The Psychic Change That Made the World Bearable – Bill C.

Our guest speaker for the night will be Bill from Torrance, California. Hi, I'm Bill. I'm an alcoholic. It's been a long day. we left early this morning I was supposed to be here last Thanksgiving the day before Thanksgiving and I'm a little late and that day of course it was a Wednesday and I left at three o'clock in the afternoon along with the rest of Los Angeles and it was raining and about almost four hours later I'd gone about 20-25 miles and I was still in Long Beach so i gave up and uh so today to come down here i left at quarter to eight this morning we got into uh um oceanside about 9 30 and uh went and played some golf with another sick alcoholic that lives down here that moved from los angeles it seems like most of us are moving down here. I don't know why that is, but when I see all the construction, there must be a reason. So I got here on time this time. I was born and raised in Los Angeles around Englewood in Westchester. I graduated from high school in 1965, so I'm a child of the 60s. I survived, I think. Part of it is a little dark. I lost most of my hair and a few brain cells. I heard a guy the other night say that he came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and he had two brain cells, and they were arguing. You relate to that. It's always good to know the room you're in, you know? My father did a very strange thing when I was six years old. He decided to get sober, and that was 34 years ago. He's still sober. He's a little weird, but he hasn't drank for a long time. And he was very active in Alcoholics Anonymous. And 34 years go, the hospitals hadn't figured out that they could make money off this, and there was no place to take us. And if we were in bad shape, the hospitals wouldn't take us, so he brought them home. And some of my earliest memories were of drunks in the living room in various conditions of recovery and big, wet, wine-soaked kisses and stuff like that. And I would come home from school, and I'd walk home from school and there would be a drunk laying on the back porch waiting for who I now understand was their sponsor to return. Sometimes they were sober, a lot of times they weren't. And I would get them up and bring them in the house and clean them up before my dad got home so he wouldn't see them in that condition. And I can remember being in AA meetings at the end of the meeting standing around holding hands like this going, keep coming back. And I'd bring out the donuts during the break, during intermission. And I now take cakes with my father. Our sobriety dates are one day apart. And I take cakes with him in some of those meetings that he started 30 years ago. And it's a real special thing to do that. At the time, growing up as an AA brat was not fun. I knew what Alcoholics Anonymous was. I knew that it wasn't a bunch of old men and women in overcoats sitting under bridges not drinking. You know, I knew what you looked like and who you were, and I'd been to all the barbecues and the Labor Day picnics and all the stuff. You know? Chuck C. and my father got sober together, and we would go to his house, which was a real AA house. And the Roxbury Men's Stag was one of the big heavy hitters up there. You know. It still is. You know, if you never get a chance to go there, it's really a riot. But we would go there. I mean, I knew all those guys and stuff. And a lot of the friends of our family now, I realize, they're all alcoholics. I didn't really realize it at the time. But I don't recommend growing up in AA, especially if you want to drink. You know? It's just, you know. And like a lot OF us know that that mental quirk starts before we drink. you know like i have always been in trouble you know always you know i was always in trouble i was always causing some shit you know and and i was alway in somebody's face and somebody was always in my face and it was just trouble constantly you know at 14 years old i think when it was when i started drinking it got worse and my attitude got better because i really didn't give a shit then. You know, I mean, it really was, it was awful. It was awful living in my house. My parents were two of the most boring human beings I had ever come in contact in all my years of 12 years old, you know? I mean these people were a drag, you know? And I would go to other kids' houses and their parents were partying, you know? These kids were having a good time, you I mean, my parents were like sober and always there. Awful, you know? I mean I can remember being on the phone one time with a friend of mine and the friend was saying, yeah, my old man got drunk again and they hauled him off and stuff. And I sat there and I went, yeah, My Old Man got drunk too and they hauled him just to be like everybody else, you Know? I mean My Old man was stone cold God damn sober sitting in the living room watching television, You Know? Night after night, You know? And the worst thing that ever, I hated my father. I hated his guts with an intensity that just drove my life for years. When I was 13 years old, I started having like anger seizures where I would just double over and hit my knees. My mother took me to a shrink to find out what was wrong and I just hated him. I prayed for his death. I mean, I just really hated him intensely. When I got around to that goddamn ninth step and I had to look at that, I couldn't remember why. I couldn'T remember why, and he never beat me. He never molested me. The worst thing he did is he neglected me. He ignored me. It wasn't even neglect. No, he was busy, man. He was going to meetings, and he was doing his thing, and he started a business and stuff like this. He was just a busy guy, you know? I mean, I lived in a real nice home. I mean it was very middle class and very comfortable, you now? I didn't grow up in a ghetto somewhere. I didn'T have any of those excuses, you knOw? And my father, as some of you have been sober for even just a little while, realized what happens to people in sobriety is we joke and we laugh about it, but they do get spiritual. We do. Our lives have been saved, and we realize it. So we have a life, albeit not perfect, certainly has some sort of a spiritual base in it. And that's the way my house was. And I hated it. It was boring. And I left a lot. Get the hell out of there. In 1965, I graduated from high school, barely. And I left home, man. I pulled my car out of the driveway and I was waving, boy, goodbye assholes. My parents were standing there by the doorway looking at me, smiling, going, goodbye asshole. They were glad to be rid of me. We hated each other. It just was awful. That last couple of years living there was really awful. Especially when you get big enough to really get in your dad's face and he realizes that he can't beat you up anymore. And there were those confrontations at the door, in the kitchen, in the morning, at breakfast. Like, fuck you, Will. Fuck you, will. Fuck you. Just like that. So it was 1965. It was 1965, you know. San Francisco, I hate Ashbury, was really in bloom. You know, as George Carlin says, pot swept the neighborhood. And so I started mixing my alcohol with other stuff that was available. The road from Los Angeles to San Francisco was definitely the road to nirvana. Golden Gate Park was the center of the universe. We weren't just getting loaded, we were making a political statement. The young ladies were discovering their sexuality and we were helping them as best we could. I can remember people sleeping by parking meters in the street and we'd walk by and put money in the parking meter because they couldn't bust you. It was your property as long as there was money in it. And it was wonderful. It was fun. It really was fun, and it was working, and it would be summer all the time. You could hitchhike, and it were safe. Nothing bad was happening, it seemed like. For some odd reason, at 19 I decided to get married. I have no explanation for that, but I did it. And we moved to Oregon and went back to the earth and got a trailer out in the woods and grew our own. And by the time I was 21 years old, I think, 21 or 22, I ended up in the Oregon State Mental Institution. And I had lost a house, a couple of cars, several jobs, a wife and two children, actually. I mean, I lost a family and everything that goes along with that, all the properties and possessions of that. And I was in the Organ State Mental Institute, and I was injecting heroin and methadrine on a daily basis off and on, taking a lot of LSD, drinking all the time, eating 50 whites a day, reds, and all the stuff we do. I mean, we were children of the 60s. And our alcoholism, my alcoholism was aided and abetted by a lot of drugs. I could cop to being a drug addict then. I mean James Taylor did. It was a badge of honor. You know, yeah, I'm a drug addict, aren't you? What's your problem, man? How come your hair is so short? Are you sick? And it just, you know, I had an attitude. See, my story is kind of the things I was. I was a surfer and a biker and a tough guy. And I couldn't surf very well. Well, my motorcycle rarely ran and I was afraid to fight. So everywhere I was was a rude place. I mean, I never was where I belonged. And you couldn't, if you'd asked me then when I was each one of those things, if that was true, I'd deny it. You know, I really, I look like those things. You know? How do you like my suit? This is Christmas. And it covers up the tattoos real nice. You kind of, you look good. Well, I looked good on a Harley, you know? I mean, I had a chrome Nazi helmet and a primary chain for a belt. But I wore a clip-on earring, you know? And I just remembered that the other day. A guy told me it was a clip on. I was a phony, you know, I was a phoney. I was scared to death. Most of the time I was scared to death, really. And I think what really put me in the nut house was not the drug so much, of course it had a lot to do with it, but it was the lifestyle. It scared me. You know, it frightened me. I mean, the people I was running with carried guns and they had a tendency to shoot them once in a while and it was a frightening place to be for a wimp, which is basically what I am. I'm a wimp. I've always been a physical coward. If you confronted me, if you had the balls to confront me, you know, I'd back down. If it was really going to happen, I'd black down. But you get used to it. I'm sure there's a lot of good actors in here. You get used and you can walk into a place and you could frighten people. If you're big enough, you can frighten them. You know, if you've got enough weapons on you, you can fight them. And I would do that. You know? I'd pull guns on people and stuff like that and scare the shit out of them and they'd run away from me. But if I ever got confronted by somebody who was real, who really was that way, really that way. I would run every time And I have. And that doesn't build a lot of self-esteem. Well, anyway, I ended up in the nuthouse. And after that, I went out and tried to kill a guy. And fortunately, I didn't find him. And the state of Oregon decided it was time for me to leave. And I agreed. So they waved, and I waved. And off I went. And I left my wife and children up there. And I was living in my car. But I didn' t really notice that. You know, I mean, it' s like hindsight. You look back. You know? I was livin' in my ca. But it didn' T seem like that. I mean... You know... People always talk about livin'. In their car. and I hear that and I go, I wonder if it seemed like that to them. I mean, I was living in my car. I would sleep in my car and I would go from house to house and I had nowhere to live. I was collecting unemployment. I came back down here and looked up some old high school buddies and would start bumming off of them. And what happened to me then is off and on during this period of time I was going to a lot of therapy and I ended up back in therapy again when I came back down here for two and a half years I was in group therapy and I met another woman and I cleaned up my act. I quit sticking needles in my arm. And I quit doing a lot of the overt stuff that we do, you know? I mean, I think that alcoholics have, a lot alcoholics, at least of my generation, have a strange affinity for hallucinogenic drugs, you now. It kind of adds a paisley texture to the drunk, you know? And it makes linoleum floors more interesting when you're laying on them. And it doesn't really, it doesn' t seem like a toilet when you are puking in it and stuff, something else, you know. And I quit doing all that. And I met a woman and I got a job working for my father in his business that was failing at the time. And I became normal. And what normal was to me, and this was something I consciously did, I'm going to clean up my act now. It's time for me to stay. I had learned a lot about myself in this therapy thing. I learned what's really going on with Bill and I was delving into this anger and hatred for my Father and trying to come to terms with all these things And I said, I've got to clean up my act. So what I did to become normal is I would drink on the weekends and smoke dope during the week. And smoking dope is not getting loaded. It's what you do in between getting really high. It's just maintenance. And I figured that's what I would do. And I did that. And I was successful at that for eight or ten years. I did dat. And this woman that I met, we got married. And for 10 years, we had no children. And we just, you know, we were free. She was working, I was working. We had pretty good money. And things got better. Each year would go by, things got bitter. We moved into a better house. And finally, we bought a house. And the business kind of turned around. My father retired and I started making more money. Things were going really well. And all the time, my drinking got worse and got worse and it got worse constantly. You know, consistently, it would get worse. and pretty soon it wasn't just weekends. It was Wednesdays too and this type of thing. But it was a slow progression, you know? Alcoholism for me started right off the bat. When I drank, the first time I ever drank, I drank alcoholically. You know, I drank. I got sick. I threw up in my record player. It was an old web core. It had a lid on it, you Know? And I threwup in it and closed the lid. And when I was, say, 30 years old, the same thing was happening. Every time I drank I got drunk. I see absolutely no reason to drink socially, whatever that is. I know a lot of people have. You start out drinking and pretty soon you cross the line. Well, I crossed the line at 14 years old and anything I ever did to alter my consciousness I did to excess, always. So as this thing got worse, every time I drank I would get drunk. The weekends were just a blur and then pretty soon it started going into the week and then as the business became more successful and it became larger I didn't have to do all the 16-hour days at work anymore as much. I could leave, and I could do what I wanted. I could split, and pretty soon it got worse. Then my wife had a child, and she had to stay home. She had this kid, you know? And I would go off, and pretty sudden then I wasn't coming home. All of a sudden she was stuck at home. I had nobody there with me to say, well, it's time to go home now, Bill. It's time for you to go. It's fine to go back. That helps when you have that person, you Know? For a while. And pretty soon you go, what the fuck do you mean it's time to go home? You know, and then we'd cause arguments. You know. Well, she just let me go. And then I was gone and the drinking got worse. At 37 years old, which is when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, next month I'll be four years sober. And so I have a lot of opinions and I'm also very spiritual. So I hope you'll forgive me, especially people with some time, you know. I think it's our job to have opinions at four years over. And I... Aren't we the ones? Somebody has the opinions in AA. I think it's us. And we run AA, by the way. People with five years and less, that's who runs Alcoholics Anonymous. So if you were anybody newcomers were wondering, I'm running for president. What happened to me at 37 years old, I weighed over 300 pounds. I just was... And I hurt everywhere. I had been drunk in a bar one night a couple of years prior to that and some people took exception to my opinions. and threw me down some stairs, and I had broken my ankle, so I walked with a limp. Because you have 300 pounds on an ankle that's got pins and screws in it, it limps. I had a bad knee. I had, I pinched nerve, what ended up being a pinched tendon in my shoulder, so my right arm was kind of gimped up and I would hold it to my side like this. My liver stuck out on one side and I hit a real bad liver count. You know, doctor asks you that great question, you know, do you drink much? A couple of beers, you know. and a few years prior to that i had found my true drug of choice which is gin gin worked for me and at 37 when i finally got to alcoholics anonymous the party had stopped a long time ago but it would get rid of the physical pain every time i would supplement it with a little this and that. But I just, I started off at 14 years old drinking. I ended up at 37. All I could do was drink. I couldn't smoke dope anymore. It made me paranoid, scared the shit out of me. All I Could Do Was Drink. And I just drank every day. And the last year, I couldn t not drink. I had to drink. And i knew that. That s an awful place to be. It was for me when I would sit in my office or wherever I was and knew that I, that I was going to drink. I just knew I was gonna drink cause I couldn't not drink. It had me literally had me. What happened for me is at five o'clock in the morning, one morning sitting in my Cadillac in a three piece suit, I had just bought the car and I was sitting in a two piece suit. I had a wife at home with two children in a home that I bought and she told me a long time ago, please don't call me at night. I don't care where you are. I'm sleeping very soundly. Don't wake me up. And her story is that she just made sure that the insurance premiums were paid up and maybe this time the son of a bitch wouldn't come home. And there was no arguments in our house at all. There was just dead silence, that booming dead silence. In a drunken blur one night through the prodding of another psychiatrist that I went to see. I confessed to her, because I wanted to get honest in our relationship, about using prostitutes, which was a real neat thing to do. And it just killed whatever she had left, whatever feelings she had for me at the time. It just killed it completely. She didn't have the type of family that could take her in, so it was purely a financial situation. She just stayed there. She was planning on getting out. She had a place lined up to get out, but I screwed up. I got sober on her. She didn't want to look bad, you know? So at 5 o'clock in the morning sitting in my car with another guy in the car I started telling him I had to stop this. I couldn't do this anymore. I just couldn't keep it up anymore. And I got him out of the car and I went and I called my mother and I said you've got to come and help me. I'm screwed up. There was nobody left in my life. My mouth had alienated everybody from me completely. I was not a happy drunk anymore. I was argumentative. I was very political and anything that would cause a fight, I would do. And if you didn't agree with me, you were just an asshole. I'd sit there and argue or try and change your mind. So I was alone, completely alone. People come to Alcoholics Anonymous, they talk about when I got here, I was completely alone I think some people say, oh, there must have been somebody. Well, I understand that. There was nobody. There was no one. There was nothing left in my life. So the only person I could think of that would come and help me was my mother. And I called my mother and said, Mommy, you've got to come and get me. I'm screwed up. And I was afraid I was going to die. I was having chest pains, anxiety attacks in the middle of the night where my chest just felt like it was going to pound right out of me. And I'd wake my wife up and I'd put her hand on my chest and I go, do you feel that? She'd go, no. And I go never mind. Scared to death. I'd get up in the middl eof the night and I would go sit in the toilet until it would pass. I don't know why I did that. I guess I didn't want to die in front of anybody. Kind of stupid. So she took me to a hospital and I spent a month in the hospital and I got out and I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. My big book, I got away pretty cheap. It cost me $8,000, I think. I was there for 35 days. That was my M.O. When things got too tough, I just institutionalized myself, put myself away. So I spent 35 days in there. They used to let us out to go to the drugstore and stuff and I wouldn't leave. I was afraid to leave the hospital. For 35 days, I stayed inside that building. I wouldn'T go out because I just knew I was going to get drunk. I knew I was gonna get loaded or something. There's no way I could just go to meetings and stay sober. I couldn't comprehend living life without drinking. Well, I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. The first night I got out, I looked up a directory thing. I called a guy and I went the Gong Show. It's a meeting on Friday night at the Hermosa Beach Alano Club. It should be experienced. It's an experience. It's special meeting. Special. There are many who don't believe it's a meet. I kind of agree with that. But I went to that meeting, and I went up there, and I took a 30-day chip in all my 300-pound glory. And after about two weeks, I found a sponsor. This guy is about this tall. He's short. He's younger than me. I don't think he's as well-educated. He's a Nazi is what he is. He's just a Nazi. He's not a Nazi, you know? He said awful things to me and hurt my feelings deeply. He still does. I think he gets pleasure from it. There's something, some sponsors are not human and this guy is like that. I have no idea why I picked him. But I saw him in meetings or something and I went up to him and asked him, will you be my sponsor? He says, I'll meet you at the Hermosa Beach Men's Stag Monday night, be there at 8 o'clock. The meeting starts at 8.30. Meet me there at eight o'clock and we'll discuss it. I said, well, I had something else I wanted to do that Monday night. He goes, I don't care. Just be there if you want to talk to me. Be there. So I showed up. I showedup at the meeting and he took me around the corner and he asked me a few questions and he asks me the first question they always ask you, I think, is are you willing to go to any lengths to not drink? So I've been in the hospital and they grill you with, one of the things that hospitals are neat They give you like a list of all the cliches and stuff, you know. So that you know and you're prepared for this stuff. And I lied and said yes. And I suggest that any of you who are new, that when you hit on a sponsor and he asks you that, he or she asks you to say yes, he or he asks me that, you just lie and say yes. For several reasons. One, you have no idea what they really mean by that statement. You know? And if you say no, you've got to listen to them for another ten minutes or so. I told him yes. And then the next thing he said to me, and I will never forget this, he says, I noticed that in the meetings you identify yourself as an alcoholic and an addict. And I said, well yeah, that's what I did a lot of drugs. That's what they taught me to do in the hospital. I'm an alcoholic and I'm a addict. And he says well I might make this suggestion to you. He says if you're calling yourself an addict because you think it's a little hipper and a little slicker and a little cooler you might want to drop it and be like everybody else this is Alcoholics Anonymous and you might want to for the first time in your life be just like everybody else he looked me right in the eye and I could feel the anger well up from inside go up my neck and my veins started to bulge my face turned red and a thing that went through my head who the fuck do you think you are You know, and I just swallowed that like that. And we went into the meeting later on that day or a couple of days later. I thought about what really made me mad was he's right. I was trying I was looking for something to be a little bit different because, see, I'm not like you. I'm unique. I'm special. I'm Not Just an Alcoholic. I'm other things, too. and i'm not like the old guy over there you know i'm a hipper kind of a guy you know in all my 300 pounds glory you know and i had to sit and hear that you know I had to hear that and he said that to me through my relationship with my sponsor I will always be grateful that I found somebody who loved me enough to tell me the truth and not just what I wanted to hear. He never cared about what I wanted to here. And he told me, he says, come over to my house Thursday at 5 o'clock. Read the doctor's opinion in the big book and we'll talk about it. And make notes in the margin and we will discuss this. So I read the thing and I made the notes and I went over to his house and he told me a little bit about himself at that time, at that initial meeting. We read the doctor's opinion. In the doctor opinion, it describes four or five different kinds of alcoholics. And we picked out the one that I am. We found me in there and we circled that and said, that's Bill. He's that kind of an alcoholic. And in there we found Jay. He described to me this is the kind of alcoholic I was. He says, I was sticking needles in my arm when I was 15 years old. You know, geez, I thought that was kind of interesting. We had something we could share. All of a sudden it didn't seem so unique anymore. You know, this guy did, I did have something in common with him maybe. Later on in that passage in the book it talks about what the alcoholic needs if he's going to survive is a complete psychic change. To be determined that that's what I needed. That my psyche was a little tweaked and it should be changed. That maybe if my perception of the world around me was a bit different I could live a little more comfortably not drinking. I agreed with that. I thought, God, that's kind of neat. Because I'd read that before but I never read it with anybody. and he made me read it to him out loud because he didn't trust that I'd actually read it. I thought that was kind of significant. The next week, I went over there and we read Bill's story and we circled some stuff in there and we got things that I identified with and things thatI didn't identify with. And he told me, he says, if anybody asks you, you're on the first step, by the way. This is a 12-step program. What you and I are going to do is work these steps. So if anybody asked what step you're one, you're going to be on the second step. You're on your first step. We read Bill story, Then we read the next chapter. He says, okay, now you're on the second step. Well, the steps to me, I could read them and stuff, and I could look at the first step and I Could say, yeah, I'm powerless. I could cop to that because I was real sick. My life is unmanageable. I was intelligent enough to know that doesn't mean that you don't have any money. It means that there's nobody in your life. There's probably a good indication that you're a little unmanangeable. People don't like you and stuff. My life Is definitely unmanegeable. My wife hated my guts about this time. She Was really getting in touch with that. She was telling me. You know, she sat me down one day and she said, I have something I want to tell you in case you were wondering. I hate your guts, you know? And she was crying. This was a real moment for her. You know when you live with somebody and you know they hate you, it's kind of almost a relief when they finally cop to it, you know, and say, I just really hate your gut. You've hurt me a lot. And I realize that I can't make you drunk or anything, so I'm telling you how I really feel. And I'd run to my sponsor, God, she hates my guts. And he'd look at me and go, no shit, you're an asshole. You know, I've been therapied by some pretty good people. So I knew probably more about myself than was really necessary to know. And I was getting in touch with emotions and stuff. And he would say things to me like, your emotions are as fucked up as you're thinking. Keep it to yourself, please. Aren't I supposed to vent it? He goes, I don't want to hear that crap. I really don't. And please don't do it in the meetings. If you have a real problem, come and talk to me, but don't go to the meeting. Don't do what's in the meeting because it's embarrassing. Jeez. God. Awful. One time he looked at me and I was going on about this. The first step talks about powerlessness and unmanageability. The second step says that we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves was going to restore us to sanity. And as far as I was concerned, if you believed in a power greater than yourself, you were insane. So I didn't want to hear anything about this God shit. I wasn't stupid enough to be an atheist. You know, I had gone through my atheistic period. You know what I mean? At one time or another, if we were in the 60s, we all went through a phase of communism, you know. And I'd carry my mouse little red book and stuff, you now. And so I was a real good atheist, and I preached it. Then I got involved in another intellectual pursuit that said, atheism is irrational because it's a belief in nothing. And of course, there must be a source for all natural phenomena. For lack of a better term, we'll call that God. Whether it's intelligent or not is unknowable. And that's called being a deist. Deism, what a deists is, is an agnostic with a title. I could give you a bibliography about this and I could discuss it with you. And so I was an intelligent guy and I would discuss this with my sponsor and he would look at me and he'd say, resign from the debating society. We don't give a shit what you think. It doesn't matter what you Think. It's irrelevant what you Think. You're going to work this program or you're out the door. It's time for you to work This program. Your program got you here. So shut up. I don't want to hear it. Another time he sat there and I was going on about this. You've got to hear this, man. This book is stupid. It' s just stupid. And one of the notes I made in the margin was, what? One of the notice was he was talking about God. He was talking abut the Wright brothers and stuff like this, you know. And I put illogical thought process. You know, I would make little notes like that, you now. And different things like this and I would discuss this with him, you kno. And he looked at me one time and he looked and he just yawned right in my face. And another time, the worst one that he did we were sitting on the beach he lives right on the beach and we were sitting on the beach in the sand we're going through all this stuff and he looked at me and he tried to control himself actually he turned his face away from me and he laughed and spit all over himself you know and I almost he told me he says I thought you were gonna hit me and I said I almost did that would be a straw that broke the camel's back you know he says well you were so stupid you know he told me around that time is when told me, he said, either have faith or you don't, man. There's no middle ground. He says, I'm not going to argue this with you. I'm nicht going to debate it with you It doesn't matter what you think That's the point What you think is irrelevant Because you're here now This is Alcoholics Anonymous and a power greater than yourself is going to restore you to sanity That's it It doesn' t go any further than that They give you the chicken gate You know they're talking about God but they bring up higher power and all this stuff. And I'm sitting there going, I know what they're talking about. This is a Christian God from Akron, Ohio. And I am a new age kind of guy, man. Just was awful and I just agonized over it. So we get to the third step. He told me things like he said, in the morning, get on your knees. Yeah, you bet. And ask God to keep you sober. And then if you haven't drank all day long, at the end of the night, get on your knees and you ask Him or thank Him for doing a good job. He says, can you do that? I said, I can't do that, man. I'm sorry, but I can do that. I said I'd feel like a hypocrite. If I did, I'd be a hypocrit. I'd say I feel like an hypocrite because I just don't believe it. It turns my stomach. It makes me sick. God is for weaklings, for people that are afraid of death. It's real clear. Don't you understand that? You went to college. You know, I can't do it. And he says, well, if you feel like a hypocrite, tell God your fucking sponsor told you to do this. The next morning, the next morning I get up, I go in the bathroom and I still weighed about 270 or 280, so it wasn't a pretty sight. and I got on my knees naked I figured if we're going to humiliate ourselves I've never done things halfway I locked the door for fear anybody would see me and I knelt down next to the sink in case I gagged and I did and I said God, my fucking sponsor told me to do this please keep me sober today, thank you that was my first big time a prayer and i think maybe that night i said thank you because i didn't drink and that was about it i don't think i went two days in a row i just couldn't do it and i lied to him and told him i was doing it she said are you playing i said yeah yeah sure so we get to the third step and he took pity on me i realized later he took pity on me when we got to the third step, he did not make me kneel down with him and hold my hand as I have had the privilege and honor to do with other men today. And I asked him, why didn't you do this? He says, I don't think you could have handled it. He said, I thought about it and it kind of scared me. So I just, you know, I think he thought he might have been struck down by lightning or something. But I said the dumb prayer and it was over with. You know, let's get on to the fourth step. Everybody's sniveling about it. Let's do it you know so i started writing i sniveled about it for about a month you know and uh or some period of time see maybe longer than that and i wrote out my inventory then i made the appointment with him and i went down and and this is like this is in hermosa beach and he lives right on the strand in an apartment there and i go to meet him to do my fifth step and i want to up to the door and knocked on the door and i hear this hey bill and i look and he's sitting out he's got two chairs sitting out in the beach on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer on the strand. And I'm all dressed up, you know, I was still lame. You ever tried to dress up right for AA meetings and stuff? You know,I went through that agony for a while. You just can't do it. It's impossible, you know? Because nobody dresses all the same. So you're always wrong. And i'm in the middle of the summer. You know, i'm all dressed up you know. It was just sad. And I went out and I sat on the beach and I told him everything. He told me we did it just like in the book. The guy never had an original thought in his whole life. Everything is like the book, you know? I've even found out some of the stuff that he told me that I thought, man, he's pretty insightful. You know, he got it from his sponsor, Fred Ellis. It was just so sad. And I told them all this and he told us the thing you want to be sure you do is be sure that you tell the three or four things that you're never going to tell anybody. The things that there's no reason to tell anybody. I mean, we all want to talk about the bank robberies and the murders and stuff like that and the big-time stuff, you know? The bigger sleazeball you are around here, the more higher up you are, it seems like. You know, that's one thing that's neat about AA. I love the stories. Mine's just boring, you Know? I mean there's really nothing there. I went out and tried to kill a guy one time. Well, shit, I even screwed that up, you Now? And, you now, I've been in jail and stuff a few times. I got busted for pot and I got common drunk and stuff, you know, nothing flashy, nothing flashy. I spent two weeks in L.A. County one time because my old man wouldn't bail me out, you know, and I've never been back since. Interesting. But I had nothing really to tell, but I told him those three or four things, things that I'd done in the privacy of my own room with nobody else around, the things that I thought I was. Those were the things I thought Bill really was, a sleazy, sneaky, gross, sick kind of person the things I believed I was I told him I took that leap of faith and I told him those things and he didn't throw me away and he shared back with me some of his things and it kind of made me change my opinion about him a lot you know he's really sleazy and you ever stop and think you ever stopped every once in a while especially those who have been around here for like you stop and look around at who you're sitting with after a while you get to know like I rode all the way down here with Bruce and I stop and think about that now and I'm kind of afraid to drive back with him. Because I know some of his stuff, but this is the beauty of this place is that we are like each other and they can't throw us out and they don't throw uns out ever. Well, I shared that with him and that was a big leap of faith for me. He told me after that, he said, now I want you to go like it says in the book and be quiet for an hour and reflect on what you've done. you know have you been fearless and thorough is there anything that you want to tell me that you haven't told me you know and reflect on that and when you go home and you put the key in the door think about the person that's going through your front door now compared to the person that was going through Your Front Door when you first came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I went up on a hillside and I looked at the beautiful bay and it was a beautiful summer day I did steps six and seven. I can never figure out how people say when they say they're stuck on six and seven, it's two paragraphs in the book. You say the dumb prayer and it's over, you know, and I did six and seven in five minutes. And then I was on step eight. But I sat and I looked out across there and I thought, you know man, something has happened to me. I've changed. And I went through my front door and I saw that I was not the person I was that day compared to the person I was when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was different, man. I had been busy arguing and hassling and going to two meetings a day seven days a week and sitting up all night eating sugar and drinking coffee with my buddies trying to figure this motherfucker out, man. And what does your sponsor tell you? I hadn't realized that the obsession to drink had been lifted. I hadn'T realized it. I stopped and I thought, my God, isn'T that interesting? Isn'T that bizarre? There's two very bizarre things that happen to all of us. One, we have a moment of clarity. I mean, people have been telling us for years. They've been telling this for years and finally one day we wake up and go, oh, well maybe it's my drinking. What a concept. Then the other thing happens to us. This other bizarre thing. For me, it happened right away. The obsession to drink just gets taken away. And for me, for 25 goddamn years I'd been obsessed about it and half that time was wonderful. I didn't care about it. It was okay, but I'd always been obsessed by it. Now I obsess over other stuff. I mean, there are times when I'm going to play golf no matter what or I'm gonna ride my bicycle or something or I just get that. I'm just that way. It's part of what makes me lovable. I'm cute like that but I don't obsess over alcohol or drugs anymore at all since March the 28th, 1985. Isn't that strange? You know, and I looked at that and I thought, I didn't do that. I never asked for that. What happened for me after that is my sponsor became my higher power. I put faith in him. I trusted him. I told him all my secrets. He's now the keeper of my secrets, there's more people like that now. He's not the only one, there're more. There's a larger group now, people that know who Bill is. I have a home group who knows who I am. Most of those guys in there know who I'm. intimately, in depth as much as I know about me. But at that time there was one person walking the face of this planet and he's got all the secrets, man. He's got it all. We made a list of all of the amends that I owed. Most of them emotional. I didn't come to AA owing a whole lot of money however I did and I paid the money back. Most of it that I've been able to locate the people. But we made a list of these amends that I was going to make and on that list was my mother and my father. You know, most of us, I think, would have that on our list. And I set about to make these amends. One of the big ones I had was my ex-wife. And I hated that woman. You know? She had been messing around with my best friend. He's the guy I went out and tried to kill. He's still floating around somewhere. Maybe looking for me. But I had to go up and make amends to her and my two children whom I had abused verbally and sometimes physically. And I left them. And I flew up there and I sat in front of her and I apologized for breaking the trust that we had had. As my sponsor told me and a few other people that I went to, before I went out to make those amends, my sponsor talked to me about it and then he sent me to some other people to talk to them about it who had had the same experience. Not some intellectual construct about what I should do but who had the exact same experience and I talked with them and asked them what did you do? Did you have a wife that you hated and you had to make amends to? How did you do that? And what I was told is, at one time you loved that woman. Yeah, I guess so. You broke the trust. Did you not? Were you not a good husband to her? Yeah, but so what? All of a sudden you get to look at that and I went up there and I apologized to her for that. And I took my two kids and the oldest one who's now 21, both of them have been through recovery programs, The oldest one is just an absolute mess. It's just frightening to see somebody that messed up. And when I sat in the living room with him and made my amends to him, he knew he had it coming. He had a great attitude. He went, go ahead. And I did it, man. I looked him right in the eye and I said, I'm sorry for treating you the way I treated you and I will no longer treat you that way. And you got it coming, you know. I was a real asshole. He has dreams, he has visions of killing me real slowly with a knife and stuff. And maybe that's diffused a little bit. Hopefully he won't have to wait until he's 37 or 38 years old to get that monkey off his back like I had to wait all that time. Maybe he can get rid of me quicker. But anyway, I made those amends and when I came back, I was not the same person. I was just the same guy. I was the same man. I was no longer the same person around this time or just before that we had our first annual South Bay Roundup And my sponsor has got, he has service problems. He's this GSR thing and he does all this stuff. He calls it a disease. It's like an outside issue. And he's involved in all the service structure of Alcoholics Anonymous. He was on a booth down there and I called him up one day and I said, I've got to talk to you right now, man. I've really got a problem. I've Got to talk To You. And he told me that there was no big deals, which is what he likes to say a lot. and he met me down there at the Roundup and we were sitting in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel and there was people going in and out of the place and I was sitting there trying to explain in my own inimitable, long-winded way what was going on, which I really didn't know what was doing. But I was really confused and screwed up and he looked at me and he says, do you want me to pray with you? And I said, yes, would you? And he goes, sure, how about right here? And I looked and I said this is a lot. I looked at him and I says, you would, wouldn't you? you really would he goes well yeah everybody would know what we were doing i go please don't make me do that so he took me around we went down a hallway around still in the main floor of the room there's still people walking in and out of this place down this hallway there's thousands of drunks in there and we're sat on this couch there's a shrine there now one of these days i'm going to put a plaque on the wall but last year i went there and they moved the couch and I almost went and complained to the manager. Where's my couch, man? And we sat on this couch. He put his arm around me. We found a big book and we did a little deep breathing and he said the third step prayer and I said the first step prayer and I meant it. I really meant it and I will always and forever cherish that experience. It'll never be the way it was that first time, I don't think and that was really special because I really ment it. something happened in here that I didn't ask for that I didn't think about it I mean I didn' t think it into existence it was something I realized somehow innately that I wasn' t keeping myself sober I would still today like to take credit for that it's this wonderful program that I work you know and the lineage of my sponsor and his sponsor and so on I like all that stuff you know and I like being a step Nazi and my home group is the bike club that I never really was a member of we're tough work the steps or die motherfucker that's who I am I identify with that it works for me the macho approach where the men are men and the sheep are nervous I like being a tough guy I always wanted to be a tough man now I'm an AA Nazi you know we have t-shirts that say step Nazi on the front but when it really comes down home when it comes home ultimately when it come home there's a power greater than ourselves that's keeping us sober certainly keeping me sober And that's a very soft and warm feeling. There's nothing tough and harsh about it at all, you know, because what Bill really is is a marshmallow inside. And I can do all the posing and all the stuff I want to do. It doesn't matter, you Know? When I did my fifth step, my sponsor informed me that I was now a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I brought to his feeble mind the attention that it says in the traditions that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. And he says, it says in there, idiot, that that's the only requirement. It doesn't necessarily mean you're a member. There's some stuff you've got to do around here, kid, if you want to be a member, you know? People coming in and out of here all day long, you Know, very few of them work the steps. You've done your inventory. You are now a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he went around telling everybody in his little cadre, he's in now. He's in Now. He did that for me as I've done that for other people. The guy, he's done it. He did his inventory. Now I can stand outside the meeting and say, I've done my inventory, man. Have you? And it meant a lot to me, man, I've always wanted to feel part of, I've also wanted to be part of something. And today I believe and I like to call myself a member in good standing of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am a member. I'm in. I'm part of it. I'm not just posing around the fringe. I do the stuff. I don't turn down AA requests when I'm called I go, no matter what. It's real simple. For four years I've done that and I've never been given more than I can handle. Sometimes I look like that, but it's turned out I've Never Been Given More Than I Can Handle. I believe that what happens in the psychic change that's talked about in a doctor's opinion, when alcoholics of our variety go out and do acts against their will, things that we don't want to do when we return, there's no way that we can be the same. We change. We change. There's two kinds of people in AA. There's those who work the steps and those who don't. And those who don't work the step think that there's a click. And they're right. It's those who workthe steps. That's the click. That'sthe ingroup. That' s the inside crowd. It' s those people, those whoworkthesteps. You can always tell the alcoholics and alcoholicsanonymous they work the steps and their lives change. I believe that what happens, the whole thing is a third step. Three, four, and five go together. We say the third step prayer. We turn it over to God. We don't have a clue what that means. We do our inventory and we look at that and we go, that's what we're turning over. We do the fifth step. We turn if over. We give it to the other person and it's turned over. It's gone. I had that experience. It left me. When I made amends to my father, I waited on his 70th birthday. It was a frightening thing for me. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to say to this man at all. I waited on the 70th birthday and the people had all left the house. I took him in another room. This was all told to me to do this. You do it quick and you do it clean and leave him with the memory that you apologized. Leave the room. Talk about it later at some other time, but don't continue the conversation after you've made the amends. Do it and get out and leave them with that memory. I went in. I sat down with him and he told me, he says, you don't have to do that. And I said, you better than anybody know that I have to be a lawyer. I don't know how to do it. Don't tell me that. And I told him, I'm sorry that I wasn't the son that you wanted me to be. I'm so sorry that you didn't want me to live. I'm very sorry that I got in your face. And I didn't list all the events. He was there. He remembers. You know, I said, you're my father. I love you. I don't want to hate you anymore. I left the room. I walked out. I got into the car and I started crying driving home. My wife was sitting there with me and it just left me. It left me that hatred just left. I mean, I will never forget that experience. My life has never been the same. Thank God I did that before he died. They're still around, but thank God I have a relationship with my parents today. I made the amends, and I've done that. And I've been relieved of that burden, of that bondage of self. All those resentments and anger and pain, that's all bondage itself. That's all ego crap. And the ego is just waiting, waiting. It feeds on that stuff, and it doesn't want us to go out there and make these moves. When we make the moves, we come back, we're not the same. Alcoholics Anonymous has saved my life I am conscious of the fact that my life has been saved My sponsor told me that the reason that I was sent to Alcoholics Anonymous is that they needed better transportation I drive the AA assault vehicle Whenever we go I drive. I'm the one with the Cadillac Why would we ride in anybody else's car? So we go get them in the Cadilac We've gone on 12-step calls. He called me up in the middle of the night one night. He says, I got a 12-stop call from the central office. Let's go. He never asked me, do you want to go? Let's Go. Be here in five minutes. I get up out of bed and I go with him. And we went and we get this guy out in Wilmington somewhere, sitting on a stoop with a few beers. He'd just been rolled. He was all beat up. There's been a series of those events. On Memorial Day weekend a couple of years ago, So I was waking in the middle of the night. It was about midnight. There's a 12-step call in a hotel room down on Western in Gardena. So I picked up another friend of mine. He came over to my house, and we drove there. And it's in the Middle of the Night. It's Memorial Day weekend. There's drunks all over the streets. It's in Gardera, and it's a Clint Eastwood movie hotel, man. We walk in the front door, and there's doors with padlocks on them all the way down the hall. and you can just see old Clint going down the hallway, you know. And I'm looking down this hallway. I'm scared to death. There's people screaming. You can hear some woman screaming and people are banging the walls and stuff like this. The place stunk. There's beer cans all over the place. My friend Derek's standing behind me like about 10 feet by the door looking down that thing and I stood at that hallway and I didn't know which room the guy was in. And I looked down the hall and I just closed my eyes and said, God, you've got to help me now because there's no way I'm going down that hallway. And if I'm going down that hallway, it ain't going to be alone. You've got to do something now. And it just was lifted. The fear was gone. And I just walked down the hall. And I can remember feeling that. I felt that. It wasn't anything that I thought. It was something I felt. And I просто знал, что я буду в порядке. И это работало. Я имею в виду, что это просто работало сегодня. Today, I believe that when I'm on those things, as it talks about in the book, I believe I'm protected. I believe that. I don't know if it's a lame feeling. Like, I've become the weakling I thought everybody else was. And I just give it up when I can. I mean, there's no way anybody... What we talk about up here and what we do is two different things. But these are the experiences I've had that have changed my life. On another occasion, there was an old drunk standing outside the Alano Club and he was babbling and moaning. He'd been around for a few days bumming money off of people. And he was out there and he wasn't drunk. And he wasn' drunk and my sponsor was standing there talking to him and he said, if I find you a bed in one of these halfway houses. Will you go? And the guy says, yeah. So there's another guy standing there and the old drunk kind of wandered off and I said to this guy, I said, this guy's not serious. Why the hell are we wasting our time on him? He's just bumming money and this guy looked at me and he got in my face and he says, who the fuck are you? Jesus. He says, that's just the way I was when I got here. Where do you think you are, kid? This is Alcoholics Anonymous. If he can't come here, where can he go? If he cannot come here where can't he go Are you going to help this man or what? Are you just a bunch of hot air? Oh, gee, I'm sorry. My sponsor comes down and says, we've got a bed for you. And he looked at me and he says, go get your car. Now, I don't mind working with drunks. I like the clean ones. This guy's stunk, man. He's been sleeping in his bushes for a long time. I go get my car. I pull up. They open the back door, throw his bedroll in. They open their front door and they throw him and nobody else got in the car. My sponsor's wife came around the driver's side, handed me some cheese and crackers, and she said, if he wants to eat, hand him this. Don't stop for anything. And I took off driving this guy to the way back in. On the way there, I thought he was going to rape me and stab me and kill me. And it never occurred to me that he was frightened. It never occurred that he would He didn't know who I was. He didn' t know where he was goin'. And he said to me while we were in the car, he said, what happened to me? I used to be married and I had some children and stuff. What happened to Me? Suddenly I looked at him closer and he wasn't as old as I thought he was. He was probably my age. But he looked awful, you know, the way we look. By the time we got to the way back in, I was holding the guy's hand. We took him into the wayback in. The guy was signing him up. I said to the guy, I said, you're going to take care of my friend, aren't you? He goes, oh yeah, we'll take care OF him. And I'm holding this guy's hands. And he's trying to eat the cheese and crackers with one hand. And I got a hold of this guy. This is my alcoholic, man. This one was for me. When I left him there, I got in my car and I was probably 10 miles from home and I said a prayer of gratitude all the way home. And it wasn't thank you God that I'm not him. That wasn't the prayer. Thank you God for saving my life so I could be here to have these experiences. I'd always talked about doing shit and now I'm finally doing it. They'll even let you stand up here as if you know something and talk to a large group of people. And I love it. I think it's fun. I enjoy it. I like the thrill of it. I love to go on 12-step calls because I can go. Other people can't go, but I can do it. So I get to do those things. Other people do other things. It isn't important which job you do in AA. It's just important you do one. There's only three things here to me. You go to meetings you work the steps and you get commitments so that you can stay if you have commitments you have to go to the meetings even when you don't want to go and there's been times I don't want to go to the meeting there's a thing that comes from a brother organization CA that everybody loves to do here is to repeat principles before personalities cocaine people need that they have a lot of personality problems and it comes it's coming and everybody loves to repeat it and I wonder if anybody knows what that really means why we repeat that or why it's so important. The fellowship is only personalities. That's all it is. It's just a bunch of people in a room and I will cop resentments against you like I have any other group and you'll do the same with me and pretty soon I'll be gone unless I have some principles. The principles are in the steps. There's a lot of them. Talk to your sponsor. He'll tell you what they are but the principles will allow us to survive the goddamn fellowship because it'll kill us because they're just like any other group. You reach a point, or I reached a point where the meetings weren't enough, the personalities weren't Enough, all the warmth, the pseudo-warmth. We're all staying sober together and we're going to expect that we're going to get something more than that out of it. And that's all there is here is sobriety. The only constant that we may have in our lives is this power greater than ourselves. The principles of Alcoholics Anonymous have changed my life. It has created a psychic change in me to where I do not any longer perceive the world the way I used to so that I don't need the anesthetic to survive it any longer. Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. Thank God for AlcoholicsAnonymous and thank God for you. Thank you.