The Persistence of the Illusion of Control – Clancy I.

I knew there was something I was missing in my talk tonight. I used to drink and I drank for a number of years, as I'm sure many people in this room did. And I spent a lot of time drinking off and on and I never paid much attention to it really. Because I have never, I never felt for years that drinking was ever my major problem. Sometimes it was when I got in a jackpot, when I get in trouble. I would think about my drinking and think I would have to moderate it but I never really felt I was an alcoholic or that drinking was really my problem because from as far back as I can remember I always felt I always thought that my emotions must be different than other people's not that they were significantly different it just I remember thinking one time way to describe it is that when you come off the end of the assembly line and the last operation they're supposed to put on a protective coating and when I got to the endof the assembly somebody said hey God and God said ja ah screw him he's Norwegian and it seemed that my emotions were like other people's but I just seemed to feel things more intensely and I based this of course in the classic way that people like me and I suppose like many of you base how you are by comparing yourselves against other people by comparing yourself to peers or other people or how they're looking or how their how they look like they're feeling and one of the major factors in that evaluation is that you always make that comparative when you are feeling bad when you are feeling good you don't stop and think how you're doing but when you're feeling bad that's when you evaluate and think and study and so when you're feeling a little different you're not very good and you look around you and it can be on a job or just people going by or people in social situations or people that you know well or people that you hardly know every human being I'm sure when they feel bad sometimes makes little evaluations seeing how they are compared to them and I suppose one of the reasons you do that is to find some way to feel more like them to be less alienated and the problem with these little evaluations is that everybody does it sometimes but the one thing that nobody ever seems to know is that the answer you get is always wrong it is always right for one reason that nobody ever thinks about because I am comparing my insides against other people's outsides I am compared my raw meat against defense mechanisms they've spent 30 years building to conceal their raw meat so as a result I think it's safe to anyone in here to say the next time you start comparing yourself I think I can guarantee you that you will never see anyone who looks as sensitive as you feel you will never see someone who seems to have this secret anxiety that you have you'll never see anybody who seems to be troubled by feelings of insecurity like you secretly do you will never see anybody who seems to have the form of loneliness that you do other people are lonely when they're alone I have a tendency to be lonely in the middle of crowds that's unique unto me I always knew that you can't even talk to anybody about that how are you doing tonight oh I'm lonely there are a lot of things I've said this before but there's a lot of things you can't talk about in life because they're not acceptable problems acceptable problems are heroic problems not petty snotty little niggly weak thing that yeah I remember a lot of times sitting or at least a few times sitting in advertising agencies where I was supposed to be a slick writer and hip and thinking, I wonder what these pukes would do if they knew how I really felt. What if my boss came by and said, How you doing, Emerson? That's it. Oh, I'm afraid. What are you afraid of? It's the shit out of me. Kind of a general free-fall fear. Those are not correct answers in the world. Those are not acceptable emotions. The correct answer is fine. Doing just fine, Mr. Carlson. Just opening this vein to get out some tired blood. My cuff link broke. Well, damn it, nothing else is going right today. Why not that? But you go through life comparing your feelings against other people and I'll tell you one thing you wind up your efforts to understand why you feel different and the more you study it the more alienated you feel the more different you become the more what we call classically in alcoholism the yes but someone can say well I've had that feeling and the mind says yes but not like this turkey you don't say it but you know it so most of my adult life has been an effort to get things leveled out to get a handle on things to get to get things together and I've tried a lot of things I was in psychotherapy over 30 years ago I you know a lot of people in AA say you shouldn't go to a psychiatrist but I tell you in psychiatry I discovered answers that just made me understand so much more that it was just incredible. You get to know so much, you aren't even aware of the fact you're just not getting any better. At this very day, I see a psychiatrist twice a week. And some people say, if AA works all that well, why do you see a psychologist twice a year? And the answer is always the same because I have told him unless he gets to those two meetings I won't be a sponsor that's why I'm not putting down psychiatry at all psychiatry is a wonderful thing just that the recovery ratio in alcoholism is something less than one quarter of one percent and the only sober alcoholic psychiatrist that I know of are in AA but it's technically it's not like it should work because you learn so much one thing about psychoanalysis and many factors like this for people like me it gives you reasons to lay off the guilt it gives us it gives your hooks to hang things on why did you do that? because I was hurt as a child you son of a bitch and it's nice to have things to blame things on in fact you can get into such a habit that sometimes you die from not being able to undo that sometimes but I eventually nothing ever works another time I got into metaphysics I was working three jobs at that time in one of my catch up phases I was work working days at an advertising agency at night I was on the faculty of the University of Texas directing a grand opera in the original Italian that's kind of fun watching Texans try to sing Italian and I was writing a weekly sports column for the newspaper because I always had diversified interest that's one of the great pleasures of having a fragmented personality and I was under a lot of pressure as I've said before I'm a Norwegian Lutheran from northern Wisconsin and that's kind of the purity end of the religions and I had I had gone bad and married this Catholic and she was the worst kind of Catholic she was a good Catholic bad Catholics you can do something with but good Catholics there's no doing business with them at all I used to say to her Charlotte can't we use birth control in a brave new post-war world no I said how about just getting something for the prevention and disease they sell them in a machine down here at Rocky's Rockaway no she had the priest over one day and they gave me two hours on their rhythm system which is the Catholic form of birth control and I listened intently and I just couldn't pick up the beat I just couldn't I told her we'll have to hire Lawrence Waltz who stands the foot of our bed more. One and a two, one, one, and a... So one of the problems in my life is we kept having kids. Made me just crazy after a while. That's the way it was in Texas. I had a kid. I was trying to make up for lost time because my previous job had been playing the piano in a whorehouse in San Francisco which is a resume buster when you're an executive and I was really going strong and I... I was drinking a little too much because I was under a lot of pressure and they said I could not to I shouldn't drink anymore the dean said we understand you've been acting bizarrely in Juarez whenever you see people who have little thin blue lips and they say things like now this is for your own good you know you're about to be screwed and so I had to stop drinking to hold my job at least till my wife had that baby at the time and so I I couldn't drink and drinking to me has always been a relaxant it's not a my thing it's just a cushion when you take that away I just I get tense and anxious and nervous because I have no relaxant I got into metaphysics and it really helps to get into metaphetics when you're about half crazy because you're halfway there already and I was very intense as a personality and I I don't like to gloat or brag but at one time to the best of my knowledge I was one of six people in the whole state of Texas who knew truth that's a very heavy load to carry in Texas it was almost a relief when they finally put me in the state insane asylum just to take the pressure off and the nice thing about it is I was that insane I wasn't in there for drinking I hadn't had a drink for some time I was in there for suicide because that's how I get when I stay sober too long I have a tendency to get nervous and one day my wife took all the children to church and I just went in the garage and turned on the motor and went to sleep and the neighbor heard the motor running and came in there and I was dead behind the seat and they put me out and beat on my chest and beat up my nose and put me in a psych award to examine me and determine that I was a schizoid depressive and give me an indefinite period in the Texas State Insane Asylum at Big Spring, Texas. Now, that's another resume buster. I thought I was depressed before, Jesus. It's pretty hard to make it when you're intermittently put apart. The only funny thing I ever thought about that whole period of overthinking when the doctor said we're afraid you're a schizoid. Part of my mind said, Jesus, that's funny if they only knew if I could get my personalities down to two I could make it it's this group therapy where I'm alone in the car but I was in this nun house for a while I didn't direct any grand operas in there but I directed the Christmas pageant when I came off Electric Shock they allowed me to go back to my old career and I directed this Christmas page about a second grade level so the whole student body could follow along there weren't very many delicate nuances in the performance but the director's main job was just trying to hold the three wise men off the virgin marriage we just want to worship our clients and I thought I might have to be there a long time because I had to stay there until I got well which was a long you know I might've been there now but they put in an alcoholic program unfortunately because I have a tendency to drink sometimes and people think my problem is drinking I had been sent to AA a number of times I've been going to AA six or seven years by this time off and on. So when I saw an alcoholic program I pretended to be an alcoholic and in a short time I got in the alcoholic program. I was wonderful. Everybody else was there for 30 days. They weren't home in 30 days they were put in there by their families and went home in 30 years. I was the only one in there indefinitely. So I was more responsive than they were. You know old guy would give us a talk for an hour and say are there any questions boys nobody one question how do we get out of here you know Mr. Ross perhaps you could tell me some more about the fourth step how do We get this garbage out of us and get this guilt on the paper and how We can begin to work towards a new life could You tell us some more about that Mr. Roth You say yes I can Clancy and everyone else in the room would say oh shit I wasn't trying to win them I had to win him I uh yeah he really was not a very sincere group you sit next to somebody what are you going to do when you get out of here Fred I'm going to kill that bitch they came and went and I stayed and I got to be secretary of the group and eventually I went out and gave little talks the hospital sent me out to West Texas to give little talks with my attendants one night I talked at Midland and one night at Odessa and one night at the big spring town and I gave beautiful little talks to you I wasn't burdened with any sincerity I just I'd give little talks like friends I'm just proud to be here tonight on behalf of my fellow patients at big spring state hospital we were people who were lost in the vast desert of alcoholism and we came upon the tall green hills of sobriety but they were too you pointed out 12 golden steps that we could climb one after another until we could stand high atop the green hills of sobriety to find a new answer with the new God and look back to going back to our communities throughout West Texas and show others still lost the 12 steps to recovery. God bless you. Now, you're going to laugh. I got me out of the Texas nun house. And the funny thing else, I never had another drink until I ran out of Thorazine. But when you run out of Thorazin, it tends to get edgy a little bit. But some people were convinced I had learned my lesson. I came home. Ten seconds later, my wife was pregnant. And I got a job in Dallas, the largest advertising agency in the South. A number of people said, this kid has learned he's been a wild one but now he's straight and I got a job I was working if you're old you remember these ads these old Elsie and Elmer ads for the Borden company and I was doing fine except that the pressure started to mount and I was having a little more difficulty and my drinking was a hit or miss I was trying to just use enough to get me through the pressures and sometimes I guessed wrong and and Dallas is full of crap heads really if you want to know the truth and I one morning I woke up and I was in Phoenix, Arizona drunk tank a thousand miles away and the guy had just got done kicking my front teeth out because I'd vomited on his bunk you think that's funny? where did I get to the part where I die of leukemia you'll realize that again as I've said here before but I'll say it one more time that was one morning I was glad I'd spent several thousand dollars in psychoanalysis because once you once you've been in psychoanalysis you always have deeper insights and more understanding than people normally have and that morning I was so sick when I woke up I couldn't even move my head out of the way of this guy's shoe while he kicked my teeth out but I was almost instantly able to identify his problem I remember thinking this son of a bitch is overreacting as long as you when you can understand things like that you really got an elbow on and then by that time my wife had taken all the kids and left me and I it just got things took a little turn for the worse later one morning I found myself being 86th out of a skid row Michigan told not to come back and I'd been 86 I was in Los Angeles and I couldn't believe it I couldn' t believe it what in hell do you have to do I've been an award winning writer I had my picture in the paper all over the country for this opera direction I have done all sorts of things I'm in the top 2% of the intellects of the country in my evaluation and god damn it I am at the beck and call of every redneck puke that comes along and I'm dying on the street and there's by that time I wish I were an alcoholic I've been going to AA for nine years but AA's got no answers for people who are cursed with the ability to think. Here. It's a great place for drinkers. Oh, I put the plug in the jug and it just got gooder and gooder. Ah-ha-ha! There's no great intellectual satisfaction in a... I mean, when you come into a meeting finally and you may be desperate and may want to make a clean breast or something like that. I don't know if you understand this, but I think I'm going crazy. and have some old fool lean over and say well you keep coming back or when you may confess and say I got a I don't know what you do but it's a name I got $120 in hot checks out and if I don' t cover them by Monday they're going to nail me to the wall what do I do and I have something and I say well you turn it over to your higher power son I tried that once and my higher power turned over to Sheriff Peter Pitch that is not a viable solution in the real world and these steps you know they're enough to just gag a maggot they're nice but they're they don't work for thinkers it doesn't help me to say I'm all I'm a terrible old alcoholic but I know I'm not and therefore my life's all screwed up that isn't why my life is screwed up my life screwed up because I'm surrounded by idiots I'm going to come to believe God is going to make me sane I'm crazy I'm just not crazy I look crazy to crazy people is not my problem you're going to turn your problems over to God try that some morning here God must have not didn't get outside of the gravity there gonna write an inventory write down things I've spent thousands of dollars to forget gonna write things down I wouldn't tell my psychiatrist I never I never even told my psychiatrist much because I was afraid he'd reject me I didn't I just thought if I ever told this guy how I really feel sometimes he'd say get out of my office you sick son of a bitch so I just told him what I thought he ought to know to help me and he couldn't but they wanted me to write things the men's first you know write things you wouldn't read you wouldn' you wouldn''t tell to the psychiatrist and then read them to a plumber now is that is that is that that's satisfying isn't it do you still like me Fred yes I do well you only hear this is it really going to help me a great deal to have some brabber mouth know that I used to be married to a sheep outside of Butte Montana is that but I want to hesitate to add that's not a part of my inventory that's what we call a figure of speech you're going to ask God to make you perfect get rid of all your defects of character so you can get your own little set of blue lips maybe go around and talk to people for their own good make amends to people who've been screwing me for 30 years here's 10 dollars for rejecting me that time more inventory in case you've been lucky enough to forget anything just keep digging then meditation that's a great step meditation is a great step for suicidals it really is if you ever want to really if you ever want to die quick just sit in your closet for a couple hours for a few hours in the dark and think about how things really are now there's is there all of this might be or if there's some great reward at the end are you going to be given love and happiness understanding you're going to be allowed to get up at three o'clock in the morning and drive across town and tell some idiot about it while he pukes on your shoes AA is a nice place for simple people it has no place in the life of a person who is sensitive intelligent got any sense that's all that's why people like me have to find adjunctive therapies and it really is it's kind of hard to find the correct adjunctive therapy you know it's kind of a funny thing I spent some time in AA thinking only alcoholics look for adjunctive therapies, but the world is full of people. That's why they have TA and TM and EST and primal therapy. You talk to anybody in any of these therapies, nearly anyone you talk to has been in one of the others already. They go from therapy to therapy looking for some way. But I kept thinking if I could just get a handle on my emotions, if I Could just get it together, if I can just find a place I'll fit, because sometimes I do great I'm a great 50 yard dash man but they're not running a 50 yard dash, they're running some kind of god damn marathon out there but for 50 yards I'm the great husband, father son, worker brilliant guy, but at 50 yards I breast an invisible tape that nobody else feels and I sit down to wait for the trophy and they go by I kept looking for where's the place where it's always where it is going to be where it will look what I'm looking for I'm all looking for all I'm licking for in the world is the wonderful place the fun place and I found it a number of times but it always turns un-wonderful after a while it turns un-fun it turns grubby and I've got to find the place where where it stays good and I couldn't find it I was sober a great number of years before I came across a great evolved a great fact that is I knew I guess all along but I didn't put it down into a phrase but it says this people who are always looking for a good place or an exciting place or a fun place are rather immature individuals they cannot mature to the fact that no place is wonderful all the time In fact, there's a truism that is so true that it's just dreadful and it applies to almost everything in life. And if you can accept it, it makes life ten times better but you can't accept it very well. And it's juste this. Nothing is wonderful after you're used to it. Nothing is beautiful after you are used to But children like me, all I demand of a relationship is when we both reach for the salt and our fingers brush I want to feel a spark I don't want to have to turn around to know that she came in the room I want her to be able to feel the electricity and no matter how much sparks you had I'll tell you something the day comes in every relationship where your hands reach over the salt shaker and you say give me the god damn stuff and a lot of people feel the relationship is over and what they don't realize you have just passed to the infatuation stage but I've looked for that in my jobs I've look for I want that wonderful place to be there and I find it it's exciting there are sparks and one day it isn't sparks anymore I think ah this is getting crappy here and I get put upon and edgy people places and things the paint starts to peel on them and I just yuck and I realize I'm being used by that and I that's why drinking was kind of a pleasure in my life drinking at least adds a little color when there's no color there it gives me a little pizzazz gives me a little Oz you know I just love everyone's thing the wizard of Oz the only thing I could ever understand about Dorothy is why she would want to leave Oz and go back to Kansas for Christ's sake that black and white not even black and white sepia tone Kansas instead of being in Oz where the colors are there may be a poison poppy here and there and monkeys flying but god damn it there's some Colors. There. A little fun. And I didn't know that alcohol had a special effect on me. I never knew that once. They used to tell me, if you're an alcoholic, they told me this 30 years ago when I was going to meetings under duress. You know, if you are an alcoholic alcoholic has a special effect on your body. So you find some dummy saying, what's this special effect? Well, it sets up a terrible craving that you can't stop. And I used to go out on meetings and go to a bar and run the test. I'm going to find out once and for all if I'm an alcoholic. No craving. Thank Christ. I didn't know that alcohol had a special effect on my body and I didn' t know what it was they said it makes you drunker than other people I have out-drunk any number of social drinkers in my day in fact the worst night of the year to be out for any drinker is when New Year's Eve you bet your ass Slim because them amateurs are out there stumbling around. They don't know how to drink. Anybody in this room has got at least 20 seconds to know when you're going to vomit. You just recognize the symptoms. Pardon me, just a minute. Anybody got a cert? social drinkers get drunk once in a while they don't even know what the symptoms are you're going to be talking right to them how you doing today Fred well I said I would assume anyone in this room has done this time I didn't think about it when you start to go you just those idiots just fall down they don't know how to drive they try driving with two eyes they never know how to drive maybe the great tip off is if you're at a party where there's drinking going on and you're done with PR you notice that there's an alcoholic and a social drinker a social ringer once in a while will say things like well Marge I had a couple extra you better drive home honey if anybody in this room ever said that I'd be sick with mortification the correct answer for us is it's my god damn car it's not my god dam car alcohol doesn't make me goofy it makes me right in fact here's something I thought about this it's really true without even being aware of it I spent my whole life thinking the real me was the personality that appeared after three drinks when I was sober that was not the real that was just some poor boob when I had three drinks that's the real kind of a devil may care lovable old thumb bitches didn't play favorites you with anyone granny want to play shuffleboard for your daughter Fred if I could have held that three drink edge I would have been something but it starts to taper off when you overshoot and it's just hideous and so my I very nearly died and I never knew that there was an absolute pattern in my life that was absolutely clear and was delineated and delineate in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that I read that book four times over the years and never saw it once and yet I believe it's the greatest single description of alcoholism that I know of and it's that first two pages of chapter three God that is really the story of my life and nearly everybody's life starts out. The great obsession of us is that somehow, someday, we will control and enjoy our drinking. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many of us pursue it into the gates, not up to the gates but into the gate of insanity and death and that is the story of my life trying to control control the effect control it to I can't make it without it and I can not make it to overshoot but to control it to find techniques there is a funny paragraph on the next page that talks about various things people try that is really funny and I cannot quote it drinking beer only drinking only at home never drinking at home changing from scotch to brandy drinking only natural wine drinking only with people never drinking with people taking physical exercise reading spiritual literature taking a trip not taking a tip not taking swearing off he says the list could be continued ad infinitum I remember reading that a few years ago I'd have to laugh I had tried every one of them except one I had never tried not taking the trip because when the heat is on I move it well Charlotte you take care of the kids and I'll tend you some dough first chance I get in fact I sponsor a man in Los Angeles right now who left Omaha under much of those conditions and his wife is here tonight and son and I and I have to assume they had to feel the way my wife felt time after time I'm glad that his life is working out and hope your life will work out and I hope my family's life will stay good because these are problems that affect all of us in various ways then it says there are brief recoveries followed always by still worse relapse and it says something to the effect that over any significant period of time it gets worse never better and eventually you get to a point and it's just such I've read these words a thousand times before they really jumped off the page at me till you get to a place of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization I used to think that's how drunk you got you get through pitiful incomprehensible demoralizing but it isn't I've come to believe that's the condition you get into when you get sober again that's when the problem is you know I was talking about drunks being such suicidals and all many times drunks commit suicide and it's amazingly small percentage of drunken suicides are successful and nobody knows why my particular theory is that when you're drunk and you decide to commit suicide it usually is to make someone sorry and then as you're about half gone you suddenly realize I'm not going to be around to see these bastards sorry and I've received phone calls maybe you have too maybe made them oh Clancy I just want to say goodbye I'm checking out I've taken an overdose of pills I don't want anyone to bother me at 1-11 East 14th Street do you know when most successful alcoholic suicides take place shortly after becoming sober. There are no notes, there are no big goodbyes, it's called pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization where you can survive a little while and then it goes away but for a while because you find yourself in a position where you cannot even justify it to yourself and you've got to go out there pretty soon and justify it to people upon whom your life depends. Families and employers and people who are friends and you want to look good you can't even find a rationale you can not even find a hook to put it on takes a few days sometimes to find a hook to put on or to arrange the facts so it does not look as bad to you as it did until it was her fault or their fault or somebody's fault I am in a position unlike probably most of you here maybe all of you I am at a position where I see alcoholics die almost every day very few people have that opportunity and I watch people die every day and I watch people dying every day and I watch people struggling in this terrible destructiveness it's a funny thing Monday will be nine years ago that I resigned a job as a marketing director in Beverly Hills to go down and run the mission that 86 me in 1958 I was going back and get revenge on those people they've got me again but you know that's another corollary to that same thing I said earlier I thought boy I was down there here I was I'd been worked my way back up laboriously through radio and television and advertising and I was back and my family was back and I Was living out by the ocean in Los Angeles and it was just great and I found myself AA it altered me enough so I wanted to give this up and go down run a skid row mission it's not an alcoholic treatment center I'm not smart enough for that it's just a I don't mean that in a bad sense I just have no training we just feed people and bed them down it's a funny corollary I see people die every day when I first down there there wasn't a day that I went by and didn't thank God for my sobriety because I used to be on that street with them but it's another corollery nothing is hideous after you're used to it there are no big things I go to work now I go walk five guys dying on the sidewalk and I see them and I empathize with them a little bit but my mind is not what has to be done in there today everything is once it becomes conditioned it doesn't have strong impacts anymore I love the ocean that's why I never moved to the ocean never moved on the beach because when you move to the beach you lose the ocean it becomes part of your conditioned environment you don't see it anymore like when you live in your mountains look at those lovely mountains after a year from now you can say what mountains and that's the way it is most of life but I see alcoholics die every day it's a funny thing let me tell you something funny I see alcoolics die from liver I see alcoholics die from exposure I see alkoholics die from falling in front of a bus and having to run over a guy's head I see alcoholic die from all sorts of reasons just general debilitation all the ambulance finds him in an alley and picks him up dead and takes him off the one thing you hardly ever see on Skid Row, however. I do not recall ever seeing a suicide. There are no suicides on Sked Row that I know of. Suicides are people who are above Skid row. When you're on Skad Row you have one advantage. You no longer are pretending that you're anything other than the rotten son of a bitch you know you are. It's when you're in the world and you have to get up every morning and suck it in and pretend it's okay one more day. That's when suicide happens. When it just can't. Pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. That's what makes it so hard for people to understand. Well, if it's doing this to you, why do you keep doing it? And I have no idea so I tell them to shut up. Or it's because of her. Or it' s because of them. Or it is because of this or that. You can make rationales but they get tedious after a while. The one thing I never knew, it's because I suffer from an illness I never even knew. I would suppose if there's any major reason why people die from this disease, it's such a simple thing and yet it goes on and on and a number of people in this room will die from it. And that is lack of knowledge of the nature of the illness. Most everybody comes here thinking they're here to beat alcohol and that is not necessary some of the more if you're like me when I was dumber you might think you're here to stop drinking or to get sober ridiculous you're not here to get sober if getting sober was the answer detoxes would turn out winners hospitals would turn out winners toilet bowls would turn out winners they talk all they want about the detox programs but the major American detox is the toilet bowl that's where more detoxes take place than anywhere else there aren't very many people in this room who haven't knelt in front of the old porcelain altar in the morning gazed into those shimmering waters waiting for an answer to surface say your morning prayer oh god you hardly ever realize your body is giving you a little free detox baby, that's all some days when you're sick enough your body will detox you from both ends at once that's very good for your body but it's a bitch on your nerves I'll tell you you're called upon to make a series of split second decisions and every answer must be correct there is no room for error you guess wrong just once and you and if you are like me if you were fortunate enough to have some surviving loved ones staying with you till the bitter end they stand outside the bathroom door and give you moral support and I say cut in the fire you son of a bitch why don't you go and shit on her floor it makes it hard to keep things in a spiritual balance the hardest thing to understand here is the nature of the problem it is not alcohol if alcohol were my problem I would not be here tonight I would be somewhere else baby because I don't need it I haven't had a drink since October of 1958 what do I need of this stuff but then it turns out that it's not alcohol it's something that sounds like alcohol and we talk a lot about drinking it's called alcoholism now you say it's the three little three letter suffix that makes no difference but that little three letter suffix is what makes me sick and also gives me a chance to get better the difference is just this it turns out that the thing that alcohol does different in me than it does in most people who drink it isn't what it does to me at all it's something infinitely more sly it turns out alcohol does something for me that it doesn't do for most people it almost instantly has the power to alter my perception of reality it almost instantly alters my relationship to my environment it almost instantly makes me larger and more self-contained and them smaller and less frightening. And I never had the slightest idea that it didn't happen to everybody. But that's why a few drinks makes me feel like myself. My holes are plugged. And other people don't get their holes plugged by drinking. That's why drinkers wind up running with drinkers. Who wants to run with, you know, stop after work with a new friend? Want a drink, Frank? Yeah, thanks. You want another one, Frank? No, I'm starting to feel it. When I'm in a bar at 11 o'clock at night, I want to be in there with people who understand colorful life. When someone says, Hey! Old shot of Kansas City! I want you to say, I want here a bunch of people say, Yeah! I don't want to be around some little puke who says, Why? I have to be at work at nine. What will I tell Margaret? Tell Margaret to keep you home, you sick little pukey. Yeah. Alcohol makes the world the way I wish it could be. now there's nothing wrong with that except for one thing if alcohol does this for you there's just one slight tab it slowly and surely erodes your ability to cope with reality my life begins after three drinks my life without two drinks gets worse and worse doesn't mean I don't become psychotic or crazy it's just that the negative emotions are enhanced and the positive emotions are decreased and the anxieties and irritations and as that old commercial said I know relief is just a swallow away and I want to be on the straight and narrow but god damn it I don't want to live like this some kind of a guy chained to a rock you try to do the best you can and one day you get up and those three words come out that kill people like you and me and they just say what's the use Christ's sake what's their use I'll watch it I'll control it and I fight to control it and turns out the curse of alcoholism is not what alcohol does to you it's the fact that sobriety eventually must always become untenable now that is something I never guessed because once I get the alcohol out of my system I'll make a go of it without realizing the difference between an alcohol problem and alcoholism is when you got an alcohol problem stop and drinking you're cured in alcoholism when you stop drinking you've just taken away what comfort you got and the painful end of alcoholism is sobriety and now drinking is doing something to me and it's destroying me and reality is worse and it doesn't happen the same and different in our lives some people get that surge the first drink they take some people drink for 30 years before they get that surge that's what they mean by crossing an invisible line when alcohol begins to do something for it you don't even know it but you can see it sometimes in rhetoric sometime during that year maybe you can figure it out but that's why that's how it makes the incongruity of the alcoholic sentiment sometimes you see some old fool get up and he'll say I drank for 35 years and he looks accusingly at some little snot to about 20 years old in the front row is you have to say how can you be an alcoholic you little snot and what he doesn't know is the little slot is looking up and thinking you can't be much of an alcoholic if you lasted 35 years you old son of a bitch it doesn't make any difference how long you drank it's when it began to do something for you because that's the beginning of the end Charlie some people are I've seen a number of my sponsors sponsored several of them I have a friend here tonight a periodic who gets drunk and gets off three months and knows he's well and goes again and gets out three months and goes back and goes again and in between he'd swear to take a light I'll never drink again and the thing would never move whatever it builds up and you go you go so now AA is designed to do what to make you sober to get you shaped up not at all oddly enough the function of alcoholics is on the bottom line if you can stay here long enough to understand what the hell you're here for but you have to do things before you understand them anyway as this the function of AA is to little by little break up emotional blockages that are causing you to distort your reactions to reality to little by little alter your perception of reality because no matter what I tell you If it all looks crappy to you, it's going to be crappy. But something doesn't change. That's one of the interesting things that AA seems so... How do you do it? Well, never mind. Just do it. Today, there's a great school of thought about treatment centers. When I got sober, there weren't very many treatment centers and we were trained to dislike them. And I spent a lot of years disliking treatment centers all treatment centers over the years however I've come to be a little tolerant I now like some treatment centers and I don't like some intensely and you say to people why would you want to go to a treatment center when you can come to Alcoholics Anonymous and get it for nothing you know you just want to shake them and we forget what it's like as I think about this if I were on the beach in Santa Monica tonight and I wanted to go to Catalina which is an island out of sight and there was a little a small ferry there called the SS Treatment Center with people we had coffee and food and attendance and we'll take you and he said okay what's the other deal and here are two guys skulking down the beach saying we've got an invisible boat do you want to go with us not me Jim anybody that had the right mind that had a choice and insurance would go on that treatment center I don't put them down at all for it the problem the only problem with the treatment center is this you get out just out of sight of land and they say well we're turning back now but I'm not there yet just swim like hell remember remember the comfort you had here and you start swimming and here come these two pukes in their invisible boat you want to ride in my invisible boat I ain't that sick Jim and you almost drowned and here they come again you want a ride in our boat you get in and as soon as you dry off you think this is ridiculous there's no boat here it sounds like an optical illusion what do I do better grab an oar and row except there's no oar there's nothing and I and I would dive back in Eventually they come by one more time. All right. Better grab an oar and row. You crazy bastards. And the irony is, the boat only appears after you begin to row. But no one wants to row a boat until they can see it, which makes it paradox. You have to be kind of desperate sometimes to pick up that goddamn oar when there ain't no oar. And the boat appears. And if you row long enough, the boat gets better and better and better. You wonder what you ever saw in that... young man? Cream and sugar in mine. Thank you. sorry kid when I was your age I was 15 and there's only one other thing to remember about this boat analogy you get in a good boat and it's great and you discover you don't even want to go to Catalina you want to stay in the boat and it is great and you pick up other pukes who are too dumb to row what's the matter with you come on and after a while it gets so good that you say hey man I'm sure glad I found this you put down your oar and it takes a while but gradually the boat disappears little by little you don't even notice it some people are back in the water dead before they notice it so there's really only two potentially dangerous times in sobriety one is when you're first sober and the other is all the time after that If you could just keep on your ball those two times, you're home free. But that's what AA is about. AA is not a become wonderful. No matter how hard you work this program, you will never rise above basic human being. Imperfect, emotional, some days cross, other days just so god damn wonderful you can replace maple syrup on waffles that's why they say in AA don't get too hungry or angry or lonely or tired not because they're bad things but they are perspective disorders perception disorders when you're hungry you stay alright but everybody else gets a little stupid and slow is what they get when you're angry you just want a gun to educate them you know what's the matter with you I'm going to tell you about love you selfish boom boom when you are lonely that brings out the self pity in everybody ever in the world you know just I guess they are probably all at a party somewhere but they didn't tell me. And when... Oh, I don't drink coffee, son. Nobody likes a brown-nosed kid. He's learning about AA early. Here's where you extend the hand of friendship. Some fool bites it. Thank you. Thank you. When you're tired, people really do things to you. I don't know why. I don' t know how they know you are tired but they know. I've mentioned this analogy before but I watched it happen again last Monday. I had flown in late on Sunday night from somewhere and I was tired and I got up in the morning. I got on the freeway to go to work and I had a big day and I could just see it setting up up there see the glide in the blue station wagon he's tired let's all cut that son of a bitch off I try to look rested how do they know how do we know but I'm not hungry angry or lonely or tired I stay the same but thank God you all shape up a little bit that's all That's the function of AA. It's sponsorship, it's steps, it's meetings, it' s fellowship, it's taking actions. It is not to make you wonderful at all. It is to do something that is absolutely impossible that I know, that I can think of. It is too little by little upgrade your perception of reality. Everything else little by little shapes up. Oh shit. Oh shit, yeah. And if you don't roll, that's the way it goes down. That's all right. That's alright. AA's going to hell. Wasn't this way in the old days when we were sincere? AA is the same as it has always been, I believe, since Dr. Bob and Bill sat in Akron, Ohio on June 10th, 1935 and decided to work with other people and to take actions that will help them recover from the necessity to have to drink. And that's what it boils down to where the rubber meets the road. All the slickness, all the parties, all the fun, allthe conventions, everything, they're all great. But they are adjunct to taking specific actions that will alter your perceptions and your emotions that will enable you to live in a world that is reasonably pleasant. that is why we gather meetings like this not certainly not for the food I didn't get any that's what I mean not that I could eat no, we don't gather because we need to be in this hot smoky room it's to reinforce again it's a reinforce no matter how it looks to you baby keep rowing no matter how it looks to you today whether you're above them or below them keep rowing and if you're new row when you haven't got any oar the purpose of a sponsor is to come by from time to time and say hey, you've got your oar upside down oh and that in the last analysis in my opinion is the difference between a good treatment center and a bad treatment center a bad treatment center releases people like me and says now keep it together you can make it from here a good treatment center says watch for those two pukes in an invisible boat they'll be by soon you better hop in because there ain't any other way you're going to make it there's no other way that I know that people like you and me can make to live in the world with some degree of dignity to not have to drink to feel strong to feel little by little that the psychic holes are being filled up without ever having to drink to do it then it's worth everything it took I'm glad I'm in Nebraska tonight I'm really am glad because tomorrow afternoon I won't be at the Super Bowl but I'll be in Eau Claire, Wisconsin with my little old mother and father and we'll be watching it on television and as the camera pans over my seat in the warm sunlight it's your fault you old people then I'll roll home I'm very glad that you had me here I'm sorry that you couldn't have Joelle but perhaps another time thank you