The Young People’s Panel and the Gift of Being Active – Charlie C.

hi my name is Charlie I'm an alcoholic well I want to thank Jennifer for inviting me to come here it's it's really an honor I want to thank the committee Katie and and everybody in the committee I especially want to think Rachel and Jim for keeping the hospitality suite always moving That's a lot of work, and people put a lot of shoulder work into that, and I really am impressed. Especially I want to thank Gary for picking me up yesterday and always nice to have someone standing there with a sign with your name on it. Unless I went one place one time and the guy had a sign With My Name on it, but he had it under his arm. I have a friend in my group who went somewhere one time and they had their names on the sign. So thank you, Gary, for getting it right. I really appreciate that. The cold doesn't bother me, really. I just don't go outside. We delicate California things can't handle it. And I want to thank Roland for taking me to the Remand Center this morning and starting my day off with an extra dose of gratitude. and I was really honored to be able to do that. It's always a good experience to be able to take whatever pitiful message I've got into a hospital or an institution where these guys are pretty well shut out from everybody, really. If you haven't done it yet and you have enough time to do it, I strongly recommend it because you'll feel 100% better when you leave. grateful that you were able to do something and also grateful that you get to leave really I think that's probably the best thing is leaving you walk out just the summer wind anyway I don't have much of a talk I'm an alcoholic that's pretty much the extent of my issues sometimes I feel so lonely at meetings, but that's it for me. Any questions or anything? I loved hearing the speakers I've heard. I miss the morning speakers. I apologize. I got to hear Benny last night and really enjoyed it, and I loved here in the young people's panel this afternoon. I mean, that was great. I mean just great to see people who are really active no matter their age. You can't be too young to come to AA. You can'T be too old to come AA. We had an old guy in my group named Ben. He died a couple years ago. He was 75 when he got sober. He stayed sober for I think 17 years. He showed up at every meeting in a coat and suit and tie with a matching pocket fold, and he always had a beautiful girl on each arm walking him around the meeting. And Ben was only about 5'2", and he was why he always walked around smiling and laughing. You know, one day I said to him as he walked by at the meeting, I said, Ben, I want to find out what it is you've got and bottle it. And Ben says, yeah, then you can take a little bit out in the morning and just rub it on your chest. And a friend standing next to me goes, oh, I wouldn't be wasting it on my chest, Ben. But Ben was the oldest employee in the L.A. Unified School District, and he worked with special education kids at 92. He was doing it. He was cracking jokes up until the day he died in the hospital. He went to the hospital, wasn't feeling well, and they kept him in the hostel and he died about a week later and he was just a great guy and Alcoholics Anonymous gave him his life back and if you're young, AlcoholicsAnonymous will give you your life back and ifyou're in the middle or if youre a reformed young person like I am, AlcoholicsAnenomous will giveyou your lifeback But you have to do certain things first, which is the catch. And I came from a decent family. My, you know, I'm Pete and Katie's boy. My dad was a drill instructor in the Marine Corps, and he was a carpenter. I'm an only child. My mother was a humble virgin woman. And I was born bewildered by this whole experience. My mom had had two pregnancies before me and one after me, and they all died at birth. And so I'm sure there was a lot of trepidation about having another child when she was pregnant with me. And I'm sure a lot of that fear just came over her because she'd lost two babies before. And so when I was born, all I had to do was clear my throat, and that house got scrubbed down like a surgical station. And I never understood. I was a sickly kid. I was home a lot. I just was, and I was also full of, for as long as I can remember, fully disgusted with the human race. I just don't like people. I'm getting a larger following these days, certainly, but I have never liked the human race. They have just, not you, of course, but them. You know, them out there. You I have a special fondness for. But, man, I just did not like people. They always seemed to know each other. It was like a big club that was going on that I wasn't a member of, and I was awkward and gawky when I was a kid, and I had asthma, and I wheezed a lot, and I couldn't run with all the other kids and do all that other jazz. I wasn'T quite as buffed out as I am this evening. And I just sat around. I spent a lot of time by myself, a lot of time my myself. It wasn't a bad thing. I like spending time by my self. Some might call that anti-social. I just like to think of it as I'm just planning. But I had a problem with hating the human race. And I think a lot alcoholics will understand this. I loathe the human race, but I demand its approval and love all the time. Which gives your life a really weird sense of torque. It just drives you along in the most uncomfortable way possible. It just is a grinding anxiety about wanting the approval of people that I don't like. It's exhausting. but I gave it a try I had something that I've always had all my life I'm sure there are some people in here who might understand this I've been blessed with a lot of potential most of which I still have tonight I'm running about 90% tonight even And I've always had people willing to tell me I have potential, which is the most annoying thing. I've been called into offices by priests and counselors and teachers and everybody to sit down with my parents in tow. My dad, now my family, my father's family is from Fargo. They're a good, there you go, my people. hey how you doing okay and um good to see everything's hunky-dory up here too and um he came from a family of 15 and i don't think any of them ever went out when it got out of the ninth grade really they were all farmers they they lived in fargo moorhead and they lived they lived on a little town called hope which has about eight people and uh and a crick i think and And so they had a lot of, my mom had just a little bit of, she had about a 7th or 8th grade education. Her mother forced her to quit school and go to work. So they had quite a lot riding on me going to school. And I was actually not bad at school. I didn't get to school a lot because I was sick, but I was a good speller, and I caught on to good spelling, which helped me with women later. But I was able to get through school without having to really panic about it. I could just get by with what I needed to. But I had that potential just burning, and I'd get called into these offices by all these people, and they'd sit down with this folder and say to my parents, you know, Charles has potential. We just don't understand why he doesn't do anything with it. And my response was always the same. I know I've got potential. Now my parents know I have got potential, you-know-I-have-got-potential. It seems all God's children know I'm got potential and I will use that potential when I am goddamn good and ready to. I am not going to be jumping through the hoop just because you snapped your fingers. When I do use my potential, I hope you're wearing sunglasses, Skippy, because I'm going to light you up. but until then perhaps you can take your idiotic concern from my potential and go wipe it on somebody else because if you were such hot stuff you wouldn't be a high school counselor now would you um it never came out in exactly those words i usually said something like i'll try harder but uh that's another problem i have is that uh i have a really deep and and profound rebellious streak in me i just don't tell anybody and it drives me crazy so i've got all this stuff going on i haven't had a drink yet um i didn't i didn' t drink in high school on principle because i thought the people who drank were pigs in highschool i didn''t want to be a part of them I was in high school, and I'm one of the few people This is really one you can get a badge for One of the Few people I know who grew up and went through Their teens in the 60s and never took A drug Thank you very much We were married Once, weren't we? So I had I had a moral aversion to any of that stuff because I didn't like people. I thought they were all phonies, hypocrites, morons, and not possessing what I had, which was the big picture of things as they are. Now you're probably wondering, I'm sure many of you are wondering, what's this got to do with alcoholism? And I'm almost wondering myself, but I got out of high school at 17 and went right into college and graduated 13 years later. But while I was in college, I got a job in the music industry as a clerk at a record store in Fullerton, California. And when I was working there, these guys came in who had sort of been the troublemakers of my school that I always have had a grudging admiration for guys with who just cause trouble I like people who wreak havoc I like troublemakers I just admire that because I can't do it myself but God bless you if you did it uh I didn't act out my alcoholism that way you did and you're the ones who did time really there you go um I'm uh I'm down for that and um So I'm working in this record store, and these guys came in, and they knew me from high school, and they said, hey, we're having a party on Saturday night in Santa Ana. You want to go? And I said, okay, because I'm inclined to say yes first and then regret it afterward, and I did. I regretted it, but I told my buddy John about it, and he said, well, let's go to the party. And John always had girls hanging off his leg. He was a drummer for a band, and he had it all going on. And by that time, I was 6'2 and 127 pounds of percolating testosterone. And so I thought, John, I'll go to the party, and I'll just catch the runoff. So we go to this party, and I'm dreading it the whole time we go there. And he drove, we get there, and within 10 minutes I understood why I did not want to be at this party because A, there were people at that party, and B, they were all drunk. Half the room was drunk, half the room is on acid. that they all believed they were having a conversation. And the MC5 is playing on the stereo, and it's just chaos. It's a big Victorian house in Santa Ana, and I went crazy. I was standing there just raging. These people are, this is exactly why I hate coming to these things. Would never want to come to these places. This is why I eat people. Look at them. They're just like a bunch of little rat-faced bastards just playing around. they're just doing all their phony little stuff everybody's against the war, everybody wants peace and love it's just BS, all they want to do is drink and get laid they're one step up from just carbon anyway why bother with these and I'm standing there raging about this and someone walked by and handed me a can of malt liquor and I thought oh great, I get to join the Romans so I started drinking this can of malt liquor and I got halfway through that can of malt liquor when I realized quite suddenly that I'd been way too hard on you people. Halfway through that can of malty liquor, I kind of put the safety catch on my pistol on, you know and I just started to feel interested in you. I liked you you were fun I was becoming fun I was getting half a can of malt liquor and I'm feeling like a just great combination of Errol Flynn and John Lennon and David Niven all kind of rolled into one just irresistible package which is nearly impossible to pull off when you look like Sherman from the Mr. Peabody cartoons but I gave it a good run and I got that can of malt liquor down as fast as I could and started drinking others because for the first time in my life and let me just explain something to you for those of you who are new what I'm talking about right now and what Benny talked about last night and what the people talked about today in their talks and what the speaker tomorrow morning will talk about is not, we didn't get those observations in real time. I didn't stand there drinking going, wow, I'm having a sudden change in perception in which all of my negative energy has suddenly become positive. It didn't happen that way. It just all of a sudden I just instinctively, it's like a dog knows when it's hungry. You know, I just all OFA sudden started wagging my tail. I don't know why. I just thought this is something really good happening here. and it occurred to me much the only reason i know what happened in my story is because i've been sober for 25 years i've Been coming to aa that entire time i've had a sponsor i've done the steps i've, been active in the fellowship i sponsor other guys and i've heard everybody else's story lots of other stories And identified with alcoholics so that i started to understand what happened to me after a long period of time that's the only reason I can tell you what I thought was happening to me at the time it's not because I was having these revelations in real time because I know when I was new and I heard people talk about their story I thought, I don't even have a story I just came in here, I feel like somebody spun me around three times and pushed me in the door what's your story son? I donno, don't stories have a beginning and a middle and an end I donna know where this one goes I can tel you the end, that's now but when Iwas at that party I just felt for the first time in my life, I wasn't frightened by what was going to happen tomorrow and I wasnít remorseful or ashamed about what happened yesterday. I was in the moment. I was not drunk. I was there. Thatís the only way I know how to describe it. And anybody who is an alcoholic understands where ìthereî is because we may all have our different versions of our own individual there, but we all know that when we drink, I'm going there. I don't drink to get drunk. I don'T get up in the morning and go, Wow, it's a great getting-up day. I think I'm gonna go out, drink, pee some blood, have me a good time. Maybe I'll humiliate my family and ruin my reputation. Why not? Lose the job? What the heck? I never drank for that reason. I drank just to get there, you know, that place that's so—it's that place that kills alcoholics because we never forget it. Nobody wants to get drunk and ruin their life. Nobody wants TO get drunk AND have consequences, but every single one of us just wants to have a couple just to GET at that place where everything is going to be all right, because I feel so much better. One of the young men, I think it was David this afternoon, was talking about, I feelso crappy when I'm sober. I feel like just a brittle thing when I'M sober, but when I get alcohol in me, everything smooths out and I can breathe easier and I feellike there's hope and that sense of anticipation, you know, that blessed anticipation that alcoholics have that things are just about to get better. It's only about a half hour away and I'm going to sit it out because when that half hour comes it's going to be bingo, you know? And alcohol gave me the satisfaction of a job well done without having to do a damn thing. You know, it's just like the big cosmic boy howdy pat on the back, you now? I'd get drinks in me and just start to feel better. And I got drunk that night pretty much like I drank every other time. I drank till I couldn't drink anymore. I came out of a blackout running alongside of my friend's car, holding on to the door handle and vomiting onto myself as I ran alongside of the car, puking and just laughing my ass off because I'd been there. And if you're not alcoholic there's no way to understand where there is because I don't know any other way to explain it. But But when I talk to alcoholics about it, they know. I mean, that's all I want is just a little taste of there. I don't even want to stay there that long, just a Little While. I just need the anticipation and the excitement of it and the sense that everything is going to be fine because when it finally goes away, I'm sitting here left with my restlessness, my irritability, and my sense of discontent. And I can't, I don' t like that feeling and it makes me angrier at you because it can't possibly be me that's causing it. It's just being around you that causes the heat to be on, your expectations and your crummy little desires and your petty little infighting that I can't help with and the world's going to hell anyway and all I want to do is just feel a little better. Is that such a wrong thing? And again, that's the kind of thinking that kills people like you and me. And I drank for the next 12 years. I'm a blackout drinker, but I don't recall ever coming out of a blackouts saying, you know, cover me, I'm going in. I never come out of blackout going, okay, cut the red wire, you now. I've never come from a black out saying much of anything. I've come out from blackouts with people talking to me, saying stuff like, boy, I bet that hurt. I am an alcoholic who believes that the fastest way down a long flight of stairs is to just relax. And I've got the scars to prove it. I drink, I fall, I laugh because it's going to be better next time. And I drank for 12 years. You know, we all have our little war stories. I drank poorly. I drank with my friend John. We go to places like the Humdinger in Anaheim, California, which is everything it sounds like. And go in there and drink all day. And sit in there. You know you're sitting in there in the middle of the afternoon and all of a sudden somebody walks in and that big axe slice of light comes through the door, just cuts across everybody. And everybody at the bar at once goes, shut the door! It's just one action short of being buried in a coffin with soil from your native country in it. You know what I mean? It's a strange phenomenon. But I would sit in there with all the other chemists and surgeons and astronauts, and we'd all sit in there and we would look out the door and you'd see the cars go by and whiz by and think, look at that. That's sad. The little people going to their little jobs with their little family and they're going to go out and have a little picnic or something. They're living out those petty little lives when I am in here with the people who know. I don't have to complete that sentence. You know what I mean by the people who know? We know. We know you ask. We'll tell you. We know the only thing we don't know is why we keep drinking. So I have to make up excuses for that and I have start constructing things to defend that, because alcohol, you know, I think there's, my friend Eileen W. talks about one of the questions, the 20 questions, it says, is alcohol affecting your reputation? And Eileen said, alcohol is my reputation. That's exactly how I was. I just love alcohol. I hate people who say, oh, alcohol was a terrible thing. No, no, no. It was a good thing. It saved me. It really save my insides for a long time before it started taking its price. But I started to have consequences as everybody in here does. I started cutting away pieces of my life and cutting away friends and cuttingaway family. I tell a story because I think it helps illustrate this, although I don't mean it to uh i'll just tell it and you'll understand i have a neighbor across the street a couple and they have two little kids that are my children's age and tom was uh just a big strapping guy in his 40s he built sets at the studios and uh and it was the kind of neighbor that would come over and fix your fence because i'm completely inept at doing that and he would come over with a couple of about five minutes of buzzing and playing with a screwdriver he would fix the fence that kind of a guy and Tom got sick with pancreatic cancer and this is in October and so he had to go in for surgery and I went to see his wife I saw his wife outside and I asked her how he was doing and she said he's doing okay and I said uh how did the surgery go and she said well the surgery went exactly like it was supposed to and I say well is there any hope and she said well no not at all I said well why did they do the surgery and she says what they did was they took away other parts that are inside to give the tumor a place to grow so that he won't have too much pain during the holidays and he can live long enough to be with the kids over the Christmas holiday. So they took out parts of his stomach and parts of His intestine and his colon to allow the tumor to have a place, to grow, so that He wouldn't be in such excruciating pain from it. And I don't mean to trivialize that man's death but is that not exactly what alcoholics do in cutting away perfectly good parts of our lives to allow the disease to grow. We cut away family, we cut away friends, we cut away hopes, we put away aspirations, we cut away all kinds of different things just to protect that right to have a couple of drinks to get there because if I can't tag up there I don't know what's going to happen to me. I don' t know what else to do. That's all I have that makes me feel whole inside. And as it goes with most alcoholics, I used to teach writing at college and in high school when I was sober, and there was an essay by George Orwell, and I quote this all the time because I can't remember anything else, but he said in one of his stories that the tyrant wears a mask and his face grows to fit it. And I think that's very astute in describing what happened, in my case, with alcohol, and that is that all my life I stuck a mask out there for you to look at, hoping that you wouldn't ever have to look at what was really me. I didn't know I was doing it, but I put this thing out there for you to see so that I could hide behind it so you wouldn'T get too close to me. And when I drank for the first time, that alcohol filled the gap between here and the back of that mask, and I really believed that I was the person I was putting out there. This is the real me. I have found a way to satisfy and fulfill myself, a wayto deepen and broaden my experience with life and give it color. This is me. And then by the end of my drinking 12 years later on the 11th of June of 1981, I was still holding that mask out there for everything it was worth, And yet over the years, the alcohol had receded from behind there and I still had the mask out there and I couldn't hold it anymore. And I was as drunk as I'd ever been in my life, physically drunk and could not get that moment of relief that I needed. If I could have had that moment of relief one more time, I don't know that I would have made it. I don' t know. I do n't like to even speculate on it because I think that's just a waste of time, but I had cut away my family. My dad died when I was 23, and I had always been indifferent to my father and indifferent to my mother. I went to Catholic training. I went to catechism class every Saturday, and I went and I went church every Sunday with my mom as a Catholic and took the sacraments, but never felt close to God in any way. I thought God was for people like, you know, them out there. God lives up in his penthouse with all of his good people. And here I am down in the basement with the rest of you looking for the light switch. You know, it's unlikely, and this is my belief, it was unlikely that even if I behaved perfectly for the next 50 years, I would never be able to get up the stairs all the way to be with God. So why bother? Why bother? Maybe if I just sit tight and don't rock the boat too much and don' t attract too much of his attention, he won' t condemn me to a life of eternal damnation. There' s a happy view of a higher power. It' s like having some of the Vikings as your employer. I had this big hairy monster up there, and I'll tell you, it came out of my inventory when I was a child. I was a third in my family born, and then my mom got pregnant again quite by accident when I Was about eight years old, and she went to the hospital. We didn't talk about it. No one ever talked about anything at our house. My mom went to The hospital. I got sent down to the neighbor's house, and i was laying there in bed one night staring at the wall and trying to go to sleep and I was crying. I remember this vividly. And I asked God, please help my mom. Please let this baby be okay. Please let everything be all right. And the next day I got sent home and they said, don't ask your mom about anything. You know, we put, they put signs on the door that said, please don't ring the doorbell. Mrs. Carney needs some rest. And no one ever said a word about that baby again to me. AndI just felt like if God doesn't answer, God doesn' t even answer the prayers of an eight-year-old what kind of a god is this i'm not gonna i don't ever and again i didn't this didn't come about as i was as it was happening this came years later where i realized that's not the god that i wanted to worship or be around that's nothing god i can trust and and someone when i was taking my inventory my sponsor of course had the question what was your part in it i thought well what do you mean what was my part in i prayed to god i did I was an eight-year-old. How could I have had any part in that? And he said, because you're still carrying it around and you're 31 years old. And it's as vivid, you're crying talking about it. It's as riveted now as it was back then. You know, I had to do something about that. I didn't know what to do. I had an idea, but I didnít know how I was going to make it better. And I had held both of my parents at arm's length all my life, just with complete indifference. I played the game and played I love you and that kind of stuff because I felt cornered. I always feel when someone tells me they love me, I'm being led into a trap, you know, that feeling. Or like you're in a transaction that you're not quite sure what your part is. It's like coming out of a blackout at a cash register, you now. And so I just handled things the best I could, which was usually indifference. Just pull the grating down. I don't react. You can't hurt me. Say anything you like. I've got a wise mouth. I can cut you to ribbons with it. I don' t fight. I hang out with people who can fight for me, you know? I hangout with bikers and troublemakers, and I was just a nuisance, but they were trouble. And there's a distinction. I can tell you about it after the meeting. And I just got sicker and sicker. And I was peeing blood on the 11th of June of 1981. I was married, about to be unmarried quickly. I married a woman who I thought if I married her, I would become a fulfilled man, which is a terrible way to go into a relationship as a partial person and then expect the other person to satisfy the missing piece in me. And I didn't know it at the time. Again, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought it was love. And when the romance faded, so did the marriage and so did the relationship because when the intensity and the excitement that little tinkle, tinkle that goes on with the new one or pretty much in AA anybody you look at every time I get on the elevator in here I keep thinking how many relationships are going on in this elevator that the other person doesn't even know about I see a lot of guilty-looking men now. But that marriage, the only fault in that marriage was that my wife loved me, and she was not an alcoholic. And she was like what Benny was talking about last night. She would try to drink with me, which is the saddest thing in the world when a non-alcoholic tries to give it that good, you know, that can-do spirit. I hate that. And she tried to pick up the can-Do spirit and would try to drink with me, and it was just sad. And she'd get about two glasses of wine into it, and she'd go, I've got to stop. I am really starting to lose control. And I would think, that's the problem is you're a quitter. And that's pretty much the distinction between you and me because when I start drinking, I start getting some control. I'm out of control when I'm sober. When I start drinkin', and when I get drunk, and when you'll know this, yeah, okay, yeah. I can drive better. I can think better. I can do things better. I just choose not to, but I'll do them tomorrow. But I will do them. Trust me. And if you're any kind of an alcoholic at all. You can make them trust you for a certain period of time. That's what keeps people who get into Al-Anon alive until they can get to Al-Alanon, is that sense that maybe it'll happen this time. I wanted to be a writer. I never made quite the jump between wanting to be writing and actually having written something, but I did buy a corduroy jacket and a couple of Oxford shirts. I was in publishing at the time, I was working as a receiving clerk at a bookstore and just a stepping stone job that I had for 12 years but anyway I'm working there and I'd get out of my costume and my work outfit at night, my jeans and boots and stuff and I get into my writer's costume and anoint myself with whatever And I'd go down to this place called the Orr House in Santa Monica, which is down the street. And I go in there and start to look for her, you know, because I knew that she would be there. Capital S, she. Capital H, her. Not just any old pronoun, but a her. And I would get out my notebook and I'd start jotting down things in there, you know, observations, feelings, thoughts, just with a dreamy kind of a look. and wait for her to come in. The problem I had was that I would have a couple of drinks and I'd get there. And once you get there, who the hell needs her? She's just a drag on my progress anyway. Did I say I was alcoholic? I lose my train of thought. I did things that I was remorseful enough to make amends for, things that i had to make a men's in different ways that i couldn't make direct amends because they were under the category of affecting someone else's life when they needn't have had me enter back into their life again But I lived that kind of life, and I hid everything. I wouldn't talk about anything. When my father died, my mother wanted a son, and I couldn't bother to be around with her and hang out with her. And I took every chance I could to kind of goad her into a little argument and then just verbally smack her around. That was my relationship with my mother. And I just got sicker and sicker. I started going to therapy, which was obviously not working very well. As I understand it, the prerequisite for therapy to work is truth. That was the catch I found out later. I think therapy is a remarkable thing. I think theory is a wonderful thing. Therapy is very helpful for people. The problem that I have with therapy is that it doesn't work for alcoholism. It works for a lot of other things, but it does not work on alcoholism because, and I mean no offense to anybody in here, but if you are an alcoholic and you're in your first couple years of sobriety, you don't have a clue what the truth is. You aren't even within sniffing distance of the truth. You and I, when we are new, have such a scaffolding of lies built around us to protect ourselves and to try to keep from having to hurt other people but just more importantly protect me that I couldn't get through it without some help and I didn't know how I was ever going to get through It. So I went to a meditation retreat. I was going to commit suicide there And I certainly grounds for a refund. And the therapist I was going to was having this meditation retreat. And I went to it, and I wanted to die. And at the moment that I wantedto die and felt in the most despair, I felt for about 30 seconds completely and unreservedly loved. And it went away. And I didn't know where it came from. I didn' t know what happened. I thought I was losing my mind, and I went home from that retreat and decided if I quit drinking, things would get better because I felt that at the retreat. If I'd stopped drinking, maybe my life will get better. So I stopped drinking. And as I think Sherry said today, things just get really interesting when you stop drinking all of a sudden. My friend Don G., he's a retired judge up in Atascadero, California, And it says that all our lives we just take all the crap that we have to deal with and just chuck it in the back of the station wagon we're driving in life and keep throwing it back there. And all of a sudden, we've got to slam the brakes on in our life and all that crap just flies forward, you know? And that's what happened when I quit drinking. Things got really interesting. I started... And now, mind you, I didn't have a really dramatic detox like a lot of people. I didn'T have to go to a hospital because I never thought of going to a hospital. I was peeing blood, but I wasn't going to call the doctor about that because he'd be disapproving. So I just peed blood in peace. It wasn't that much blood, and I can just deal with it. In California, sometimes Al-Anons will say they're in such a state of denial that they could be in hell and go, it's not hot, and i'm not here. That's how I felt detoxing. It's not that bad. It's just this vibrating wreck. I forgot how to walk the second day I had stopped drinking. I had to sit down on a planter at work because I just forgot how to walk. I literally had to set down for a good half hour and try to think, how am I going to walk again? I don't know if I can ever walk again. I can't stand up on my feet. And then I started to have the imaginary gnats that would congregate in the peripheral vision and they just kind of hang there. And nobody that you're speaking to is kind enough to brush them away. And when you go to look right at them, they're gone. So you go back to talking to somebody and back they come like this. So all I could do was brush them away. So I'm at work. i um i had my car stereo going uh listening to steely dan album for about three three weeks the same song over and over again and that stereo hadn't been hooked up for years i was uh getting the sound from the back seat of my car going charlie I was like, you know, Charlie it was insane and I was not having a good time and I would have to pull over on the way to work because a seagull flew by my car and I had to cry which is not an excuse tardy on the receiving dock you know you were late why because you had to cry and so I still had to I had to hide the fact that I was doing things that I was doing drunk and then I had to hide the fact that I was trying to get sober you know the minute somebody walked in the room I just you know and then and charlie and i was just it was over and over again and um at the at about the about the fourth day of this this hamster wheel of anxiety and and and vibration i got a call from my soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law and she said um you know your sister-in-law Debbie is getting out of a detox on Saturday, and she'll need a ride to an AA meeting on Sunday. Do you think you can give her a ride at the meeting? And I thought, sure, I'll give her ride. I quit drinking myself this week. I'd be happy to give her a ride because she's sick. I drank with her. She needs help. Now, I'm driving a car. I've got a 1967 Bug that looks like somebody tried to slap the smile off its face, you know? It's got that cockeyed bumper and the raccoon hunting headlights that are just aimed up in the trees. And all I could do is get in. And like I said, I am a drunk driver. It's funny to talk about sometimes but It's not a funny reality, and there were times when I tried to get on. There was one time I recall vividly coming out of a blackout trying to get on the freeway in West Los Angeles going the wrong direction at night. Yeah, you can laugh. I'm the last thing you want to see in your front windshield coming at you at 85 miles an hour, I'll tell you that, going, what's wrong with these people? i was lucky that day that day i was trying to get on the freeway and somebody came was coming off the free way and they were not happy about my attempts to get on the three-way and we're bump the guy was bumping my bumper to make me back up really aggressively just happened my bumper with his car and yelling and i was furious that they hadn't signed the free away well enough to keep innocent citizens like me from accidentally driving on the off ramp of the free weight And someone, I told that story because I tell it when I talk. And a woman came up one time and said, you know, God was with you that night. And I thought, what a bunch of bunk that is. Not that I don't understand the sentiment behind it, but God was not with me. Because if God was mit me that night, then who is he with? Who is he not with when people actually get killed by guys like me? the guy who right now in Los Angeles I can guarantee you there's some drunk driver taking somebody out on the street it happens every single day is God ignoring them but he likes Charlie I'm one of his chosen people I think that's such a bunch of crap what I am and what I think you are we're just lucky people we are really lucky people to have gotten the message of AA in time before we create. And some of us still created disaster, but we still are here and trying to make something good out of whatever happened in our lives. We are really lucky that we were able to come too long enough and get out of our own way long enough to grab the moment of grace that we have here. And so I went to pick Debbie up. I'd drunk several times with her ex-husband, who died at 25 of alcoholism. And I told my wife at the time, it was my ex-wife's brother, I said, Bob is no more of an alcoholic than I am. You know, and we were drinking in the living room and having a great time. And two weeks later he drowned at 25 with a five-year-old daughter and a wife. And this woman was the one who brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous because in the 20 minutes it took after I picked her up, she had 22 days of sobriety and she 12-stepped me in the car with 22 days. So if you have only a little bit of time and you think that you don't have anything that you can share with another alcoholic, you're looking at someone who is sober tonight because of the actions of somebody with 22-days sharing her experience, strength, and hope with me. so don't kid yourself that you can't be useful and she was useful to me something had changed in her in the three weeks she'd been in that detox so I pulled up to the curb at the meeting it was a Sunday night meeting and I said, I'll be back in an hour and a half and get you and she said, well why don't you come into the meeting and I says, because I'm not an alcoholic you know i uh charlie don't turn around don't turn around and don't dignify them with a response and um i said i said honestly as honestly as i could i'm not an alcoholic i really am not an alcoholic i have problems and i drink a lot but i'm non-alcoholic as soon as i can get the drinking thing i can break the habit of drinking then i'll get better and she said something that saved my life you don't have to be alcoholic it's an open meeting why don't you come in maybe you'll hear something that will help you stop drinking and I thought that sounds fair enough and I parked my car and went into the meeting I've been coming to AA ever since and that's because of the people there I'll tell you why it worked because there was a secretary at that meeting there were lively people at that meeting who came up to me while I stood in the back of the room. Now, mind you, I'm wearing a deerstalker hat, sunglasses, a tweed jacket with a wool sweater vest, and it was about 109 outside. It was June. And I'm standing in the background, and I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I got shoulder-length hair. I've got this nice Fu Manchu mustache, and And I'm standing in the back of the room, minding my own business. And people, I get irritated when people would come up and say, are you new? And I would think, no, I'm not new. I've got four days. Because I thought new was that you were drunk when you came across a threshold of the meeting. And I've Got Four Days. I haven't had a drink in four days, so I am not new, and I would appreciate your not chuckling like that because that was the hardest four days of my life to get here and that's how I felt and people gave me phone numbers and I started to get active unbeknownst to me they said the next week I came back and it was a Sunday meeting I got there about 4.30 on Sunday afternoon to get a decent seat because the meeting started I think at 8 And it was a nice, sunny, beautiful Sunday afternoon. And I had a half a bottle of bourbon at home. And so I just went to the meeting place. And I'm standing there and these two guys, it just so happened that there were two guys there who were making coffee. And they said, are you looking for somebody? And I said, yeah, I'm looking for the people who were here last week. And he goes, oh, you mean the AA people? And I thought, oh man, there's a janitor right outside. and uh yeah those people and he said we're having a meeting we're just making coffee here why don't you uh were you here last week i said yeah and he goes well you know how the chairs were set up why don'T you set the chairs up for us and we'll finish the coffee and then let's all go out and get a cup of coffee and a donut somewhere while the coffee's cooking here i said okay so i set up the chairs and and um we came back and and uh you know people had moved the chairs you know i set those chairs up exactly like they were the week before and people were picking them up and moving them around and i thought you know what i put the chair right there if i'd meant for it to be right there i would have put it there because I set up the chairs so until you set up the chairs you might be so kind as to move the damn chair back it didn't come out in so many words I said something like have you seen my keys but I but they say that your worst defects will be your greatest strength in AA and I don't like people messing around with my stuff you know and so I became the chair setter upper guy And I would set them up really forcefully as if by slamming the legs down, it would somehow make it impossible to move it off the spot. I eventually wound up at about 60 days sober or about 58, 55 days sober. I wound up going to the Pacific Group in West Los Angeles because I worked at Santa Monica College and it was right nearby. And a guy named Keith Carpenter had spoken at the meeting, and Keith died about six months ago with about 40 years of sobriety, 45 years of sobriete. And he saved my butt again. He brought me to this group of activists, and he, activists being an operative, I mean, people say Nazis, but, you know, we weren't responsible for any of that. And I'll tell you something. I said this at the panel today. You know, we're activists, and we're fanatics. I guess you'd say fanatics these are fanatical A's. Watch out for them they're fanatiques. You know when my house is burning down, I want a fanaticle fireman to come out I don't want a fireman who can take it or leave it I want a fire man who's going to put that fire out so I got in there and the Pacific group is known for being a really active group if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands things and um i had phone numbers and you know approaching teeth coming toward me and and they urged me to get a sponsor and i didn't want a sponsor and they made me get a big book you know oh a big book well how big a book are we talking about i work in a bookstore i got a lot of big books there does your book have a name or is it as simple as the rest of you big book clear drink so I got a sponsor and he was like Benny and I must have the same sponsor because this guy was nice to me up until I asked him to sponsor me then he just turned into like Rasputin here's what i want you to do sport and that's what he called me sport bill is about six foot seven and cranky and his sponsor is clancy so i get clancy like direction with just a fraction of the abuse but anyway um he sat me down and said are you willing to do anything to stay sober and i said yes and he told me what he wanted me to do and it was all a bunch of un a bunch of actions unrelated to the problem at hand. I want you to get a commitment at your meeting, mop in, clean an ashtray. Why don't smoke? Clean the ashtrays anyway. I don't give a damn if you smoke. You can mop the floor. I wants you to make coffee, clean up the coffee pots, do whatever you can just to get commitment at every meeting. Call me every morning to let me know what you're going to do during the day. Go to work and give them a good day's work and be present at work and I'll see you at the meeting. And then I want for coffee with us after the meeting." I thought, Oh, man, this is like overkill. And then he goes, he was a milkman and he would be way up in the north end of the valley and I was living way down in Orange County at the time and he'd call me at 5 o'clock in the morning and say, are you doing okay? And I go, yeah. And he goes are you out of bed and ready to go to work? And I said, I'm getting there. He said, have you said your prayers yet? And I can't say that I have. And he said, okay, I want you to get on your knees right now and say your prayers. And I says, okay I will, I'll talk to you. And he goes, no, no. Just put the phone down, get on your knees, and say your prayer. I'll wait. Well, I'm self-conscious about prayer anyway because when I was eight years old, I told you that story, and I get down and I prayed. And this was the extent of my prayer, and this is pretty close to what it is now, and that is, God, please help me stay sober today. Please show me what your will is and not my own. please help or bring your grace to and I have a list of people that I want that have needs that I pray for and please let me have some kind of spiritual awakening and please make it really obvious what that is because I don't get subtlety at all you know I don' t need some still quiet voice in the night, I need a real pick me up by the lapels shake me around who's your daddy kind of surrender you know um otherwise i will miss it and so amen and i uh and i started doing the stuff that bill asked me to do and and it was about eight months along and i realized this isn't working i'm still as uptight angry frustrated as i was before i say my prayers every day i do all the stuff you ask me to go through i want to know when i'm going start working the steps and he goes what are you talking about and i said the steps i want to do the steps I hear everybody talking at meetings about working the step and I work on the steps I work the steps like like you need some cross training clothes to get it going you know spot me I'm gonna do three okay um I hear that but I don't I don'T know when we're gonna start working the steps he goes do you call me every day and I said yeah you go to your meetings every night yeah do you keep your commitments yeah do you keep them when you even when you don't want to and I said yeah and he goes do you want to be at those meetings every night I said not every night and they said well what do you do on those nights I said well I go to the meeting he was how you feel when you leave I said better and you're calling me every day and you are going to work every day and you re praying every day what part of the first three steps do you think you re not doing because it s a lot more than just observational analysis to doing the steps. It's action. It's not action as just a vague thing. It's actually action like pick up the chairs and put them over there. Mop the floor. Clean the ashtray even if you don't smoke. Pick up the cup on the floor that you see. Show up on time when you say you're going to be someplace at a certain time. Dress like you respect what's going on in the room. Whenever I'm asked to speak, I always wear a coat and tie. It's my choice, but that's because it makes me feel respectful. When I go up and read to my daughter's kindergarten class, I wear acoat and tie too because I respect those little kids in the same way I respect you. I dress for them the sameway I would dress for you because it saved my life. What a terrible price to pay to have to wear acoat and tie to pay back something that saved my live. But you know how we are. I think Bill had a great sense of humor. I think one of the funniest lines in the book is that, and I'm only quoting from memory because I don't have much of a memory, so I can't quote the book. You can all breathe easy. But there's a point in the books where Bill says, I think something like sometimes the choice between living life according to spiritual principles or dying an alcoholic death is a difficult choice to make. I thought, yeah, you know, you can either keep drinking and get esophageal lesions. You can puke your guts out full of blood and die. You can get drunk and stumble in front of a bus. You can be beaten to death with a pool cue in a bar. Or you can die of cirrhosis of the liver on the layaway plan for the next 30 years of agony. Or you come to an AA meeting, drink some coffee, laugh and scratch, hang around for an hour and a half, do some simple steps, do a couple of things around the meeting to help other people, and live. And only an alcoholic will go... i don't know an hour and a half that's insanity that's insanity we're not talking about woogie woogie boogie insanity we are talking about that quirk of the mind that tell now i'm not crazy when i feel when i hear people all the time getting up to podiums going i'm crazy I just feel crazy today. I'm crazy. You know how crazy I am? I've just been crazy all day. I never like that when I'm my most crazy. When I am my most Crazy, I'm the most sane son of a bitch in the room. You're the ones who are crazy. You're the ones while we were sitting here having coffee who just all of a sudden turned on me. I can feel it. You didn't have to say anything. That's insanity. And if I have a couple of drinks, it will make me get there and I'll start liking you again. That's my fallback position. So I keep coming to meetings and keep doing what I'm doing because it helps me stay sober and sane. In the course of this, my sponsor told me that after I'd taken my inventory and started making amends, Bill said, if you want to be able to complain about your job, you have to take steps to find something else to do. And I thought, oh boy. And he goes, I want you to go back to school. Because I had a degree in journalism. It was somewhere in a drawer in my house. But he said, I wants you to get your master's degree. So I went back to Loyola Marymount University. And through a series of painstaking attempts to get loans and get accepted at the university, everything fell into place. Even though I guessed it wasn't going to happen, and it happened. And then I guessed the worst case scenario, and the best case scenario happened. And then I kept thinking, now what? You know, I got accepted and they're giving me money to go to school. Uh-oh. You know? And so after the first semester, one of the deans from the college where I was working in the bookstore came down and said, we're short a teacher. We've got 30 students and we're missing a teacher。 Can you teach a class on writing? And I said, I don't have a credential. And she said, that's fine. We can put an emergency credential in for you. I've got to unload trucks at the bookstore in the morning. She goes, academics supersede student services. I thought, well, you've got all the answers, don't you, Missy? I didn't say that. I said something like, I've Got to Call Somebody. So I called Bill and said, you know, they offered me this job to teach, and Bill didn't even let me get the rest of the sentence out of my mouth. He goes, take it. And I said, yeah, well I will, but I thought if I stay in school for a year and really work at it, then I'll be able to have more insight into what I'm doing. And all I heard was a dial tone on the other end. So I took the job and became, against my better judgment, a college teacher. And then I guess the pain wasn't enough. The next year I became a high school teacher. I've been going back to the Catholic Church. I wanted to go back because I've been reading Thomas Merton. And if you're 30 years old and you're reading, or 33 and you'RE reading Thomas Merton, you're in trouble if you'RE Catholic. And I had to go back and see what my faith was with that church that I had walked away from when I was a teenager. And so I went back and I went to a priest at this church. I started going to mass by my house. And I met with this priest named Father Perry Liker, who was just a kind, young priest, and he said he asked me I made an appointment, and I did a fifth step with him much like I did with my sponsor except a fifth stop about the Catholic Church and he sat there and listened to me for about an hour, and then he just sat there very quietly, and Keith Lewis talks about this, and it was very similar to what Keith talks about after he listened to me, he said isn't it a shame that the Catholic Church didn't have anything to offer you when you were going through all that And I thought, no, really, I got what I need. You know, I told him I got what I needed, but he was so kind. And he said, you're absolutely absolved of everything that you've done. God loves you. I care about you. And when you come to get communion Sunday, get in my line. I felt so restored. I felt like my eight-year-old anger at the Catholic Church just evaporated at that moment. And I started going back to church and they had a guest lecturer there named Father Kidney, who was Irish, Irish, Irish and he was enthusiastic you know and really up there red faced guy, he'd get right into it. I would go like I did, I learned well from my group after the mass I would come out and thank him for his homily. He was just a guest guy there and I'd go out the front door and go up to him and say thank you for your homily just like we thank speakers and I did that every week for about eight months, a year and so I went and applied for this job at a school up in Playa del Rey by the airport, and 30 people had applied for the job. And they were thinking that she wanted me to, the vice principal wanted me to meet the principal before I left. She said he's out playing basketball with the kids right now. He should be in in a second. So I sat there and waited. And who comes bounding through the door with his collar hanging off his father kidney? And he said, you're hired. You're hired! You're going to go straight to heaven now. you're a high school teacher in a Catholic school, you know. This is, this, I became a high school teacher, in a catholic school, I, who was the guy who used to rip off those little porno magazine stands in Los Angeles, by kicking it, and then stealing the magazine, you had a date night, and sleep tight parents, if you got a kid in catholic School, in Southern California, but I, but I was a good catholic schools teacher, and I loved doing that, and taught my, I taught writing to my kids in literature and in the doing of teaching them how to write, I became a writer myself like I wanted to be. I went up to a guy named Maurice Zolotow in my group who was a writer and I said to him one time, you know Maurice, I've always wanted to become a writer. And he swung around without even pausing. He goes, then write something! And he turned around and walked away. Even before I could get... So I was so shocked that that was the answer. But that was the answer what did i want him to say like what everybody else has said well you're good and you could do this and you could do that he just said write something so i did and i started writing and i got hired to write a cartoon an animated cartoon for a studio and i was on my way the year late the year after that i got fired full-time by the studio and had to quit my job as a teacher i had to pull my kids i've been teaching there for seven years i said do you think i should go to the studio or stay as a teacher and they said why not go with what you can do what this new thing i mean it's great and so i went and did it and i worked at the same studio for 16 years until uh last year when i got laid off and i've been freelancing it ever since but i'm writing you know i'm doing something and the only reason i tell you that i told it that at the at the remand today it's not to pat myself on the back for what i can do it's to try to get across to everybody sitting in here that god has imbued every single one of us with something that we do remarkably well. And if we can get out of our own way and take that power that God has given us and use that power without continuously jumping in our way, I was talking with Roland about this today, and saying you're not worth it. Other people can do it better. You know, other people may be able to do it Better, but I'm doing it now, you know, as long as I'm doing it. When I was going to become a teacher, Bill came over one night and he sat in my living room and he said uh he said boy being a teacher is hard and i said i know and he said those high school kids could eat you alive tomorrow i thought yeah thanks uh i know and he goes you could find out tomorrow that you should just not be a teacher so what kind of a pat on the back is that he said you may find out that you should never have even thought about being a teacher but but you gave it a try anyway and he said you can do that or you cannot do it and wonder the rest of your life if you could how do you want to live your life do you Want to do something and maybe risk failing at it or do you want to sit around and wonder if you Could have done it till you're an old man and so I chose to try to do it I'm trying to do It today and it's not well I got I got married nine years ago and we had two beautiful children and the marriage failed. It was a catastrophe and I thought, I was devastated by this because I have these two kids that I just adore. I thought I wasn't raised in a divorced family and I love these kids and I don't want them to be subjected to this but I'm doing the best I can. I call these kids every night and I'm going to go up to my room after this and call them again and say goodnight to them and tell them I love them because they live with their mom and I have them every other weekend and uh but i've built a relationship with these kids because people in aa all the divorced dads were helpful to me and taught me how to be there on time and follow through and what to do with kids when you get them and how to play and all that stuff so that i have a real working relationship with my children even though it's not the one i wanted it's not the ones you have a god of my understanding now i don't have a god of my expectations anymore and the same thing is with life i have certain expectations i have to shove aside and deal with what's happening really right now i made amends to my mother she died about five years ago and the last thing my mother told me was that she loved me and i was shocked by that not shocked that she love me but but shocked that he would say it because she was always so afraid to to say anything emotional or get in that way but she knew she had told me about a month before she died that she thought alcoholics anonymous was the best thing that ever happened to me. And that shocked me, too, because she was always asking me, why do you have to keep going to meetings? Why don't you come over to my house? And then how come when you come over to our house, you always have to go to a meeting afterward? Take a guess, you know? I didn't say that. I love going to our Thanksgiving meeting. I would love to. I've never gone in my group. We have a Thanksgiving meeting every Thanksgiving and for 25 years I've missed it because my sponsor told me you're gonna spend Thanksgiving with your mother and make amends to her. And And then I heard Clint Hodges talk about how he made amends to his dad, or his mother. And I heard Sharon B. talk about how she made amens to her father. And I started doing that. I started paying her the money back that I owed her. Just like I'd paid back other stuff. The mother loans with interest. And I'd send her a check every week. And I do exactly what Sharon said. I put a card in with it and with a note saying what I was doing and how things were going. And I got a relationship back with her by taking those steps. And my father, who had died, I had to make amends to him. And I heard what Clint said about making amends to his mom. And I went back to my dad's grave. And at 10 years, I hadn't been there for 20 years to that grave. And at ten years sober, I finally went back and sat down there and did what Clint did. I cut around the grave, cleaned it up with some windex, put a carnation on it because my dad loved carnations, and just talked to him and told him about you and told them what you'd done for me and how my life was getting better and everything was changing and the fact that I had all of that inside of me just like that knowledge of what God is that we all carry around that we awaken in each other in here we wake that up in each another and we go oh my god I knew that but I never really knew it and so I told my father that he'd given me all the good things that he could give me and I just held him at arm's length all the time and my father about two months later nothing happened that day I went away from there and drove off. But two months later, I was talking to somebody about my dad, and I realized I hadn't felt any guilt about my father. And he had not been – I thought he'd been disappointed in me because I hadn'T been an athlete or hadn'T be exactly what he – like a marine type for him. And I thought He was completely disappointed in Me. And it turns out I didn't feel any disappointment from Him. My father loved Me. And I'll tell you a story about love, and I'll sit down. Because what's your experience in this weekend? for you who are new, is absolute love. And it's not that little oochie-goochie palpitation of the center button type of thing. It's genuine loving action that you find in here that's like, it's dry-eyed humility is what it is. I witnessed that all weekend with people who are running in to do commitments and people who were running around making sure everybody's comfortable and making sure things are happening even when they have responsibilities to do other things. And my father Like I said, we didn't have any resources My dad was a carpenter during his life And never made much money And we just barely got by And so I had to carry my lunch to school And every day he would get up in the morning And he would make lunch for me He would make a sandwich And he'd make it just the way I like it And he Would put chips in the bag And he Put an apple or an orange Or something in the Bag And he Folded up and write my name on it And he Would set it by the door And he Wood go off to McDonnell Douglas In his little squishy sold shoes and his gray outfit, and he'd go there and work. And I would go out there and I'd grab that lunch and I go to school and for four years I would walk across the school property line and drop that lunch in the trash can and just keep moving because cool kids don't carry their lunch into school. Cool kids buy their lunch, and I am not going to have one more piece of evidence that I'm a fool and a loser. And I Would throw that in there, and every time I did that, some little tiny knot in my stomach would tighten up in my gut like a screw tightening. And I couldn't look at my father. Over a period of time, I just couldn't look at him. And I was so disappointed and so full of anger. And I'd get to lunchtime, and I wouldn't eat, and then I'd be like, oh, my God. And I would act like I'd already had my lunch, and i'd be resentful. I didn't even know what was happening. And that went into my inventory, and I wrote about that. And my sponsor said, why don't you make amends to your mom for that? So I went back to my mom, and I said, you know what? every day between about the 7th grade and the 10th grade I used to throw my lunch in the trash that dad made for me and I really feel sad about that my mom says, I know and I said, how do you know? and she said, well your dad told me and I asked her, how did he know? and she answered, well he used to ask you questions every so often every couple of months he'd ask you how your bologna sandwich was and it was peanut butter and you'd say it was fine and how was your apple? it was great and it wasn't orange you know and he would just and i said well if he knew i was throwing it away why did he keep making it every day and she looked at me across the table like i was the biggest dope she'd said i ever set eyes on and she smiled at me and i got it i got het was like a it was just pure love he didn't care what the results were of it he just did it because he wanted to make lunch for his son the only son that lived the only son that he cared about. And he did that, and if I threw it away, that was my choice. But it wasn't going to stop him from continuing to do it. And so if you're new here tonight, this is where the meal is served. This is where The Nutrition comes from. This Is The Lunch. And if you want it, it's here for you. And If you don't want it we still care about you, but we're not going to stop making it i'm going to continue to do it over and over again every night every day to lay out this nourishment for the spirit that we take from it and all we ask is that you come back and share it with somebody else make the lunch for somebody else it doesn't matter what they do with it it just matters that they have the example of people who know how to doit i want to thank the committee and thank all of you for having me i really enjoyed this and thanks so much