The Only Inspired Piece of Literature He Ever Held – Clancy I.

Thank you, Joanne. It's always a privilege to be asked to do anything in AA, to be singled out for various unpleasant duties and some unpleasant duties, but tonight is a pleasant one, and I've only been in contact with Clancy on a one-to-one basis a few times over the past number of years, and he spoke once at the anniversary of the world famous Kingsway Group about 11 years ago I think it was and we had a lot of fun then and I have his tapes which I'm sure many of you have and as I told him or was about to tell him that I'm very pleased that finally the legend has come alive and is here and present and touchable laughter I'm not sure he can handle all this stuff but I'm delighted to be asked Joanne says Jack's going to say a few words I don't think Jack R. ever said a few words about anything but I might have you notice to remind myself that I'm not up here doing the retreat I'm here to welcome our good friend Clancy we've already done that on a one-to-one basis and I ask you all to know to welcome Clancy I from Venice, California My name is Clancy Emeslin, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm very glad to be here. I want to thank Jack for the introduction. Jack is... You know, I've talked on the way from the airport. He and Maggie were kind enough to pick me up at the airport, and just as we got in the car in the airport I said, how's it going, Jack? And he finished telling me, just as he pulled up here. The only break is when one time he stopped somewhere and said, oh hell, we're on the wrong road be turned around. Maggie's so brave. I'm glad to be here tonight. I know many of you people have been to this particular thing several years, and there are some people who are new. I'm going to tell you something that may stagger you. I've been sober a long time, longer than Jack, but it's nice to see you younger people hanging in there. But this is the first retreat I've ever attended. I've never attended a retreat before and I didn't want to attend this one because I've always had kind of a subconscious joking attitude towards retreats of I know how to retreat I'm trying to find a way to go forward now my sponsor I didn't dare tell him that because he went to retreats and did a wonderful job old Chuck C and the Paula Mesa retreat of course turned out into a book finally so I mean I've talked a lot about the steps at various times and Mr. Grafton from Winnipeg wrote me a letter and said, now you ought to go up and do that and I said, I didn't want to do it and he said, well you better do it so I came up here but I really have not been terribly comfortable because I didn' t know what I'd find I come from a little Lutheran community in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and I thought there might be Catholics up here laughter I don't mind them as a rule I married one and I practically single-handedly repopulated the entire Catholic Church with my efforts I was unfortunately married before birth control became acceptable and as I've said many times my grandmother warned me about marrying a Catholic girl and I told her that that was a bigoted pre-war feeling and I'd been in the Pacific fighting the Japanese so that we'd have no more bigotry and no more racial or religious intolerance I married this girl and my grandmother was right it's not that she was bad but there's something you never tell little Lutheran boys if you marry a good Catholic obviously she was a bad Catholic but good Catholics if you're about to become the head of a rapidly growing family whether you want one or not and I used to plead with her and tell her that we didn't have to take orders from some old guy in Rome in a white dress and she'd get nettled she finally had a priest come by one time and he gave me an hour and a half on the rhythm system which is a Catholic version of birth control and I listened intently and I just couldn't get that beat so I became a national distributor of small Catholics people like me always don't have much hair in front, because you go through life coming home and saying, you're what? So I have a little experience with Catholics, but not much with retreats. But I'm glad to be here this evening to discuss. Most of you, I'm sure, have studied the steps and have heard outstanding authorities on the steps. All I can give you is my personal version and my opinion and my feelings and what I've learned in the 33-plus years I've been active at AA. I'd like to start off by saying I've had no other therapies in the past 33-pluss years. I'm not going to weave in other therapeutics. That's one of the great problems we're facing today in AA is the concept that people come into our meetings and want to talk about gobbledygook, their learning in other groups, in other therapies. And we don't judge in AA. We all do, but we say we don t. I don't judge, but I want to tell you this, you sumbitch. But the one thing I think we can do... We were talking about the way it comes in Cairo. People come into an AA meeting and there's a discussion and they'll talk about the difficulties they're having with their inner child or how their parents and their alcoholism caused all this and on and on. And there may be valid reasons, but I think it's valid to say as we were talking about the car that's very interesting but take that to the group and discuss it in the group that discusses those sort of things in Alcoholics Anonymous we discuss 12 steps and recovery we do not any more than I would go to transactional analysis and insist they work the 12 steps they got their thing and I got my thing you do your thing, I got mine and I don't want to come to an AA meeting and listen to someone whine for 45 minutes about their inner child it makes me want to puke, that's all I'm not saying their therapy is invalid but it is invalid inside of our walls because our walls deal with the only successful treatment of alcoholism in history it has lasted very long the Washingtonians had a successful therapy, many of them similar to our steps, some of their therapies but they didn't survive because they didn'T have any traditions I'm sure or some of you folks might not remember this, but there's only been two effective treatments of alcoholism in all of the 4,000 years of recorded alcoholic history. And one was started in 1840 by six guys in a bar in Baltimore. And they evolved a little organization and gradually grew. And very much similar to AA, they had got little groups. This guy would go over there, that group would talk, and one would talk to another, and individual to individual and very successful. By 1845, five years later, it was estimated conservatively that there were 100,000 sober alcoholics on the East Coast. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Newark, Boston, and there'd never been anything like it. But they didn't have any traditions and there were a lot of problems they were having who was getting the most newspaper notice by their talks and who was the most successful in gathering new members. And then they got into a thing, if we're this successful, and you'll hear this in AA today, if we are so successful with alcoholics, we should be able to change the whole world with what we are doing. And so they little by little worked into different fields. They had people, Washingtonians who were abolitionists to wipe out alcohol all over the world. They had people who were anti-slavery. Got into the anti-Slavery Movement. There was one of the speakers in 1847 in Washington, it was a young congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln talking about slavery. And on and on. And they got to work with narcotics addicts, narcotics at the time, opium and laudanum. And they really expanded their message to everyone. By 1848, to all intents and purposes, the group was extinct. There was a few people left. I remember I have a book home from a guy written in 1862 by one of the old line members. He missed all the places he traveled, all the speeches he gave, and how he's sad that something happened. He doesn't know what happened, but they all left. They didn't have a primary purpose, a unity of thinking. But that was the place that they had steps and no tradition, not really steps. And these steps, as we know, came along. we know the history of this there were no steps written certainly when Bill and Dr. Bob got together in the Cyberling guest house in 1935 and there were no steps written when they got organized in Akron or when Bill went back to New York or when Clarence started a group up in Cleveland and in 1938 Bill Wilson and this organization decided to write this book, hopefully to take some of the funds and start hospitals for alcoholics and he wrote this book that that I have come when I was new my first day of meeting I was sent to a meeting in 1949 that's a long time ago you think that's a long Time ago? You weren't even born yet you puke I shouldn't be mean to the newcomers. I want to say this to the young people because sometimes we forget to say this, we get so caught up in our stuff. But I try to say it in my talks that my group in Los Angeles is the largest group in the world. Some 1,200, 1,300 people every Wednesday night. Really up, enthusiastic group, quite famous. And we have a lot of young people. I want you, I'll tell you what I tell the young People in our group. You are the AA leaders of tomorrow. And if you're like the young people in our group, I'm really glad I'm going to be dead. But they wrote this book and when I was at my first meeting and a guy was trying to help me and he asked me to read the book and I found it to be interminably dull it's an old kind of a joke well I read that book and it was just bad writing it wasn't bad writing it's just dull and some years later through a series of bad breaks and misunderstandings I came off Skid Row and I had a new sponsor and he had me read the books and this time I read the new sponsor and I read this book and it was interminably dull it just was an interminable dull book all my adult life I've been a successful writer I write things and say do this, buy this, take this action move now, now when you read that book it just goes on and on if you are thorough at this stage of your development but over the years I've come to believe that that book is the only inspired piece of literature I've ever, divinely inspired piece of which I've held my hand. Because it's I believe the book is a miracle. I didn't believe that for many years but I couldn't believe it. And I believe it's a miracle because the man who wrote it did not know enough to write it. He had no background in psychology or medicine or abnormal psychology or theology. and there have been all sorts of experts in this field working on this problem of alcoholism and he sat down and wrote a book based on the observations of people most of whom went back to drinking you know we keep forgetting that, we make it sound as though all the Christians under the catacombs stayed sober most of them didn't stay sober and he wrote a books that has changed more alcoholic lives in the last 52 years 53 years than all other therapies combined in the history of mankind it's kind of interesting when you read about him he talks about writing a book and how one of the hang ups he had was how to put these principles down and he laid awake at night and think what the hell and he said he's taking a nap and he just fell into place in his mind and he jumped up and scribbled them down but I didn't come to 12 steps and as we know now our combination of things principles in the Oxford movement and a couple other places and this these 12 steps have boggled the mind they're deceptively simple we've all heard them a lot of times we read about meanings and it just doesn't seem to anyone with any intensity of emotions knew that this can possibly change your life it's just they're nice to talk about but they have no meaning they're like the 10 commandments they're not nice on the wall but what do you do with them and that's why I'm glad to talk a little bit about them for the next couple days nothing else if not to instruct you to at least revive within me a continuing memory of what they're about and I think the first three steps which we're scheduled to talk on tonight I've always felt are the three most important steps in all of Alcoholics Anonymous because they are the steps that drive people away they drive people away from AA because they come here and they just don't seem to have any meaning you come here and you're desperate, your emotions are ripped up drinking is a problem but you have so many deeper problems and that feeling is just and those steps are just well first you're going to admit you're drunk and therefore your life is all screwed up and then you're gonna come to believe that God's gonna make it all better and then turn it over to God it's going to be just fine and there's a Spanish word we use in Southern California sometimes that maybe you've heard that fits that moment adios I've got to find something more complex than that, crap and when I was I was in and out of AA for many years and I knew quite a bit about it and I read the book because I knew all about it, and I'd done a lot of things. And I had good sponsors, sponsors who were decent and good people, not power-drunk dictator people. I'll tell you, what I learned about sponsors over those years was this, somebody new here, you might be looking for a sponsor, find someone who uses the term, because it's so reinforcing, unconditional love. You want someone who's going to love you no matter what you do even though they don't really mean it you find out after a while they get cross but even they say I'm not going to tell you what to do but they all tell you sooner or later so you stay away from as much as you can and the only time you really need your sponsors is after you drink and you call up and say hello Bob I'm sorry but I've I've let you and A.A. down now if you got a guy with unconditional love he'd say you haven't let us down you're sick you've had a relapse that's all I'm coming right over and I'll get some of the guys and we'll go through this with you I'll bring a pint so you won't go into D.T.'s God bless you Bob that's what I call sponsorship I wound up in Los Angeles with some old puke that knew nothing about AA he'd say things like kid call me anytime you want a night or a day if you haven't got the money call collect but until the time you drink but after you drink save your money all you're going to hear from me is a dial tone Jesus this guy don't know nothing about AA but he was he was rather insistent I do think he insisted I read the book it's stupid so I didn't pay much attention to it but at least I I could tell him he was stupid he was awfully testy I guess I made him testy just like you hear about these dysfunctional families I come from a dysfunctional family and I happen to think later I made it dysfunctional well should have just let us sit it I came from a dysfunctional family I've been a victim all my life. Wherever I go, people hate me. I don't know why. But the first three steps of AA were to me a very difficult thing because they seemed to have nothing. They're just mishmash. And we all know that. We admitted we were drunks or powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. and I remember discussing with my sponsor once on this subject and he began, he wheeled on me and got me thinking for the first time and changed my thinking about the first step over a period of time, not that moment of course but I think the hard thing to remember is that we come here and everybody knows the first tip says you admit you're an alcoholic and it doesn't admit youre an alcoholic it doesnnt even ask you to stop drinking as my sponsor said why don't you just try the black parts I've said before he used to wave his finger at my face and I didn't have any front teeth at that time so every time I really missed my front teeth I wasn't going to give him the pleasure of gumming it I'll tell you that but he said just take the black parts he says it doesn't say that because you admit you're powerless over alcohol you have some trouble with alcohol and so on and we talked about that and what do I have to admit is I've lost my power to control my drinking and if I hadn't lost that power to control my drinking I wouldn't be here it's really the first step is non-debatable because either side of it if you had not fallen into it you wouldn't come here people don't get up in the morning one morning and walk through the French doors into the garden and say well spring is here we come here under the lash and the problem is sometimes we get thinking that we have to admit our problem is alcohol and we don't have to admit that either it says we become powerless over alcohol, in other words I can no longer control my drinking and nearly everybody in this room lost that control long before they came here. And not know why. After you're here a while, you understand why. We keep fighting alcohol without realizing alcohol is not the problem. Alcohol is the relief from the problem It has an unnatural relief tendency. That's what makes it such a remarkable and lethal thing But all we have to admit, there's nothing debatable there. I've had some trouble drinking. Yeah, I have and therefore my life is unmanageable but that's where my sponsor nailed me, he said it isn't therefore our life is unmanangeable, he says there's a dash there, I don't know if you remember you're supposed to be a hot shot writer but a dash in the English language means end of thought, beginning of new thought my life is not unmanable because my life is powerless over alcohol I am powerless over alcohol and in addition to that I'm also, my life is un manageable or in other words I've lost my power to control my drinking and I've lost my control over my power, my power to control my sobriety that's all you admit but if I hadn't lost my power to control sobrietry I wouldn't have to go to AA I would just live in sobrieting all of us I'm sure have quit and realized that quitting is the painful part of the illness that's what makes alcoholism to this day such a lethal disease why over 90% of alcoholics it's estimated in America still die from alcoholism or die drunk after all the help available because it's the only illness in the world one of the very few of course where the problem comes after you are withdrawn from the toxic substance and then you live in agony so Allah has to admit you go along and get much more sophisticated in these things and discover the nature of the problem something called alcoholism. And alcoholism consists of an unnatural reaction to alcohol which brings about a feeling of euphoria following sober conflict. But there's nothing really to admit there. I mean, there's Nothing Debatable. What do you think about it? People read much too much into it. They have to admit they're lifelong drugs. if their problem is alcohol they're going to stop and shape up and change their lives it doesn't say that it says I've got a problem with alcohol and I'm admitting I've Got a Problem Without Alcohol it's just that simple we'd like to read deep complexities and metaphysical insights but that's all it says I have to believe that's what he meant second step however gets a little spooky there's no getting away from that because now you've got to return to God and returning to God may be fun for some people but not for sinful Norwegian Lutherans as I've said many times I was raised in a very very strict church our dropouts became successful Catholics it's been said maybe true for all I know Norwegian Lutherans even if they're married for 30 years would never make love standing up just in the fear that some passerby might think they were dancing it really is a sinful church and you know I kind of liked the church it was a good church but I was weak and sinned and did terrible things I wish I wish I could have been older sooner, I think about that when I was young I don't know what made me pop my mind now this certainly is not prepared I had my script but it seemed to have lost it when I Was A Boy like most boys I was troubled by sexual drives and fantasies and urges and when I was 15 I was on a ship in Pearl Harbor I'd run away from home because I had a great lust for adventure early in the second world war and I found out later that on these ships they gave us all sorts of what's that stuff no no not condoms Christ saltpeter condoms when you're aboard a US ship you don't need safe sex we're all clean there anyway what a terrible guy and I've been afraid of retreats all my life and here's the kind of people but they put saltpeter in our food and I often thought about that it never seemed to have any effect on me it's supposed to keep you from being edgy and nervous and fantasizing some of the guys edge up to the mess men and I'd been eating pounds of this stuff and I was always fantasizing and nervous and sweaty and pimples bursting out but the odd thing about that saltpeter is something I never realized I ate a lot of it, never had any effect and it just kicked in about two years ago if I only would have had that effect many years ago I'd have saved a lot of problems if that's all Peter would have worked Christ, I might have gone to heaven but I was raised in this church and I joke about it now but there's something, I'll tell you something. When you're raised in a strict church and you are kind of a bad person, you're a rebel or a sinner as you see it you can joke all you want about it but it's like the thing Hitler used to say you give me their minds till they're 12 they'll be a part of them, they'll become Nazis till they die. They say they're not but they are. You know, I got to be older and somewhat at least imitation intellectual and a writer and traveling in fast crowds and cities and so on and cunningly agnostic or atheistic they can say you're on distinguished cocktail parties with other little pukes and discussing the farce of the belief in God. And then, if God exists, let him strike me dead. If God exists why in Chicago does Louis Lepke or Three-Figure Brown rather live in a big estate with women and broads as children are happy on the edge of his estate, a train comes and hits a busload of nuns and screws them along tracks for half a mile. Is that how God rewards his people on Earth? God exists. Why does a gangster live in lucky Luciano live in Italy? Women, fraud, drugs, money, drinks, everything he wants. Fifty miles away, the Pope dies screaming in pain from cancer. Just how God awards his people, ha, God doesn't exist. I remember reading in my imitation intellectual reading, reading Nietzsche, and one thing that struck me about Nietzsch is he has one of his characters once, in one of His pieces says, God is dead! He may have existed once to set the orbs of world and to make the natural law, but look at about you, there's anarchy. God no longer exists. God is dead, do not live in fear. I remember thinking I hope that's true. I really hope that is true because late at night when I am afraid I know I am going to go to hell. Incidentally I should say about that there is always somebody who spoils things there is a Nietzsche is quoted in the theological seminar in Chicago they have a big sign that says God is dead Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche 1884 and beneath it it says Nietzsche's dead, sign God 1906 but I was an imitation intellectual and imitation atheist in fact one time in Dallas some guys we almost brought this off we were so cute somebody snitched on us but we had a deal we were going to put in the telephone book a dial-up prayer for atheists where you'd call this number and nobody would ever answer well so I began going to meetings again and staying sober, I was living in the back seat of an abandoned car right outside the club back door so it was close to the meetings and I didn't want to hear this story about returning to God in fact I remember talking one night to the media, I don't want you to hear that crap I may be here to get sober after listening to that religious crap I remember an old lady come up to me and she said oh son, she said I just hate to see you fight God I remember it took all I could do to keep from saying well ma'am you'll never see me fight God again boom now you can just hear me fight God but my sponsor and some others over a period of time educated me into that step remember he said it never says you got to return to God and well return to a power greater than myself to that fool your little people around here I have to be a little more intelligent in that sense it doesn't even say that it says you come to believe in something you never return to anything there's nothing in AA that says you ever return to anything because we're coming out of sickness the only thing about return to anything is one sentence that says some people return to normal living but he said a little puke like you'd ever had any normal living so you don't have to worry about that and boy I just caught him I said oh yeah he just turned white he says you've got to believe in something you've gotta believe in stuff can't you believe in God no I don't he says do you believe in any of this no I don't he says you think I'm doing better than you are he says I guess you are he says congratulations I'm your new higher power now he became my higher power and that was acceptable to me he could not send me to hell he could make my life hell but he could never he could send me to hell and he I just to stay out of his way as much as possible but he became my higher powder and I was so glad he did and over a period of time when he tricked me when he found me at the right time when I was feeling bad enough to be pliable he got me to take actions and do things little by little I stayed sober much to my surprise taking those stupid actions he nailed me with over a time period of times I came to believe in A is my higher power after I was a year and a half sober so I came believing in A is my high power that was great and sometime after that one day I found myself praying to an abstract God that I swore I would never pray to and I came to believe in a power greater than myself to this day I still I would say this to anybody who's new I would much rather see you believe in your sponsor that you really believe in than to pretend to believe in a God you don't believe in so you look good at the meetings. Because the time comes, it's two in the morning and you've got to turn to what you believe in and if you've been shucking them, you're dead. You better have something out there that you believe it. But you've gotta come to believe in something, that's all. You've gotta Come to Believe in Something. The step is quite simple. I came to believe that some power exists that meetings, AA, sponsor, God will what? Will restore me to sanity. now there is a that sounds so easy to say but once you're an imitation intellectual it's very difficult might even be true for real intellectuals how about that Jack anyway I need to ride back to the airport, I'm just playing up to him sanity is a very very difficult thing to define. You could read ten books on mental problems and mental recoveries and you would get ten different definitions of what sanity is. When I was in the electric shock board, well, very funny, huh? I was under a lot of duress except I couldn't remember what it was. There was a guy next to my bed but I always thought it was one of the the only man I ever knew that was happy really sane because he was happy all the time I do this one just hi and I realized sometime later the guy's nuts he's never going to get out of there as long as he keeps laughing until he realizes how bad it is here what the hell is sanity what does it mean that you're happy all the same all the fun that you are well adjusted no some people who live in great pain are very sane What the hell is it? Now, oddly enough, insanity can be defined. Sanity can't, but insanity can. Insanity, now not the insanity we talk about in AA, although that can be fine, but that's not what we're talking about. You know, they still say, well, alcoholism is a still.