The San Quentin Pirates Second Baseman – Johnny H.

Hi, everybody. My name is Johnny, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here today, and glad to be sober. Glad to be in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. My God, there's a lot of you out there. I want to, before I get wrapped up into my magnificence, i want to uh express my gratitude for the privilege of being allowed to participate in an alcoholics anonymous meeting particularly this one it's always been my opinion i hope it always remains such that it's some type of a privilege to be allowed to come and sit with you good people i hope i don't ever get it through my sick head that i have a right to everything that goes on in alcoholics synonymous just because i was lucky to stumble into a room of Alcoholics Anonymous on the fourth day in November 1959 and stay sober from that day to this day. Now, I haven't had a drink of alcohol or a mood-altering chemical of any nature in my system from that moment to this. I haven'T even had any Prozac or near beer either. Near beer. You know, a guy told me it took 69 bottles of near beer to get drunk. I don't know how in the hell I live without that information all these years. Can you imagine playing with yourself that long? 69 bottles. How could you stay out of the bathroom long enough to get loaded, for Christ's sake? But anyhow, that's neither here nor there. I'm extremely pleased to be here today fully clothed and in my right mind and I only tell you that for this reason it seems like the longer I stay sober in Alcoholics Anonymous the more necessary it becomes for me to remember from whence I came and I don't ever want to forget that a little over 39 years ago right now I was crawling around on my knees in a cell in solitary confinement in a maximum security penitentiary You're drifting in and out of total insanity. Now, because of a loving God who has expressed himself through our program called Alcoholics Anonymous, it's no longer necessary for me to crawl around on my hands and eat like an animal. If I don't get nothing out of that deal at all other than that, I've been vastly overpaid. I would like to stand here today and tell you without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that that's where alcohol and drugs took me to. Oh, I'd love to be able to tell you that. See, that's where I took me to. The only thing that alcohol ever did in my life, it kept me alive long enough to stumble into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm as sure as I'm standing here that if I hadn't taken a drink of alcohol, I'd have blown my brains out before I was nine years old. I've always been a misfit. It always seemed to me that there was something missing way down deep inside of me and I never knew what it was. I didn't have a clue what was wrong with me. Now, I'm restless and I'm irritable and I am discontent and I am angry and I a vicious little kid. I do not know then as I've come to understand by hanging around you all these years that that is the symptoms of the most deadly disease that's ever been known to mankind. That this disease I have has killed more people in the 7,000 years of recorded history than it has than anything that's ever been know to man and nobody knows where it comes from or how you catch it. wouldn't amaze me. I didn't know that. I knew a lot about whiskey. My people all drank whiskey. I mean, they drank it. They made it and they drank It and they do what people who make whiskey do. They just gathered up every once in a while and beat the hell out of one another. They were all crazy people. They were Irish folks. Now, they didn't have any type of religion to hold their guilt down, so they just went at it hook, line, and sinker. Whoever was left standing was the king for the week. That's the way they worked their deal out. Now you know there's a funny thing about that, I always understood that. I always understood the violence. There's always been something way down deep inside of me that understood the virus. You know, it's some type of a spiritual experience to put your foot in somebody's belly. Oh, almost like a spiritual experience, really. Sometimes I feel like that on the freeway and I sometimes don't feel all that spiritual from time to time. What I was never able to understand was this, and I'm still not able to understand it today very well, how these same people who did that to one another on Saturdays would put their arms around one another's on Sundays and say to each other, we love one another because we're family. And I guess I said to myself, I don't know whether I did or not, I guess i said to my self if that's what love is you can keep it. Because I don' t ever remember uttering that word to another human being prior to coming to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, or for a long time after I was here. It was not in my vocabulary. It just wasn't there. I don't know why it wasn't. Maybe it wasn'T. Maybe I thought, maybe I got the idea from listening things that if you love somebody, it made you weak. If you love somebody, you owe them something. If your love somebody's gonna have to give them something. I really don't knOw. I just never said it. It wasn't part of my vocabulary so I never used it. Now I'm looking for a way out of this deal a a long time before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous because there's always been some part of me missing down there. I've always known there was a problem. I didn't know what the answer was, but I knew there was problem. I got all these funny feelings inside of me. I got these crazy ideas. I have this little streak of violence in me that I don't understand. I don t know what s going on in my life. And I look around in my live to try to find some way to get out of this situation and I looked up and saw my grandmother. Now, my grandmother lived when she was 90 years old and she never took a drink of alcohol to smoke a cigarette in her life. My grandmother wouldn't think it's a big deal. I've been sober 38 and a half years. Big deal, she'd say. I ain't had a drink for 90. But I'd look at her and say, yeah, granny, but I guess maybe you should have had a couple. Might have made you feel better some kind of time. But my grandmother used to get up, they used her house for a war zone in this little town in Kansas that we lived in. And she got up every Sunday morning, put on the best dress she had, and she stepped over the bodies and she went out was gone for a couple hours and she came back. And after she got back, there was something magic about her. She was a little lighter in her step, a little easier in her being. She picked these people up and cleaned them up and cooked for them and sang songs to Jesus. I took a look at that and I found that in my keen alcoholic mind. Now if you're new here in Alcoholics Anonymous today, I want to let you know something. This is the only place in the world you're ever going to hear about the Keene alcoholic mind. I sat here last night and heard that Al-Anon lady talk about it. She did mention the Keane alcoholic mind, they never do you know. They get up and say something like the Kean alcoholic got up last night in peed in a linen closet but they don't tell you how smart we are. But you see my confusion was my grandfather. See my grandfather used to leave when he had money and he came back when he didn't have money and it came back in various shapes and forms. They brought him back on a wagon one time. He'd been shot and stabbed and thrown off the second floor balcony of a whorehouse in Kansas City. I took a look at that and figured Grandma's got the best deal. Grandma ain't getting thrown down wells and off in places, so I figured another bad mistake in my life because I don't know any better and I don' t know anything about what's wrong with me, but I got this idea in the back of my head that all I would have to do is go where my grandmother goes and do what my grandmother does, and I'd be like my grandmother. I'm not like my grandmother. My grandmother's not alcoholic. I didn't know that. I didn'T know that I was bodily and mentally different from my grandmother I'm a little kid. I put my hand in my grandmother's hand and went off with my grandmother and sat in her church on Sundays and waited for this magic thing to happen to me that happened to my grandmother and it didn't happen Now I don't remember feeling victimized by that I remember feeling any kind of issues dwelling in my soul to solve later on in life. I didn't remember feeling anything. Hell, I'm a six-year-old kid. All I know is nothing happened. So I don't know what's going on. It took me a long time to understand something very simple. It Took me a Long Time to Understand that there was nothing in the world wrong with my grandmother's church. There was something wrong with the jackass sitting in it. Me. See, what I was doing in that church is what I did in my entire lifetime prior to coming here and maybe a long time after I'm here. I'm looking for something out there to make me feel better in here. And the harder I look, the more lucid it became. Andthe harder I worked to get it, themore lucid fit became. It became such an obsession of the mind that I just almost destroyed myself. Sitting on the back porch of my grandpa's house a couple of weeks later, my grandpa was drinking whiskey out of a fruit jar. He set it down and went somewhere I guess but I picked it up and took a drink of whiskey. That's the first thing I ever did. I did something I said I'd never do. The next couple of minutes of my life is what makes me an alcoholic. I'm not an alcoholic because I spent the next 20 years of my live creating mayhem out there in the world. I am alcoholic because I have some type of an abnormal reaction to alcohol. And what I damn near died learning here was this, that everybody who drinks alcohol does not get the same reaction from it that I do. I didn't know that because alcohol was a wonderful thing in my life. It went down inside of me and filled the screaming madness. It took me from the black pit of nothingness and stood me into the gray fringes of the business of living. It installed in me this sense of arrogance that said, damn you world, it's all right. I'm not good enough to be around the good people, but I'm too good to be Around the bad people. It's okay right here. That's what alcohol did for me. That's a wonderful thing. But that's not the thing that drove me into the gates of insanity and death and beyond. What got me is what kicked in right behind that, that our book Alcoholics Anonymous talks about that happens in limited to alcoholics of my type. Once I ingest alcohol into my system once I ingested in there. Then and only then am I drinking to overcome a craving that's beyond all human understanding and beyond all help. I didn't know that, and what happened to me for the next 20 years of my life every time I drank alcohol happened to me. It was never just once or twice it was every time. I took a drink of alcohol and three days later they pulled me out from underneath a bridge stood me in front of a judge and sent me to the Hutchinson State Reform School. 20 years later, they pulled me out of a car in Compton and stood me in front of a judge and sent me to 20 years in the penitentiary. Now that's what happened to me when I drank. I got drunk and went places. I just travel around out there, man. I went from reform school to reform school to junior penitentiares to penitentares to nuthouses. Now they call them treatment centers. Personally, I like Nuthouse better. It's a little more macho. Come on, if you're going to be bad, you ought to be mad for Christ's sakes. I mean, don't quit drinking because you puke a little. Hang in there. Give it everything you got. Alcoholics and armors work a hell of a lot better when you run out of options. I gave it everything I had. I threw everything into the battle and lost the battle, and they didn't know what I was fighting. It's amazing to me. I never one time in my life ever came out of one of them institutions and said to myself, you know, it's been a long time since I've had a series of electroshock treatments. I think I'll have a drink. Never entered my mind. I just can't hardly stand it. It's been so long since I'd been wrapped up in one of those straight jackets and beat with them clubs. I just can't hardly stand that. Think I'll have a drink. No, I took a drink for the reason alcoholics of my type take drinks after being sober for a period of time. Just to go... That's why I drink. Because I've driven myself up into a state of anxiety and madness and guilt and remorse that I got to have some relief. But you see, all my disease wants me to do is just succumb to the first drink. And then it takes over, and I have no control over what happens after that. Now, I didn't know that because I'm sitting on a street corner 10 or 11 years old drinking a bottle of Marca Petri red wine, which was my drink. See, I started on a wine and worked down, and that ain't easy. Cheap wine at that. Most of you never heard of Marcapetri red vine, I can tell. the reason you've never heard of it because it was experimental stages of Thunderbird that's why you never heard I'll tell you how bad that stuff was it never saw a grave but it gets now I'm drinking this stuff and it ain't taking me where I want it to take me I always want to be somewhere else anyhow doing something else with somebody else any other time but right now and I'm sitting there and I don't know what's going on in my neighborhood and I am staying around with my little gang and they tapped me on the shoulder. Someone says, you ought to try these. And he gave me some pills. Now I don't remember saying to him, what are those? Will they bother me if I take them? Thank God they weren't ex-lax, that's all I can tell you. I could be standing here today as the adult child of a laxative taker. I would have been functional, but Mother sat on the toilet all the time when I was small. Well, I hear stuff stupider than that in some of these things at masqueraders' AA meetings. Work? Thank God it worked. But a couple of years later, I'm sitting on that same street corner on a furler from another reform school, and I'm eating these pills, and I'M drinking this wine, and IT AIN'T DOING WHAT I WANTED TO DO, AND A GUY STUCK A NEEDLE IN MY ARM. And for the next 14 years of my life, I stuck needles in my arm, and I ran in and out of institutions. That's what I do. See, I live out there in them streets, andI do what people like me who live in the streets do. I destroy everything that comes in contact with me. I'm like some type of a plague, and there's a good reason for that, you see. I'm a taker. I'm an abuser of people, so therefore I'm not an abusing person. I'm selfish, I'm self-centered, and I'm self-serving, and I've got an ego bigger than this whole room. My entire lifetime was spent before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, for a long time after I was here, and maybe even a great deal of the time today, I don't know, without a conscious thought or a conscious concern for any other human being who lived upon the face of this earth. I wasn't interested in you at all unless you had something I wanted, and then when I got it, I cast you aside like so much trash, and I went on about my business. That's the way I live my life. I didn't live my wife like that one day or one week or one month until the heat got on. I lived my life like that from my earliest recollection of life until a long time after I was an Alcoholics Anonymous, and what happened to me is very simply this at the ripe old age of 27 years old crawling around in that cell in solitary confinement in that penitentiary drifting in and out of total insanity there wasn't a single solitary soul left upon the face of this earth that would send me a penny postcard they were all gone but they should be gone and I didn't have any right to have any of them back I still don't have anything good and decent in my life back to me just because I was lucky enough to stumble into your rooms and get sober. Everything that's good and decent in my life is some type of an unwarranted gift from a God that I discovered sitting with you. Not there's nothing special about me. I'm not one of God's chosen children. I're just one of the people who wandered in here and sat down and been given a tremendous gift. That's all, and the gift is sobriety. Yeah, I don't understand all this other nonsense that goes on, all this intellectual jargon that you hear from time to time? Well, it's a good thing because you got as much brain damage as I've got. You wouldn't be able to understand it either, for Christ's sake. Just simple things around here. See, that's what comes stumbling into your meetings in November 1959. Higher people say, I was an animal. I don't know what I was. I was a thing without feelings. I had no place else to go. I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous through no fault of mine. I'm sitting in this penitentiary. I looked up one day and saw some women walking across the yard. I got up and followed them. I followed them into an old quonset hut of a building and I sat down. I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous over 38 and a half years ago to smell perfume, and I've been honking and sniffing around here ever since. It don't make no difference why you come. I pray God that you just stay here long enough to discover the nature of your malady. That's what happened to me. I didn't know what was wrong with me. If you'd have caught me at that door that day and said, are you an alcoholic? I'd said, no, I'm not alcoholic for Christ's sake. I'm hip. I're a gangster. I don't think dope thing makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Don't be Makes addicts seem kind of candy-ass, don't they? Remember, if you're going to be bad, be bad. I remember sitting in the back row of that room that day. I remember I said to my lovely call, my throne of content. I had my coat collar up and my shades on because I was cool. If I'd had a hat, I'd have had it on backwards. A guy said to me the other day, he says, AA must have changed a lot in the long time you've been here. Has it? And I said, yes, it has. He got real interested. He wanted to hear that, you know. He says, how has it changed? I said well when I got here the men had tattoos and the women wore earrings. I remember sitting in that room that day looking up on that bag board. I saw them two big gays. I didn't know what they were. I always thought it was some type of an anti-aircraft brigade. I said to this clown sitting next to me, What is this anyhow? He says, It's Alcoholics Anonymous. I sunk down on my seat. I didn't advise you the big gangster hanging around with them winos. I got a reputation I'm trying to hang on to, you know what I mean? I get images. Come on, I'm a gangster for Christ's sake. I've been raised in these institutions. Everybody knows me. He said, well, I'll wait for these women to get up and tell their racy stories. Now, you've got to remember something, that when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, there weren't very many young pretty girls hanging around here. if they were they weren't sending up that penitentiary where I was at I'll tell you that these old gals got out to talk and one of them said she drank for a long time you could look at her know she'd been somewhere for a long time she said I used to drink I said I'll bet you did bad stuff see I knew everything when I came here I'm a walking encyclopedia of useless information I know so damn much about what ain't true I don't know what is true so there I sit for all intents purpose is a dead man. I don't know what's going on, and I tell you what frightens me sometimes a day. I sat in that room in that institution a little over 38 and a half years ago, staring at the answer that I had sold my soul for, but I didn't recognize the answer because I didn' t know what the problem was. It's awful hard to solve a problem if you don' t know what it is. It's awfully hard to seek the answer to a problem them if you don't know what the problem is. And I don't know what it is. I don' t know what's going on. I don't now, I'm fascinated by these people. I don't understand these people, you know what these crazy people did? These people got up at their own expense. Now listen to this, at their own expense on Sunday in their own cars, bought their own gas, bought their own lunch and drove 185 miles up those old back roads to spend two hours talking to a room full of people who didn't want to listen to them. People like me who sit in the back row and made fun of them. Now, let me tell you how sick that is. Here I am sitting in the penitentiary. I don't know when I'm going home and I'm making fun of people who are leaving in an hour. But I'm hip. but these people fascinated me because I didn't understand them see the reason I didn' t understand them is not for what they did I didn''t understand why they did it I had never seen people like this perform alive see what these people were givers I'm a taker takers do not understand givers takers only understand takers and takers hang out with takers so takers destroy takers. These people fascinated me. I couldn't understand what they've ever done. I don't understand what's going to ask a guy one day, I said, what do you get out of coming up here anyhow? You know how you talk to them. Hey! When you're tough, when you're hip, you talk with people like that. Hey! Bouncing. And when you stone crazy like I am, they stand off and look at you while you're doing all this stuff. I said, what do you get out of coming up here anyhow? And he gave me one of them deep philosophical answers that they give you in AA all the time. Well, son, when you can answer that question, you won't have to ask it. I pondered that for hours upon hours, trying to grab the deep meaning of this. But it's like Alcoholics Anonymous. The reason that people like me don't grab things like that, it's just too damn simple. I'm going to tell you, I've discovered something since I've been sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. This is not an opinion. This is a fact based on my experience of sitting in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous with an average of six times a week for all these years and doing whatever it is I'm asked to do in Alcoholic Anonymous without too much backlash. I've recovered something. My old sponsor, Norm Alpe, used to talk a great deal about crossing over some invisible line from controlled to uncontrolled drinking. I don't have any qualms with that whatsoever. I think my line is three inches down my throat, but that's beside the point. I was over it when I was there. But there's an invisible line in Alcoholics Anonymous. I know that as well as I'm standing here. And if you're an alcoholic of my type and you don't cross over that line, you're going to die drunk. I don't care what anybody tells you. And there's that visible line from being a taker to being a giver. And if you don't cross over and you're an alcoholic of my type, you're going to die drunk or you're going to blow your brains out. And that's just the way it is. I don'T make those rules. My book tells me that. My book tell me that selfishness and self-centeredness seems to be the root of all of my problems. And I must be rid of it or it kills me. So I must get rid of this selfishness. It doesn't tell me I must quit drinking or it kills me. I know that's going to kill me. I must be rid of this selfish self-centeredness of mine. That's the root of my problems. All I ever care about is me. I've never done anything for anybody else. I've taken from people and used and abused and destroyed people all my life when I come here. No wonder I'm insane, for Christ's sake. I'm clinically insane because I can't stand to be sober. Every time I'm sober, I go nuts and attack psychiatrists. I even attacked one one time in a straitjacket. you think that isn't exciting. You know how they do it? They just read back in his chairs and smoked his pipe. He said, I think you're overreacting. I don't know what's going on here. I've never been more confused or more proved to myself that I was not alcoholic in my early days of Alcoholics Anonymous than any other time before. You proved to me that I wasn't an alcoholic in sitting in meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous. You proved that to me without a shadow of a doubt. Because you would get at podiums like this, and you would say things like, I used to drink. Now I don't drink anymore, and everything is just wonderful. Guess I'm not alcoholic then. I'm Not Drinking Either, and I'm crazy. I'm as sober as you are, buster, and I'm nuts. How could I be alcoholic? Wish I was. God, if I could just be alcoholic, then all I'd have to do is not drink, and I would be okay. They say, get busy. Well, I was busy. I thought busy. I was busy all the time. I was so busy I couldn't sleep being busy. Just busy, busy, busy. So I tried something. I tried picking up ashtrays. Nobody ever saw their ashtray for Christ's sake. I'm so fast and so busy getting back to my seat with my partners. And I said, I said back, I'm not alcoholic. I can't be alcoholic. How could I be alcoholic? I'm not drinking I'm as physically sober as these people who come in here and say they're alcoholic now they're the only alcoholics I know of they're saying they're alcoholics okay you're alcoholic that's fine with me I'm nuts you say you're alcoholic and you quit drinking and you're busy and you are just wonderful how could I be alcoholic I'm physically sober as you are I'm trying to be as busy as you are and I'm crazy I want to kill people I'm nut I've got nightmares I can't sleep for the disastrous deeds that I've done prior to coming in this thing. What am I supposed to do? What I have just described to myself without knowing it is not an alcohol problem or a drug problem. It's a disease called alcoholism. I didn't know that. I was bewitched by the four horsemen of terror, and I did not know it. I'm in nightmares of dastardly deeds thatI can't do. I got the ringing voice of my mother screaming in my ear in 1951 that I had murdered my baby brother. I don't understand those things. I got her eyes staring at me as I stood handcuffed between two detectives at his grave, watching him bury the only thing in this world I cared anything about. I got these kind of nightmares. I got faces of people out harmed and destroyed sitting at me when I'm sober because I didn't have blackouts. I knew exactly what I was doing all the time. and it just absolutely drove me crazy now I'm sober now I got no anesthetics to block it out now I am just faced with it all the time and for lack of a better word that is a disease called alcoholism and although it sounds a lot like alcohol it's not it's much worse an alcohol problem is solved by not drinking alcohol a drug problem is resolved by not taking drugs But it is a seemingly hopeless, twisted thing that I have that I didn't know I had called alcoholism. The only thing that sobriety has ever done for me is made life so damned unbearable that I can't stand it. And so it's necessary for me to have to drink over and over and over and again every time I'm faced with this terrible dilemma. And that's what I'm facing here. I got up one Sunday morning a long, long time ago. I love Sundays in AA. I didn't know it was a day I'd live my entire lifetime for. I didn' t know anything about it. If I'd have known it that day, I didn''t know I was going to go get driven right up to the gates of hell. I had no way of knowing somebody was going to put the key in there and let me out of there. Not at all. I didn ''t know that at all." If I had known that, you'd have a different speaker here today. I wouldn''t be here because I wouldn't have went to an AA meeting that day. I would have went over and talked to my counselor. I would ha''d talk to my therapist. I would hav''d talked to my psychiatrist or my parole officer or maybe even some of my partners at the domino table. Some of the real get-fewers down there. I didn't know that. You know what I did? I just went and sat in an AA meeting. Where do I always sit? Had my coat collar up and my shades on. I was still bouncing around back there in my air of contempt. And a little guy that I knew did 23 flat years in the penitentiary stood at a podium that day and told me something I've never forgotten. It makes more sense to me than anything I've ever heard. it'll make more sense to me tomorrow than anything I'll ever learn. He looked down where I was sitting that day and he said to me, you don't have to live like this no more if you don'T want to. He says, you DON'T have to do it like this, no more. Nobody had ever told me that. People have been telling me all my life, don't you drink, swallow, smoke or shoot? But they never told me how to live without doing it. See, I knew this little guy. He was my baseball coach when I was a star second baseman for the San Quentin Pirates. I put that on a resume one time. I really, I swear to God I did. I went to get a job. My sponsor insisted I go get this job. I didn't want it. So he said, I said, well, what am I supposed to tell the truth? So I put it on the resume. I told you, he said recreational activities, past and present. I starred second baseman for the San Quentin Pirates. He looked at me and he studied it. She said, oh, San Quenton. And I said yes. He says, where's that? And I says, it's up near Stanford. He looked without a doubt. He said, that must be a great school. And I said, yes, I've learned many things there. I'll tell you, it's kind of hard to recognize one of us sitting across the desk from us if we've been sober a little while. We just don't look like what they picture, do we? Oh, you. Anyhow, this little guy walked up to him and I said. You know, how did he learn how to live, Les? And he said, Johnny, there's a book called Alcoholics Anonymous in the library. Go home and get it. and I'll pray that you find some part of you in it. I guess he's prayed real hard, that little fella. I have been a student of that book from that day to this day. And the only thing I've ever found in that book is me. I haven't looked for anything else. Oh, I'm not looking for a way to sober up the world or cure all of society's ills. Not at all. I'm looking for away to live peacefully and comfortably and joyously with me and you and God. now the strange phenomena that takes place in my life is very simply this it seems like to me that the closer I adhere to the principles that are written in this book and the more willing I become to share that knowledge in this fellowship just for the sheer joy of doing it the more peaceful and the most comfortable and the joyous I live with me in the loving God that made me now I don't understand armed with these type of facts and with this type of knowledge, with this type of understanding, why it is that my ego still drives me into jackpots that I really don't comprehend. But I do know that the greatest single event in my life that ever happened to me is not coming to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's not the greatest single event that ever occurred to me. The greatest single thing in my life is getting sober is not the great—I was sober when I got here. I was as physically sober the the day I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I am this moment. My children being born and my grandchildren being born, and my lovely wife Karen sitting in the audience are not the greatest single events that ever happened to me in my life, although I love them dearly, don't get me wrong. The greatest single event that ever happen to me happened to be sitting in a room with a man doing what our program of recovery says is a fifth step. I heard myself say to this man that I was an alcoholic. And from way down deep inside of me came a freedom that I carry with me to this very instance for over 38 years now. You see, as I stand here before you today, what I've known for the last 38 years is exactly what's wrong with me. I'm an alcoholic and I suffer from a disease called alcoholism. I am not an alcoholic in anything. When I was an alcoholic, and something or other, I couldn't have your program. And the reason I couldnít have it is I separated me from you. Iím not like you. I'm better than you. I'm slicker than you, Iím hipper than you Iím stranger than you but Iím not LIKE YOU! When I became just like you, alcoholic it became necessary for me to fulfill the condition for the only program of recovery for alcoholics of my type in 7000 years of recorded history This is the only thing that's ever worked for people like me. I came out of that penitentiary on the fourth day of June, 1961, which was 37 years ago Thursday, to a world I didn't know anything about whatsoever. I had no social skills whatsoever. I had never worked a day in my life. I stole everything that I needed. I took whatever I wanted and I used whoever I had to use to get it. I didn'T know anything abOut working. I didn't have a driver's license. All I had inside of me was the first nine steps of this beautiful program of recovery that I had completed to the best of my ability while in this institution and all I wanted to do when I came out there in the back of my mind, I had this little dream that maybe you would let me come and sit with you. I never one time in my wildest imagination ever dreamed that you would ever ask me to do anything because I didn'T think I was worthy enough to sit with you. There were no people like me. I come from Iraq and did the things that I did to the people I did, and used the things I used, and I didn't know what was going on. But I said to myself, if they give me that privilege to sit with them, I'll do anything they ask me to do. And for over 37 years of my life, I've done everything that I've been asked to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not very grudgingly, and never volunteer for anything, but I do whatever they asked me to do. I went home to see my mother. She fell off the steps blind drunk. I picked her up and put her on a couch and said, Mom, I'm going to an AA meeting. She said, fine, I think you should. I'd like to tell you, my mom got sober and my dog got sober and my kids got sober. And my cat got sober, and we're a sober, sober, sober, sober. That ain't my experience. My mother never did get sober. Oh, my mother got undrunk from time to time, and while she was undrunken and her undrunkenness, she came and sit in meetings with you. But she never sit here like most people who come to a state of undrunkenness and never discover this magnificent thing called sobriety. So my mother came in and out and in and out. And I watched this dance of death with my mother who I love beyond all things. I watched my mother drink herself to death over 30 years while I sat right smack dab in the middle of this program and enjoyed the fruits of this magnificent thing call Alcoholics Anonymous. Powerless to do anything about it. What I discovered from that was very simply this, that I don't have the power to get anybody sober, for Christ's sakes. I don'T have the POWER TO GET ANYBODY DRUNK EITHER. I DON'T EVEN HAVE ANY POWER To KEEP ME SOBER. My book, Alcoholics Anonymous, tells me that all I have is a daily reprieve contingent upon my maintenance of certain spiritual conditions. That's all. This is my day. I got no yesterdays. I got notomorrows. I can't guarantee you I'm going to make it back to my hotel tonight. I don't know that. I've lived over 40 years longer than the medical profession says I can live. I'm walking around with a certificate from the leading psychiatrist in the state of California that says I'm clinically insane, and I can'T live outside of an institution without some type of medication in my system. And the only therapy that's been introduced in my life for these last 38 1⁄2 years is this wonderful program of ours called Alcoholics Anonymous that was designed by these two beautiful men, one of them whose birthday will be the 10th of this month. And I'll tell you, I don't know how many of you are here, but I'll say it. I'll just tell you there ain't nobody in this room, nobody in This Room or upon this planet who lives any better than I do. I'll Tell You That. Oh, some of you may have more things than I do, but you don't live no better than I do. Do you know what it's like to live all day long in an absolute peaceful coexistence with the God of your understanding? I do You know what I've learned in 38 and a half years? I've incorporated something into my life I didn't bring in here with me. I learned to love another human being more than life itself. My lovely wife Karen, who's just back there. I learned that here from you. I didn't bring these things with me to AA. I brought a mad, insane, bitter, frightened, guilty thing that would destroy anything that went near him and it was ready to go into fits of craziness at any moment. The best he could do was stay out of a straitjacket for four or five months in a crack while sober. And you hear I sit and stand before you today, loving everything God made in this green world. Listen to birds singing. So why is that? What has been added to my life? Nothing. Only this program. I hear people all the time say, oh, I guess it ain't enough. Well, maybe it ainít enough for them, but they ainít never found what I found here. By God, if it was any better than me, I couldnít stand it. A guy asked me the other day, he said, how are you doing? I said, man, if I was any bitter, Iíd have to be triplets. This thing is good, baby. If you ain't tried it, get it on. That's all I can tell you. Anybody, anybody, there ain't nobody in this room whose life would not be enriched by the application of these... Gee, I thought I'd offended one of them people already. They're coming at you from the wall. It's really true. Me, you, all of us. There isn't anybody in this room so far superior to anybody else in the world that their life would not be enriched by these 12 beautiful steps of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. That's all. I was here over 20 years ago at this place, and it wasn't like this. Dr. Bob's house wasn't what it was, but I made that trip that Bill made from the Mayflower Hotel to Henrietta Gebring House. to Cyberland's gatehouse, to Bob's house. It wasn't like it is now, to the King School, to the hospital, and all the things. Made it again today. And I'm going to tell you a magnificent thing happened to Karen and I and a couple of other people who were out at the gatehouse this morning. I'm gonna share this with you because it's such a beautiful experience. We're out at The Gatehouse early this morning at Henrietta Cyberland Gatehouse where our beloved Bob sat with Bill. And we were standing there looking around and Karen was trying to get up on the wall or do something. I burglarized the damn place, I guess. I don't know what she's trying to do. She's a little strange, my woman. I used to be something in Ohio before I married her. She's from Columbus, you know. People from Columbus say, who's that guy sitting down there with Karen? It just saddens me because I really used to be something around here. But anyhow, to get back onto some serious note, instead of the silliness. We were standing there and some guy got out of his car and he said, are you from AA? We said, yes we are, why? And he said I'm Henrietta Sybinton's nephew. And my mother, 108 years old, Henrietta's sister is in that little room in there right where Bill met Bob. And he started telling us about his friend who got sober and alcoholic synopsis. And we're all standing around like a bunch of dupes trying to figure out what's going on. I thought that was the most amazing thing that I'd ever seen. A minute before that or a minute after that, it would never happen. You know, I went to a meeting one night after I got out of the penitentiary and a guy walked up to me by the name of Norm Alpey and says, I'm going to be your sponsor. I said, oh, what's that? I didn't know. I mean, you know, I'm hip. I got all the answers. I work the program. You know what I mean? I got it together, baby. You know how I mean. he said well I'm going to help you get it done I said well what do you want me to do Norm and he said well why do you ask me I said for Christ's sakes you just told me you were going to be my sponsor he said if I can't run my life Johnny what makes you think I can run yours I said then what do we do what do I want you to do Norm he says why don't you just do what I do I said just what is it you do Norm he says if you do what I do then you'll know what I do isn't that Alcoholics Anonymous? Oh, monkey see, monkey do. I mean, how are you going to know how to stay sober if you can't stay sober unless you watch somebody sober do something? I mean this ain't no do-it-yourself kind of Burger King program, Abba Chair away for Christ's sake. We got a program of recovery to work here. Two men devoted their lives. My beloved Bob whose birthday we're celebrating, this thing called Bob's House, all this stuff. You know what he said? this is what he said the last thing he ever said to you and I let's keep it simple let's you and i keep this thing simple when you take our 12 steps and simmer them down to their simplest form they revolve around two words they revolved around love and revolve round service you see i will not serve anything i don't love and i won't love anything i can't serve Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . . . Thank you. You've got to learn about the two things before you can do anything here. And see, what happened when I came here is that you loved me before I could love myself. That's all. I hear people talking, alcoholics and almost all the time. Said, I had to learn to love me before I'd love you. It ain't the way it is with me. I don't even like me sometimes. I do some things that I really don't like me for. But I ain't never not loved you. I loved you before I ever knew you. I loved your family. I loved before I even knew I loved ya. I loved yo before I knew what I felt for ya. I just wanted to be where you were and do what you do. That's all, and I still want that more today than I ever wanted it before in my life. I can't tell you every moment I've lived out there, every meal I've eaten, been to banquet, every day I've moved out there I've looked on the sunny side of the street. I don't understand all that. I don' t understand a lot of things. I've been through, my wife committed suicide when I was six years sober, the mother of my children. I don know how to handle that, but you knew how to hand it. You just came and rocked me to sleep. You made sure I went to meetings. You kept me happy. My sponsor made me go to work and do things I didn't want to do. made me go on panels I didn't want to go on panel he was a mean cruel man my sponsor I went to a meeting with him one night I'm back there I used to walk in with you he's the speaker he's a little out of speak and I'd walk in behind even waving you know and I'm backed at the literature table at the coffee break and some guy who happened on the children said Johnny I said what he said do you know you're a miracle? I said, really? What was it that brought that to your attention? You know how humble we are. He said, well, I heard you talk the other day, man. Well, I listened to him, as humble as I am, kind of sauntered back to my seat and sat down and stared out the window looking for my spaceship. You see, I know I ain't here, baby. I know I'm somewhere else. I'm calling again and I'm staring out there. Norm's watching me. We're in the car, but I can't drive. He don't let me drive because I ain' got a driver's license. He said citizens like him had a right to be protected from jerks like me. And I'm stared out the window and looking for my star and he said, what are you doing over there, jackass? Are you smoking that stuff again? I said, Norm, I don't think you're going to understand this, but I'm a miracle. Norm didn't understand that. Matter of fact, he slammed on his brakes, damn near ran into the divider and screamed at me. He said, you're what? I said, I'm a miracle, Norm. He says, where do you get this nonsense, Johnny? I say, that guy just told me that. And they ain't mean it. He goes, you are not a miracle jackass. He says, Alcoholics Anonymous is a miracle and you are just a small part of it. Now, I don't know what that does for all the miracles in this room, but I can tell you what it's done for me. It's kept me small enough to stay here. Can you possibly realize what an egotist like me would do if I thought I was a miracle? Let your imagination soar. I'd be renting some Greyhound buses to take us all to Waco tonight to do it right this time. I have that type of an ego, I understand that. That's why I have to go to a lot of meetings. That's Why I have a sponsor that's stronger than my head. That's What I've got to do what I'm asked to do around here in Alcoholics Anonymous. Left to my own devices. I'd Be Wandering Around Here With A Loin Cloth Or Something. Sandals. Bringing Sim Marines Or Doing Something. I'm Goofy. I'm Not Wrapped Up That Tight. You got to have a leash on me, I'm telling you. I'm amazed at all these people who come here and get well. Well, they're not here anyhow, so we don't have to worry about them. They're probably watching the ball game somewhere. The sick people are here. You know why I know that? I am declared, and I am clinically declared by the leading psychiatrists in the state of California, clinically insane. And all of you are listening. Boy, that puts me right at home, baby. I don't know about you. But Alcoholics Anonymous is a wonderful thing. I really have a good life. I really do. You know, I just told you, Karen and I are married, and we've got a wonderful life. And I love her very dearly, but I learned that from you. I have a little eight-year-old grandson my youngest daughter who's sober three years and Alcoholics Anonymous now after many years out there is sober now and she's got her little eight year old grandson and I just love him he looks like me and acts like me runs through walls and he's crazy I love him but you see what I really want to impress on you more than anything else is that I never brought anything like that with me to Alcoholics Anonymous all I brought into Alcoholics Anonymous was guilt and hate and bitterness and violence and insanity. And by coming in here and sitting in your rooms and doing what you've asked me to do and trying to fulfill the conditions of this program of recovery, I have learned things like the 12 promises. I know what it's like to live at peace. I Know What It's Like to Live All Night and All Day Without Any Nightmares Whatsoever. I Now What It'S Like to live in a world absolutely and totally current in all my affairs. I stand before you tonight, I'm absolutely and totally certain. I don't owe anybody anything. Oh, I have some bills, I got a car, but that's not anything. I don' t owe that. I just sell it if I get too bad. My life is really a very blissful thing. Why I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, my sponsor when I was new made me shut up and sit still in meetings. He told me to shut up and listen. He said, Just sit there, Johnny, and pay attention. You may miss something. I didn't realize then what my sponsor was doing for me. But what my sponsor was dealing for me by making me sit still and pay attention while I'm in the room, he was introducing me to a God of my very own. Now, I didn' t know that because my God of my very own has already happened to me. Why I come to meetings has already happen to me? I heard it the other night sitting at the old-timers meeting. I heard that last night when I sit there and listen to that man and woman, that lovely couple from Louisville talk. i heard it all day today as i'm wandering around bob's house and by the cemetery and out of the henry eddie gibbons hate house and all these places i've already sat around to listen to the things that go on i listen to the people chatter as they walk around and i see all these things and you see the amazing thing to me is when i'm doing that i'm more interested in you than i am myself and at those brief moments of my life i'm about as close to my god as i've ever gone to get. My old Papa Chuck told me something a long time ago that made no sense to me then, it makes more sense to be today than anything that I know. He said that nature abhors a vacuum, but God abhores a vacuum even more under heaven and earth. He says to me that if I could empty myself of self, I would be automatically for the God. And so when I sit with you and become more attention to what you're doing and more concerned with your life than I am my own, I'm about as close to my God As I've ever gone to get That's why I like to sponsor people I got to tell you the story of my hoodlums It's a story of Alcoholics Anonymous I love these kids I got a flock of them I don't know where they come from for Christ's sake But I guess, I don' t want to say that That's a bad word Not very long ago A kid that was nine years sober Clean and Narcotic Anonymous Came to me And he heard me talking to me And he said to me Would you be my sponsor and help me I said, well, what do you want me to do? You know, we do a little thing differently. We work this program. We try to get out and help people. Mark, what Do you want Me to do?" He said, I want you to help Me. And so I put Mark into Alcoholics Anonymous, into our program of recovery. Not necessarily the fellowship, that too, but our program recovery. He worked a fourth step and a fifth step, and he's making his amends. And he's gone on for about eight or nine months. He takes a cake, and that night his partner comes up and taps me on the shoulder, and he said, hey. And I said what? He said what did you do to my friend? I said What do you mean? He said he's happier than I've ever seen him. and I said I don't know I just put him into this program why and he said do it to me and now I got about seven of them out there hanging around there but you see what I do for them is what Bill did for Bob and what Bob did for the 5,000 people that he treated in this area. He told them about a program of recovery called Alcoholics Anonymous and he took the time to put them into it. He took the Time to introduce them to a God of their very own. He took The Time to help them clean up the wreckage of their past so they could live in a peaceful coexistence in this world and the people around them without the removal of the wreckages of our past. We can't live with any peace here. We got to clean it up. That's why they've got that nine step. It's the most beautiful step in AlcoholicsAnonymous. Dr. Bob couldn't stay sober until he did that step. Dear, beloved Dr. Bob, who was my hero, could not stay sober his first time out because he refused to do the remorseless thing. He didn't want to do those things. He didn'T want to make amends to nobody because he lived in Akron and he got drunk. And when he came back the first day back, he was out mending fences. And he stayed sober for the next 15 years until he died. This program is magnificent and beautiful. It does things that people that I don't ever believe. And if you don't sit in the middle of it and see it, then you're going to miss the whole ballgame. Somewhere in our program of recovery, in our book, it says to see this fellowship grow up around you is an experience you must not miss. The most joyous thing that happens to me in my life is to watch these young people that I work with and sponsor doing Alcoholics Enough, to watch the light come on to their eyes. They're like wild horses. You can't get enough of them. You know what they asked me the other day? We were having a party for one of them who tried 11 years to make a program. He made one year. They asked me if I knew how to play dominoes. I just said, well, slightly. God, we went at it hook, line, and sinker. Look at that old fool over there slapping them dominoed down there, carrying on, yelling with them kids. Alcoholics Anonymous is wonderful. It's wonderful. I love being here, and I love to be around the people. You know, everything that I have in my life, I owe to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything I may ever hope to have in My Life, I will owe to this program called Alcoholics Anonymous, and dear friends, please believe this. It's a long, long walk from a cell in solitary confinement at a maximum security penitentiary to where I stand right now, But for the grace of God, AA and good people like you, I could have missed it all. God bless you. Thank you.