The Phenomenon of Craving and the Physical Difference – Don G.

So, a round of applause for her, please. And now it's my pleasure to introduce to you our main speaker for tonight from North Hollywood, Mr. Don G. Good evening, everyone. My name is Don Gates and I'll call it. if there is anyone here who didn't stand up, would you care to do so now? There must be some here who haven't done a solitary thing to help this convention, but have bad-wrapped all of the speakers and the program chairman. Please, I'm very impressed with the quality of this organization that went in here. our leader he left the country before the money came in. I had to discover that after I came on the program that when our treasurers disappear as they do from time to time it's called a geographic in my line of work it's called flight across state lines to avoid prosecution I was discussing before the meeting here the LA Times did a fairly big blurb on some unqualified person who wrote a book about alcoholics being capable of returning to social drinking and I felt it was a little overdue those books come out approximately every five years and in fact I was concerned enough I was almost going to write one myself those of you who have been around the time you can probably remember a number of the others where they had one called Alcoholics Anonymous Culture Cure that was about 15 or 20 years ago and then they ran foundation did one and but they're fascinating things really as near as I can tell they go around and ask alcoholics why they're drinking. Or if they are drinking, are they enjoying it? You know that's the least likely source to go to for information. We could give them a dozen reasons and we wouldn't have scratched the surface. Because in all candor if we were really honest about it, we would recognize that to ask an alcoholic why he's drinking would be similar to sticking your head under the surface of the sea and asking some passing fish why he chooses to live underwater. If he were an alcoholic fish I'm sure he would give you a reason. He would say You know, I choose to do this. I could come up and breathe air if I cared to, but I choose it because you don't get those wide temperature swings with hot and cold and you don' t have that pressure of gravity. You just kind of let go and swing with it. And if he were a fish with a few years of seniority on the program and were candid he would probably say why you fool the reason I choose to swim underwater is because I'm a fish that's how you recognize this and the same answer I think would come from an alcoholic the reason why I drink is because I'm an alcoholic that's why you recognize we're drinking but I try to tell people that they really shouldn't concern themselves too much with those books when they come out because I really doubt that any alcoholic dies as a result of reading if anything will get you drunk anything will get you dropped we were listening there to chapter three being read and quite well actually. Not bad for a cold reading, but they list the various little things that occurred to the Founding Fathers to put in the program, but almost all of us could add many other things to it because the persistence of the illusion the determination to prove that we're different is astonishing. I don't know why because i was listening to it there tonight i remembered that on one occasion i have no idea what it was but i had been sober for a period of time and i read an article in a newspaper that they had found that the reason that we suffered such horrible hangovers as a result of drinking was water imbalance in the cells and that the cure for this was he takes salt before the, and during the evening. You know, and I thought, isn't that remarkable? How simple, almost as a biblical ring. The salt of the earth. And I started to wave and then when I ventured forth once more in pursuit of this grape, I remembered that and I went down to the drugstore and bought a large bottle of salt tablets. And the first night, I had one drink. Took four salt tablets and went to bed. And it worked. Woke up the next morning, eye like a hawk, hand like a rocky crag, steady. Next weekend I think I had two drinks and eight salt tablets. Same result, and I thought isn't this remarkable. What happened to science rock? Pity the poor people in AA tonight who don't know this magic cure. The following weekend I went on what might colloquially be described as a bitch. I don't remember much of it except that when I lifted my head where I had been genuflected over the toilet bowl, I looked up and saw an empty bottle of salt tablets. I also noticed that there was an infestation brine around my nostrils. So if there are any young intellectuals with further experimentation, you can forget that one. It increases the saline content of your vomit, but other than that nothing really. Now the difficulty with our drinking at least in the early stages is that it is difficult to pinpoint our problems, at least limit them, through alcoholism. We tend to come into conflict with society and in order to do that you must have the participation of at least one other member of society and you usually can blame him for the situation and in most instances he is at least in part responsible like I used to say if he hadn't made a left turn I wouldn't have hit him which is true but if I haven't been an unguided missile coming down the street I might have seen he was making that turn much sooner or if he hadn't said what he said about our beloved president I wouldn't have a broken nose which again was probably correct but if I had not been bombed he might not have made his point quite so tellingly and as a result it takes something to force us to focus in on just the drinking alone and I have told this story, in fact many asked me to tell others. It's a strange thing it doesn't seem to matter what sort of a talk you give. I have given talks in which I have strung together pearl-like jewels with insight on which you could build a life and all the audience ever remembers is some story in which you made an utter booby yourself. And this particular occasion was where I first gained insight into the nature of my drinking. See, I drank largely to relax and on this particular occasion I've been relaxed about five days and I awoke from a fearful dream of hellfire damnation brimstone imps of the perverse were stabbing at me was straight from Dante's Inferno and I was utterly drenched of perspiration. I remember staggering to my feet and thinking, what is wrong here? Is drinking having something to do with this? Fortunately, however, I was soon able to survey the situation, and I saw that I had passed, no, I had nodded off on the couch. My family having retired at some earlier time to wherever it was they went in the evening. And from this couch there emanated a thin spire of smoke and I quickly realized what had occurred. I had nodded off with a cigarette either in my hand or mouth and it had fallen upon that plastic covering that conceals the matting and it burnt through into that packing sticking in there and having no oxygen with which to take flame, the embers had just slowly spread during the course of the evening until they covered the entire bed. And I realized with great relief there was nothing wrong with my drinking. I'd merely been barbecued. so commending myself for my perspicacity I went out into the kitchen came back with a butcher knife well first actually to be honest I went up and got a pitcher of water and tried to pour it into that tiny little hole I produced a rather spectacular cascade on the carpet but a little else and so I went to the kitchen again came back with a butcher knife and slashed the couch from one end to the other opened it up exposing the reddish coals and then I did indeed subdue them with a cooling bomb of the water and it achieved its purpose but it also filled the room with acrid black smoke that's been nigh on a half a century ago and yet I can still remember it standing there looking down at that slashed and sodden mass and realizing that almost to a certainty my wife was going to notice it. She was a very keen-eyed woman. There was little that passed her can around that house, I'll tell you. And though she was a good woman, loving, supportive woman who would do nothing to assail her husband's leadership in the house, do nothing to emasculate him verbally or emotionally, but on the other hand, in moments of stress, she would say things that were unkind. Cruel even. Things which later she would deeply regret. And I wanted to spare her this remorse. But the only thing I could think to do was to take the couch out of the house. I realized that she might vaguely remember there was something on that side of the room but out of sight out of mind the only thing is it isn't easy to move a bed couch by yourself even when you should not be checking into a sanitarium but with that Herculean strength that comes only to the panic stricken alcoholic I somehow was able to heft that brute onto my shoulder and head out the front door. At that time, we lived on the second floor of an apartment building that had a very small porch with columns on it. I remember I virtually beat my brains out trying to make the turn caroming off those posts. Bum, bum, bum. but then when I reached the bottom of the stairs I realized that like Bobby Burns' mouse foresight had not been my strong suit there is virtually nowhere that one can conceal a couch in the typical apartment patio and so I'm standing there legs quivering I should be in a hospital but I'm moving furniture and I remembered a creek about five miles away so I lurched to my car and I hefted this monstrous thing on top of the car and got in and proceeded to drive to my selected place of repose. Now all I've ever really wanted in life is dignity. I have not cavilled a disaster if I could face it with dignity but as proceeded down the street, by this time it was 637 something, daylight anyhow and there were people now standing at bus stops with lunch pails and briefcases. I have no idea by the way how they can stay up that late but if you check they're out there. And as I went down the streets I noticed that They watched my progress. Their heads turned, eyes agape. Jaws extended. I thought by golly it doesn't take much to draw a crowd in California. until I chanced to pass in front of an auto dealership that had a very dusty window that acted like a mirror, and I caught a glimpse of what it was that they were watching. Here came a car down the street, driven by a man with about a week's growth of beard, Natalie attired in a bathrobe. and on top of his car rested a couch which previously had lacked oxygen enough to take flame but now moving down the street the wind was going through it like a billows and the flames were 30-40 feet in the air And when I ultimately returned, I found it absolutely impossible to think of some way of blaming my sleeping wife and children for having imperiled their lives as they had and it was a lesson that dawned on me I'm not going to carry on in that vein just let us say subsequently I was to move beyond social drinking In fact, at the terminal stages of my drinking I wasn't even coming into conflict with society anymore. How much trouble can you get into in a hotel room with a bottle of wine and a copy of Playboy? The maid doesn't step on you, you're reasonably safe, the only thing is that you can't move, dying in there. And then of course you come into AA. You know it's the oddest thing I think I have a very difficult time, more so today in many ways than I did in the beginning, imagining how it is that newcomers identify with us when we tell these terrible stories. I mean the classic speaker gets up and spends 50 minutes denouncing himself, flagellating himself with his own inadequacies so there isn't a shard of flesh on his back. And then about five minutes before the closing he says, and then I joined Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean it's a voice dropping off too. You know and they never bothered to point out to the newcomer that they didn't see these traits in themselves while they were doing it. I mean, from their own lips come the admission they were a liar, drunkard, thief, profligate, and ne'er-do-well. And they'll say, and we're all alike. How can the newcomers identify with that? The newcomer is a liar. He's a liar or a drunkard or a thief, profligat, and never do well. Not because he wants to be, but because that is what alcohol does to us. I am not of the school that stresses, not that I quarrel or quibble about it, but I don't stress the idea that we are different than the non-alcoholic. I'm more of the book type where it says the only thing that distinguishes us from a non- alcoholic is the phenomenon of craving that results in taking the first drink. Other than that, nothing! We don't have any new emotions that the non-alcoholics don't have. There have been no new emotions invented in the last 10 millennia. I mean if you wake up in the middle of the night feeling inadequate sometimes that's not because you're an alcoholic, it's because you are human. I'm sure the Caesars, the Pharaohs awoke sometimes in the middle of a night thinking what am I doing with this stupid laurel wreath you know I'm no teaser. Now you can get trying to get by. It is imperative for me to remember that I am physically different than other people. If I thought that my alcoholism could in any way be managed by discipline, control, determination, I'd still be out there fighting it Because I'm a very disciplined type. If I make up my mind to do something, assuming it's within my prowess to achieve, I will generally achieve it. I had to quit smoking here about 10 years ago. I kept it up two to three packs a day for 35 years until I burned my lungs up. The camels will do that too. I know that one or two people here still smoke, but if I could handle it like you, I'd be doing it too. I had the... I had quit and And by the way, there's nothing to it really once you're ready. It's like stopping drinking. You get down on your knees and bark like a dog for a month and... I waited till Adam Manster to repeat emphysema. I don't believe in rushing into things wildly. but as I say I'm a disciplined type I could hardly go half a block when I quit and I celebrated my 60th birthday a few years ago running a marathon 26 miles that is not an admirable thing it's all about discipline willpower is something that alcoholics have a phenomenal store of. Occasionally, non-alcoholics will say about us, you folks are lacking in willpower. You know why they say that? They think we want to stay sober. If they had any idea what our true goal was, they would stand in rapt awe at attention and our dedication. What do they have they will pursue to the gates of insanity or death, huh? Now it is imperative for me to remember that I am physically different than other people and to talk to me about having this. You know what? It's strange with other types of disorders of this type, people don't say to a diabetic, Now look, I asked you, I'm not asking you to give up sugar. I'm out of blue nose What I suggest is you take two or three candy bars and then not go into a coma I don't You know, I've mentioned about that smoking thing. It has nothing to do with AA, but in a way it's half typical. No one ever asks you about your smoking the questions they ask you about your drinking. In all the years that I've smoked, no one ever came up to me and said, Don, why did you start smoking? Was it lack of self-esteem? Did you have a hole in your stomach through which wind blew? Were your parents smokers? I mean, nobody ever asked such nutty questions as that. Everybody knows why you start smoking. You're about 13, 14, 15, somewhere in there, you know when the testosterone rushes hit and you, the madness that they call adolescence you want to look grown up, mannish by gosh a smoke, but that's what grown up mannished men do the fact that when you pass by a junior high school and see a kid lighting up he does not look adult and mannisch, put it out punk no but, he doesn't know that in fact if any of you younger people wonder why I started that all you would have to do is watch a motion picture made in the 30s and 40s. In those years, everyone smoked. Every heroic, manly figure smoked. Paul Henry lit two at once, gave one to a lady, and got laid just like that. And you asked me why I started smoking. And in all the years I smoked also, and I imagine this is true here, those of you who still smoke, has anyone ever come up to you and said, why, my goodness Bob it's only 10 in the morning and you're already smoking. Do you smoke when you get out of bed in the mornings? Do you smok when you're alone? Do you smok when you are nervous? I mean they don't ask questions like that. They know that because 10 people out of 10 who start smoking and pursue it for more than a few weeks are going to become hooked and they will smoke about every 15 minutes until they quit or die, whichever comes first. But with booze, because only one person in ten who drinks becomes hooked, the other nine can't understand it. And they ask those idiotic questions. It may sound, by the way, like I'm putting down alcohol or cigarettes. I'm not, I guarantee. Everyone talks of the horrors of overpopulation And yet the tobacco and the alcohol industry are the only ones really trying to do something about it. I wouldn't go there. Now, as the poet says, I divorced old barren reason from my bed and took the daughter of the vine, the spouse. and I would not be so lacking in gallantry as to criticize her just because she threw me out. That's funny, I don't know why. You know, how dominant in our life becomes alcohol? Something just flashed through that reminded me of once I was in college and I was early on and I had not yet had any significant problems or any major problems with alcohol. Nothing that a night in jail wouldn't cure. And yet we were asked in a class that had to do with literature, oral interpretation of literature or something, to make a recording at the start of the class and one at the end to see if we had learned anything. and I recognizing that what I was going to put down would be forever memorialized for posterity I selected carefully something to read and of all of the material in the English language that I might have chosen I picked the epilogue of the Shropshire Lad which for those who haven't read it or forgotten it A. Hausman wrote this book and it had to do with a very gloomy verse about the youth dying young and all sorts of things. It was supposedly written by a fellow named Terence and his friends say to him that how gloomy this is. Come, you know, sing a tune to pipe, you lad. And he responds saying why if it's dancing you would be there's brisker pipes than poetry. Say for what were hop yards meant? Why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many appear of England brooms lively or liquor than the muse. That too has been almost 50 years ago and I still remember it. I don't do that. Anyhow, ultimately of course I came under the program i didn't get off to a miraculous start i hear other people say i never had to do any experimentation i allowed others to do it for me i'm proud to say i've never asked anyone to do anything i wasn't willing to do myself people would say to me don what you have to do is to get more active work with the newcomers And I would drag them in off the barstools, ready or not. I still had trouble. And they said, Don, you have to get into your inventory. And so I would take a rod, reel, and pencil and go up the stream of consciousness looking for character defects. And I'd still have trouble. And they'd say, You have to be more spiritual. So I would pursue God up and down the byways of the San Fernando Valley. And I still have troubles. and then about a quarter century ago I decided to quit drinking haven't had any trouble since but I did have a hard time with the higher power it seems absurd to me now you know, it is odd when we come around all of our intellectual cripples I remember sitting in a club one time and a newcomer decided to lay the bomb on us he said I think I should tell you gentlemen I do not believe in God I was about to give him 30 minutes of William James and this dumb guy who was sitting with us said oh that's okay fella I don't believe in the God you don't belive in either and i thought that's a silly remark but the more i reflected on it the more real wisdom there was in that if with this entire universe as raw material you create a power greater than yourself that has attributes that you cannot accept chances are no right thinking person is going to accept them either. All that shows is you have a very poor imagination. But I was a very devout atheist when I got here. Believed in no God with a capital M. Worship. And I had a terrible time. I can remember the Lord's Prayer at the end of the meeting. This was extremely difficult because here was a quote from a specific religious text. I not only wouldn't say it, I wouldn't lower my eyes or head well, you said it. I stood erect, eyes gazing about the room, trying to see if there was anyone else with enough human dignity not to engage in such juju. If I saw such a one, I would approach him after the meeting and spake unto them, sometimes saying, would you like to go get a drink? And they usually said, yeah. So I decided to translate it into something that I could understand and accept. And I did. I translated it, which when you consider the author to which it's usually prescribed might be deemed somewhat presumptuous, but I translated. The only thing is mine didn't scan. Mine began whereas. Went down a page now therefore, and it didn't have the ring of the original, and I also had to go like the dickens in order to finish at the same time you did. And it dawned on me one night, why don't you say it the way it's written and understand it the way you translated it. And it was just like a light went off. I thought, good Lord, could that be what they mean by God as you understand it? See, AA is very difficult for the pseudo-intellectuals. You know, even though they have the steps numbered to help us with the sequence. People with degrees after their names won't see it for some time. i also have the excuse that i come from the backwoods of oregon where you're either a devout pentecost or an atheist there's no half measures about it i mean there you're neither hot or cold for seeing you but lukewarm the lord god jehovah skews you out of his mouth it was harder for me they know i remember i had an uncle somebody once said to him do you believe in infant baptism and he said believe in it i've seen it done. I probably shouldn't mention this after the reverend's fine invocation, but Saturday night, I had another uncle about the only joy he got in life was being saved. And whenever the revival would come through the woods, he would go down to the tent and be reclaimed again. And one time he got so caught up in the fervor of it that when the minister said, is there anyone in the audience that has ever had relations with a goat? My uncle raised his hand. The minister called him forward and said, brethren, tell the assembled group about your intimate relations with the goats. My uncle said, oops, I'm sorry, I thought you said goat. So the program didn't come easy to me. I used to read the scriptures, actually, not looking for inspiration, but in order to have material with which to flagellate the Christians in those barroom discussions. Ultimately, I gave it up, you know, because I found other than our leader here tonight. No one else reads the Bible. You know, you would think if you really thought that the creator of this universe took time out to write a book, everybody would read it, but nobody does. And so I found you don't have to read it. You just make it up. You know? You walk into a bar, you sit down beside some young lady and say, blessed is she who welcomed a stranger unto her bed. Deuteronomy 917. You know, I mean, when does she know Deuteronomy 9.17? But you've already got a spiritual leg up, as it were. Maybe that's how Jim Baker got his start. But anyhow, the program was very difficult for me and the first real emotional insight that I got into it was an episode I had come onto the program and married a beautiful young woman and we did I remember how delighted we were when she got her first birthday, because then we were already married and she was pregnant, and then we could become emotionally involved as well. Until then, we'd been getting by on prayer and lust. and we had the great joy of having a son who it seemed to me had been born into my age with my other children whose lives I mistakenly thought I had ruined it turned out it was quite the contrary. But with them, I had been busy trying to get ahead, you know, driving. With this little one, I was like a grandfather almost. And with the others, they would come up and say, Daddy, Daddy will you play with us? And I'd say, get away kid, I'm reading a book on how to be a good father. But, with this one,I had time and I enjoyed it. And the occasion that meant so much to me was he liked to play outside. He was about a year old at this time. He learned to walk and he loved to get out in the lawn and play. And I was going to take him out, but it was a rather brisk day. In order to get him out into the cool air, I had to garb him properly. And so I was putting him into a play suit. Now if any of you haven't put a one-year-old into a place of recently. Let me describe the phenomenon. Their fingers grow to enormous sharpness that pierce the lining of it. You know, you try to put their hand down the sleeve and they say, put your damn thumb down. You don't want to play outside. Do you want to fly outside? And they kick and throw. But finally, through brute force, I got him garbed took him out and stood him in the middle of the green board was he humbly grateful for the good that I had brought to bear in his life not as a result of his planning not even with his cooperation but over his stout resistance I had bought this to bear in his light was he grateful he was not I swear if he could have snapped his fingers he would have done it he kind of swaggered off across the lawn you know his attitude was about time things were breaking for me he was taking credit for it and it disturbed me it really did because I I identified You see, because a little child, an infant, without a power greater than themselves would be dead within a week. They are utterly, absolutely dependent upon a power greater than themself. They don't know what constitutes food, nourishment. They don' t know how to prepare it. They don''t know how to eat it. They would die of starvation within a week. protect themselves from the elements, the storms. They don't know how to put a roof over their head or shield themselves. They would die of exposure in less than a week. They don' t know what things in their little environment are dangerous or hurt. They do not attend their wounds when they get them. When they rush toward a hot stove and you stop them, they don't realize they're being lovingly protected. They're being thwarted. If they break free and touch it, then they, oh father, father, why hast thou forsaken me? could it talk to my mind because i realized that every good thing in my life had been preceded by a period of preparatory pain growth is painful birth is painful and that it was necessary sometimes that we have our the steel of our character tempered in the fires before we're worthy of having something good come but we can't be told that and there are times you know I realized that I was like that I'd been thrown out of all kinds of relationships and here I was in AA with a beautiful son a wife a lot of friends back in my profession and there were times when I was snapping my fingers you know and I learned at that point something that I think I still practice and something I would certainly recommend to each of you when things aren't going right when you seem to be limited or enduring unnecessary pain try to relax Allow your fingers to go down and slide through that place. Because I believe now that our father, just like my son's father, wants nothing but the best for us. The only thing, of course, that ruins that story and why I haven't told it in years is that when this son reached puberty, he became agnostic and began to doubt me. he's now 24 years old 23 years old he's sitting right here and I'm humiliating him ha ha ha gotcha kid come up the hard way like I did but it's true it meant a great deal to me that by the way doesn't mean that everything works out the way you think it should work out because you stop drinking the world is not going to rise up on its tippy toes in order to avoid upsetting our tender psyche the world remains the old world yet people are going to abandon you fail to appreciate you people you love are going die all the things that flesh your air to are going to happen to you no two-legged beast who ever got out of the forest has missed torment and pain why should we things will happen that you cannot conceive of after a number of years back right in the midst of the testosterone rush, I found myself and my son. We were batching it, and I thought no good can come of this but break my heart in two. I wish I could tell you that as a result of our wonderful programs he and I were able to communicate one-to-one. But any man who says he talks to his pubescent son one-on-one lies about many things. Of course you don't talk to adolescents. Adolescence is a form of insanity. They are suffering the absolute agony of the damned. The pain of youth is horrible, horrible. And they have no words of communication. They can't speak. They don't have any command of the language and they're just dying. Built like Greek gods if they get a pimple their life is ruined. My daughters were even worse. They would come home you know know, in tears. And I'd say, what's wrong? And they'd say to that boy, what did he do? He looked at me. What do you mean he looked at you? How did he look at you funny? What do you means? Funny, lewd, lured, aggressive? What kind of funny? Funny! Funny! No. They lack the power of speech. They have records where they amplify primordial grunts of some sort. Of course, I didn't speak to him. He lived in the front of the house. I lived in career. The only time I used to see him, I'd throw money in the hall and when he came out, ha! So we survived and he's graduating from University of California, San Diego this year. and after a period of bouncing around batching I met my beautiful wife here who came in where angels might have feared to tread she had 20 years sobriety I don't monkey with newcomers but she came on to the program so young that she is still like a child bride to me and yet she seems to like me and that's very good she doesn't object to old age creeping on her at night and that's better And in around about that same time, it seems my professional life went to hell and I grunted under a weary load and remembered back, you know, you have to be at least contented to some extent. And when I first came into AA, I remember being rejected in law firms because they didn't understand the whimsy of our life. I would tell them parts of my story and instead of realizing they were the source of innocent merriment, as happens in AA meetings, they stood aghast. I remember telling some fellow, I didn't want him to love me for my sake. I'd outgrown the need for human acceptance. But to the glory of your name and so that I would get a job. And I told him, you know, a little icebreaker type about how I got drunk and threw my mother-in-law down the steps or something until after I got a double hernia. And he didn't giggle a gig titter a tit. He just kind of stared. And I thought, I guess I'm being too subtle. So I told them about the time I was in four-point restraint and vomited straight up. And I got a reaction. And finally, I said to him, I could see I wasn't penetrating and I said, look, I'm not asking you to recommend me. He said, recommend you? Recommend you? I wouldn't offer your name for consideration. No attorney in the history of this nation has ever done the things you've done or had happen to him the things that have happened to you. I suggest you forget the law. Go into the countryside. Try to regain your health and honest labor. heard it. He said, when we send members of this law firm into a courtroom, they represent strength in the face of adversity, honor, tenacity. Send you? Boy, I wasn't ready for that. I was not ready. If I could have slid like a serpent across the floor, out under the door to the nearest bar to drown the shame of that in that bottomless bottle like I always did, I'd have done it. But I thought, no, if I do it, he'll be right. And I won't give him the satisfaction when at the old 6300 Club in Los Angeles drank coffee at him. About ten years later that guy flipped out, cold sober, took off with Czech protector one of the secretaries and went to Europe. He disgraced the law firm, the legal profession, he disgraced his wife, his family, the city of Pasadena. I mean it was one of most beautiful pyrotechnic displays of misconduct I have ever seen and he did it cold sober. On the other hand about six or seven years ago the governor of our state called me and told me he was appointing me to the appellate bench as far as I know the highest judicial office ever held by a sober member of AA, at least in California. You know what happens now when I enter a courtroom and members of that law firm are there? They stand up and they remain standing until I tell them they can be seated. All power to the powerless. And yet I haven't changed all that much. I don't drink, of course, which is the greatest possible change that can come into the life of an alcoholic. I've learned to laugh at myself, which, by the way, if you don't learn to do, will cause you to miss the greatest joke in your own generation. I've had the pleasure of sitting on the Supreme Court of our state, seven of us in our black robes, six deadly dignified and one just giggling. because AA is now the major focus of my life it even works its way you know we because we talk in a certain way we have a litany that we understand when we meet in grocery stores we drop words you know your personal easy does it and when I find myself working those in every time I write a decision if I should decide to publish it it appears in every law library in the United States and I slip in AA remarks sometimes You know, I used to talk in a pitch. I'd talk about what a good father I was. Every Sunday, I'd get up and take my children out for a drunk drive. I wrote a decision a while back that said, Appellate, one morning we'll opt for a Sunday drunk drive at a newspaper's call. We also say things like, his complaint sounds in tort, or it sounds in contract, or it sounds inequity. I don't know why we say that, except Blackstone did it a few centuries ago, and everybody said, that's a grabber. I wrote a decision that said, no point would be served by reciting a poet's complaint in detail. Suffice it to say that it sounds in self-pity and resentment, but states no cause of action known to the law. I filed one the other day that said in law as in life, half measures avail us nothing. my colleagues say where do you get those expressions I don't know they just because when you come to an A rather than as the newcomer thinks life ends joy ceases it is not one long walk down a dark dank tunnel or climb up an arid mount carrying your cross of sobriety. This is where life begins. I have done, as far as I am aware, everything sober that I ever fantasized about and I have some crazy thoughts. Delirium is a disease of the night and I want to live and enjoy. That doesn't make much sense to you young people because you know you're immortal. In fact, one of my kids even said to me once, you know, Dad, if I should ever die, what the hell do you mean? Yes, punk. It's not a hypothesis. In reality, I'm staring at it. I'd given up the thought of suicide. How much time would I really save when you come right down to it? See, I want to know every priceless moment that remains to me. even the dirty gut-twisting days and there are going to be those we don't get many days you know what are we a lot of three score and ten seventy years multiply 70 by 365 you get a very small figure about twenty five thousand now that isn't very much somebody gave you $25,000 said you had to make it last I got your traffic by the handful wadded up flush it down the toilet even though you can get money back but a day you will never get back the priceless days that we have we will never give back I think I hate more about my drinking that than anything else. The days that I lost, on the nod, stuporous, drunk, or sick, hung over, hospitalized, or caged like an animal because I did something illegal and society rubbed my nose in it, are hostile and resentful, getting ready, justifying the next one. You know, and I don't want to do that anymore. These days are so rare. You know, I was giving a talk up someplace when the torchlight parade was coming through L.A. a few years ago, and the leader said, after the meeting, we're all going down to Rosemead Boulevard to see the Torchlight Parade passed because it's a once-in-a-lifetime event. I said, hell, everything is a once in a lifetime event. This moment, this moment, right now, tonight, this is a once in a Lifetime event that we should ruin it by being angry or hostile or taking each other's inventory or our own even. And the way we criticize each other is astounding from where once we came and where we are. It'd be like saying, yes, Lazarus was raised from the dead but I noticed he still has athlete's foot. Now this program is about being born again, in essence. Free at last, as the hymn says. Free at least. Free at best, great God almighty, free at last. That's who we are. We can do anything we want. It's like some god set forth a feast of experience and said, take what you want, and then pay for it. So where you find out whether you want to repeat it or not. Now this is the time if there's any injustice that you would like to correct any noble thing you would like to do, now is the time to do it in the tomb no one raises their hand for righteousness there's something tender loving, gentle blue, blurred now's the time for that too, the poet says the grave, it is a fine and private place but none, I think, do there embrace now this is it if I could do anything it would be not with the power that the state of california gave me wisely or unwisely but as a result of the experience i have garnered in my years in aa i declare that life is now in session