Without a Fourth Step We’re Able to Bullsh*t Ourselves Much Longer Than We Absolutely Should – John L.

Hi. Good evening. My name is John LaRocquette, and I'm an alcoholic. That's like Craig asking me to drive where the hell I am. Halfway here, I started getting word that I didn't have my passport on me. My goodness. I was expecting a larger meeting, but I guess I'll run. I love being in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, wherever it is, however many people are there. Just so that you know, I do belong here, and that I don't just play an alcoholic on television. There's a reason for me to be here. I am sober just shy of 14 years, and in that time, I have learned some things about myself that have allowed me to stay sober. I've also learned some things about you that have allowed me to stay sober. I think the former is more important, but I'm never clear. I'm not quite sure these days. A quick back story. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to a poor black family. The New Orleans part is true. The only child is true. I was very Catholic. My father was an alcoholic. He left when I was two years old. I didn't know him at all. He died in 1976 of the disease. I had never had a chance to talk to him about it, which I had. I had decided to go and visit him, but I think I got drunk that weekend and didn't. He died. A lot of my relatives died of alcoholism. In New Orleans, the definition of alcoholism is very thin and very narrow. Most of my relatives died falling down the stairs or being hit by a milk truck. They had a weak heart. They wanted a gallon of wine every day. Being very Catholic, I was always very afraid. When I was a kid, the Catholic Church was not nearly as... as Aquarian age as it is today, it seems. It convinced me that I was born worthless. I came here with two strikes against me. The only way that I could survive was to admit that I was not worth anything and move towards some sort of reconciliation with God and the Church. At some point, I might be worthy. Well, I took that very seriously. I really felt as though I was not... not very worthwhile. I'm sure if I... if Sigmund Freud were around and I were on his couch long enough, I would be able to tell you that it was because my father left. Yada, yada, yada. My mother was too protective. Yada, yada, yada. Well, it doesn't matter why. You know, that's the one thing I have learned. It doesn't at all matter why because the solution is the same regardless of the conditions. I first got loaded when I was... seriously loaded when I was 18 years old. I was in a rock and roll band and... we were in a place called Biloxi, Mississippi and it was in the height of the Vietnam War and we picked up some sailors who were getting shipped off to Nam the next few days and so we got a bunch of booze. I think we actually robbed a liquor store to get it. Not really robbed. That sounds too dramatic. It's not like Woody Harrelson in Afterboard Killers or anything. There was some old lady who was head of the... and she couldn't see anything anyway, so... And when she turned her head, I just grabbed whatever bottles I could. I didn't know anything about booze, although it was always around my house and being from New Orleans, Louisiana, it's the only town in the world where the signs on the bar say happy hour, any waking moment. We grabbed what we could and went to the back of this club where my band was playing and we had a very, very esoteric collection, eclectic collection of alcohol, everything from schnapps to Southern Comfort. I had a tendency to go for the thicker ones for some reason. They were more like dessert to me, so... Everybody sort of sampled. There were like eight of us in this band, these two sailors, and everybody sort of sampled from the bottles and found something they liked and had a few more swigs of it. And I continued to drink. I continued to savor the different aromas and textures and palates of the different booze. Until about a half hour later, I just did this huge technicolor yawn all over the seat of this... I don't know if you guys know what a pousse café is, but it's a drink that has different colored layers of liqueur. Well, that's what my car seat looked like. And so, from the moment I started drinking, I drank alcoholically. There was never enough. Somewhere in my personality, I have the psychology that if something is good, then more of it must be better. It seems a very logical and very simple equation. I could never understand why someone would go out and have a drink or two drinks like my wife can. My wife considered alcohol a beverage. I don't understand that philosophy. To me, it's medicine. And the more medicine you take, the better, right? Whether it's booze or later in the 80s when I couldn't afford that NyQuil. Long before I started drinking, and I know that's now only in retrospect, I was born an alcoholic. I had the personality defects, that every good alcoholic should have, an extreme lack of self-esteem, coupled with this grandiose self-image. The two did not cohabitate well. And they produced phenomenally erratic behavior. I was very afraid of you, because it was logical that if I didn't know who I was and didn't like me very much, how could you possibly? And so, in the 60s, luckily, the Beatles came along and I was able to adopt personalities that were more in vogue at the time. I mean, I was nuts before I ever drank. There are people in this world to this day that have relationships with me for months on end, and I'm a totally different person, different name, from a different country. I don't doubt that there's some 50-year-old woman out there sitting at home looking at television and thinking, Jesus Christ, he looks like that English guy I met in the 60s. But it was so wonderful to be able to concoct the life that I figured was successful. It was so easy to pretend I was somebody else so that I could put in place the personality traits and the emotions that I thought made up a whole healthy human being. And I was very good at it. And then, in the early 70s, I heard there was actually a place where you could go where they paid you to do that. There was nothing else I could be but an actor. You know, I lied too well not to be. I don't lie as much anymore, by the way, except when I get paid these days. So Catholicism and fear and all of that stuff drove me most of my life. I mean, I was such a coward. I had such fear that at any moment, either God or the authoritarian figure of whoever happened to be in front of me was going to eradicate my existence under this constant, low-grade fear. Clancy talks about that, where you wake up every morning and you just know. You just know that the day is probably not going to wind up being very nice. That something's going to happen to you to verify the opinion you have of yourself. I can only say that I am very glad that I found alcohol when I did. Because I do believe that alcohol prevented me from going completely psychotic. I do believe that when you're unconscious, it's hard to be nuts. I mean, I'm sure I was talking to my dog, and he would have been telling me who to go kill if I had not had something that would turn it off, that would turn me off. And fortunately, I was a child of the 60s. Consequently, I had the opportunity to blaze trails into chemicals that... I felt like Captain Kirk. I was going where no man had gone before. And I was blazing, and I was absolutely off the edge from the moment. Now, you know, I didn't get arrested very much. I didn't rob people, except if you had better dope than I. I didn't. But I certainly stole people's lives, in a way. You know, I was once described by a girlfriend as a psychic vampire. And I would sort of just suck out of you everything worthwhile, and then leave you hollow and starving on the ground. As I found another host. It's terrible, but it's true. You know, I'll tell you how insane I was. When I was in fourth grade, I was ten years old, I lost a book, a catechism book. And the nun, whose name escapes me, but in my mind she has become Sister Mary Rhino for some reason. I knew that I could not go back to her class without this book, otherwise my ass would be grass. So I thought, what can I do? Well, logically, I thought, well, I'll run away. And so I looked at some friends, I was on the playground with them, and I said, I'm going over to Convent for a music lesson. And I walked off the schoolyard, and I walked past the Convent, and I kept walking. And I was ten years old, in the heart of New Orleans, very close to the Mississippi River, and the levee runs right back to the school. So I got on top of the levee, and I started walking down the river toward No Man's Land, Chalmette, and St. Bernard, weird places, where you go to get oysters and fireworks, and that's the only reason to be there. And I was gone all day. And by four o'clock in the afternoon, I hadn't eaten, I was scared, and I thought, well, I guess what do I have to do now? Well, I can't go back until I tell the truth, which never even occurred to me as an option. I mean, it wasn't even like I had that thought. It wasn't truth or, it was which lie. And actually, being unwilling to take any responsibility whatsoever for my actions, I devised a plan. So I tore my clothes a bit, my little Catholic uniform, and I scraped my knuckles on the sidewalk, and I started going back toward the school. And about two blocks from the school, I saw a sort of Quasimodo pose. So I limped back to the school. And the nuns come, you know, floating out of their building toward me. And I've got nine inventories in the Catholic Church, and I've got such a long way to go yet. Anyway, they swooped me up and brought me into the school and said, what happened? And being faced with this dilemma, I fessed up that I had been kidnapped, that a man had found me outside the convent, just before I'd gotten in, threw me in the back of his truck, and took me away, and kept me all day. And I didn't know anything about sex at the time, so it didn't even occur to me that, you know, he had touched me in that special place or anything. I wasn't even, I didn't even go that far with the story. And what little imagination I had at the time when they asked what he made me do, he said, all I could think of was, he made me listen to the radio. So my mother was called, and my grandfather, who we lived with, and my old man left, we moved in with my grandmother. Grandfather was sensibly raised by my grandmother. My mother worked. So anyway, she comes screaming and crying in delirious. Everybody's been looking for me in delirious. They take me home, and she gives me ice cream, and puts me in bed, and I think, yeah. Well, at six o'clock, there was a knock on the door, and there were two men standing at the door. The police came in, and they sat me down and said, so we hear something really terrible happened to you today. Would you tell us about it? Well, it was a little too early to drop the story, it seemed to me, so I proceeded to enlighten them on my predicament that day, embroidered it somewhat, and gave a description of a guy who really sort of looked like it wasn't Wells, because I think the third man had come out about that time, so that's the image I had in my mind of Harry Lyme, and they nodded, and they gave a lot of sympathy, and they went away, and I thought, well, that's all right, you know, I got to cover the story. And about three days later, they came back and said they had caught him. You know, I'm a good alcoholic, I really thought for a moment, wait a minute, did I get kidnapped? So now, I've got a real dilemma here. Do I fess up to losing a seventy-five cent book, or do I send this bastard to jail for thirty years? Well, I think it's a, I mean, the scales were almost even, I think, in a little while. But I didn't. I finally, in a heap of tears and gnashing of teeth, I confessed what had happened, and everybody knew. You know, that's the thing that's great about us. We think we have this phenomenal facade that we are streaming through the universe and nobody can touch us, and everybody knew from the get-go what had happened. These guys weren't cops, they were from school. They were very elaborate. I think they were drunks, too, because they went pretty far with the story. But that sort of incident is how I live my life. Faced with the possibility of admitting to you that I was a liar and a thief and a hollow individual, I would far rather concoct the most absurd reality to try and get any responsibility deflected away from me from my own actions. And it went on and on like that. I mean, I did that to school. I did that to the United States, maybe. I mean, I did that to the United States government, for God's sake. We won't get into that. That's a whole different thing. And I'm not sure if the statute of limitations have expired on that. For six weeks, I drank a lot and did a lot of drugs. I moved to Colorado for a spiritual reason. The guy that used to make my LSD lived there. And I prided myself on taking the purest stuff, if you understand what I mean. It had to be LSD 25 or nothing for me. I convinced myself once toward the end of my drinking that I didn't have a drinking problem because I only had like $5 on me. I went into a liquor store and in front of me were these, you know, vats of gallo, mountain thorn wine, a half pint of Courvoisier Cognac. I chose the Courvoisier. So I figured that if you go for quality and not quantity, you really can't have a problem. I moved to California in 1973 to pursue an acting career and was successful rather quickly as far as that goes considering the amount of unemployment in my business. I received roles in television, et cetera. I married a woman in 1974. I was married to a woman who was a woman in the United States. I was married to a woman who was married to a woman who was married to a woman who was married to a woman who was married to a woman who was married to a woman who was married to a woman who was married to a woman who was married to a woman who was married to a woman and things started going along well as far as my career was concerned. When I was born, my first son was born in 1977. At that time, I had a series, a regular job on my first series called, uh, Baba Black Sheep and we were, you know, we were supposed to be survivors and, uh, and Bounty Balls and, uh, Mischiefs and so, we'd live the parts off screen as well as on screen and things started going downhill then. Things started changing. Things changed because, for the first time that I really can recall, getting loaded became more important than anything else, that my life had to be designed around the possibility of where are we going to get screwed up tonight and with what. When my son was 10 months old, I sent my wife and he and my adopted daughter to England. My wife is English. I sent them to England because I thought it would be better if we lived separately. Financially it would be easier. I just wanted to be able to drink without guilt and I moved on to a friend's sailboat and basically I laid down for three months. I was too big to stand in the boat. By this time I discovered heroin. Heroin is like being dead but still able to dance. I wasn't working. I was living off of residuals and unemployment, et cetera, and I took a ride down to the blood bank. It was my first time in downtown Los Angeles. Some very large black fellow grabbed me and brought me in because if you get an extra two bucks if you're on the buddy system, if you brought a friend, they gave you an extra two bucks. I'm lying on this table having the precious bodily fluids, my precious bodily fluids drained out of me for $12. I look over at the television. There's a little to the bed and I see myself on the television and I thought, this is really wacky. I remember saying at the time to myself, if you don't die, this is going to be a great story on the Johnny Carson show. It was, actually. I got a job and I got enough money to bring my family back from England and stuff them into a small little apartment in North Hollywood somewhere. It was just horrible. It just got worse and worse and worse. I wasn't abusive. I didn't beat my children or any of that stuff. I disappeared. I didn't. I was a kind of drunk that would just want to be left alone. I would go away. I would get on a plane and leave. I would get into a bus and leave. Any place that was away from anybody I knew where I could, with some immunity, impunity, not be noticed as to what slob I had become. I was 240 pounds at the time and I looked like my face was just stuffed with door knobs. In 1980, I got a job at a film called Stripes. We went to Kentucky to do this film. John Candy and I shared a motor home and during the time we were there, John Lennon was killed. We had an Irish wake for about a month. I can watch that film today and literally not remember doing some of the scenes. This was toward the end. It just got so bad. I really kind of, in some ways, appreciate the fact that Mr. Lennon was shot because it put me so far over the edge that I went to a place I had never gone before. I went to a place of being alone in a room. I'm not going to be graphic. It was pretty big. It was a big room. It was a pretty base, pretty base what I was doing to myself in order to try and feel something other than this cold, vomit-smelling life I had created for myself. In May of 1981, I checked myself into a hospital just to escape, just to hide. I didn't know anything about alcoholism. It was never mentioned when I was a kid growing up. Dylan Thomas was once asked when he was a boy, what do you want to be when you grow up? He said, I want to be the drunkest man in the world. That was my goal. I thought all of my defects were gone. All of my strengths were pluses for my artistry. I thought that I alone in the world had the pioneer spirit of being out there on the edge to show you dull bastards what life could really be like. If you're afraid to walk through the fire, well, God damn it, I'm not. Come on. Let's go. When I walked out of this hospital, on the bed stand next to me was this book that you guys, I guess, are familiar with. I stayed up that night and read that book. I put the book down and I thought, so I left the hospital. I realize now that I know what the problem is, I can drink in peace. It won't be that nagging, why are you doing this? You're an alcoholic. Thank you. That went on for about seven months, and in February of 1982, I got sober. For the first time and really only time, I didn't go in and out a lot. I just couldn't imagine going back out there. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I was in a coma. I couldn't imagine going back out there. I wasn't happy about being here, but I didn't want to go back out there again. In those days, it was mandatory that you smoke in a meeting. I'd be sitting in these rooms, in basements of churches, in Glendale and places I'd only read about in John Fontaine novels and Raymond Chandler novels that I knew existed, with all of these old men with these long coats where you couldn't tell the difference between their ankles and their feet. They were so swollen. And I thought, gee, what has happened to me? This is it? Luckily, I was in one of those church basements, and a man stood up, an actor whose work I've admired all my life, and told his story. He was sober about six years then. And I'm sure as many of us have had this experience, my life fell out of this man's mouth. My spine sharpened. It was the most amazing experience I've ever had. And I realized, you know what, I'm no different than anybody in this room. I'm exactly the same as every single person in this room, whether you're a woman or a man, or you weigh 300 pounds, or you're 90 years old. We all have something so intrinsically in common. The thing that I've looked for all my life is the rest of the lepers. Where are the other lepers? And I found them. And being the extreme individual I am, I got so active so fast that it's amazing I didn't get loaded. As I said, being Catholic, I have very heavy atheistic tendencies. And the only thing I thought that would stop me from staying here was this word on every wall I walked into, you know, in every room I walked into, this three-letter word. And I thought, you know, I don't know how I can stay here if I have to accept the fact that only this God thing can keep me sober. And I thought, you know, that doesn't seem fair. And luckily, the second step really saved my life because in it, it doesn't say God. You know, it just says a higher power, a power greater than myself. And I, at that point, even as the enormously bloated ego I had, I could accept the fact that in the universe, somewhere there must be a power greater than myself. And I don't mean that facetiously. You know what I mean? I read a lot of the hand-to-hand. I read a lot of the hand-to-hand books growing up. I could walk up to the beach, though, and I could stand on the beach, and I could tell those waves to stop all day long, and they won't. They'll just keep doing their thing. The planet is a stronger power, you know, a higher power than myself. And I found a sponsor very quickly, and I chose an atheist, a Jewish atheist, which is as far removed from my upbringing as I possibly can get. You know, I didn't meet a Jew until I was 19 years old. I didn't know what it was, being very Catholic, that was the only thing that existed in the South, and there was not very much else. And I accept I'm a friend. And so I chose this Jewish atheist, and I said, you know, I don't know if I can stay here if I have to believe in God. And he said, fine, go get drunk. I said, well, no, there's got to be a compromise here somewhere. And so on a piece of paper, he wrote these words. God is how I understand God is. And he put it in the lips of a poet. And he wrote these words. God is how I understand God is. And he put it in the lips of a poet. And he said, go home and finish the sentence. And so I went back to my little apartment, stared at this piece of paper for days on end, and I just, you know, the grandiose thoughts of every Alan Watts novel, every Alan Watts book I'd ever read, Baba Ram Dass, Krishna Murthy, I mean, all of those guys that I really craved as a young man to try to find the answer to myself, find that part of me that was connected to somehow some divinity somewhere. I know I had to be connected. So I finally finished the sentence one. And I brought it back to him. And I was folded in my hand. And I said, here, I finished the sentence. And he took it and he tore it up. He said, fine, now pray to it. He didn't care what it was. It doesn't matter what it is. As long as you know it's not you. You know, that's the only thing I know. You know, I got really, as I said, very active. I was incelic. I mean, I was an obnoxious bastard about it. You know, I mean, I would walk into bars with a big book and find something. Some likely candidate, you know, sitting at the bar like I would. I put the book down. Hey, how you doing? Good to see you. Luckily, a lot of the behavior waned in me as I became willing to realize that unless you ask for it, I'm not going to give you the message. It doesn't do us any good to do that. And also that I only had to carry the message and not the trunk. I mean, I literally took guys from the parking lot and brought them to my house. And my wife would go, what are you doing with another one of these scabby old men in our house? And I would shower them. My son at that point was five or six years old. And I would take him with me to Barnstall Park is where I found most of my likely candidates. Vermont and Hollywood, where there's a huge Frank Lloyd Wright house at the top of the hill. And all these bums. There's this whole city that lives on the perimeter of this hillside overlooking Vermont. And I would go down there and find a candidate and take him to a meeting. And none of them stayed sober. Most of them died. But that didn't matter. Some of them stayed sober for a little while. I had guys that would actually drink their mother's perfume and stuff when they couldn't find any booze. And I thought, yeah, I never thought of that. I used to have a mother for a family. I once, you know, the idea of humility is a real strong notion with me these days. And I'm still a very grandiose, pompous asshole most of the time. But at least now I recognize that in my song. Before I thought it was an advantage. You know? And that was just me. But I realized that in order to achieve some sort of real, permanent, spiritual awareness, I had to be willing to admit that someone else could teach me something about my own life. And growing up Catholic, there was always people telling you about your life. And actually, there are some priests to this day who actually opened me up to a lot of the world. There's a lot of literature and art and music. But to be in one of these rooms and to look at some guy who has nothing in common with you, or some woman who has nothing in common with you, and admit that that person might be able to teach me something about me, that's my definition of humility. You know? That I'm willing to look at your life and take from it some particle of sanity that I might be able to apply to mine. It's a remarkable experience, and it's proven to me that we're all very much alike. And I don't say that with any sort of, um, you know, I get tongue-tied when I really try to think about the importance of sobriety in my life. I would be dead. I mean, you know, we've referred to it a lot from this podium. But there's absolutely no doubt about it. I'd be playing handball with John Belushi right now. You know, it's just, I've had a lot of people die on me in the 14 years that I have been sober. I recognize that most people in most meetings will die drunk. And there's just no doubt about that. You know, just the statistics show that this is a killer. And that many of us will die from it, regardless of how long we stay sober. And I have known that it's gone on after 20 years, after 25 years, and never got back. You know, just one day, boom, glass of vino. It just happened to be in front of me. And the guys that do make it back, I make sure to go right up to them and look them right in the eye and ask them one question. What did you stop doing? What the hell did you do? Where did you get this in your mind, you know? And almost invariably, it occurs that they stop going to me. That they started isolating in meetings. That they started standing in the back of the room going, there's this big bastard up there, I'm glad I'm not that bad, whoop. God, damn, why don't you go get a drink, buddy? Separation again, you know. I lived most of my life separate. And once I was connected, and I got connected in these rooms, and I got connected in hospitals and lockups around this country, and the world, you know. I go to meetings all the time. And in many countries of the world. I'm fortunate to have a job that actually allows me to travel, to sit in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, you know, or Paris, France, or Auckland, New Zealand, and know that somewhere in that town there are lepers, that I can walk with a bunch of other people who don't have noses and parts of their faces are falling off, you know, and I'll be right at home. It is a spectacular thing. And it is a simple thing. You know, I used to think that the answer had to be incredibly complicated to be worthwhile. I mean, anything that is simple, how could it possibly be worth my investment in it? You know, there's a bookstore in Los Angeles called the Bodhi Tree. A spiritual bookstore. It was born in the 60s, I guess, when we were all looking for answers of some sort or another. And most of us found them wrapped up and rolled up in little papers. And I would stand in this bookstore at 1030 at night, and before I got sober, and pray that one of these books would just sort of fly off the shelf and hit me in the head, and it would fall open, and there would be the answer. How can I be comfortable without the necessity of lying to you or to myself? And I've got to tell you, this book, this book is the answer for me. And I think it's the answer for any alcoholic. I'd love to have it spread across the world for people who are not alcoholics. Because there's Henry Miller, a great writer, once went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the late 40s. Didn't know what it was. Wasn't a drunk himself. Went with a friend. And afterwards he wrote an essay. The essay was called The Hour of Man. And in it he described this Alcoholics Anonymous meeting he went to. And he was bewildered by the fact that, as we have done tonight, can laugh at the most horrendous disasters in one's life. That we can actually get some sort of fulfillment out of the fact that we lived hollow, desperate, sickening lives. Left people, you know, hoards bleeding and wounded behind us. And so he wrote in this essay that if the world ran like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, we could disband every police force and every army on the planet. And here was a group of people who supposedly had nothing in common other than the fact that they suffered from this malady called alcoholism. And in the time that they are in this room together, what they care about most is staying sober and helping the person next to them stay sober for that evening. I mean, that cuts through all the bullshit. You know, that cuts through any political, any sexual, any racial lines. You know, it is our souls together. It's a phenomenal thing. And I saw that there were a lot of newcomers here tonight. And I know that a lot of this sounds like, you know, when I was new and I listened to people talk, if I had any kind of time, I would just go, what the hell are you talking about? But it really is as simple as just don't get loaded today. You know, I don't think that's enough. But if you start, it talks for a hundred reasons. I saw this because I think the most important step in this whole bloody thing is number four. Because I think without that, we're able to continually bullshit ourselves much longer than we absolutely should. And I bullshitted myself all my life. And I want to be honest with me because I knew that there was no other way for me to live. And when guys would tell me, it doesn't matter what you do as long as you stay sober, I thought, well, that's a pretty good answer. But I do believe it's more than that. I do believe it's important that we move beyond that. I do believe that is the launching pad for my life. Even once I'm sober, I have no choices whatsoever. But once I stay sober, this talks about the fourth step and it says, if temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue our melancholy activity when we sink to such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here, of course, we have lost all perspective and therefore all genuine humility. For this is pride in reverse. If, however, our natural disposition is inclined to self-righteousness or grandiosity, we will be offended at AA's suggested inventory. No doubt we shall point with pride that to the good lives that we thought we led before the bottle cut us down, we shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking. This being so, we think it logically follows that sobriety, first, last, and all the time, is the only thing we need to work for. We believe that our one-time good characters will be revived the moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty nice people all along, what need be there for a moral inventory now that we are sober? Well, it's a real, real importance, you know, because I can lie to me easier than I can even lie to you. And I can lie to you pretty damn easily, you know. And if I'm unwilling to really open myself up to myself, you know, and that's... Being Catholic, it's easy for me to deal with that part because I've wanted confession all my life. I loved it, actually. Here was a person in a room listening only to me. But if you do nothing else, I think the idea of sitting down and honestly and forthrightly looking at those things you know, if we all take 30 seconds here and just scan across our lives, I know with me there are these peaks of desolation and despair and embarrassment and anger that just are always there, you know. The big ones, the really large evidence of what insane lives we led, you know. And all of us have different ones. Several of mine include Frank Sinatra. I don't want to get into that. But when I was willing to sit down and really examine myself and take responsibility, not guilt, but responsibility for everything I had done in my life, then I was able to look at myself in present time and say, now, do you want to continue doing that or not? Because you can. You know, you absolutely can. And we've all heard this, I'm sure. The definition of insanity that an old man once told me when I was newly sober is the repetition of the same action expecting different results, you know. That's how my drinking life was. You know, today's only going to be two beers of Mousseau Franks. That's it. I promise. Then it's 3 o'clock and you go, well, you know what? Maybe just one tequila. And that's all. I don't like the way that beer tastes. And then it would be 4 o'clock in the morning and I was in some fat bastard's hill in the Hollywood Hills paying $120 for Italian baby laxatives, you know what I mean? And I would crawl home at 7 o'clock in the morning and be so ashamed to go into the house that I would go into the garage and crawl up in an oil stain somewhere in the corner until my family woke up. Then they left the house. My son would be driven to school by his mother. My daughter would go to school and I would crawl into the house and get back in the bed and sleep till 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Just two beers of Mousseau Franks. That's all for it. It's wonderful to remember. It would be horrible to repeat. I am married to the same woman today. We've been married for over 20 years. We have more children together. We have an 8-year-old son. She has stayed with me. She is a true Al-Anon. Trust me, if she's ever had a plane crash right before the ground, if the plane hits the ground, somebody else's life will flash before her eyes. But you know what? Only next to me she saved my life more than I did. She stayed. You know, she looked at me one day and she said, I understand you'd like to die, but would you just please not do it in front of your children? She's English. She doesn't believe in divorce. Homicide, yes, but not divorce. The script is part of her. And today we have a spectacular relationship. I am successful with my business. I have beaten the odds at many turns in my life. But I know enough about me to know that if I think more of anything is the solution to my problem, that's when I get into trouble. More is not the answer. I think really truly for me less is the answer. In 1985 I was... I tell this story a lot, but it is so... it just so points for the alcoholic personality, at least mine. I won an Emmy Award for acting for the show I used to do. And I went to the award show that night and nominated. You know, didn't know I'd win. And I was feeling great, but I was obviously wanting to... If they don't give it to me, does that mean I'm a piece of crap? Different stuff. I was sober about two and a half years at this point. And they called my name. And I was like, I'm going to be rich. Got up on the stage. And for the first time in my life I felt the imposter had left. You know, this was me now. You know, here I was where I belonged. 50 million people watching me on television. I've got this great gold statue in my hand. I am the best. I left the stage. And I walked out of the auditorium with my beautiful wife on my arm and I got into my beautiful limousine. And I drove to my beautiful house by the Pacific Ocean. I walked in and I took this statue. I placed it on my mantelpiece. And I stepped back. And my very next thought was, you know, I need one on the other end just to balance it out. And when I start thinking like that, I'm unable to really understand the gifts that I have in my life. You know? I mean, I've got three more of them, but that's another story. Progress, not perfection, okay? If you're new to this journey, please don't take anything out of it. When I say seriously, find out for yourself. The only thing I know is the experience that I have had in the time that I have been sober. The only story I know is mine and how it applies to my life and how it applies to my daily living in this world of insanity and debauchery and evil and anger and violence. I don't have to participate in any of that. All I have to do is make sure that I understand that I have a daily reprieve of a situation that was not... I did not volunteer for this. You know, I didn't wake up when I was seven years old and say, I want to be an alcoholic when I grow up. I am an alcoholic. I was born an alcoholic. And I have the opportunity on a daily basis not to act like one. And I love that opportunity. And some days it fails. You know, I... I'm in a business where people are paid to satisfy my ego. You know, their jobs depend upon satisfying me. And that's a real dangerous place for an alcoholic to be. You know, because I can get very righteous about it and I can be very justified in it. And I'll tell you something, that in the time that I have been sober, the number of times, considering my position, that I've walked up to a grip, which is a guy that like pulls cables and stuff on the set, or a prop man, something was wrong and I blew up in the moment. To walk up to one of these guys and look at them and say, you know what, I was really an asshole. And I'm really sorry. Is there something I can do? Do you need any time off? What do you need? I just want to let you know how badly I felt about that. What a remarkable thing. Well, I don't have to stand behind that righteousness anymore. You know, I can just look at you and admit that I was absolutely and totally wrong. That I neglected to look at you as a fellow human being. Regardless of whether you're a drunk or not. You know? Because I believe this is a school room and there's life out there. I've got to treat those people like I'm willing to treat you. Otherwise, I'm only half alive. I really do believe that. So if you're new, please go to meetings. Become aware of your opportunity here. You know? Each day is an opportunity to feel better about yourself. And there are a lot of people around here who have been feeling good about themselves. For a long time. The book is a miraculous thing. I don't need any of you if I have the book. What's great about having you is that I get to reflect on its truth through your experience. Which gives me a whole new dimension. You know? It's like watching five different guys do Hamlet. I see five different interpretations of a great thing. By listening to your lives, I get an opportunity to reflect on mine and relax back in and enrich it. Because there are people in this room who I envy. There are people in this room who I admire. And I don't even know you. The idea that someone can stay solo for 20 years and not become Clancy. I'm just glad he's not the only all-timer around, I'll tell you that. I've taken up much of your time. I want to thank Craig again for allowing me to come down here and share my experience. I do love you. And I don't even know you. But I love that part of you that is me that both reflects my disease and my cure. Thanks for letting me share.