Vince Y. at the 19th Midwinter AA Conference – 1999

Good morning my name is Vince and I am an alcoholic and I truly am delighted to be here and I want to thank you for inviting me this is really lovely those of us who do a lot of this will tell you that all of these events are not like this. And so it's really just a delight to be here to what is truly the real Renaissance weekend. And it's nice to be with old friends. I know everybody, all of the speakers, we're all old friends. Tom gave, I always enjoy listening to Tom Whalen and I thought last night he was wonderful. He was just wonderful. This talk was just inspired. He's a charming man and we've known each other for many years. We're much like brothers, I suppose, in many ways. He's a significantly older brother, it's true. But we are, and Sharon is like a sister. We're essentially from the same AA family, if you will. And we've been trained or some would say indoctrinated in much the same way. We come from the SAME AA ethic, I suspect. And so it's good to be with them. And I've met Sandy only a couple of times, but I've listened to him for years and it's just a delight in Beverly. It's a delight to be with everybody and just good to be here. I would like to welcome, last night we had several people who were relatively new to Alcoholics Anonymous raise their hands and stand up. And this morning I want to welcome you to AA. And I want you to know that that's where you are today. You're an AA, which is really a miserable development, isn't it? Quite frankly, it's not really what you planned on. And I know that if you were new or relatively new, I have never met you, but I know a lot about you. I know the fact that you are a AA. I know you've had a bad year. I can tell you that for sure. This has not been a good Christmas season. I mean, and here you are. You've ended up in AA. And I also know that if you're anything at all like I was when I was new, down deep inside where you really live, you may be utterly convinced that you are not really alcoholic and that you are not like us and that your case is different and I would like you to know that if you feel that way that means you are precisely like us and you fit because that is as near as I can tell the working definition for alcoholism is to be utterly convinced that you were in the wrong place and that you don't belong here and you're not really like them And so welcome. I hope that you stay. I know that, well, I will tell you about my first AA meeting, which was a long time ago now. It was in November of 1965. I know you girls are in the front row thinking he cannot be that old. I understand that. And I want you to know I was only seven at that meeting. but it was in long beach california uh which is a a i guess a a large suburb of los angeles for those of you who may not know it's down the coast a ways a few miles and i wandered into a meeting on a friday very cold friday night in november of 1965 in in a section of long beach California known as the Los Altos section which was at that time anyway, a very upscale kind of community with all professional people owning very fancy homes. And the AA community in Long Beach all went to the Presbyterian Church on Friday night for the AA meeting. It was a big, very dynamic speaker meeting and everybody went. And you must realize, those of you who are relatively new, that in 1965 there weren't AA meetings on every corner, you know, every night of the week as there are now. And this was the big event in Long Beach. Everybody went to Los Altos on Friday night, and they dressed up. They wore coats and ties, and the ladies wore dresses, and it was really a big deal. As a matter of fact, it was so impressive that if you were to wander into the Los AltOS meeting in Long beach, California, on any given night, and you were look around the room, and you would see these people, you would have surmised that none of them are alcoholic. they didn't look alcoholic I mean, they looked good and they sounded good and they behaved well except for the night that I was there you would have picked me out I had on a ripped t-shirt and a dirty pair of jeans I had not shaved or bathed in over a week and I'd spent the previous five days in the Long Beach City Jail due to a series of unfortunate circumstances that were not my fault as it turns out the police department in Long Beach, California is fascist I don't know if you know that. And they had abused my civil rights on a consistent basis. And I ended up in the Long Beach City Jail often in those days. And that was the latest of those occasions. And I end it up in a basement of that Presbyterian church. And I always want to remember why I was there. And if you're new, I would like to tell you. It was not because I was in search of sobriety or quiet heart. or peace of mind. I had no job, no car, no money, and no place to live. And every time I get in that kind of shape, I go to AA. That was my motivation. It was simply no more noble than that. So if you are new here this morning and your motivation you feel is less than noble, I have excellent news for you. We do not evaluate you as to your motivation here. If we did, this would be a smaller meeting. Bet on that. It only matters right now that you're here, and I hope that you stay. I should also tell you from the outset that I'm Irish and Catholic, and I'm from New Jersey, and I have difficulty with people from Texas. We have a chemistry problem. And at that first meeting, I sat in the back of the room up against the wall In the basement of this church And I sat next to this guy He was about six foot five And he had a ten gallon hat in his lap And cowboy boots on And his name was Tex Now Tex wasn't sober very long himself But he wanted to hip me And he told me Boy, I'm going to hip you And I remember thinking Why don't you go hip somebody else leave me alone but he was going to hit me and the first thing he did is he repeated to me in rapid succession all of the AA cliches one after another and they are very dreary aren't they if you're new I mean good grief easy does what you know and he put his arm around my shoulder and he said ah keep it simple I thought I'll bet you do Tex I have no quarrel with that I will tell you and the meeting began and it began much the same way we began here this morning they read essentially that part of our book that is our program they read the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and I don't know about you but I didn't hear anything new I am a product of the Roman Catholic Church I know all about all of this as Tom said last night these concepts are familiar to me they are not unique to Alcoholics Anonymous the concept of a searching and fearless moral inventory did not originate here I will tell you admitting to God and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs is not, I did that every Saturday afternoon from the time I was seven or eight years old, maybe till the time I was 15. And what I knew about all of that when I sat in the basement of that Presbyterian church on that Friday night in November of 1965 is that it did not apply to me. Whatever was wrong with me was not remedied by that because if it were, certainly I would not have to come to a Presbyperian church. on a Friday night to make that discovery. So somewhere on some subconscious level, I suppose, I sat in the back of that room and I dismissed those 12 steps. I said to myself, probably subconscious level my case is different. I don't belong here. I don' t fit. And I dismissed those 12 steps. And I didn' t reason all of this out. But apparently that' s what I did. The meeting began and it was a good meeting and they had several people participated And if I had any doubts as to whether I belonged there or not, they were cured at the end of the meeting when they, I don't know how you celebrate anniversaries in South Carolina, but in Southern California we call them birthdays. We're California, so we do it with flash. We have birthday cakes with candles on them. And I mean, good grief, this is really embarrassing, isn't it? I mean, if you sit in a room full of middle-aged people and they sing happy birthday to some jerk who went a year without taking a drink and they blow candles. I mean good God, it's like something should take place at a mental institution in the day room right before dance therapy or after you've worked on your wallet. And they had a series of these imbecilic birthday parties for people. And one in particular for a woman who was about 110 and apparently she'd been sober forever. They had a fire on top of this cake down the aisle and she blew the candles out. And she got up here and she said her name was Phoebe and that she was an alcoholic. And then she said something about, did I want what she had? Not tonight, Phoebe. I don't think so. And that was my first AA meeting. And I guess it is safe to say that I did not have a spiritual awakening. But I'll tell you what I did for the next three and one half years. I stayed sober right in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous. And during that period of time, I did everything there was to do in AA. I participated in Alcoholics Anonymous on virtually every level. I was as active as you could possibly be in AA. I washed coffee cups and scrubbed ashtrays and set up meetings and was the chairman of meetings and secretary of meetings and went and spoke, did everything you do in AA except one thing. I did not take these steps. And as a result, my alcoholism got worse. and it got worse while I stayed physically sober and busy in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you're new or relatively new here this morning, you ought to have this information. Recovery from alcoholism comes one way. You must take these steps. That's how you get better here. You take them, you recover. You don't take them. You get worse. and you get worse while you are sober in the middle of AA. That's what happened to me. I sat in the Middle of Alcoholics Anonymous and got worse. And I knew I was getting worse. And I'll bet there are people here today exactly in that state of mind and body who've been here some appreciable length of time and have not begun to be involved with these steps and you are getting worse too. And you know it. And the way you know you're getting worse here is you are surrounded by people who are getting better. And you watch them get better. You can see it. It's visual, isn't it? Can't you see people get better? Does anyone ever have to tell you they're recovered here? You know, don't you? You just need to be around people who are getting besser here and you know who they are. Something happens to them. You can say it. You can watch it in their face, in their eyes, in their persona, in the sense of purpose they have about their life. They are going somewhere and they have direction. and if you're like me you sit here and you watch people come in here long after you and they get better and you don't and it makes you crazy and you look at them and you say to yourself emotionally and psychologically when do I get to feel when do i get mine when do we get when do you get to feel like that i used to think you had secret meetings have you ever had that feeling where they all got together without you and shared it could not be this and that's how life functioned in Alcoholics Anonymous. On the outside, my life got very good. Good things happened to me. I come from a wonderful family. I should tell you this. There aren't any other alcoholics in my family, and I'm Irish and Catholic, which is somewhat of a heresy in AlcoholicsAnonymous, I suppose, but it's true. They're all basically okay. And I came along late in my parents' life. My parents were quite a bit older when I was born, so they died within one week of each other when I was 12. And that was a, you know, tough thing for a 12-year-old kid. There's no doubt about it. I have four older sisters and I was spoiled, I suppose. My youngest sister is 11 years older than I am. And I came along very late in my parents' life and all of a sudden there was a boy in this Irish Catholic family. And, I mean, they really, my sisters, it was during the war, they dressed me in soldier suits and sailor suits and I had pictures saluting. It would make you throw up, trust me. It really did. But that's how I was raised. And I was loved, nurtured, and not abused. And I was educated in Roman Catholic schools. I guess what I'm trying to tell you is my alcoholism is not my family's fault. It is not the fault of the Roman Catholic Church. I discovered a very painful fact when I finally wrote a searching and fearless moral inventory here. The worst news I ever got. My life is my fault. not good news not really but that's what happened to me and in 1960 I went into the military and got some very good training in the Navy medical training as a matter of fact I left college and joined the Navy well I went in the navy very early I was a really young kid, and they made me a naval hospital corpsman. I don't know if you know what that is. Many of you old sailors in here know what it is. And I did very well. The one thing I do well is I go to school well. I can get good grades. And so I was in Navy hospital corpsmen, and they sent me to a more advanced school where they trained corpsmen to go on ships where they don't have doctors. It was really advanced medical training. And then medical administration school, and lo and behold they commissioned me an officer and ensign in the Medical Service Corps. and then sent me to Okinawa to the Marine Corps, which was a bad mistake. As it turned out, I was attached to the 3rd Marine Division on OkinaWA as a medical administrative officer, and they could not find a job for me. So they put me in an officer's club on the northern end of the island and forgot about me. And I forgot about them, quite frankly. It was really okay. And my duty consisted of getting up in the morning and reporting to the cocktail lounge at noon and drinking Hagen-Hag Pinch at 60 cents a pop, which is pretty good. You know, that's not bad. And that's what I did. And pretty soon they put another guy up there. He was a surgeon out of Temple University, a thoracic surgeon who had a bad drunk, and they did not want him around patients. He was the only thoracics surgeon you've ever met that had an eagle tattooed on his arm. You know? If you get an idea what this guy was like. And they put him up there in this officer's club, and they just left both of us alone, and it was fine with us. We just kind of lived our own lives. We grew beards and lost all our uniforms somehow and walked around in shorts, and, you know, it was just really that's what they did. So finally they caught up with us, and they decided we should have some kind of duty, so they put us in charge of venereal disease control for the island of Okinawa. And what we did was the Marines would catch hideous venereal diseases. They would get venereal disease that you only saw in textbooks and in Marines. And our job was to go out into the villages, into the bars, and find the young ladies in questions. And this is very not really a Saturday morning talk, is it? But anyway, it's very tawdry, but this is what happened. And our jobs was to grab into the village and find the young lady in question. And then we had this awesome power of quarantining these bars. We could close them down. and we would ride around in a jeep well as soon as they saw us coming they would set up scotch for free so we never closed one bar down ever in our entire tour of duty over there the trouble is you didn't want to stay in these bars and drink too much because these young ladies would start looking good to you which was a tricky thing because you knew why you were there so you didn'y want to drink too muc but that's what we did and essentially our military career was over we came back to the United States when I'm back to Temple as a matter of fact I think he's a cardiovascular surgeon today in Philadelphia and I don't think he has ever been to AA if you need a bypass don't go to Philadelphia it was at that period in my life when I knew there was something that was really wrong with me I don't know if you remember that. Do you remember when you were young and you knew there was something really wrong with you? You weren't really ready to label it. You couldn't call it alcoholism, but you knew you were screwed up. Do you Remember that? You just knew you Were different. I mean, everybody else is socializing. They're getting married. I mean they're completing their education. They're doing and you are just I mean you're crazy, you know, and you don't Know why and you're not you know they were leaving you behind. And I know the answer to that. The answer to that is to get married. And that's what I did. I married a Navy nurse, a girl that I'd known in the Navy and we got married and she immediately became pregnant and we moved to Southern California. She was an only child and we move to be near her parents. And so we moved in with her. Here we came from a brand new wife, newly pregnant with son-in-law they haven't met to Southern California to move in with them and I was going to go ahead and go to school, complete my education and I got a summer stopgap job as a bartender and that did not work out well. I would end up coming home to my new in-laws house at 5am in various stages of undress drunk and after three weeks of that they threw me out And I found myself out on Bolsa Avenue in Santa Ana in Orange County with a lot of Samsonite luggage and no money. And I got a job for the rest of that summer as an ambulance driver in Orange County. And I drove an ambulance drunk for the next six months in Orange County. Now, when I tell you, and I'm a blackout drinker, which made the ambulance calls colorful. I had been on ambulance calls with the lights and the sirens going, and I'd come out of a blackouts. and I'd have to say to the attendant with me where are we going? You know and he would get unnerved. One night we got caught in a cul-de-sac in Newport Beach. Have you ever you know how you lock on to something and you can't so we're going around in this cul-te-sack and this ambulance with a beacon on the top of the ambulance shining into people's bedroom windows you know and they're all coming out on their porch in their pajamas and they are looking at this ambulance going around in a circle and you know how you just can't get out they sent a police car in to lead me out as a matter of fact shortly after that I lost that job and my driver's license oddly enough and it was right after that that I ended up in that AA meeting that I told you about in 1965 and in 1966 a new profession opened up in civilian medicine was called the Physician's Assistant Program. Now, many of you know what a PA is now, or a physician's assistant. It was brand new in the middle and late 60s in this country. And the concept then was that most of these guys getting out of medical schools were going into specialty training, and there was a shortage of guys doing primary medicine in emergency rooms. So they took people such as myself, who had this rather sophisticated medical training in the military, and we were the first PAs. and we went to work in emergency rooms in the urban centers and in rural areas too for that matter and we did the primary care medicine in the emergency, we were trained to do it I mean we did all the things that a physician does in an emergency room, triage the patients we sutured the lacerated, everything that a position does always special with sun call everywhere but we did it and I was in on the ground floor of a new profession, I was the third licensed TA in the state of California and I went to Work in an Emergency Room in East Los Angeles And it was a very, I'll tell you, emergency rooms in East L.A. are colorful. It had everything going. I mean, they had the city contract. They had the stabbings and the shootings and the industrial injuries from Kaiser Steel. All of these things came into this emergency room at night, and it was very challenging and very rewarding. I was well trained to do this, and I suspect I did it well. I met another girl, the daughter of a longtime sober AA member, a beautiful girl, and we fell in love and we got married, and she went to Al-Anon. and everything was really going to be okay except I had not taken these steps and there was no spiritual recovery in my life at all. And I would end up going into this emergency room at night terribly depressed and inadequate and not up to the task and all of the things that you and I know about when we're unrecovered and we're dry. And so I have no program to deal with this but I have an excellent medical education And I know how to take care of depression. I use dexedrine. Fifteen milligram spanchels work best. And before I was through with those, I was taking seven or eight of them a day. Now if you know anything at all about amphetamine abuse, you will understand. That's got you moving right along. I will tell you, boys. Whatever you're doing, it will be in a hurry. and after about the fourth or fifth day when you've not slept nor eaten and your hair stands right out on end like that and your eyes dilate over here like this and you show up in the emergency room to help the sick it does not look good I'll tell you, the guy you were leaving never wants to go home they look at you and say things like Vince, you need to get something to eat or get some sleep. But there's a remedy for that, and the remedy for that is a drug called Demerol. And I suppose most of you know what that is. Demerrol is a narcotic. It's not really a narcetic. It's a synthetic, actually. But believe me, you never know the difference. It's close enough. And narcotics, incidentally, which is, I'm going to say this because I think it needs to be said sometimes today in AA, and I'm gonna say it now. Narcotic addiction and alcoholism are different. They are not the same. Narcotics all come from opium, and they are addictive. Morphine, Dilaudid, Demerol, Percodan, it's all the same thing. It all comes from opiate. All the same drug, really, heroin. It's just buffered a little bit differently. It's allthe same thing, and it's addictive, physiologically and psychologically for everybody. I mean, you inject heroin intravenously or morphine, you'll get addicted, period. You don't need to even worry if you have an addictive personality. you just get a syringe and a needle and that will happen that's not true with alcohol turns out that what is it 8 or 9, 10 people out of every 10 people who drink alcohol 8 or nine of them are social drinkers they're not like us their experience is completely different they don't have anything at all like us they're what is known as social drinker I don't understand them And they say things that are baffling, like, no more for me. I have to drive. Or I'd love to have another, but my wife's waiting dinner. I'm going home now. On the other hand, you know, you and I are not going home. you know, we're going to Las Vegas. Is that right? I mean, it's a different dynamic. On the other hand, I have never met a social heroin user. You know, I don't know any. So it's different. The dynamic is different. And I suspect it's because, and this is just a personal opinion, it's my opinion that I think people drink alcohol, alcoholics drink alcohol to fit in, to be part of I think people inject heroin and morphine to drop out, to leave so I think it's two different motivations at least that's what happened to me and the other problem with Demerol in the emergency room is people care about where it is God, it really gets tricky they come in the ER and open the narcotic drawer and all the dope is gone and they say things like Vince where is the Demerol and I say I don't know and everybody gets upset the pharmacist who's issued it the administrators and the people who get the most upset are the people on the medical quality assurance board I can tell you how upset they get they came into that emergency room one night and inspected narcotic logs and placed me under arrest and took me to the Los Angeles County Jail, which in those days that was the recovery program for impaired physicians. It was the L.A. County Jial. We were not enlightened yet. And right down in my scrub suit downtown we went. And I don't know if you've ever been booked through the Los Angles County Jal. It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It's just absolutely horrid. and the charge was subsequently reduced to a misdemeanor and I did not have to do any jail time but they took my medical license in. The long and short of it is I ended up spending the summer of 1972 living in an apartment by the airport in Englewood, California drinking one half gallon of vodka a day and that's how I spent July June, July and August of 1972. Now I don't have to tell you about that kind of drinking you all know about that That's people who drink a half gallon of vodka a day are alcoholics, incidentally. They are not social drinkers, none of them. The experience is all uniform. Everyone has the same experience that drinks a half-gallon of vodka today. There's no difference. You vomit bile and you don't ever go to sleep. You pass out. You don't wake up. You come to. You don'T work. You lose weight. You lose 35 pounds if you're me. and your wife leaves you and I'm left in that apartment with some money and no car when they leave me they take everything I will tell you there's no nothing just the apartment and me and some money in the bank to where I walk over to buy supermarket brand vodka and take it home and drink it hot out of the jug which is really in the summer hot vodka in August in Los Angeles I mean it's just lovely I mean boy that's good social drinking I got to tell you and that's the way that it ended for me and I was in and out of blackouts all the time I came out of a blackout in Newport Beach and I don't remember how I got there except it was mid-September 1972 the temperature was about 110 and I found myself in this three piece wool suit and a white shirt and a tie sitting on a park bench by the Balboa Peninsula going through the Orange County newspaper looking for a job with some luggage next to me and I became cognizant of where I was, I don' t even remember leaving Englewood That's where I was, and I found a job that day, too, as an apprentice embalmer for a mortician, which was all I could do. My medical license was gone. I went to work for this undertaker in Newport Beach, which was the job. If you're new and you need a job, do not do that. It was a hideous experience. The job paid $85 a week, and a fringe benefit was this apartment over the room where they kept the caskets. So every morning with a hangover, you would get to walk through the casket room, which would set you free. God, awful. And I didn't like this undertaker and he didn't like me and I got drunk and stole his hearse. And on September the 20th, 1972, I came out of yet one more blackout driving the wrong way on Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach in a stolen hearse with a young lady next to me who I did not recall meeting, oddly enough. screaming at the top of her lungs. And I remember thinking, I really have a character flaw. You know, I am predisposed to get involved with these women who are neurotic because all the women in my life end up hysterical. And I told her that too. I told she was a neurotic woman and I told that she was unstable and probably ought to get some counseling or something because she was just... Now, I have never seen her again. I hope she got home all right, but that was September the 20th, 1972. And I have not had a drink of alcohol, nor have I used any mood-altering chemical from that date to this. And what's remarkable about that morning is it was not my intention. If you could have materialized in the back of that hearse and foretold my future, what you would have told me would have been truly remarkable. you would have said today you're going back to AA and for the next 26 plus years you're not going to drink any alcohol and you're gonna stay sober right in the middle of it and I would have been to AA whatever it was that was gonna work for me it was not AA but yet that's what happened and the reason it happened is because when I and I did go back to AAA that day because I didn't have anyone else. I brought the guy's hearse back to him, and he was upset. And he had been up in the apartment over the casket room throwing my clothes out the window. And I found myself at 6 a.m. with all of my earthly belongings strewn over this blacktop parking lot of this mortuary in Newport Beach, California, with no money, no job, and no place to live. So I go to A.I. I went to the Costa Mesa Alano Club, which is all there was in 1972, which was not much. I can tell you that it was a dreadful place and I put all my belongings in a cardboard box and I reported to the Alano Club and I sat at the coffee bar and I had a cup of coffee they had an AA meeting there that noon it was terrible and another meeting there which was worse 7 out of work Texas plumbers sitting around a table telling each other to put the plug it was dreadful It was awful. And the manager let me sleep on the sofa, and I got up in the morning and got in a gin rummy game with some ladies and won some money and rented a room for $11 a week. I don't know if you've ever seen an $11-a-week room. They're all generic. They're dreadful hovels. And I moved into this room, and when I thought when I moved in there, clearly I'll have to stay here several weeks until something happens and I can, you know, make a change. And he said, well, you know, I don't think I can live here that long. I told the guy when I moved in, I don't thing I can stay here three or four weeks. Two years later when I moved out of that room, it didn't look that bad. My life had taken some really dramatic turns. I spent my first two years of sobriety in Orange County, California, and I want to tell you I did not do well. I'd lost my medical license I was kind of at loose ends I was untrained to do anything else and I got and lost a series of jobs that were unbelievable I mean, you could not believe I lost a job as a gas station attendant for being incompetent I lost a job as a $1.87 an hour drill press operator Do you know how hard it is to be a bad drill press operator? I mean they wheel up a cart of copper plates in the morning and you take a copper plate and you put it under the drill and you pull a handle and the drill puts a hole in the embossed part of this copper plate and then you put the copper plate over there. This is not difficult. I put the hole in the wrong place in about 800 of these copper plates one day and the foreman came up to me and said, you know, we've got to let you go. He's from Texas too, incidentally. He said, you know. We've got to let you go, boy. Let's call your boy son. We've got to let you go. He said I can see it's too bad because you're real trier. He said, you're just not quite bright enough to do this kind of work. Then I explained to him where I went to college, which is a bad mistake. You should never do that. And he said, well, boy, I'll tell you what, you ought to go back, take the course in drill press operating, you know. And that's, I lost that job. And I remember going back to that Drury Alano club that day and I thought, good God, how do you get from there to here? The incongruity of my life was unbelievable. How does this happen? And there was another guy that hung around that Alano Club those days. He was sober about 11 years. He was from Texas also. His name was Clarence. And ClarenCE was in the floor covering business, like my friend here. But ClarenCe was a one-man entrepreneur. What he did was he would go down to Lido Island and Newport Beach and he'd sell floor covering to all of these wealthy people. Then he would run to the manufacturer, buy the floor covering, come run back and install it. And he needed a gopher. and he said I'll hire you as my gopher he said, I'll pay you $10 a day and provide your meals sounded like the presidency of General Motors to me I mean, my overhead was low so I went to work for Clarence for 10 bucks a day in meals and I worked for him for the next six months we would end up at recalendars every night and we would have dinner and then he would give me a $10 bill and I would go about my business This is how I survived for so long in Orange County. And I began to acquire some material possessions. I got a 1964 red Chevrolet convertible with a hole in the top and no brakes. And I would drive this to the big fancy meetings down on the Balboa Peninsula, and I'd pull that baby into the parking lot, and everyone would immediately jump into their Mercedes and put it on the other side of the lot. They always asked me questions like, do you have insurance on that car? I hadn't had a driver's license in three years why the hell would I have insurance and that's the way that I function pretty soon I was two years sober and I knew I needed help of a more practical nature somebody needed to help me and by now I had developed it's very interesting I remember one night, maybe the worst day I can remember the day I lost a job as a drill press operator Thursday. And I went down to the big meeting on the Balboa Peninsula, which was a big dynamic speaker meeting, very exciting and very up and very enthusiastic. And the speaker that night was again somebody Tom mentioned last night, Norm Alpey was the speaker. And this was a guy, Norm Altey, for those of you who are new, this guy was a I suppose if Frank Capra invented an AA speaker it would be Norm Alopey. He was like Mr. every man you know and he would uh he told this story this chronological aa story and he never changed a word and if you you could repeat it verbatim every time you heard him but every time you heard it was like you were hearing it for the first time it was an amazing thing he he was wonderful and he was inspiring and i listened to norm alpey that night and he did not inspire me i mean i was terribly depressed i had how how could you get from where i was to where i am now and I went back to this $11 a week room and it was raining and I got soaking wet and I had bronchitis and I just had a fever and I didn't have any medical insurance and I thought, what in the hell is ever going to happen to me? And I went into that crummy, dreary room, that $11-a-week room and I can't believe my life is in this kind of shape. I'm sober. I haven't had a drink in months and months. I don't know what is ever gonna happen to be and I did the most stupid thing I could ever imagine. I got down on my knees beside the bed in this crummy room and I said a prayer and it was a simple unsophisticated prayer it was God please help me I am frightened I am alone and I can't make it anymore I believe my recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous began that night and if you're new and you want to know how you begin here that is how you began you should know that it is not necessary that you believe in that God or have any faith in that prayer it is only necessary that you are willing to take the action because it turns out that Alcoholics Anonymous is about action and I became two years sober and I got the only sponsor I could get that I thought could help me and I fought it with every fiber of my being I did not like this guy he was arrogant and he was self-serving and he had this retinue of people that followed him around and got him coffee and saved the seat and he's just really unkind to new people too, I'll tell you. As near as I could tell. But there was something about this guy that was indisputable, undeniable. He had an amazing capacity to help losers in Alcoholics Anonymous. The dregs of humanity would leave Orange County and they would go and get this guy for a sponsor and they'd join his fascist AA group on the west side of Los Angeles and they were going to do this and they went and they would take actions and do things that were seemingly unrelated to anything I could understand about AA but something was undeniable, they would turn up in Orange County months later, transform human beings I mean, they'd have jobs and cars one guy in particular, I'll never forget him Manchester Red the biker good God, this man was really he would show up at AA meetings with a tank top and no teeth and his matted beard and Canadian club in his pocket and he'd want to fight, you know, kill people, maim them, you know. And when you saw Red in an AA meeting in Newport Beach he would say, oh my God, not tonight, you know please. And he dropped out of sight and someone said he got this guy for a sponsor and he moved to West LA and God I'll tell you it was six months later we were in a meeting in New port beach and someone says there's Red and I turned around and looked in the back of the room and I said where? I don't see him. They said there he is and there he was, except he'd had his dental work done and he was clean shaven and had a haircut sitting there in a blue blazer, gray slacks and penny loafers he called on him to talk and he came up to the podium and he said his name was Red six months prior to that evening he said he'd made his first child support payment in ten years and next month he was going to vote in the presidential election for the Republican push me over the edge I'll tell you so I called this guy up and I asked him to help me he said he would and he said for me to come down and have lunch with him at this mission he ran on Skid Row in Los Angeles and so I drove this beat up old Chevy down to that mission and I had lunch with them and I ask them to help and I'll never forget what he said and if you're new here today I hope someone says something like this to you someday because it is the most important thing anyone has ever said to me in AA. He said, yes, I will help you if you are willing to accept the proposition that my best judgment about your life is infinitely better than yours and if you will do everything I suggest you do without debate I will tell you that I am most grateful that I was just desperate enough that day to make that unholy pact with the devil i agreed to do what he said and he had me to do uh it's i'm not going to go into all of it now but he i did i have this miracle story i mean i got my medical license back it was all wonderful i mean but he had to do things that were not related to what i perceived to be wrong with me you must understand i everything he had mado by my lights had nothing to do with me getting better I mean, it was totally unrelated to what I knew what was wrong with me. And I knew he didn't have any answers for me. But the difference was that I was desperate enough, just desperate enough to do things I did not believe in because my answers did not work. And I think that is the secret of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous, is to be desperate enough to take actions you do not believe him, direction from people you do not like, and consider your intellectual inferiors. If you are willing to do that, your chances here are superb. And, you know, he took my car away from me. Just asked, told me, give me the keys to that car. And I said, why should I do that? And I'll never forget what he said to me. He said, you should give me the keys because citizens such as myself have a right to drive on the city streets free from danger from morons like you. Very hard to argue with that, you know? I gave him the keys. I mean, how do you dispute that? And he took the car and parked it in front of his house in Venice, California. I don't know if you know anything about Venice, California. It's not... He said, well, take that. He made me move into this mission and live there. That's a whole other evening. I'm going to win that. But he took my car and he made me park it in front off his house in Venice and I would get up and they played softball and gathered there every Saturday, my group did, and they'd play softball and they go over to his yard and they have hot dogs. And the theory was I'd get to visit my car every week. And soon I would get a job and get insurance and a driver's license and I would be able to go to his house and I wouldn't get the car back. Well, my recovery took a little longer than we might have liked. So I watched my car. Every Saturday I would go visit my cars and watch it decompose. I don't know if you ever parked a car in Venice, California, but it was hideous. It was a tradition in our group. I would go over there and meet these guys and play softball, and they would all gather around my car for the weekly report, which was one week the top was gone, and the next week the entire steering column was missing. I mean, who the hell would take a steering column out of an old converter? One wheel was gone and it sat like tilted, and it was very depressing. They would all laugh, ha-ha, look at Vince's car! And I didn't think it was funny. at all. You know, I didn't find any humor in any of that. And finally one week I went up there and there was nothing left but a huge oil spot. Symbolic of my life. That was all that was there. At any rate, what I should tell you is this. This guy is still my sponsor today. And that's been 25 years ago now. And I've been a member of that same group for all these years and I want to tell you this during that period of time my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous has been completely different what you should know is I have taken these steps 1 through 12 I've taken them I have written that inventory I have developed a relationship with God as a result I've attained a measure anyway of recovery in Alcoholic Anonymous and my life has flourished. I have had this wonderful, wonderful life. You can't believe what has happened to me and yet along the way I have made mistakes. I have make all of the mistakes that human beings make and you make them in sobriety. Sobriety is not about not making mistakes. Sobpriety is about not defending them and if you're willing not to defend them you get to survive here. in 1976 I met this cute little redhead I met her in September, married her in October and divorced her in November you might consider that a mistake and the last time I saw her she was on the way back to her daddy's ranch in El Dorado, Texas but I'll tell you what I didn't drink and I didn' t run and I stayed right here and wonderful, I met another girl a girl in 1975 I watched her stay sober while her husband died of lung cancer that's a tough way to get sober in AA while you have a dying husband he passed away and we saw a lot more of each other and we fell in love and we got married and we're married for 18 years and I'm going to tell you I love my wife more with every breath I take I have the best marriage I know of and I think that's a good thing to be able to say, isn't it? She's not become hysterical once in 18 years and she's not run screaming into the night and our marriage gets better every day and she is truly the most treasured, the biggest treasure in my life. I've got into a new profession in vocational counseling and I made a lot of money and had my own business and bought big houses in Pasadena. I have a Mercedes, and I drive that to AA meetings and put it in lots with beat-up old Chevys, and when I do, I put it on the other side of the lot. I'll tell you that. You know, I know they don't have insurance. I keep it away from them. But my life has flourished, and I have this... We've had, you know, I mean, bad things happen. We've got... Within one year, they changed the laws in California. Our business was changed completely. We went from hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to 50,000. I mean it just really was not good and then to top it off I had a couple of heart attacks and bypass surgery and it was a rough year. I want you to know that but I'll tell you what through it all through all of it I always wanted to be sober and we knew we'd make it and we hung in there together and we've done what we needed to do and I want to remember what I thought of when I laid on the operating table after the angioplasty had failed and they had to rush me down to the OR to do the bypass and they were getting ready to give me the anesthetic and I didn't think about, gee, I wish I could make more money you know, I didn's think of what I didn' have I thought, oh God, let me live I'll never bitch about going to South Carolina for a weekend or church camps in Texas or just let me do it, and he has. He has. And it's like being reborn. And so I want you to know that coming here this weekend is a privilege and it's an honor. And I thank you very much for asking me. And if you're new, God bless you and stay here. Thank you very mucho.