stops in the Indianapolis 500. We just come in here to these places on these special weekends that we have and we get tires and oil and gas and we're all ready to go again. And then Monday morning, we're back out there on the track. Back out there doing the same crap. That, you know... The same old, same old. How many times do we say that to people? How you doing? Same old, the same old... but the same old, same old for people like us is very special because each day of our lives is a spiritual day because God is in our lives in a very special way I think and each moment that we're alive and sober is a very special moment for us every night is New Year's Eve thank you Thank you.