The Throne of Contempt Prior to Investigation – Johnny H.

Hi, everybody. My name's Johnny, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here tonight, and I'm glad to be sober. And if you're new here in Alcoholics Anonymous tonight, I hope the word being sober doesn't offend you as bad as it offended me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. See what I said in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and the people of Alcoholic Anonymous talked to me about being sober, I didn't think Alcoholics Anonymous had anything to offer me. And the reason I didn�t think that is because I was as physically sober when I came to my first meeting of alcoholics anonymous as I am right now. Physically sober. I have been sober without any mood altering chemicals or alcohol in my system from the first moment I sat with you to this moment. And I've learned to think a little bit different about sobriety. The idea that there's no alcohol or chemicals in my system doesn't even enter into the picture anymore. Sobriety is the way I live. I lived a certain way for a long period of time. For a long period of times, I could not stay sober. For an equally or long period time plus that, I have lived an entirely different way and all that period of Time, I've been able to stay sober. But you know, you'll hear a lot of things in Alcoholics Anonymous and it seems like we're getting more sophisticated all the time here. They're sticking us with a lot of psychobabble from various places about feelings and this and that and the other. On June the 4th of this year, I'll attend a meeting and my home group and my sponsor will give me a cake. a birthday cake which he does every year and he doesn't give me that birthday cake because I've been successful in a relationship or that I've managed to overcome the concepts and the working problems of life out there I get that birthday kick for one reason one reason only for that last year of my life I haven't taken a drink of alcohol or swallowed any mood altering chemical now let's not forget that let's not get so caught up in all this outside nonsense that keeps perpetrating our rooms of alcoholic synonymous and we forget that our primary purpose in life is to stay sober and to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers and even more important than that let's just try to figure out who's suffering and who ain't oh we're great I'm going to go over and get them they're special hell we've got some things out there we got people you know just the honesty of God truth we got people trying to sober up people who don't even drink for Christ's sake I said in love I love those traditions tells me what my purpose is what we're supposed to be doing here and what we're not supposed to be doing here so I would like to thank the committee for allowing me the privilege of participating in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I have always considered it some type of a privilege to be allowed to even come in here and sit with you good people. I have never been able to get it through my head that I have a right to be here or a right to all the good things that my life seems to offer me today because of Alcoholics Anonymous just because I don't drink alcohol. I can't get that through my head. I hope as long as I live, as long as I'm able to breathe in and out, I always consider it a privilege for me to be allowed to come and sit with you good people because I've looked over my life before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I looked it over very thoroughly and I've been doing it for a long, long time looking back over my Life before I got to you good People and I can't see anything in my life before I became to Alcoholic Anonymous that would allow me that I did, that was good enough that would allow me to live the way I live today. There is nothing in my life that I ever did that was good enough that would allowed me to by the grace that I lived today in this magnificent thing called Alcoholics Anonymous. So, I have to consider some type of a gift that I've been given here and some type a privilege to be allowed to receive and maintain and nurture that gift. And so, I'm very glad that they allow me the opportunity or afford me the opportunity to do whatever I can do in AlcoholicsAnonymous to keep my gift alive. Because my old sponsor, Norm Alpe, when he was alive, used to make a statement that I love more than anything and I think it's really apropos for us. He used to say, what you are speaks so loud I can't hear a word you say. And I'll tell you why I think about that. Ed and I were having dinner tonight and the little waitress came up and we were joking with her and having a good time and she was all frustrated. She said some people were out there raising hell with her out there on the patio. I said, why don't you go out there and ask them what step they were working? So you never know. But I'm glad to be here. I'm happy to be with the people that I'm with. And I'm just glad to be sober. That's all. I'm extremely pleased to be here tonight fully clothed and in my right mine. And I know that doesn't do a hell of a lot for you, but 33 years ago tonight, crawling around in a cell in solitary confinement, drifting in and out of total insanity, it's what I had reduced myself to. I can't stand at the podium of Alcoholics Anonymous or anything in the world and be able to blame any single thing in the World for it. I've never been able to blame alcohol or drugs for anything that happened to me. That's what I did to me, what alcohol did in my life it kept me alive long enough to find alcoholic synonymous, that's all it just kept me alive long enough to found you because I've always been looking for you as far back as I can ever possibly remember I've been looking through you I didn't know it was you I was looking for because I didn' have the slightest idea of what it was I was lookin' for, I didn''t know what it was, I just knew there was somethin' wrong with me, and I knew I had to find it. I just knew that there was something wrong because everything in my life was scattered. There was nothing together in my life. It was anger and hostility and bitterness and anxiety and envy and jealousy. I didn't know all those things either. That's just the way I felt. I was just all scattered around. And wherever I went, I was more confused by what the people were saying because I never, you know, I never just showed up in Alcoholics synonymous one day and said, man, I'm looking here. I didn't know I was on a search, but I knew there was something missing. I knew there was something wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it. I was restless, and I was irritable, and I was discontent, and I knew there was something that mattered with me. I did not know what it was. Man, I knew as much about alcohol when I was six years old as I know right now about what alcohol would do to people. What it would do to them is what it did to my family. My uncles drank whiskey and went to penitentiaries. My aunts drank whiskey, and worked in those houses on the other side of the tracks. Mom drank whiskey ,and beat up dad. Dad drank whiskey beat up mom. They both drink whiskey and beat me up. I saw what whiskey did to people. All that said for me was, I ain't gonna drink. I ain´t gonna be like that. I'm gonna be better than that. I'm gonna be something." But one day sitting on the back porch of my grandpa's house where he'd stashed his bottle, I took a drink and in that instant of my life I sold myself into bondage for the next 20 years of my life. Bondage that took me into the gates of insanity and death and beyond, pursuing this thing. I didn't know it then. As I look back on it now, I recognize it very simply because I've been sober and Alcoholics Anonymous for a long time. And I found out that at that moment in my life, I had an abnormal reaction to alcohol. I did not know that. It was not a bad reaction. You know what alcohol did for me? It put it all together. It made all the pieces just like that. And it installed in me some type of an attitude, damn you world, damn you world. I may not be good enough to be around the good people but I'm too good to be around the bad people it's okay right here. Right now right here, it's fine thank you. And what I did for the next 20 years of my life, I pursued that fantasy into the gates of insanity and death. Every time I drank, the same thing happened to me. I took a drink of alcohol, and three days later they pulled me out from underneath a bridge and stood me in front of a judge and sent me to the Hutchinson State Reform School. Twenty years later, I took another drink of wine and a drink with alcohol. They pulled me off a car in Compton, stood me up in front of a church and sent us to 20 years in the penitentiary. that's what happened to me when I drank I got drunk and went places I just traveled around out there I went from reform school to reform school to junior penitentiaries to penitenciaries to nut houses now they call them treatment centers isn't it amazing how people change the names of things that offend them you know what I mean really I mean have you ever stopped to figure this out when in God's world did toilet paper become bathroom tissue that's just an illustration but you know I'm an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous and we got a lot of Let me just put a little scenario out here for you because this won't offend you, Bob, at all. I am an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous in my home group and my other home group that my sponsor makes me go to. We have a lot of young, hip, slick, hope fiends coming in. I said hope fiends. They're trying to be, you know what I mean? They're working at it. And they're slick. Now let's put it in proper perspective. They want to be tough and they want to be macho. I can just picture this. In my neighborhood it was necessary to be... How would you like to come walking up in my neighborhood trying to beat me? You know, putting on your bad act and you walk up to the neighborhood and somebody says, where have you been? Well, I just did 30 days in the care unit. Not in my neighborhood, you wouldn't, I tell you. I just come out of the nuthouse. 4,000 shock treatments. Ha ha ha! They'll go, oh yeah. The hero for the day, I'll tell you that. That's what I mean. You know, I'm sitting on a furlough from reform school when I'm 10 or 11 years old drinking a bottle of Marca Petri red wine, which was my drink. Most of you have never heard of Marcapetri red vine. It was the experimental stage of the Thunderbird. That stuff never saw a grape. Ever. Well, I'll tell you how bad it was. I like to remember this because I was in Palm Springs one time having dinner. And I called a wine steward over and I asked him, I said, have you ever heard of Marca Petri red wine? He says, yeah. But I don't know anybody who ever drank it who ever lived to talk about it. And I said I used to drink it by the galley. He said sure you did. you know how they are he went over and stood in the corner and every time I saw him watching me the rest of the night I'd do things like this but I'm sitting on this street corner I'm drinking this wine I've been looking forward to drinking this see I'm an alcoholic I didn't know that I didn' t know it and I'm alcoholic and when I get locked up I'm fine first couple weeks I take physical exercise I'm a ball player I'm real active athletically. I read books. I'm studying. But somewhere along the time when it starts to think about me getting out, I start to think About It. And I start thinking about showing up in the neighborhood and then that conflict starts to go off inside of me and I start To Think About Showing Up In My Neighborhood and I Start To Think about my gang wanting me to be their leader. I don't want to be Their Leader. I want to Be a Doctor or a Lawyer or an Architect or a Major League Baseball Player. That's what I want To Be. But I don' t know how to tell them. So I'm a wimp standing up against the street corner, and I don't know what to do, and I'm trying to figure there's magic that freed me from there and gives me that. And what is it? It's a bottle of Marca Petri red wine. The answer, the alcoholic's answer. Clancy talked about how well it works in our lives. Worked that way with me. I knew it was the answer. It's the best friend I ever had at that point. And I'm looking forward to it. And then one day I'm sitting on this street corner. I'm drinking a gallon of wine. I drink the whole gallon. I'm sober as I am right now. Crazy. It's not magic. And the guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, why don't you try these? And he gave me some pills. 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 have a whole new 12-step program called Laxatives Anonymous working around out there somewhere. I could be the adult child of a laxative taker, I suppose. I could have been functional, but mothers sit on the toilet all the time when I was little. I don't know. I hear stuff stupider than that. It seems logical to me. Work is all I can tell you. They work. Thank God they work. But sitting on that same street corner a couple of years later from another reform school, I'm eating these pills and drinking this wine and it's not working. And a guy stuck a needle in Marm. And for the next 14 years of my life, I stuck needles in Marr and ran in out of institutions. That's what I do. I live out on the streets and I do what people like me who live in the streets do. I destroy everything that comes in contact with me. See, I'm a taker of things and I'm an abuser of people, so therefore I'm a loser. I'm selfish, I've set centered, and I've self-serving and I got an ego bigger in this whole room. I never spent my life before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous being concerned with anybody else. I never had a conscious thought or a conscious concern for any other human being in my life before I got to you good people. Selfish people like me, self-centered people don't even know how to say I love. I never told anybody I loved them before I came here. And the reason I didn't, if I told you I loved you, I gave you an edge. Takers don't give people edges. TakERS keep the edge. If I told your I loved and you had an edge, you were going to be able to use me and I did not allow that to happen. Ever. I'm the user. Users don't allow other people to use them. Users use. And I'll tell you what will happen to you. If you live that way over a period of time, what'll happen is that pretty soon you use up every living thing in your life. You know, 33 years ago, crawling around in that cell, there wasn't anybody sending me penny postcards anymore. I had nobody or nothing left. I'd used them all up. And I destroyed everything that I came in contact with. In 1951 on my way to the penitentiary, I destroyed probably the only thing in my life I cared about before I got here, if I was capable of caring. I had to stand in the old Los Angeles County Jail when my mother screamed at me that I was a murderer. That my baby brother had gotten into some of my poison and took an overdose of it and died. I stood handcuffed between two detectives three days later while they buried the only thing in my lifetime I ever cared about with all the guilt and shame and humiliation and degradation of a lifetime hanging around my shoulders. I stood there. just stood there. I couldn't cry because I didn't know how, I didn' t know what I was supposed to do, I did' t know how I was suppose to feel. They wouldn't let me near the family, the family was there, I was here, the family looked at me and I don't know, it was terrible. I felt everything but I felt nothing and I really never ever got that picture completely out of my mind. I went on to the penitentiary and I stayed there four and a half years. I came out there four and half years sicker than I was when in there because I don't get better just because I don�t drink. I want you to know that. I'm alcoholic, you understand? And just because I don't drink doesn't automatically entitle me to get better because I go sit somewhere and not drink. And if you're alcoholic like I am alcoholic and you're just sitting somewhere not drinking, you're getting worse. You ain't getting better. And I guarantee you all hell is about to break loose sometime. If you're alcoholic like but see, I don't know who's alcoholic and who's not. I haven't got that great ability that some people seem to have to diagnose who's what and who ain't. I don' t know. The only one I'm sure of is me. Me, I'm alcoholic and that's the only one that I have to be sure of because it's my life that's on the line and it isn't anybody else's that I know of. I'm an alcoholic. I can't drink and live and of myself I can' t keep from drinking. How do you like that? That's tough, huh? Standing here getting worse, not better. How's that hope for the newcomers, huh? What that means is that I'm 30 years worse off as far as successful drinking was when I got here. And I don't get to stay sober tonight, folks, just because I've been sober. That's another fallacy that goes on around here sometimes. A lot of people think they get to stay sober just because they've been sober. That's like trying to eat last year's sandwich the day after tomorrow. That's about how stupid that thing is. I get to say it's over today for what I've done today. This is the day I get the stage over. I don't know about the rest of you. This is a day I guess the station. God, what a great thing it is. I didn't know that. I come walking out of that penitentiary bounty term and I had that DOB because I figured out what my problem was. Psychiatrist told me I was crazy. Psychiatist told me I was going to die in an institution. The psychiatrist took me down and showed me the gas chamber. He says, you're going to end up here, hot shot. I told him, not me. I'm different. Theme song of the alcoholic. What kills most of us. Saved me from a load lobotomy then. Another way they used to have treating alcoholism. It's wonderful how modern science has progressed. Karen would tell me how shocked she was. She said they were, she found out that they were still giving shock treatments. I tell her, I could take her to a place where they give shock treatments and where they gave me my last shot. Still doing it. But they don't have to put you in straitjackets anymore. They've got things called pellets that they inject into you, pocket rockets that you can carry around with you. You don't need a strait jacket if you're just walking around like a zombie. You're not violent or anything, but that's what they used to do with me. See, I figured out when I was sitting in that penitentiary what my problem was. My problem was heroin. That's my problem. I could figure it out. I only got in trouble when I was hooked on heroin. So I came out of that penitentiary and I drank whiskey and smoked grass and ate pills. It's almost like somebody in AA saying, well, I ain't had a drink, but ah, that's good. I've sought through prayer and medication to improve my conscious conduct. So six months later, I'm laying in a nut house kicking and screaming and I made my round to some of the better laughing academies in the world interviewing psychiatrists. We had great conversations. They talked to me about my mother, and I talked to them about their mother. I said I had a bad attitude. I did have a bad gratitude. I didn't have one, but I had bad attitude, whatever it was, the one I had was bad because I was angry because I couldn't find the answer. My answers were no longer answers, and my problems were mounting, and I didn't get rid of the nightmares. And every time I'm sober, I got this thing. What I hope to be my last interview with a psychiatrist happened to me in a federal government hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. If I live to be 1,000 years old, I hope I never forget that interview. I never will forget how I walked into this man's room or was led into this men's room and strapped down to this chair because I had a bad habit of attacking psychiatrists. you ever try to attack one in a straight jacket well that's they smoke their pipe and say you're overreacting but I moved in and sat down in this room and I believe sincerely as I look back on it now and I've been looking back on the past for quite a while and I look at things pretty deeply anymore and I walk into that man's office that day and I sit down across his desk and I looked up against the wall and I saw a whole wall full of diplomas and plaques and degrees and stuff. And I think for a moment, just for a minute, there was a little hope installed in me. Just for a movement. I thought well maybe this is the end of my journey. Maybe he knows. And when he opened his mouth to speak any moment of hope or any flicker of hope I had he threw clean out the door. Because he looked at me and he said Johnny if you didn't drink these things and swallow these things and smoke these things and shoot these things, you wouldn't have any problems. When I was a kid in Hutchinson State Reform School, my counselor told me that. When I was in Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, my counselor taught me that when I was at Whittier State Reform school, my councilor told me if I didn't drink these things or swallow these thing to smoke these thing to shoot these thing, I wouldn't had any problem. They told me then in San Quentin, they told me than in Folsom, They told me that in Lexington, they told me that in Fort Worth, they've told me that in Braemar. That's the nuthouse in South Pasadena, Karen, in case you want a place to check into some day. One of the most famous psychiatrists in the world is ever known in this part of the world, a guy by the name of Carl Menninger at Menningers Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, told me that and what none of those people ever took into consideration every time they told me that I was as physically sober as I am right now. It's physically sober. How many times do I want to scream out, I'm a good God doctor, don't you understand? Because they really don't. They really don'T. God love them. They don'T understand. The only people who understand you are our you and I. That's why it says here, our primary purpose is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers because we're the only ones who can. You know what the greatest words in the world that an alcoholic like me ever heard? Ever heard? I understand how you feel. You know, before I came to you, nobody ever said, did you know what they said to me before I became here? Don't do that! Why are you doing that? Can't you see what you're doing? Yes, I can. Thank you. Nobody ever said I understand, I know just how you field. Nobody knew that. So I almost killed myself I was strapped down on a bed shortly thereafter more dead than alive in the Los Angeles County Jail. 128 pounds and yellow and a doctor standing there telling me I'm going to die and wanting to die and can't die and just terrible hell I was in. He told me that three days in a row and I was so terrified the third time he told me that I was going to live. Clancy talked about it last night. There's a fear, fear far greater than living for the alcohol dying for the alcoholic. It's the fear of living. See when you run out your string and you think you're going to have to pass this nightmare the rest of your life, it's a frightful thing. When you can't get sober and you can'T get drunk and you CAN'T turn off the nightmares and it's never going to end and tomorrow is going to be just like today and for God's sake make it go away. It won't go away anymore. What's the matter with me? The alcoholic theme song. Jesus Christ, what's wrong with me? I didn't know because nobody was advertising on us in TV for ten days and two day follow-ups. Didn't know. I didn' t know. Nobody ever called me an alcoholic. They call me a number of things but they did not call me alcoholic. An alcoholic would have offended me. I laid in that bed for a period of time and out of sheer desperation one night I knew nothing better to do. I screamed out the only prayer I'd probably ever said in my life. I said, oh God help me. There was no blinding flashes of light and nobody come running down the hall with a dozen donuts saying we got an A meeting down there. I didn't wander off into the tulip somewhere. I went to sleep for a little while and I got better and better and bitter and two weeks later I'm up running around in jail looking for some more of the poison to put me back on the bed, I just got not fun. And there's a good reason for that because in the back of my mind the problem seems to be centered there was the knowledge. The knowledge that when I can't stand life on life's terms any longer, I can ingest something into my system and I'm okay right now. Right now. God, that's all I ever wanted. I just want to be okay right now. I don't want to Be Okay the day after tomorrow. That's too long to wait. Now is when I want it. So I got loaded again. Now years later, years later. I've told this story before but it's really important for me to understand it. I had an old man in Alcoholics Anonymous by the name of Chuck Chamberlain who was like a father to me. The closest thing I've ever had is a father and when I was new in Alcoholic Anonymous I used to ride around with him all the time in his car and listen to him speak and do things and just be amazed by being in his presence. And he used to talk a great deal about surrender, he'd say. You've got to surrender! And I was puzzled by it all. And so one night we were coming back from a meeting and I said to him, Papa, I've gotto ask you a question. You just talked about surrender a great detail and I want to ask you a question and it really puzzled me and it did really puzzle me because I didn't understand. I said when you surrendered on your kitchen floor in Beverly Hills in a total surrender he said yes I said didn't I surrender in my deathbed in the old Los Angeles County jail with the same death of a surrender that you did on your question kitchen floor in Beverly Hill didn't i didn't night he said why sure you did son without a doubt why I said then how come I got loaded two weeks later and you didn't How come? He said, that's very simple son. You've got to surrender every day. This is the day we surrender. God did. I can't tell you what that meant to me because I thought for a long period of time I didn't have the right or the grace or I had been done too done, been too worse or too bad that because I surrendered to a depth of my soul that I could not have what he had because I was so rotten inside that God had turned his back on me. That was after I was sober for a period of time. I stood in front of a superior court judge and the man called me a blood-sucking parasite in society. He said I had no right being around decent people. He told a woman that I was married to who was carrying my child inside her that she cared anything at all about her child that I'd never be allowed to lay eyes on it. And what that man said to me that day literally drove me insane. Literally drove me sane. Because, you see, the one thing I have never been able to do from the day I came here before I got here, the day since I've been here. I can't do it right now. I can hide me from me. Now, I can hide me form you. I'm a master at it. I just can't hide me from me, that used to drive me insane. I'd dance around and push you out there and keep you away from me by different areas. I can separate me from you by wearing my little dope fiend uniform or my little hippity hop uniform or convict uniform or whatever uniform I want to wear of the day, I can keep you out there. I am a master at it. But the thing that drove me literally insane was I could not stand me. I could never get away from me. I was always strapped with me when I was alone. That's what sobriety brought home more than anything else for me. The nightmares and the wreckage of my past sitting in my face. I were totally responsible and aware of all the crap that I had done before I got here. I didn't know what to do. So on a Sunday morning in November in 1959, I stumbled into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didnít come to Alcoholics Anonymous to get sober. I was as physically sober when I came to Alcoholic Anonymous as I am right now. I came for a drink and I came to my first meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous in November 4, 1959 because they let some women come into the institution that I was in. I followed them into a room, just like I came here to smell perfume I've been honking and sniffing around here ever since I don't know what you came here for motives don't count here motives, that's why they took an honest desire out of our traditions motives don'T count here actions count here which you are, speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying actions. I remember sitting in the back row, what I lovingly like to call my throne of contempt, looking up on the backboard and seeing two big A's and thought I'd stumbled into an anti-aircraft brigade. I had no idea what AA was. And I said to this guy next, what is this? He said it's Alcoholics Anonymous. I kind of sunk down in my seat because I didn't want anybody seeing the big gangster hanging out with them winos. I mean you have to understand that it was different when I got here I know all of you just fell in here wonderful, knew what was wrong with you but I thought I'd wait for these women to get up and tell their racy stories now you've got to remember something too that when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous there weren't very many young pretty girls in AlcoholicsAnonymous there just wasn't if they were they weren't there that day okay these old gals got up to talk and said they drank for a long time you could look at them and know they'd been somewhere for a while they said I used to drink I said I'll bet you did bad stuff too I knew everything when I came here I knew anything I just didn't know how to live which is the worst sin of all I suppose. Living so far away from the father's house, I guess. Being so far away from his home, I guessed. I guess the further I walked down that road, the farther I walked away from my father. And the farther I walk away from my father, the crazier I got. And the crazier I got, the more desperate I became. And the more desperate I became, the more I needed to numb me. And the more I needed to numb me, the more desperate I became. It was just like a snowball rolling down hell. Just smack into hell. I'm going to tell you something. was I hope I don't ever have to go there I hope I never have to go there I didn't know what was going on they talked about God in Alcoholics Anonymous that day I stumbled out of the room I didn' didn't know what to do I guess I didn want him to recognize where I was or something I don't know what I want my concept of God my grandmother taught me about a God who punished little boys who were bad had God sitting over there somewhere, writing it down. That's the way it is. That's what theology has taught. Theology has taught to take God from man and put him over there. That's where theology teaches. Alcoholics Anonymous takes God from over there and puts him right in here. Right where he belongs. Brings him home again. I'm going to tell you something. If God ain't in this room, we are in deep pucky. I'll tell you what my God my God is here tonight because my God is wherever I am take him with me because I was taught that I remember I went into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous not very long ago and somebody said to me I walked up to the meeting and the guy said Johnny you're going to talk about God and I said probably why he said oh you shouldn't do that I said, why not? He says, the newcomers they're sensitive you may run them out of A.A. Let me tell you newcomers something if God will run you out of Alcoholics Anonymous whiskey will run your rusty butt back in here I only come to Alcoholics Anonymous and came back to my second meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because I'd seen the miracle of Alcoholic Anonymous. I saw its people The miracle of Alcoholix Anonymous is in its people I am not the miracle The miracle is AlcoholicsAnonymous and what it does for the people who apply it to their life. And I didn't know that either Back to the meeting, these people kept talking about God, and different groups kept coming in there and talking about God. They had a different group every week to go make fun of. A whole new group. If I was that bad, I'd quit drinking too. I mean, yeah, I did sit back there in my ignorance and my contempt prior to investing. There is a line or a paragraph in our book Alcoholics Anonymous that describes me better than anything that I know when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous. It was written by a guy by the name of Spencer, he said, there is a principle which is a boom to mankind. It's bound to keep him in everlasting ignorance. That is the principle of contempt prior to investigation. And I can't think of a better way to describe me to you than that when I got here. See, I was so frightened of failing when I Got Here, I never tried nothing. It's a lot easier to sit back and knock than it is to say, okay, I'll try. You know, even if you don't say it, well, so I'd sit in meetings of alcoholic anonymous confused and listen to people talking alcoholic anonymous and I would hear strange things that made no sense to me I'd hear people say things like I used to drink and now I don't drink anymore and everything is wonderful I'd say I guess I'm not alcoholic then I'm Not Drinking Either and I'm Crazy I'm As Physically Sober As You Are Buster I Haven't Had A Drink I've Been Sober Longer Than You Have but I'm not so I get I wish I was I used to say to myself God I wish I was an alcoholic if I could just be an alcoholic but I am all wrapped up in my images and they say you get busy I run around like a chicken with my head cut off God I picked up ashtrays and poured coffee and smiled at people made a mad dash to inventory point so I could go back there and be crazy I didn't know what was wrong with me and every time I ask one of these people anything they say oh it's in the book I say what's in a book oh it is there you want to hide anything from an alcoholic put it in the books for some strange reason they never look there probably their therapist tells them they've got a better idea I'm not knocking therapy something gets into me every once in a while I'll tell you something that I know this is something that i know it's not an opinion it's a fact in the 56 years or the 50 some years that our book Alcoholics Anonymous has been in publication it's been responsible for changing more lives than all the combined therapy in the history of the world so if you ain't tried it don't knock it and when all else fails you may try our program when I was new I used to call my sponsor Norm up and I'd say things like Norm my program ain't working he'd say why don't you try ours jackass you say your program never did work and if it did work you wouldn't need me but I didn't know that so I went into the book Alcoholics Anonymous I suppose while I was in this penitentiary not to find a way to stay sober and to live sober and clean and decent and wonderful in a world I don't understand, to have a life that I've never even dreamed of. Not to have all that, just probably to prove to you that the program wouldn't work for me because my case was different. And sitting in a room doing what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous says is the fifth step a long, long time ago, I heard myself say something that changed my entire life. It's probably the greatest single event that ever happened to me in my lifetime. I heard myself admit to this man that I was an alcoholic. From way down deep inside of me there came of freedom that I care with me to this very instant because as I stand here tonight I know exactly what's wrong with me. Exactly. I'm an alcoholic. I suffer from a disease called alcoholism. I'm not an alcoholic and anything. When I was an alcoholic AND something, I couldn't have your program. And the reason I couldn'T have it is because I separated me from you. I was not like you. I would do other things and I was this and I was that, but I was not like you. And you see, I'd sit around on the fringes and be proud of my differences and do all the things that I was and I could not come into the center. But in the third chapter of our book Alcoholics Anonymous in the second paragraph it says we have to admit to our innermost self that we're alcoholic. That's the first step in recovery. To my innermOST self, not to you or to stand up as a newcomer to somebody I want to be my sponsor to impress them to my innermost self. I did that sitting in that room. And from that day to this day I've had to do what alcoholics have to do to stay sober. I'm alcoholic, I discovered it. And when I discovered that I discovered I have to be able to do the only thing that alcoholics have ever been able to do to stay sober. I have fulfilled the conditions of a program of recovery that's outlined in a book called Alcoholics Anonymous and I have found somebody else to help me run my life because up to that point my life, I had an idiot running it. Me. And I'm telling you, if you're alcoholic and you're running your own life, you've got an idiot runnin' yours. That's very simple. Very simple. If you knew so damn much, what are you doin' here? If your life, if your runnin', your life's so good, people don't come to Alcoholics Anonymous because they've been makin' such a good go of it. Well, I'm just wonderful today. I think I'll go down and see what they're doing down in them meetings down there and see if I can help them we usually send those people to Al-Anon I just thought I'd just you should never pick on somebody that has the microphone after you Carol I I'll just try to tell you that. You know, when I surrendered to that fact, and that's basically what it was, is surrender to that act, and I realized what was wrong with me, my search ended. I'm not looking for anything anymore. I haven't looked for anything for a long, long time. I know exactly where I am, who I am and what I'm trying to do. I became willing to do whatever was put in front of me and I had people come into my life who were more concerned in saving my life and they weren't hurting my feelings I had some men sit me down in a room and word by word sentence by sentence paragraph by paragraph feed me the English language because my vocabulary consisted of about four letter words and they didn't think that was very spiritual they told me we don't say it like that Johnny Cussin is a crutch for conversational cripples and then they stood my wrath when I rained on them I was crazy when I came here absolutely crazy and the healing agent of Alcoholics Anonymous to the insane is love do you know that love will even permeate into insane wet brains I remember one time when I was a few years sober I was out calling on customers one day and I went into this purchasing department and I sit down in the lobby. And I was waiting for the purchasing agent and I picked up a Reader Digest and I was reading a story. It was a story about a kid in Korea, I think it was, who was a helicopter pilot, whichever one it was over there. And he crashed his helicopter and one of those rotary blades went into his head and it rendered him a vegetable. And they put him in the hospital because he wasn't dead and they brought him back to the United States and his mother and his wife would go into his room all day long and they would sit there and each one would take a hold of his hand and they Would tell him over and over and over again, we love you. We love you and we want you to get well. And I was reading this thing with great desperation and at the end of the story this man was graduating from college with honors and he took his diploma and he stood up there and he said he was there because of the healing agent of love because people loved him not because of medical science in a lot of ways that borders my story in Alcoholics Anonymous that borders that tells you about my recovery because that's what's happened to me in Alcoholic Anonymous I had people sit and hold my hand and tell me that they loved me they loved be more than probably anybody that's ever loved me before in my life they love me enough to correct me I hear people talk all the time about tough love love is not tough don't ever let anybody tell you love is tough love is healing it's not tough it's healing people love you enough to tell you the truth they love you anybody will pat you on the back and tell you how wonderful you're doing as you're slinking into the slime as long as you don't pull them in there with you I've come to understand a great thing in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've become to understand that people like me probably would do a lot of things and put up with a lot of things that other people do because there may come a time when you have to put up what I'm going to do, and I want an ally somewhere. But what if I'm gonna live my life in such a way that will not need your excuses or your approval? What if I am going to live my life in that situation and it won't be necessary for me to seek your approval, it will be It would be necessary for me to render you the truth. The truth as I see the truth at that moment. And that's what my sponsor did for me. You see, I came out of that penitentiary on the fourth day of June, 1961. I came outta that penitenciary and I went to see my sponsor and my sponsor Norm came and took me to a meeting and he said to me, he said, "'How long have you been sober, kid?' And I said, "'19 months.'" And he said no, you haven't. I said what do you mean? I haven't had a drink or pill in 19 months. been in that penitentiary. He said, this is the day you're sober. In there ain't out here. Okay, Norm. Whatever you say, Norm, and so on the 4th of June, 1961, I take my birthday cake, and it'll be 30 years come June the 4TH that I have walked out of that penitenciary, and for 30 years, I have based my life and placed my life in my sponsor's hand and in his guidance and I'm going to tell you something. I don't know anybody in the world who lives any better than I do. I haven't figured out anybody in a world that I would trade places with. That doesn't mean that there aren't people in this world who have more things than I have. Than I do? That means I don' t know anybody who lives any better than I know. Do you know that I actually really love people. There are people in this room I love beyond belief. With everything in me, I love them. And I never brought feelings like that with me to Alcoholics Anonymous. I brought rage, anger, hate, doubt, guilt, and frustration and deception with me. And those things have been transposed by love and trust and faith and a power greater than myself which is God and the power and the knowledge that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous works if I work it. That's all. My sponsor that I had Norm before he died was a hard-hearted sponsor. He went to school for hard-hearted sponsors. He put up with none of my nonsense. he taught me the greatest lesson that I've ever been taught and I didn't realize it until maybe the last couple of years what my sponsor taught me and what Chuck taught me the two of the greatest lessons that people like me ever taught me. I remember one time I have to tell you this story because it'll show you because when I came out of the penitentiary after a while my wife came back and she brought that little girl I was never supposed to see and she got pregnant and norm told me it's time for me to go to work i said what do you mean by that he said work w-o-r-k and he said uh you're a bum we don't have bums in alcoholic synonymous johnny bums don't stay in alcoholics and i said hey i'm not a bum man what doyoumean i'mabum he said well what are you so i'm a sober member of a he says and you're sober memberofa bum he He says, go to work. Bums are people who don't work. Bums aren't people who think they're supposed to be taken care of, for Christ's sake. Bums were people who were on welfare. You're not a bum. You are a bum! I said, hey, I've never been on welfare! He said, what do you think penitentiaries are? Self-supporting through their own contributions? I went to work, somebody stole my first paycheck. You're going to listen to a thief when they get stolen from, I'll tell you that. If I had caught that guy, you'd have another talker here tonight. Be up there in Folsom telling you AA don't work. Like all the rest of the losers, tell you. Yes, AA does work. It works real good, but it won't work if you don't work it. That's very simple. It won't just sit there and permeate you. Some people say it'll rub off. What'll rub off will rub off, that's all I can tell you. You can wash off what rubs off. You can't get out what's in. Tell you that. I had my driver's license suspended for the rest of my natural life in 1948. I was never supposed to be able to operate a vehicle in the United States again because I was just a victim of unusual circumstances. And I used to have to ride my little girl's bicycle to AA meetings. Now, I used to have to ride it right through my old neighborhood past my old partner standing on the corner. It was all right but she had a pink bicycle. It had a big back wheel and a little bitty front wheel. It had a basket with flowers woven through it and a little bell on it. I could ring and let them know I was coming. And I'd come riding that bicycle down the street and they'd do it. Oh, that AA really works, don't it, John? Norm! I'm going to buy a car he says you have a driver's license I said what's that got to do with anything I never will have a driver license then you'll never drive another car he said I said why not he says citizens like me have a right to be protected from jerks like you showed him I rode my bicycle to the meeting rang the bell as I went by him Finally, I got a driver's license to the kind graces of my parole officer and a series of tests because I was working. I had to have some way to go to work, really, if you want to know the truth. So I called him up and told him I had a driver'S license and he asked me if I had insurance. I'll tell you, you can burn me once. You don't burn me twice. I just hung up the phone. I didn't even... So the time came, you know, you come or just wait. You got one of them cruel sponsors, you just wait You'll get your chance to get them, I'll tell you that And my day came I had the money to buy a car I had a driver's license and I had an insurance policy I didn't even call him up I just went out and bought me a car And I drove it up to his house And honked the horn And sit there And stood alongside of my car And here he come He was skinny About the same size as Karen And moved fast And talked fast And he came wandering around here He had one of them undershirts on With no sleeves on Tank tops I guess is what you call And he looked at me He looked at that car and he looked at me and he look at that car and tears came to his eyes and he put his arms around me and he said this to me and he says Johnny I'm so proud of you he says maybe you're starting to get the idea that there isn't anything special at all about you just because you're a member of Alcoholics Anonymous that you don't have any special compensation from life and that you have to do what everybody else has to do he says maybe you'll get the ID and if maybe if you keep that ID in your head you can stay sober and he says as a matter of fact he says I think as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous you ought to be just a cut above everybody else or try to be that your effort should be just a little better a little harder a little more strenuous I never forgot that and then there was this old man called Chamberlain who used to I ride around in cars with him all the time and I was I was absolutely hypnotized by his magnificence he was like a father to me I used to call him Papa and he called me son according to his wife I was his son it just was a thing between he and I the first time I ever saw him was in the penitentiary Myrtle Snyder drugged me up to him and he put his arms around me and kissed me on the cheek in the PenitentiARY I don't play that you old fool I had no way of knowing at that moment that that man was going to be the pattern of what I'd set my life after to try to follow, I didn't know that I didn' t know he'd be the father figure that I'd never known and I'd love him more than anything else and in his last years of his life I'd get to administer to him I'm riding in a car with him one night and he's always talking to me and I'm always listening and every time he'd say something to me I'd say it backwards and everytime I'd try to quote him I'd misquote him and he'd say that's not the way it is Johnny I didn't know what was going on so one night I stole something off the literature table to read I thought if I could read to him for Christ's sake he'd listen to me and I thought this was magnificent anyhow it's a real ego trip if you really believe it and so I'm going to read it if you have an ego like mine and you're looking for a little ego support this will really make you feel good so I took this thing down and I'm gonna read it to him listen to this I said why we were chosen He said, hold it. We aren't chosen. I says, it says here. He said I don't care what that says. He said we're not chosen. He said we're all God's kids Johnny. All of us are. He says if I am you are and if you are I am and if I ain't you ain't. We're all Gods children. And then he said God makes the rain fall on the just as well as the unjust and then I said to him how come I'm sober Papa how come I am sober I didn't know I said I know people who are far better people than I am who will never be sober my mother is a far better person than I'll ever be and my mother will never stay sober my dad died drunk was a far greater man than I've ever been my baby daughter out there is a far better person than I'll never be and maybe she'll sit here someday. I don't know. Why is that, I said to him. He said, well, that's simple, son. You've come to understand you're one of God's kids and you act like it. So he treats you like one of his kids. Huh. I never thought of that. Let's look at it in perspective for a little bit. You have children? When they act like your kid, do you treat them like your kids? when they act like jackasses do you treat them like jackass I do I watch my kids grow man when my kids were doing what they should be doing they were my kids when they weren't doing what they're supposed to be doing they were mine my wife's kids what makes me think that my loving father God would be any more real than that. So how do God's kids act? How do God'S kids act what do Godís kids do I mean who teaches Godís kids to act like Godís kids what do godís kids do they run around and act like Godís kids but how do Godís kids act so I call my sponsor again Norm what am I supposed to do you do what I do I said just what is it you do he says if you do what I do then you'll know what I'm going to do that's what I'll do see how they are and so for the 22 years that Norm Alpey was my sponsor and ingrained in me most of the principles and the foundation that I carry with me today I knew how he acted in every given area of his life I made it my business to know how he acted when he was at work when he wasn't at play when he treated waitresses how he drove an automobile how he treated people on the golf course how he created his kid how he did and I copied that and imitated him the only thing I never saw Norm do I never was allowed to sit in the bedroom when he was in bed with his wife I would have if he'd asked me because I wanted to know and I knew I didn't know and I had to know what to do and I didn' I knew I didn'T know how to do it I knew when I came to you good people that I did not know how to live. I knew that. And the miracle of my life is that I surrendered myself to you so you could teach me how to be a good man. How to live a day at a time so I don't have to drink. Period. That's all. You've taught me how to leave today in such a comfortable state that I do not have to drink. Period. You don't have to think to drink. All you got to do is quit doing what this program dictates for you to do, and you will wake up drunk. That's as simple as I know how to do it, if you're alcoholic. Now, if not, it don't make a fiddler's damn what you do. If you're an alcoholic like I'm an alcoholic, the only answer that you and I have is our program of recovery. It's the only answer that has ever been for people like you and I. In the 5,000 years of recorded history for alcoholism, this is the only answered that has every worked for people like you or not. And why does it work? How can it work. I can tell you it works when your wife commits suicide when you're six years sober and leaves you with two little children. I can't tell you, it works when your mother gets drunk and locks herself up in a room when you have to go out and work and make a living for your children and her. I can tell you it works when your business fails. I can tell you that it works when your marriage fails, when your long-time relations fail. I can say that it works. I know I can tell you what it works no matter what comes down the pike. I can tell you that this program works no matter what your circumstances, how you feel, what your motives are I can tell you this program works if you do one simple thing if you will come here and sit with here and do what we do we who are staying sober it will work for you now if you don't I don't have the slightest idea of what will work with you but I don t even want to speculate if you sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and you re alcoholic like I am and you continue to believe that your case is different and you don t have to do this stuff that you have found a better way and you're alcoholic like I'm alcoholic the minute I think that I have just signed my own death warrant. My own death warrant. It's a big thing. Karen talked about a daily reprieve. You know what a reprieVE is? It's a stay of execution from a death sentence. That's what I have. I got a daily Reprieve that means the day I've got a stay of execution from a dead sentence I don't have to die because of the disease called alcoholism because I come to you what happens to me when I'm here it's a very simple thing something that never happened to me anywhere else I come in and I sit in this meeting I sit here all day long I heard Dick talk last night I heard Clancy talk last time I heard Carol talk I heard Karen talk I listened to all these sick people from Ames talk all day Jesus Christ somebody ought to go up there and throw a little light in the sunshine but what has happened to me in that period of time let me describe to you what was taught to me here what happens to me is the most magnificent miracle of life is that when I am listening to you I am more concerned about your well-being than I am my own that's all I'm more concerned about your well-being than I'm my own and in that instant when my eyes are off of me and totally on you I'm as close to my God as I'm ever going to get I am automatically full of God Chuck said that nature abhors a vacuum but God abhores a vacuum even more under heaven and earth empty yourself of self, you will be automatically full of god empty yourself of self you will be automatically full of god i am i can't begin to tell you how much i love you and i apologize i just can't began to tell that everybody's always running around here talking about how grateful they are and i'm so grateful for this and i feel grateful for that and i've grateful you go to meetings and people get up here and say i'm too grateful i can't see and they stumble over their chair kick your coffee cup over as they run out the door for christ's sakes on the meeting i think gratitude is an action that's why what norm said means so much to me what you are speaks all out i can hear a word to say year and a half after clancy after norm died i asked clancy to be my sponsor i wandered around out there for a year and a half without a sponsor because i had so much grief i never got to say goodbye to norm When I came to my senses, I had another idiot running my life, me. And I was making decisions based on my own emotions, and I'm going to tell you a very secret little thing that you'll never learn about this on a psychiatrist's couch, but this is the truth. If your emotions and your intellect come in conflict, I'll guarantee you your emotions will win. Anytime your emotions in your intellect become in a conflict, your emotions will always win. And what my sponsor has done for me, and my sponsors, the two that I've had, have always done for me, is when my emotions are running my life, my sponsor acts as a buffer to control those monster emotions of mine down long enough for my intellect to take over and realize that if I don't straighten up, I'm going to die. Because I have to remember, Norm told me that no matter what's coming down out there in them streets, for God's sake let me remember when I think it's bad out there on them streets when I'm barely paying the bills and when the kids aren't acting right and they aren't actin' right let me re-remember for Christ's sakes when it was really bad let me remeber standing in front of that judge have him call me a blood sucking parasite and my brain's exploding let me rememer what it was really like when it went bad man I haven't had a day like that since I've been with you life is good every living thing in my life I owe to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous everything every feeling that I have inside of me every good and decent thing that's ever been mine this is the only good life I've ever known the only good life that's never been mine I can't drink and live when I'm myself I can keep from drinking it ain't nothing deep inside of me ever makes me want to even think about believing that i can stay sober we can i can't my power comes from my god through you to me that's why i stay sober i come to you every living thing i may ever hope to have in my life i owe to this program called alcoholic synonymous and you better believe this it's a long long long walk from a cell and solitary confinement and a maximum security penitentiary to where I stand tonight. But for the grace of God, AA, and good friends like you, I could have missed it all. God bless you.