Thirty-Three Years from the Last Drink and Twelve Steps from the Next – Joe K.

Thank you. Well, I'm Joe Klass. Thank God I'm an alcoholic. I'm lean, mean, clean, sober, and serene. I'm in my 25th year of OA, my 28th year of Al-Anon, my 28th year of NA, my 34th year of sobriety, and my 40th year of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm in my 76th year of financial insecurity. I want to state right here that I never had any difficulty about being an alcoholic, never in my life. I didn't know what it was. And one day... Nearly, well, gosh, 39 years ago last January, I was so sick, I had pellagra, which is permanent nerve damage caused by malnutrition. I had esophagitis, which is constant bleeding while vomiting caused by ruptured veins in the esophagus. And I had cirrhosis, which was terminal, and at that time every doctor in the world believed it was, that there was no way to survive it. And so I was in the throes of one of my five-day dries. I had been throwing up 18, 20 times a day for 11 years following World War II. I was a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force. We only had two rules in my squadron, which was one of the Eagle squadrons. One, you didn't get engaged or married, or you were transgendered. You were transferred to some other outfit the next day. They didn't want you thinking about somebody like that. The other was you got drunk tonight, or you were transferred the next day. And there's only two good things about a war, as I can see. I sponsor the guy who started the vet rep groups. There are 13 meetings a week at the War Memorial Auditorium in San Francisco. And he keeps trying to get me to join the American Legion. I won't join. You see these old warbirds standing around talking about the war like they were the good old days, you know? They weren't the good old days. My last flying buddy died 17 years ago from alcoholism. The one before that died in, two of them died in 1949. One dove straight into the ground. He was the top flying ace. He was the first of Europe, Don Gentile. He drove straight into the ground in Oklahoma after the war. Nobody knows why. The other one, the guy I flew with a lot, Ace Langberg, he got into a collision that same year over Edwards Air Force Base. He had the right stuff and was testing new kinds of airplanes. And he died doing that. All the rest of them died in the war, you know. I was involved in the Great War. I was involved in the Great Escape in the prison camp. I was the makeup artist. God, what a thing to do. I had studied drama and theatrical makeup in college. So everybody that escaped had a double made up to look exactly like him in the prison camp and passed the photo parade. So that when 76 people got out that night, I didn't get to go because I was the next compound by then. The Americans had been moved. And I was one of the first 25 on the list to go because I was on the committee as the makeup artist. I designed these makeups, found somebody that could be made up to look like everyone who was going to leave and designed the makeups. And then they were looking for the guy who was still there in makeup instead of the guy who was gone. So they had all the wrong photographs in all the post offices, wherever they post pictures, police stations. Made the Germans mad, so they shot. . ., they kept arresting people who hadn't escaped and they kept people turned up three weeks later in the prison camp who were supposed to be gone. It was very confusing. And so what they did is they sent of the 76 who got out. I didn't get to go that night because there was they were waiting for a thought to cover up the noise of the tunnels. And the thaw occurred on the night of March 23rd, 24th. And I remember very clearly because it was my birthday. And the it's very seldom. I mean, in a Polish winter, if you can imagine, this is where we dug the three tunnels that made Steve McQueen into a movie star. . I was a Spitfire pilot. I transferred the American Air Force. I flew Spitfires before Ronald Reagan or Tyrone Power. . . God, I had a lot of guys playing me in the movies. . . . I made beer. . . I made brew in the prison camp. You know, we'd save six weeks worth of dried fruit from Red Cross parcels and sugar. . And then we'd spend six weeks making it. So it took about 12 weeks, but we overlapped it. So every six weeks we had a brew and then we'd get drunk. . And a skunk having a great time for 20 minutes and then puke our guts out, you know? . But everybody here knows that it's worth puking your guts out to get drunk for 20 minutes. . Everybody knows that. So much for aversion therapy. So I didn't get to go because the thaw occurred at night and they couldn't transfer me through the infirmary back to that camp. We were going to pull a switch, so it didn't work. So when they sent 50 urns back out of the 76 urns full of ashes, I was kind of glad I didn't get to go. To tell you the truth, I was glad that night I didn't get to go. So we all got together, some of the survivors, a few years ago, and we compared notes and found that only about two people really wanted to escape out of the 400 who were planning to. All the rest of us were afraid the other guys would think we were cowards if we didn't go through with it. And that's so stupid if you think about it. There weren't any cowards in a prison camp. How the hell would you get to be a prisoner of war if you were a coward? You've got to be brave to get that far. You could be back baking bread. You could be back making bread or something. You know, you don't have to fight combat when you're in the military. There's only about one out of 18 people in the military that actually do the fighting. And of those, only about one out of 100 do the shooting. The rest of them are ducking, you know. Which is the smart thing to do. I got shot down. I got my fourth crash. I crashed four times. One more crash. I'd have been a jerk. I'm an ace. The fourth time I was shot down, I was on fire. I was down near the ground somewhere because that's where I blacked out from turning so much. I was out of ammunition. I just kept turning and turning until I passed out because the blood ran out of my brain into my feet from too many Gs. And I woke up stretching like I was in bed. My boots were on fire. The plane was still being hit. I tried to open the canopy to bail out and I couldn't get out. It was stuck. I couldn't get out. I couldn't see out. And I couldn't see anything. The cockpit was full of smoke. And I knew I was going to die in a split second. And I had a spiritual experience and didn't know it. All of a sudden, I got very calm and I thought, in a split second, I'm going to be a sender and I'm going to meet God. And I'm going to find out what God looks like. And this is going to be the greatest adventure of all. Everybody wants to know what God looks like. Some people think they know, but they don't. And I was worried. I wasn't even worrying yet about whether it was a man or a woman. And the plane hit the ground and let me out. And I was reported killed in action. People saw me going in. There was no way to escape that. I spent, well, the Arabs captured me, sold me the Germans for 20 bucks and I found out what I was worth. I spent 25 months as a prisoner. I was a prisoner of war. I survived the great escape. I made prison brew. Once we made some brew that was so good, we made it into prune brandy with a still made out of a trombone from the YMCA in Switzerland. We had to bribe the guard. He drank his fourth and we tried to help him, but he drank too much of it and passed out. So we propped him up out in the snow. And a couple of hours later, machine guns and dogs and 200 guards come in at 4 o'clock in the morning in the snow, roused everybody out. And the commandant himself got up and got dressed. And he announces, if whomever poisoned our guard does not confess within one hour, 50 of you will be shot. And he meant it. And people were saying, don't worry about it, Joe. We'll cover you. Don't worry about it. And I'm thinking, I got about 59 minutes. I can see 50 guys getting shot to protect me. That is dumb. Fortunately, he thought out. His nickname was Blue Boy. That night he was blue. He thought out. And so the Germans decided to shoot him instead of us. Now, his father was a big Nazi. That's why he was doing prison camp duty. He was one of those guys that was smart enough not to go into combat, right? And so instead of shooting him because his father had influence, they sent him to the Russian front where the Russians could shoot him. Now, I'm mentioning that story to tell you what lengths we would go to to get drunk. You know, I mean, that's only that's alcoholic behavior. No other way to look at it. We were starving to death in there. You know, 800 calories a day. I told you I belonged to OA. The only time I was ever on a food plan was in that place. And I had a food sponsor who was great, Adolf Hitler. And when I was released as a prisoner of war, I was finally liberated. I weighed 126 pounds. I had weighed something like 108 pounds, but I was eating for a week and a half, before I was weighed again. That's not a healthy way to go. I thought, well, I started to tell you what was good about being in a war. Two things, and they're good about being here. One is we found out we were brave. We didn't have to worry about that the rest of our life. I don't have to pack a gun in my glove compartment or on my hip. I don't have to wear a mask to prove I'm a man or that I have courage. I know I have. I found that out then, and I found it out again later in Alcoholics Anonymous. So there's no doubt about that. The other thing that was good is we were forced by circumstance to live one day at a time. There was no use planning for tomorrow, so we didn't. And that's a good way to live, no matter where you are, behind barbed wire, flying fighter planes, or whatever. Whatever you're doing, one day at a time is a wonderful way to live. So when you see the old war boards standing around trading stories about the good old days in the war, when actually all their friends were getting killed, they were getting all shot up, you know, they don't even know what was good about those days, because those days were terrible. Except they had found out they were brave. They'd found out they could depend on each other, which is something we find out here. And they had found out they could depend on each other. And they had found out they could depend on each other. And they had found out what it feels like to live one day at a time, which is great. A great way to feel. I had another spiritual experience, which I didn't recognize at the time. On January the 27th, 1945, it was 40 below zero in Poland. The prison camps, Dologlu III and Sagan, was exactly the place where Napoleon's army had collapsed, retreating from Moscow, in the same kind of a winter, 40 below zero. And he stayed there three years. That's how bad he collapsed. And his men died, most of them. And so we were there on the night of January the 27th, and people thought maybe the Germans would try to get us out of there, because you could hear the cannon, you could hear the guns, and the Russians were getting awfully close. 1945, January 27th. And so some guys were out running around the perimeter of the camp, inside the death rail, the guard rail. If you went over it, they'd shoot you. Running around the camp, four miles every day to get in shape for what they thought was going to happen, a march across Poland in 40 below zero. Other guys who were tin smiths were taking tin cans and opening them up, and making them into huge backpacks, so they could put all their belongings and carry them with them on a march across Poland in 40 below zero. And then there were the lazy slobs like me that sat around playing poker and winning all day long. Another guy and I knew how to do that. The currency was chocolate bars. They were worth seven American dollars a piece. You could sell them there. They could write a check on a prison postcard, and it was valid back in the United States if they wanted to buy your chocolate. And I had three thousand dollars worth of chocolate bars in my locker. And the order came on, everybody out. In one hour, we march. It was nine o'clock at night. It took till midnight to get us out. I went out in the hall and said, Anybody want some chocolate? Come and get it. I couldn't carry three thousand dollars. I couldn't carry three thousand dollars worth of chocolate bars. They were about almost a half a pound a piece. They were about fourteen ounces, I guess. I couldn't do that. So I let everybody have all the chocolate they wanted. That's all I took with me was chocolate bars. I didn't have a tin pack, you know. I hadn't been running around the camp, so I was in lousy shape, but I wasn't an infantryman. I was a fly boy, you know. So I was going to die that night. And we started marching. It was midnight, across Poland, sixty miles. I think there's an amoral in this story somewhere. I hope. The first ones to drop out were the guys who had been running all day, every day. They were already worn out. They'd already run four miles that day on eight hundred calories a day. And they'd dropped out. The second ones to drop out and die were the guys with the big backpacks. They were trying to take too much stuff with them. The third ones to drop out and die were the ones that dropped back to try and rescue the first two that had dropped out. Does anybody get the connection? . . . My boys all stuck together. We were all old-timers. We'd been there a long time. Old-timers survive. Have you ever noticed that? People ask me what it's like to be an old-timer. It's a near-death experience. As we slogged across Poland in forty below zero, I knew I couldn't make it. We would march five kilometers, and then we would rest for ten minutes, and then we would march five more kilometers. Our feet would freeze solid every time we stopped for ten minutes. It was . . . wind was blowing, it was snowing, and I knew I couldn't make it. And we'd march, and after a couple of kilometers, our feet would thaw out again. So they froze and thawed over and over again, all night. We marched for two nights, and I knew I wasn't going to make it another step, and I saw a beautiful mountain through the snow in the night. This great shape of a mountain. And I kept slogging toward that mountain. We marched sixty miles in two nights, and twenty-seven hundred out of ten thousand froze to death. I took my son back years and years later, . . . I took him back about, oh God, I took him back thirty years ago, to show him the mountain that had saved my life. And there isn't any. No mountain there. It's just not there, that's all. Uh . . . Last year, a year ago, my mother-in-law died, and she wanted to be buried up at Auburn, Washington, with her second husband. On a hillside. And I went up there to bury her, and I looked out and I saw the mountain. It was Mount Rainier. Now, I grew up there. I think God is whatever you think God is. I think people that have near-death experiences, if they're Buddhists, they see Buddha. If they're Christians, they see Jesus. They may see Moses. If they're Jewish, I don't know who they see. But they see whatever represents God. And apparently, I grew up thinking of that mountain as representing God. Because there's no mountain in Poland. Not like that. I came back, and I went to college on the GI Bill. I did very well. I worked for radio stations. I went up to Alaska, became a correspondent for AP. Did the news for Union Oil. I went to Walla Walla, Lewiston, Idaho. I worked in Seattle, KJR and KOMR. I worked in Seattle, KJR and KOMR. And I wrote a best-selling book about that death march called, Maybe I'm Dead. I'm plugging it, but you can't get it. This book was published, the last time it was published, it was published first in 1955, and the last time was in 1962. So, don't even try. I hope I get to plug something that's on sale before I get through here. So, this business of throwing up began six months after I got back. I want to do everything I hadn't done before. You know, talk about overeating. I learned something about that because my first really good meal was at Camp Shanks, New Jersey. Now, I hadn't had any ketchup for about three years. I had ketchup for about three years. I hadn't had any ice cream for about three years. I hadn't had any apple pie for about three years. And I hadn't had any T-bone steaks for at least three years. Maybe four, I was over 45 months. And what did I have? I ate three and a half T-bone steaks. Then I had apple pie with ice cream on it and poured ketchup on top. Then I had apple pie with ice cream on it and poured ketchup on top. They had become my binge foods. Tasted good. I got all the things I'd been missing in one plate. You know. I started throwing up over and over again and I threw up. And after 11 years, I picked up a college, a couple of college degrees. I was quite successful. I had a best-selling book. And I retired with my family to Maryland. And I retired with my family to Maryland. And I retired with my family to Maryland. I'd been in the hospital with cirrhosis and they turned me loose. And the doctor said, If through any miracle you should show any signs of recovery, I'm really setting you free to set your affairs in state. He didn't tell me I'd been drinking too much. He thought it was my horrible war experiences. My malnutrition as a POW followed by too rich living. That's the way it was put. VA put it the same way. I said, maybe I drank too much last night. I was shaking so hard at the VA once they couldn't weigh me. You know, the scale wouldn't hold still. And the doctor says, Either you gotta be on tranquilizers or alcohol. And he says, if I were you, I'd stick to the alcohol. He says, go out and get a couple of snorts and come back so we can weigh you. So that's the kind of advice I was getting from the medical profession. Which has the highest incidence of alcoholism of any profession, I understand. And so, I finally am in Southern California. I went to Mexico. I retired down there. They taught my wife how to hit me in the ass with a Dramaman needle and then screw the syringe full of stuff in and then push the needle to keep me from throwing up so much because they couldn't conceive of a man stopping drinking at that time in Mexico. This was 1956. All men drank, you know. All men drank. And so, nobody tried to get me to stop drinking. And we came back to California. Internal revenue retired me from retirement. And I went to Los Angeles and tried to get... I thought I could really put all... I thought I had a great formula. Top 40 radio. I was going to play the top 40 rock tunes and see if that didn't get a huge audience. I'd seen it done in Guadalajara. So I thought if it... They didn't even translate the lyrics. And if they can do it there, it'll work in America. And I was in L.A., you know. And so, I couldn't get anybody in L.A. to do that. They said, Los Angeles people are too sophisticated for that kind of music. So I conned a guy out in San Bernardino into letting me do that. I surveyed the market. I put the 40 records out. Walked out, said, I'm going to survey the market for a few days, which meant I was going to go to all the bars. I got three parking tickets. While I was asleep in the car. And then I drove back and spun out on the freeway back to Burbank. And I was in my periodic dry where I couldn't get a drink down. I had blood coming up and dry heaves. And the shakes, something god awful. And god, I hurt. I hurt so bad. And I knew I couldn't drink again. And I'd put myself in a separate bedroom so I wouldn't hurt the family. Keep them awake or something. And in the morning my wife came in and she said, You know you're going to die. The doctors told you so. So you haven't got anything to lose. Have you ever thought about calling AA? I said, Well, I've heard of AA. I haven't any idea what they do. She said, Why don't you give them a call? Maybe they might know some way for you to live a little longer and we could have some fun yet. I said, Okay, give them a call. That's how I was able to survive. I was able to survive. That's how I was nagged into AA. She just nagged me into AA. She doesn't even remember that. I remember it. I never forget it. Because the person on the phone said they wanted to talk to me. It was the central office in Los Angeles. I'm a drunk. She's got to talk to me. She asked me who I was. And it didn't take people long to squeeze out of me the information that I'm an author. Who flew fighter planes. She said, I know just the man to send to see you. And an hour later, I'm looking out the window. I'm going to let my wife answer the door. I'm in no shape to walk. And I see a hero of mine coming up the walkway. Somebody I had never met. But I knew what he looked like. And every fighter pilot knew about this guy. It was Pappy Boynton. The great marine ace of the Pacific. Congressional Medal of Honor winner. 28 planes shot down. Formed his own squadron. Because he drank so much that the other squadron leaders thought he'd be a bad influence on their pilots. And nobody let him fly with them. So he took all the misfits and formed the Black Sheep. Baa Baa Black Sheep. And he's coming up the walkway. And I struggled over the door. Opened the door. And he says, Are you Joe Classen? He had the big book under his arm. I said, Yes, sir. He says, Well, I'm Greg Boynton. And if you want what I have, and are willing to go to any length to get it, maybe I can help you. He said, I'm an alcoholic. And when he told me he was an alcoholic, I wanted to be one. I'll tell you something. If anybody thinks it's bad to be an alcoholic, let me tell you. If it's good enough for a Boynton, it's good enough for you. He didn't take me to a meeting because he didn't have any stretcher bearers. He didn't take me to the hospital because if he did, they'd have had me arrested. That's what happened to the drunks that were taken to hospitals. They were arrested. Because they hadn't discovered the well full of gold yet. They just were a damn nuisance, drunks, and they didn't want to deal with us. So the next day he came, and he led me quaking into my first meeting on Olympic Boulevard in Burbank. Now the room was full of people, and all the guys had on neckties. And there weren't very many women. As a matter of fact, women who had any reputation left whatsoever wouldn't be caught dead at an AA meeting. It was a disgrace to be at one. You might get around. So the women that were there looked like they'd, you know, left their parents somewhere and come to the meeting. And this guy walks up to me. Three guys are leading me, helping me into the meeting. And I'm shaking like castanets. And a guy walks up to me and says, How old are you? I said, 35. He said, You have a job? I said, I think so. He says, You live in a house? Yeah. You got a car? Family? Yeah. He says, Well, obviously you're not old enough, and you haven't lost enough to be a real alcoholic yet. But fortunately, we have a new rule. The new rule is the only requirement for membership is that there be an honest desire to stop drinking. So he says, AA is a good place for you to come and dry out, get well enough to go out and drink enough to lose enough to become a real alcoholic. I had to overcome that. Shit. Greg was older than I was. I guess he was old enough. So that's why they call him Pappy. So at the first meeting, the only thing I heard that I'd regard as program is the speaker says, What we do here is we don't take the first drink because the symptom of alcoholism is if I take a drink, it goes to the stomach, sends a message to the brain, which is an irrevocable command, mandatory. I cannot, I'm incapable. It's impossible for me to disobey. The order sent to the brain by the first drink and the order is get more. So he says, Obviously, all we have to do is turn down one drink a day. The first one. And any damn fool can turn down one drink. Well, it sounded great to me. Except he didn't tell me I had to turn down about a thousand times every day. And that I wanted it every second of every waking moment and dreamed about it at night. But I did. I turned down the first drink for three years. Greg got drunk. He couldn't do it anymore. Three more years almost. Five years and eight months turning down the first drink every day. Greg happened to be an atheist. He'd shot and killed a guy on Christmas and watched the man writhing in the fire. And he figured if there was such a thing as God, he wouldn't let one man do that to another on Christmas. So there was no God. And that's a very logical piece of thought there. That makes sense. So we didn't do the steps. I never even heard about it. I looked at the steps and said, I already agree with that. And that was it. So I turned down the first drink for five years and eight months. And then I only got drunk once. I couldn't turn down the first drink one day. Something had happened, you know. I had about two thousand excuses. What if this happened? What if that happened? Don't do this. Don't do that. If you do that, you're going to get drunk. If you do that, I'd cut out everything that was any fun because that was alcoholic behavior. Having fun was alcoholic behavior. I was living a miserable life with a big smile on my face talking about what a wonderful program this is. I'm working on greed today. What shortcoming are you working on? I was managing my life very well. I was managing radio stations. They were number one in the market. You know, one after another. And I couldn't turn down the first drink one day. And so I only got drunk once for three months. I called AA again. Now I was up in the Bay Area, San Francisco. I called AA and they sent two guys out to see me, spent the day with me. I went to my meeting again that night. I threw up. They had me read the... They said I was an old timer because I'd been in the program for six years. They had me read the fifth chapter and just after step six, I threw up. I ran into the john to do it, but I threw up. And I vomited so hard I ruptured my left eyeball. And ever since, I've got a scar there. I had surgery twice in my life. I've been in the hospital for a year. Surgery twice has failed to fix it. And if I want to remember my last drunk, all I've got to do is close my right eye. And I'm legally blind. You're all a blur. You know, I can see some colors and things out there. I can't even tell the men from the women from this distance. So that's what happened to me. And I started trying to work the 12 steps. And I had a hell of a time. It took me... I was convinced I couldn't manage alcohol by that time. I didn't know yet that anyone who could control his drinking is an alcoholic. I didn't know that controlling drinking is the first sign of alcoholism. That nobody but an alcoholic would ever think about controlling drinking. What the hell would they have to control it for if they weren't an alcoholic? You know, I didn't know yet that nobody could possibly drink enough to become an alcoholic. Except an alcoholic. That only alcoholics can drink that much. Non-alcoholics have to use willpower to drink the third drink. I didn't know that. The VA had taken away my 40% disability compensation because my liver had healed. And I resented it. Because I thought anybody who couldn't drink was disabled. And I thought anybody who couldn't drink was disabled. And I thought anybody who couldn't drink was disabled and ought to be compensated for it. And it took me three more years before I began to notice that the greatest managers on this earth were fucking up the planet. That the greatest managers in Washington were screwing everything up. The greatest managers in the world were aiming thousands of missiles at each other. The greatest power was aimed at one another to destroy us all. And I finally thought, God, if those people can't manage, maybe I can't either. And I was finally able to get started on the steps. I couldn't get through step two. It took me nine years to get through the second half of the first step. I couldn't get through step two until two years later when I went to Al-Anon over my kids. I'm in the rock business, remember. I've got Bill Graham for a client. Hell, his first check, the station wouldn't accept it, so I cashed it to get him on the air. They didn't know who he was. You know, I was at the Fillmore every weekend. And I knew what the kids were doing, and I couldn't find any other parents that would listen to me. Nobody else thought their kids were doing that. They'd say I ought to move to their neighborhood. That wouldn't happen. And I was going crazy. I took them. I helped start the first. Young people's group in San Francisco. I was sponsor, one of the sponsors. I took them to Synanon. I took them to psychiatrists. I took them to church. I had them teach in Sunday school. Nothing I did got them off the dope and the booze. You know? One after another, they were going for it like there was no other way to live. And they weren't the only ones. All their friends, everybody was doing it at that age. You look like you ought to know about that. And so here I am, finally ordered by my friends to go to Al-Anon. And I went to Al-Anon very skeptically, 11 years after I first came to AA, and after my second, fifth AA birthday. I had two fifth birthdays. That adds up to 11 years. And so I go to my first Al-Anon meeting in Orinda, California. And I thought, what the hell do these people meet for? What have they got to give up? We had to give up alcohol. We had to give up drugs. What have these people got to give up? And I went in and I got it. For the first time, I learned what the steps were all about. They only had one thing to give up. They couldn't give anything up and think they were recovering. All they had to give up was control. Nothing else. Just give up control. Nothing else. In AA, we had to give up alcohol and control. And we thought we had to do it in that order. Actually, the big book says to give up control. It says we haven't even sworn off of alcohol. It says that. We haven't even sworn off. The compulsion is yanked right out of us. We recoil from alcohol as from a flame. It doesn't take any willpower to get your hands on alcohol. You can't get your hand out of a flame. Try it. If you think it does. You know. You don't have to resist a flame. So what I'm saying is, I learned that the problem in AA was, we thought that if we gave up alcohol, we were working the program. And we weren't unless we gave up control. And the first step tells us why. Why? Why? We admit we're powerless over alcohol and we can't manage anything. The second step, I say, God take charge. The third step is, whoa, wait a minute, I left one out. Maybe God can run things better than I can. Step two. Step three, God take charge. Step four, I'm all fucked up. Step five, I admit I'm all fucked up. Step six, maybe God can straighten me out. Step seven, okay, God, straighten me out. Step eight, I haven't harmed anybody today. Step nine, don't have to do that one. Step ten, I'm fucked up again and I admit it. Step eleven, God make me feel like doing what you want me to do today. Step twelve, I just did it. Thank you. People like to sort of sneer at people like me with 33 years. People like Brennan with 50 years. Or my sponsor with 40 some years. You know, they like to sneer at us and say, we're all only one drink away from a drunk. Bull shit. What the hell are you talking about? I'm 33 years away from the last one and 12 steps away from the next one. And in order to drink a drink, it's impossible for me to drink. You know? I was living on top of the world. I went over to Siberia, helped start five AA groups, five Al-Anon groups, came back, spoke at three conventions in two weekends. Last time I saw Terry was at one of them. The next week my granddaughter was kidnapped at knife point. And two months later, after looking for her, we found her dead. What do I get from the 12 steps? Serenity. Which isn't worth a damn unless there's a disaster to use it on. What the hell would I need with serenity if everything were going right? I wouldn't even know whether I had it or not. You know? I couldn't drink. I'd rather eat shit. You know why? It would taste better. . That's what God does for me. If I were resisting one drink at a time, I would have drunk it. But God is doing it, not me. And what do I have to do to drink again? I've got to do the 12 steps backwards. Step 12, I've got to go spiritually asleep, stop delivering this message, stop practicing these principles in all my affair. Step 11, I've got to start praying for sleep. I've got to start praying for specific things again, make out a shopping list for God. Step 10, I've got to never admit when I'm wrong about anything and point out how everybody else is wrong. Step 9, I've got to expect other people to make amends to me. Step 8, I've got to make a shit list of people who owe me amends. Step 7, I've got to start removing my own defects of character, join self-help groups, go buy all the books in the self-help section, help the library. Step 6, I've got to become convinced that only I can do that. Step 5, I've got to never admit when I'm wrong about anything. Step 4, I've got to take absolute control of my own life and count all your defects of character and all the ways that you are wrong. Step 3, take full charge of everything. Step 2, believe that that's the right way to go. God gave me a will, now use it. And step 1, I've got power now. I can drink. Thank you.