The Physical Allergy and the Illusion of Control – Don G.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Don Gates, an alcoholic. It is a mixed pleasure being here tonight. It's been, I would assume, nine years or more ago that I last had occasion to speak here. not because of any declaration of persona non grata, I don't believe. It was more because I'd gone through a domestic separation about eight or so years ago and as is often true with AA couples, it pays to divide up the meetings along with the other community property lest you... Lest you become involved in foreign entanglements. And in our particular division, she got the Palm Springs Roundup and the Pacific Group. And I got the Reseda speakers meeting in the nest. But I am here and I'm delighted to see the progress this group has made. You know, unlike our first two speakers who deplore and find discomfort in the phenomenon of pitching, I, as I heard a fellow say the other night have always been fascinated by the sound of my own voice delivered in the presence of others as a consequence I have been speaking in Alcoholics Anonymous drunk and sober for 30 years and in those early days when, like a good scientist, I would go forth and test a hypothesis from time to time. I was ultimately led to give it up, among other reasons, because of the changes that would occur while I was gone. During the first couple of years that I was speaking, before my first slip I was frequently prone to tell a story about an Eskimo who came and saved a person and everyone around AA at that time used to talk about Don's Eskimos story and I went out for a couple of beers and when I came back a year later they were talking about Bobby Earl's Eskomos story And I resented that because that was my story. I had read it in Reader's Digest. And that was enough to give me a signal, but on the last one, I think, I had shortly before venturing into the investigatory pit again, I had happened to be introduced to a toothless con man who was trying to cage people around the old 6300 club and in fact the time I met him he was attempting to score off a wealthy member at that time I had the ability to prognosticate people's success or failure on the program and I realized that here indeed was one of those who had gone too far and could not possibly make it back. And when I returned from my experimental phase, I discovered that Bangashi was the secretary of a little meeting over at the Ohio Street group and was being given a certain amount of notoriety and that it should ever have come to this. I vowed I would never drink again. No telling what form of heresy might arise in my absence if I were to go forth again. But we, I became quite active the last time back and for a period of time your founder and I had meetings going he on the west end and I down in the Hollywood area where I was then living and we used to attend each other's meetings mine was on a Monday night and his was Tuesday he was the hereditary secretary of the meeting at that time I remember he was speaking at this little meeting that I had down there in Hollywood and he was talking about how he had worked hard all day and the night before and how he was always striving to deal with these sick people that he was involved with and who came to him and that he did it day and night despite his feelings because when he went to bed at night, finally at two or three in the morning a little voice would whisper, Clancy, you are worth saving. So I was giving the secretary's announcements and I pointed out that we all had our load to bear that I had worked very hard all that day over a hot courtroom and had made coffee without aid and now I had to clean up after this meeting and when I finally got things all done I was going to have to drive clear out to Santa Monica at two in the morning to stand outside this cuckoo bird's house and say, Clancy, you are worth saving. and he was and he is and he has done it without any help from me I have a feeling that though I ran into a number of people that I haven't seen in some time here that the vast majority of this group probably has not caught too many of my monologues and no little or nothing about my background and I have no intention of revealing it I thought it perhaps might be appropriate to fall back on certain little introductory stories that I ordinarily don't tell unless I'm speaking out of state, where people haven't been subjected to my message. because I have opted here in recent years to stress the physical part of our disorder not because I have any quarrel at all with the people who stress the emotional or spiritual parts of it but it was vitally important and remains so for me to remember that no matter how well I cleanse my stream of consciousness, no matter how well I come to grips with my dealings with my fellow men and the other members of my tribe, I will still never be able to take a drink. My difficulty in large measure was just the opposite of... No, that's not true. My difficulties were the same, but the manner in which I manifested them or responded to them was different. See, I don't think alcoholics have any emotional or psychic disorders that are not the common lot of all mankind. The seven deadly sins are a generalized collection of shortcomings. They don't apply merely to the alcoholic. We all have fears and anxieties. It's simply that we respond to them in different fashions. We, alcoholics, have to do something about them. The non-alcoholics do not. See, they can live their entire lives out clinging, clutching to their bosom the dubious luxuries of resentment and self-pity as our book characterizes them because nothing ever happens to them if they don't change. All they are subject to are lockjaw ulcers. No one has ever been arrested for driving while pissed off. One has yet to be booked for being a common mope, whining and disorderly. They don't have to change, we do. Not because we want to. Few of us would cross the street if we thought it would make us feel better. Because we wouldn't want to give them the satisfaction. I can hurt just as long as you can. And we are, as the non-alcoholic are, quite unwilling to give up a lifetime of failure without a struggle. And I do not therefore quarrel with the fact that we have all sorts of work to do on our emotions and our psyches after we get here. but it was vitally important for me to stress the physical part of it because I never, well in other words, I think George, our first speaker did it and I can remember years ago just standing in awe of listening to Clancy when he would talk about how when the going got tough, he split. He would take off and go to strange cities and abandon responsibilities. This was totally beyond my ability. I would think, what courage. How could one possibly flee from a trial or a tribulation? I couldn't do that. I simply could not run from anything. I had to finish anything that I set out to do. And this does not mean that our underlying problems are different. Nearly the way we respond to them is different. I was too terrified to run. I couldn't conceive of anyone being bold enough to flee a town to end up in a strange city unacquainted with anyone I knew what would happen if I did that I would starve I have told my babies when they are worried about getting jobs I tell them don't worry about it no one has starved in California since 1932 but thousands upon thousands have died of alcoholism so don't hurry and that is good advice they take it and it is always true but I know it wouldn't happen to me if I was unemployed for three days I would starve I visualize the scene from time to time I come home walking the streets in search of honest labor I visualize it in my mind even I'm in my Hickey Freeman suit with my briefcase beside my swimming pool and my children rush up to me with bloated bellies and dark circled eyes crying bread, bread daddy bread for the love of God so the idea of flight is just beyond my comprehension I am a dedicated and determined and self-disciplined person if discipline would allow me to deal with my alcoholism I would have dealt with it years ago I have trophies on my wall that I've got as a result of racing motorcycles in the desert after I was age 50 I got through the male menopause with Steve McQueen I had to quit smoking because two or three packs of camels for 35 years will do things to you and I had quit smoking a while back I could especially walk I've now run three marathons slowly if you were to witness it you might not be charitable enough to call my locomotion running. It might give new meaning to the word trudge. But if discipline will do it, I will get it done. In fact, the greatest things I have learned on this program is the ability to say, I'm sorry, I can't do it. Or to quit an enterprise once I have undertaken it. In the past, if I made up my mind this is the way I'm going, It didn't matter whether it became apparent. I was on a collision course with disaster. I remained on it. I remember in one of my running business, I can remember the first time it dawned on me that you could stop short of your goal if you had a stress fracture. So it is important for me to remember that my emotions per se have nothing to do with what is classified in our book as the one characteristic we have in common with each other that we do not share with the balance of mankind, and that's the phenomenon of craving that results from taking the first drink. By the way, I think we are all really very determined and self-disciplined types. Sometimes non-alcoholics will say of us, you lack willpower, you alcoholics. Do you know why they say that? it's because they think we want to stay sober. Isn't that crazy? If they had the slightest insight into our true goal, they would stand in awe of our dedication and perseverance. So it has always been important for me to remember this physical aspect I can hear more recently my talks have been sort of directed to that, if any of you have had to go into them. But I should, as I say, because I haven't spoken here in such a long time, perhaps go back to some of the old classic stories that I do use because one of the first, there were two aspects, and I'll try to hit them if I can remember them, but there were three aspects in my drinking career that were sort of turning points for me. and one was the realization that the conflicts or the problems that I was experiencing were not related to outside people's activities. In other words, in our early stages of our drinking, rarely does anything happen which brings you in conflict with society that does not involve society and therefore other members of it. third people have to contribute now as a result I could rationalize each thing that had happened to me in other words I could say if he hadn't made a left turn I wouldn't have hit him which was true but if I had not been an unguided missile coming down the street I might have seen he was making the left turn a block earlier or if he hadn't said what he said about our beloved president I wouldn'T have a broken nose which once again was probably true but if I had not been smashed he might not have made his point that is tellingly but I was always able to justify it and finally an incident arose that I had used as an example when it was the first time it dawned on me that I could be having problems that did not relate to other people where I could distribute at least a portion of the blame in this particular example that I have used in years past, and occasionally at convention-type things. It occurred one morning. You see, I drank largely to relax. And on this particular occasion, I'd been relaxed about four or five days. and I awakened from a fitful sleep utterly drenched with perspiration frugally coming out of a nightmare of Dante's Inferno into the purgues hellfire and damnation and I was utterly wet and shaken and I staggered to my feet wondering what had happened something obviously was wrong and I had no idea what it could be, but I looked around and I saw that I was in the front room. My family apparently having retired to wherever it was, they went at an earlier hour and I obviously had just passed out, I had nodded off in the phone room lying upon a couch. And apparently I also had had at the time a cigarette either in my hand or mouth and it had fallen upon the covering, the plastic covering over this bed couch and had burnt its way through the outer layer and gotten into the matting or the tacking where lacking oxygen to take fire it had simply spread in coal-like succession of embers until the whole bed was one concealed a set of flaming coals, or coals not flaming. And this was a great relief to me to discover this because I knew then there was nothing wrong with my drinking. I had simply been barbecued. So I moved to do something about it and I went into the kitchen, came back with a pitcher of water and to this tiny hole from which a spiral of smoke was arising I tried to pour the pitcher of water succeeding only in producing a rather remarkable cascade under the rug so I could see more dramatic measures were called for I went back into the kitchen, returned with a butcher knife and slashed the couch open spread it apart and did indeed soothe the embers with this bomb of the cooling water but it produced an acrid black smoke and though this has been 40 some years ago I can still remember standing there eyes of water looking down at this slashed and sodden mass and realizing that almost to a certainty my wife was going to notice it she was a very sharp eyed woman there was little that passed her ken around the house and though she was a good woman and certainly would do nothing to assail her husband's masculinity there were times when in stress she would forget herself and say things that were cruel unkind assaulted even like she might say you drunken son of a bitch you did it again and this would bring her great remorse later and I wanted to spare her this and so I I thought what will I do well it occurred the only thing that occurred to me was I will get the couch out of the house I mean she might vaguely remember there had been something on that side of the room but out of sight out of mind And, well, it's not the easiest thing to move a bed couch under any condition. Certainly not when you should be entering a sanitarium. With that Herculean strength that comes only to the panic-stricken alcoholic, I somehow managed to get that on my shoulder and head it out the front door. At that time we were living on the second floor of an apartment building that had a very small patio, I mean a small balcony with columns and I almost beat myself to death caroming off the post trying to make a turn. Ultimately I succeeded in reaching the patio and foresight is not your strong suit at that time and I hadn't realized how few places there are to conceal a couch in the typical apartment complex and so I'm standing there should be in a hospital instead I'm holding a large item of furniture legs that tremble and I remember a creek about five miles away so I lurched to my car and heaved this item upon the roof and set out to drive to the place of abandonment I had selected. Now, all I really wanted was dignity. I didn't carp or cavil a disaster really if I could face it with dignity. But as I was driving down the street, I'd noted that by this time it was 6, 6.30 in the morning, daylight, and there were people out on the street, standing at the bus stops with their lunch pails and briefcases. I have no idea how they can stay up that late, but they're out there coming. And as I would drive down the street, I noted that all of the heads turned to follow my progress, eyes and mouth a gate. And I thought, my God, it doesn't take much to draw a crowd in California, I can feel that, until I chanced the pass in front of an auto dealership that had a very dusty window that acted like a mirror and I got a picture of what it was they were looking at. Here down the street came a car driven by a man, Natalie attired in a bathrobe with almost a week's worth of whiskers. And on his car he had a couch which previously had lacked oxygen sufficient to take fire but now driving down the streets the air was going through it like a funnel and the billows and the flames were shooting 30-40 feet straight When I ultimately returned, I found it impossible to find some way of blaming this situation upon my sleeping wife and children, whose lives I had imperiled. This gave me a clue that something was wrong. Later, however, I was to go beyond social drinking. ultimately to find my way into this program, which as I indicated, I did not adopt wholeheartedly from the beginning. The alcoholism is such a simple disorder, its very name gives you a rather marked clue as to what the problem is. And the method of alleviating it that is adopted in our program also has a subtle caption that is read at each meeting like a Chinese water torture entitled, How It Works. And if you are intellectual, you may miss that for some period of time despite the fact they have the steps numbered for your benefit. but I think I had as much quarrel with the higher power concept because of this determination I had that I could beat this game. So our book tells us we have a physical allergy as to which we can do nothing. That's the phenomenon of craving results from taking the first drink. And this is a condition that's permanent. Now, I'm sure there are people here wondering if they're alcoholic. you know, as if their opinion meant a crap what difference would a diabetic's view of his condition or a man with hemorrhoids if he could get into a position to view them what relevance would it have? what he thinks about it is beside the point it may determine how he's going to die whether after a relatively fruitful and productive life or in the gutter chewing his tongue despised by everybody who had the misfortune to come into contact with him but that's a decision that probably doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot except to him. See, alcoholics do not represent a menace to society as such. Even at our peak, we don't endanger Western civilization. We're not that well organized. But the physical part, and by the way, if anyone here is wondering if they're alcoholic, all they have to do is ask themselves one question and be candid in the reply and they'll know. If there are any doubters, ask yourself this. Am I now, or have I ever been, in attendance at an AA meeting? Non-alcoholics don't come to AA meetings. What the hell would they come here for? Like a virgin going in for a rabbit test. I mean, it's absurd. So if you're here and you're an alcoholic, this would be no problem because we would quit drinking if that's all our problem was. I mean, none of us are entranced by the concept of vomiting as a way of life. Diarrhea, except insofar as it keeps you busy, is not a greatly momentous, desirable thing. Why do we continue? We continue not because we're mentally ill, but because we have what? The allergy combined with an obsession. And that is, we're always told what that is. What is it? The great obsession is what? The illusion of the abnormal drinker somehow, someday going to control and enjoy it. And that would drive us out again. And I could not grasp the idea that to overcome this obsession, I was going to have to turn my will and my life over. This seemed like an utter abandonment of the one thing that marked man from the common beast, and I just couldn't see it. Later, by the way, after I took an inventory, I realized that had I turned my life over to the village idiot, he would have done a much better job than I had done. But at the time, this seemed difficult. And the other incident that I haven't talked about in many, many years but was a breakthrough for me was I had had a child after I came back to the program for the last time and it was unexpected in my age I had not anticipated having any more children and I really loved this little fellow because your first children at least with me I was so busy getting places and doing things you know they would come up and say will you play with me daddy and I'd say get the hell away I'm reading a book on how to be a good father. This little guy I could really participate with and do things with and enjoy. And I was, on this particular occasion that I got this insight, I was getting him ready to go outside to play in Milan. He loves to get outside and play. But in order to take him out on a wintry day, it was necessary to put him in a garb suitable to the occasion. And so I was trying to get him dressed, putting on a play suit. Now, if any of you have not attempted to place a child into a play suit when he's under the age of one, I would like to remind you that they suddenly grow about ten more tentacles on each hand that stick into the webbing of the play suit. You know, you're trying to jam an arm down. Put your goddamn thumb down. I don't want to play outside. You want to fly outside. and you struggle and you fight and you finally get them ready as I did this little fellow and I then got him out and stood him in the middle of the groom's ward and was he humbly grateful at this good that I had brought to pass not through his cooperative effort or idea but over his most stout resistance he was not he swaggered off across that lawn in his staggering manner of walking if he could have snapped his fingers he would have done so he was taking credit for it about time things were beginning to break and I was just astounded looking at him and it troubled me because it reminded me of something and as I looked at it and his actions and reactions I thought isn't this amazing Here is this child, absolutely powerless. A child of his tender years is absolutely at the mercy of powers greater than himself. He does not know how to feed himself. He does now not know how to prepare food or even to consume it. He would die of starvation in days if he did not have some power greater than himself to care for him. He doesn't know what things in his little world are dangerous, which things cut, which things burn. He does not know how to tend any wounds that he might possibly get. He would die of exposure in days if he didn't have a power greater than himself. In other words, his entire life is dependent upon some power greater than he is. And here he was, in this instance, me. And I just loved him. I loved him just the sight of idolatry. And yet when I was getting him ready for some good that I had planned for him, I could not communicate to his infant mind my plans. I couldn't tell him why I was forcing him to be restricted, why I Was preparing him for something that was to come. There was no way I could communicate to his infantile mind. And I thought, suppose there really were some power in this universe that knew the fall of the sparrow and marked the movements of the stars. Could it possibly communicate with me? Could it possibly tell me what is in store for me? And I fought back over my life how everything good that had ever happened to me had been preceded by a period of pain and frustration that I had resisted, absolutely resisted it. You know, don't throw me out, dear. I hate your guts, but you're the only girl I've got tonight. You know? I had resistant every damn good thing that ever happened because growth has to be apparently accompanied by pain and preparation. And if there had been some higher power, it could not have communicated to me any more than I could communicate with this child. And it dawned on me, the next time things begin to go bad, Why don't you relax and lower your thumbs and allow your arms to slip into the garments that are being prepared for you because your father, our father, like this little boy's father, obviously wants nothing but the best for us. It was a revelation to me. It marked a changed point in my life, and it stayed with me. It was some ten years later, I think, before I had an emotional-type spiritual experience, but this alone was enough. following the second one the more emotional one I don't think I have taken life personally any longer meaning if I but relax and allow when things are not going my way that is no indication they're going wrong the worst things in life I have ever had to face never happened I just faced them lying in bed at three in the morning see delirium is a disease of the night they never happened I have had a few rotten things happen to me but I didn't face them they came out of left field while I was facing those over here my wife and I just returned from a rafting trip and we signed up for an 8 day trip down the length of the Colorado and we were worried terribly that we were going to get in with people who were drinking and carousing or were smoking because I have a lung problem and so on and I was worried about this we got onto a raft with 15 people 11 of them were Jehovah's Witnesses from Texas and the other two were Mormons I had something to worry about but not smoking or drinking they didn't proselytize me when I realized what was happening the very first day we were talking about the shapes of the rocks and I said look at that one up there looks like a watchtower I hope somebody isn't going to come out and give me a pamphlet But all things have worked out well for me. Now, that doesn't mean that it has always been an easy ride. I don't want to scare off the newcomer immediately by indicating your future life will be one of contentment and joy and no newcomer ever wanted such a life. He wants cause for complaint and explanation for failure but you can adjust to contentment and happiness it really isn't that unendurable after time has accustomed you to it. In addition, it's going to be broken by moments of pain beyond anything you can presently imagine. The pain of growth which requires shedding your old skin moving out of your old shell in order to grow can be excruciatingly painful. But the old must go to prepare for the new, and it has proven so with me, if I will but relax and allow it to happen. The incident I spoke about earlier happened some seven or eight years ago. I believe no good could come of this but break my heart in two. And quite the contrary, it worked out as it should. Other people are not extensions of my personality. They have their lives to live, their things to do. God has his plans for them and they may or may not include my presence. That boy that I mentioned earlier, I haven't spoken about him in a long time because he became agnostic in his adolescence. He doubted me. But he and I lived together, batching it for a time and I cannot say that as a result of our programs we were able to communicate one-on-one People who say they communicate one-on-one with their pubescent children lie about many other things. I hardly saw him. He lived in the front of the house. I lived in rear. I threw money in the hall when I wanted to get his attention. Ha! But he is now doing well and is going off to college. After some years of this, I met a young woman who now has 18 years of sobriety. I don't monkey with newcomers, but she came onto the program so young that she is still devastatingly childlike to me. And yet she seems to like me and she came into my household and we've had five or six years of wonderful times. She doesn't even object to old age creeping on her at night, which is good. My work, which fell apart approximately that same period, has become wondrously good. I have mentioned that the low ebb in my life, I think, occurred some 25 years ago when I was seeking employment, and I'd been around A long enough to know that our little escapades can be the source of innocent merriment. I did not realize at that time, however, that that was not a merriment shared by the non-alcoholic world. And I went in to apply for employment in a large law firm and I told them a few little anecdotes. I mean, not blockbuster stories, but little merriments like the time I got drunk and threw my mother-in-law down the steps and being intoxicated till after and got a hernia. You know, and this fellow didn't giggle or dig to the tit. He just kind of stared in disbelief. and I realized or thought perhaps I was too subtle so I told him about the time I was in four point restraint and vomited straight up. That got a reaction but I could see that I was not truly getting home the point I was trying to make and so ultimately I said now look, I'm not asking you to recommend me and he said recommend you? Recommend you? I would not offer your name for consideration. No attorney in the history of this nation has ever done the things that you've done or had happen to him, the things That Have Happened to You. He said, when we send members of this law firm into a courtroom, upon entry they represent strength, confidence in the face of adversity, determination and resilience to the rebuffs of life. Upon them you can lean because they represent honor, integrity and steadfastness. Send you? I was crushed I kid I was not ready for this I would have crawled like a serpent across the floor out under the door and drowned the shame of that in that bottomless bottle like I always did except that to do so would have given him satisfaction and I thought I wouldn't do it because if I do he will be right and so I went out to the 6300 club drank coffee at him and about 10 years later that guy flipped out utterly flipped out cold sober he took a check protector and a secretary ran to Europe disgraced the firm, the law profession, his family, the city of Pasadena. I mean, it was the most incredible pyrotechnic display of misbehavior I've seen in years, Cole Silber. On the other hand, a few years ago, the governor of this state called me and told me he was appointing me to be appellate bench. As far as I know, the highest judicial office held by a sober alcoholic, at least in California. You know what happens now when I enter a courtroom and members of that 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 really haven't changed that much. I really have not changed that much. I am sober and intend to still remain, which is the greatest change that can come into the life of an alcoholic. I've learned to laugh at myself, which is what I recommend for all. If you don't learn to laugh as yourself, you'll miss the greatest joke in your generation. But beyond that, I try to work to principle this program in all of my affairs, not drinking, no matter what happenings, relaxing because our Father wants nothing but the best for us. Thank you.