Earl H. in Cajun

I'm gonna ask Umm, Earl to come up at this time and umm,

that was his story. So, uh, this is his name is Earl and he's from Redondo Beach, CA And I'd like to everybody give a warm round of applause and a Cajun welcome to Earl.

Thanks buddy.

Jeez.

Hi everybody. My name is Earl. I'm an alcoholic.

Hi, I want to thank the committee for asking me to come and share

all the people that I've talked to over the last few months on the phone. I've talked to a lot of people, Evan, Yogi, Pascal, few others I think. And I particularly want to thank Pascal for driving me around. We he picked me up at the airport, brought me back here. We got up this morning and drove into

New Orleans to the French Quarter,

had a black

umm. Y'all seen that car? He has.

Has he told you about his car? Well, he is no longer known as Pascal, he is known as the Roadmaster.

He was flying.

So

I drank

and it wasn't a big deal. I mean, the only reason I drank is because I was, I started kind of late. I didn't start draining when I was 12. And this guy, this guy came up to me and said I've been shipped off the boarding school. My, my father, they did a bunch of tests on me. I was sleepwalking and talking in my sleep and scaring my parents and bothering everybody. So they took me to a doctor and had a bunch of tests done on me and they determined that I

should be medicated every night before I went to sleep

and that would take care of the sleepwalking. So basically from age like 5, I was drugged every night before I went to sleep. And I think subconsciously I got the information that if you if things aren't going the way you want them to go, take something

to file that for future reference. Moved on through my life. Those tests indicated that I had a very high IQ. I don't have any more, so I'm not bragging.

That's long gone. I

I

and when I was 12 years old, my father decided it was time for me to become a man. So I got shipped off the boarding school

and I remember being driven to this place and

I didn't even know where we were going. Just everybody was in the car and we were driving somewhere. And we went to this when I drove and drove and drove and drove and drove for hours and ended up at this place. And I got out of the car and my father got out of the car and he put a suitcase down next to me and he said this will make a man out of you. And then he got back in the car and everybody left

and the feeling was is that I just been thrown away and I had absolutely no idea why. I mean, scared the hell out of me.

The fact was I was being given an opportunity for a wonderful education.

But I don't deal with the facts. I deal with the feelings. That's just who I was from the gate. So what I felt was is that I've been thrown away. I was terrified of everything and everybody. I was 12 years old. I had no tools for living. Turns out I was the youngest and the smallest kid in the school of 250 young boys. And they had scoured the earth to find 250, the most disturbed young men they could find. And they put us in this school together and I fit right in. And I met Tiny the first week I was there. Every school has got a guy named Tiny. He's like 64240

his guard on the football team. Actually Tiny found me and he walked up to me and said, how you doing punk? And he slapped me in the back of the head, sent my books flying. And I had this like out of body experience, you know what I mean? Where you're watching yourself do something, but inside your head you're saying, you know, this is a very bad idea, but you know, listen to yourself. So I walked up the Tiny and hit him as hard as I could and you said no effect on Tiny whatsoever. And he looked down at me and he said, you know, you got a lot of guts, kids. And then he beat the shit out of me right on the spot.

And as I typically have taken this beating, I was thinking, this is going OK, you know, this is all right. I know about beatings. I know how to take a beating. What I don't, what was more important to me was, is that I was terrified of this guy.

And he had just said, you got a lot of guts.

So when I look, my first tool for living violence, violence masks the fear. If I'm attacking you, it doesn't occur to you how frightened I am. It occurs to you that I'm attacking you. So we go right over the fear thing. And that's what I wanted to do. I just didn't want anybody to know how afraid I was. So word spread around this campus in like 30 minutes, right? And watch out for this little Hightower kid. He's a maniac. He attacked Tiny.

So now I got this reputation that has absolutely nothing to do with who I am. I'm a frightened little boy right now. I got this reputation as this little madman. And so the cool guy started coming around, and Matt and Steve swung by and Matt came up to me and he said, do you want to smoke a joint? And I said, well, yeah, I do.

And I mean, I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I didn't know what that meant, you know, But what I heard was, is that you want to hook up with us. And as far as I could tell, I was alone in the universe. I needed to hook up now. And he, it wouldn't matter what he said. He could have said, listen, we're going to kill the Spanish teacher. Do you want to come? I just said, yeah, I'm with you. I need to do so. I hooked up with Matt and Steve. And Steve had a Tupperware container full of cheap red wine. And Steve had this joint went behind the dormitory. And 213 year olds and a 12 year old standing behind the dorm staring at each other.

And Matt fired up the joint and handed to me. And I just did what he did and handed it to Steve. And Matt took a pull on the wine and the wine came around. I took a pull on the wine. I went around standing there staring at these two guys. I have no idea why we're here,

why we're doing that, and all of a sudden, man, it happened. You know, just

the magic happened.

It's just that feeling went down into my shoes and came up over me. And for the first time in my life, I knew everything was going to be alright. I was comfortable standing where I was standing, doing what I was doing with the people I was doing it with. And I had never felt that way in my life. I always knew something was terribly wrong and that I was a big part of that. And I mean, and I didn't know what it was. I didn't know if it's this pot, it's this wine. Maybe it's my two best friends, Matt and Steve, that I guess that I've known for 15 minutes. Maybe it's these guys that I just love girly all of a sudden,

and I felt this strong connection to

it didn't matter. I just decided I'm going to do what I'm going to do this every day no matter what.

And I mean, why not? There's no big price to pay for getting high in the beginning.

There's no big price to pay. I feel more comfortable than I've ever felt in my life. The magic was there. I got up the next morning, took a couple of aspirin and went to school, went to class. No price to pay. Unfortunately, that changed dramatically over the next few years. So I did that. I got I drank on a daily basis for the next 16 years and I drank no matter what

in my neck of the woods. I'm from Los Angeles, CA and they got a thing to tell newcomers out there. This.

It's an opinion of mine. They tell him, uh, just don't drink.

Me personally, I think that misses the point entirely to tell if they'd have told me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, Earl, just don't drink no matter what. I left

out of left. If it was that simple, if I could just not drink no matter what, I guarantee you I wouldn't be here tonight.

What the hell for? I'd be home having a weekend channel, surfing, going to movies, doing whatever I felt like doing. I'd be hanging out, living my life. I just wouldn't be drinking no matter what. I'm the flip side of that coin. I drink no matter what. Given a good reason, I don't stop. That's the difference between me and the problem drinker. Problem drinker, you give them a good reason, he can actually stop me. I blow right by real good reasons. And I'm not talking about subtle little reasons. You got to pay close attention and you might miss it kind of reasons I'm talking about

right in your face. Big as life can't miss it Reasons drinking is a bad idea, you shouldn't do it.

Problem maker gets another drunk driving charge and goes before the judge. And the judge says you're not sick of seeing you. You know what I mean? I see you one more time. You're going to do a year. We're not going to talk about it. We're not going to discuss it. You're doing a year problem drinker says

I want to go to jail and actually stops drinking and driving me. I start wondering what's going to be like in jail because I know I'm going. I'm going to jail, I said. He just told me next time I see you're going to jail. All right, Your Honor, I'll go to Genexton

and on and on. Examples, examples, examples. But I mean, that's the way it was for me. 13 was 13 was pills. I got into pills, any kind of pills. The only reason I got into pills was the guy walked up and had a couple of pills in his hand. He said, would you like a couple of pills? And I said, well, yeah, yeah, Well, took a couple of these pills and 20 minutes later I was laying on the floor and I was very happy down there. And I was just

lay down on the floor. I was very comfortable there. And we went. He walked back in. I said, oh, what was that? He said those are two and all said all right. I got to remember that

there was any kind of pills. I mean, I, you know, to win all second all Plastidil, Placerville.

Little identification now, right over there. Yeah, the last time I kicked last year, I don't think I said a word for two weeks. It just come into my how you doing

that was bad. Fourteen was psychedelics. The only reason I did psychedelics was because I was on a 10 hour pass, my voice going, I was seeing this girl

Gabby. Gabby was an older woman, she was 15 1/2.

And she said you want you, you want some acid. And I said,

well, yeah.

And she took out a lipstick tube and popped it open and spun the lipstick up. And there was this little tiny pill on the end of it. So I just took it off and popped it in my mouth and swallowed it. And she said, did you take that whole thing?

I said, well course I did. It was a very tiny little pill and I'm used to these horse caps. I mean, I we only three hits of Y lining.

Yeah, alrighty. Needless to say, the next two days were real interesting. It was and when some point in there we all I remember was we went to the market, went to the supermarket and we were and we decided we were married and we were going to go to the supermarket and get get, you know, groceries for the house just blazing away little children. And we were going down the aisle and I looked over and I said, are we married? She said, yes, we are. I said, do we have children? She said, yes, we do. And I said then we're going to need these diapers right here.

And I've I've blacked out right about there. So I don't know really what went on from there,

but about 650 acid trips later I got classified legally insane by the military. That's but that's a whole other story. 15 I started shooting dope. The only reason I did that was because

if this woman locked up and he said, would you like me to stick this in your body? And I said, well, yeah,

I would. And I didn't want to meet. So she did, and I did this.

And as I was going for the table, all I remember thinking was,

oh, yeah, this will work. I like this. I mean, if somebody come up to me at that point in my life and said, can we get you anything, Earl, do you need anything? I said no. How many dreams or hopes or aspirations, any goals of any kind? Nope,

there's nothing at all you'd like, I said. Well, maybe you could send her back around here again, do that again about. That's about as far as I could see

now. I'm a child of the 60s

and I've been talking about drugs and I identify as an alcoholic and the reason is this.

I'm a child of 60s. What we were focused on was the drugs. Our parents were the drunks

and we were carving out our own identity to break away from our parents. We weren't going to drink ourselves to death like they did. We were going to kill ourselves in a whole new way. We were, we were focused on the drugs. But I'll tell you this, and this is in retrospect, and this is the result of my inventory work, the drugs would come and go and we were focused on those because we wanted to be hip. We wanted to be the bad boys. We wanted to terrorize our community and do all those lovely, wonderful, socially acceptable things that drug addicts and Alcoholics want to do.

But there was only one thing that was always on that table,

and that was booze. Alcohol was the only thing that was always every day. No matter what else was going on, booze was on the table. And I think there's a simple explanation for that, and that is, is that booze is extremely reliable and drugs are not. I mean, you never know what you got, so you got it in your body. And then sometimes it's too late, a little bit too much that day.

You never know what you get. I mean, there's no quality assurance going on out there in the drug world, you know what I mean? Nobody's testing this stuff. They're just mixing it up, you know, bagging it up and passing it on to me.

I mean, I never went to the cocaine connection and said, you know, I like, I like a man, you know, and I give me an ounce of that. So you know what, it's really not that good today. Why don't you come back on, let's say Thursday and we'll have something a little better for you. Never happen. Everybody's always got the best. It's the greatest. You're going to love it. Be careful with this if it'll just knock your socks off, right? That never happened. You never knew what you had until you got it in your body. You go get yourself 1/5 of Jack Daniels. You know what you got? You can rely on that. And that's why it was always there. It was the great equalizer. It was a thing that even to everything else

you do too much acid, things get a little spooky. Don't worry about it. Low Jack will ease you back into the comfort zone. You can carry on with the party.

Jack will get done what needs to get done. Not enough here on each for you tonight. Don't worry about it. If the gym will get you where you need to go, That nice quiet, heart and lungs working place, there's nothing else going on. Your heart's beating, your lungs working, nothing else happening. The gym will get you there. You so much cocaine you can't get your mouth open anymore. Don't worry about it, man. Just suck a little bourbon through your teeth. It leaves it back off and you can go back to the party.

Booze is reliable.

That was me,

16. I dropped out of high school. My father came back in my life said you've obviously got insane through me in my first mental institution.

They signed me up for three years of three months of observation and a year of rehabilitation. I tried to escape from there. I failed. I mean, I mean I was sitting having lunch with this woman. I always had lunch with the same woman in the nut house name was Kilday. She couldn't possibly still be alive. So I'm just killed it and killed a was real easy to wind up. You know what I mean. You just asked her a couple of questions. She just spin like a top and just so she was fun. Every meal was like dinner and a show, you know what I mean?

Get your little tray and ask Kelly a couple of questions. He just snap, you know, and you'd watch kill they flip out while you're enjoying. So kill they was going to be my big diversion, you know what I mean? I was going to sit with Kilde and I was going to flip her out in that direction and I was going to blow out of there through that door. But I've been doing the three cups of pills a day and getting the shot every day and I and just shuffling around this place for weeks and I didn't know, you know that I didn't I I things weren't as I they appeared to be. So when I flipped Kildee out center that way and everybody ran to get killed, I got up out of my chair to haul ass out that door and I

when I get

you know, and that was it, man. That was as fast as I could go and I'm like looking now going what the hell is wrong here, man? I can't I'm out. And you hear that demoralizing words from the nurses station here, Ed, when you got a minute, you want to grab her? Always making a break to the door,

you know, And Ed's over there having a sandwich just going. Yeah, yeah. I'll give him in a minute. It's not a problem.

Really bad news when you're trying to break out of the nut house.

I learned about, you know, Thorazine shuffle man, I learned you want about that. Other than that house, you get out before they get the Thorazine in here. You're leaving when they say

so. The second time I got thrown in the night house, I busted out on the first day. Just did that. Yeah. Yeah, I'm here. I'm glad you got me. It's really rough out on the street. You look at that, you know, hit the door, bells are going off, whistles. I got an intern right on my tail chasing me across this back lawn. There's a 12 foot chain link fence over there and I'm moving for the fence. And at that point in my life, I'm like 16 and a half, 17 years old.

I'm an alcoholic, I'm a drug addict. I'm at any moment, I'm a high school dropout. I'm at any moment, hopefully an escape mental patient. This is like my resume, you know what I mean? This is all I have to say for myself,

but I'm thinking if I make that fence I don't have a problem. Now how many problems I make that fence, I'll be loaded in 20 minutes and that's all that matters because I drink and use no matter what.

And I by the time I was 17 years old, man, I had so many good reasons that said, you know what? This isn't working. You're completely alienated from your family. You don't really have any friends. You dropped out of school. They're periodically chasing after you, trying to lock you up. This doesn't add up to a, you know, a good start in life. It just doesn't add up

now that meant anything to me because the only thing that killed a fear inside me was alcohol and drugs. That's what I needed. I needed that stuff in my body just to even up and leave the house and be out in the world, have a conversation with another human being. I didn't get how people did what they did. I went underground early and I stayed there for a long time. So I hit the streets. I spent three years on the streets doing what you do to stay loaded, just doing whatever, whatever it takes. By the time I was,

I don't know, 19 years old, I

I met this woman at a party and we talked for 20 minutes and it went pretty well. So we were in love.

Rosemary is a nice woman. And I said, and we hooked up and I said, you know, I don't really know how to do anything. I don't know how we're going to make this thing work. So I went on an interview to a very good business College in Northern California. And I got accepted based on the interview. And I didn't even have a high school diploma. Now all of a sudden I got accepted to college, right? So I go to my father and I said, listen, I got accepted to college. Don't ask. You got me a check for the year's tuition and I'm out of here. And he said Beautiful wrote the check.

So we piled all our belongings and 8 lbs of hash in the back of this truck and drove to Northern California to hire learning and we set up shop that little apartment up there by the railroad tracks

and

I was going to college during the day. I gave him the years tuition right up front. Said transcripts are in the mail. They said no problem, I started going to college during the day. I was going to got my high school equivalency done at night. Get those transcripts in A

and became a drug dealer. You know, I didn't know how to do anything else. I didn't know anything about anything else. And on top of that, I had no morals. I had no ethics. I had no honor. I didn't know anything about any of those things. I wasn't a friend, I wasn't a son, I wasn't a brother. I wasn't any of those things. I was a drug addict, alcoholic and I started selling drugs and I was studying marketing and production and distribution while I was going to school and I was applying these things in my business and business was booming and I thought college was great.

The next second year up there, they diagnosed me to have malignant cancer and they flew me back to LA, did major surgery on my back, put me in chemotherapy, told my my parents I was going to die, told me I was going to die. I remember thinking, you don't even know who you're talking to, man. I mean, the way I'm using on a daily basis that comes up like twice a week, you know what I mean? Why is this not a big deal?

And so they were doing the chemo thing, and I hated the chemo because, you know, it's a bet it's a bad high.

I didn't like it. So I just stopped doing the chemotherapy and I went home and I got loaded the way I get loaded and I beat the cancer thing.

Basically, I think that my body was so toxic at that point in my life. Cancer could not live in my body.

It was bad. That was 20. By the time I was 21 years old, I was a junior in college. I had a high school diploma. I was a junior in college.

Of drinking and using like a maniac. Like a maniac. I'd move them Rosemary to move down. We'd move her back to LA. She was saying things like I'm too high, you know, which is not. You can't say that. You can't. If you can say it's not true, you can say I'm too high. Then you're not. She obviously didn't understand, so she removed her back to LA. I'm married her later for a day.

We got married for one day.

Oh man.

So

anyway,

umm, I hadn't, I am junior in college, high school diploma, editor in chief, my college newspaper got accepted to go to USC law school, early acceptance, go to law school. I mean, I had my ducks lined up pretty good, but I was using like a maniac. I was drinking all day every day. And I got a call from my mother and she said, listen, we haven't been anywhere with a family in 10 years. We're going where you want to go. Let's just go to the family crying, begging me to be a part of this family. And I said, yeah, all right, fine. So I flew back to LA and we took off the flight of Guadalajara on November 7th, 1974, and on

way there the plane crashed and my mother, my father, my little sister were all killed and I wasn't. And I woke up on a mountain in Mexico

and, uh,

my skull was fractured, my back was broken in three places, my leg was crushed, my arm was crushed. I had a lot of internal injuries. I was paralyzed on the waist down. And I was awake and I laid there and I watched them all bleed to death right in front of me. And there was nothing I could do about it.

And I looked up at the only I could move with my right arm and I was banging on the ground my right arm and I looked up at God

and I had a little chat with God and I said, you know what? I'm going to get off this God damn mountain and I'm going to show everybody in the world how angry I am because I have no interest in a God that would take a loving, kind, gentle girl like my little sister Kimberly and leave a lion cheating, thieving, youthless dope fiend alcoholic like me on the planet. There's no justice in it and I want no part of a God that would do such a thing, kill my mother and my little sister and leave me. Made no sense. I knew I had no right to be on the planet. I had no right to be alive,

but I was angry. A little while later some guys came up scavenging the plane crash and got my wallet out, took my money and threw my wallet back on my chest and then left me up on the mound to die.

They left me there so I had no more. I had no interest in you either. So you and God were off the list. I had no interest in any of you. I've never really been any good at being in the world anyway. I know you know what I mean. I was always self-centered and frightened and fearful and not knowing what to do and having to be a little bit anesthetized or a lot anesthetized every day so that I could just function over and be around you and act like I had a clue what was going on when I never did. So I was out of the game and I just kept banging myself on my side with my arm because it hurts so bad because I was all busted up. But that kept the pain, kept

me about the shock, 'cause I figured if I shot down, I was gonna die. And quite a while later some other guys came up and they hauled me down and they took me down to the Mexican Red Cross station, and they tagged my right toe. And they sat down and lit some cigarettes and waited for me to die, which I wouldn't do. And so they finally took me to the hospital. And they because of some other things we don't need to get into right now, the federales showed up right away and and they interrogated me for 3 1/2 days

around the clock, nothing for pain. And finally, when they figured out that what they needed to do is just

Get Me Out of the country, it plastered me from the neck down and shit me back to the States. And I spent a long time in the hospital getting my demo maximum shots of Demerol every three hours around the clock to like, keep me out of. So I left the hospital on a cane with a brace. And they had told me I was probably going to have a withered right left hand, probably wouldn't walk and be blind in my left eye. And none of those things are true. And I work real hard to make that happen because I didn't want to show you any weakness. I didn't want you to know anything about me. I didn't want you to see anything about me that you might perceive as a weakness of mine, because I was

angry little alcoholic son of a bitch. And I wanted you to see that anger and I wanted you to feel that anger. And I got out of that hospital and I went on my last run and it lasted for 4 1/2 years. I got a lot of money out of the plane crash and I went for it. And I had a house in Bel Air, CA, big Spanish house and up on the hill and a bunch of cars and a barrel full of cash and a basement full of booze and another room full of drugs. And we threw a party and man, we went for it and it got pretty nuts.

I mean you. And then we could think up. We did,

and blackouts were the normal fare. And on and on and on and on and on and on. You know what I mean? I got war stories for days. I mean, it went from there. It went real downhill real fast, real hard for 4 1/2 years. The only time I drew a silver breath most 4 1/2 years was I would go into this little sanitarium in Hollywood, CA, and they strapped me to a table, shoot me full and I convulsants and let me ride for 72 hours,

150 cash on the barrel head. And it was like we're in a hospital. This was just a little joint somebody set up. And at the end of 72 hours, I need to send you Homer to the morgue, whichever was appropriate. And you got to come crawling out of there swearing I'll never drink again as long as I live. I can't take it. My ass is kicked. I cannot do this. And they say to me, you'd be a good boy and don't drink anymore. And I'd say yes, ma'am. And I will not be drinking anymore. I can't do it. They give me back my wallet, my car keys and my gun and my bottle of Valium. And I'd shake on after the car and I'd sit down and I think, you know why I need to get really shakes. I can't drive,

take 4050 milligrams of Valium, and then I'd come to in a bar somewhere 2-3 days later, having no idea how it happened. I'm like, I'm that guy in the book pounding on the bar. How did this happen? How did this happen again? I did not intend to do this. And it just kept going and going and going. By the time I threw up my hands for the final time, I was 28 years old. I was 215 lbs. I had hair out like this and a beard out like this. I was yellow. I was psychotic. I do not use the term loosely. I had broken 75 bones. I had over 700 stitches

than me. I've been stabbed twice, shot at fighting. Just a crazy person.

And I was looking for somebody to kill me. And I never, I mean, we're pretty durable, you know? They were missing the mark by inches on several occasions. And both my hands were broken and I'd been in the last of hundreds of blackouts. And I had a moment of clarity. My moment of clarity was I don't want to die. When it came right down to it where there's nothing left to do but die. I didn't want to die. And I raised up my two busted paws and I said help. And they took me to an emergency room and they pumped my stomach and they said, get him out of here. He's going to die. He's got pathetic. And they took me nameless to another place

that kept me five days. I got worse. They said get him out of here, he's gonna die. And they took me by ambulance to another place

and they kept me for 12 more days of detox and then 30 days of rehab on a free bed. And I came out of there as crazy as I've ever been in my life. And I came out of there with one piece of information, and that was if you drink again, you're dead.

And I ended up in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I did not come here because I want what you had. I had no idea what you had. I just knew I couldn't live with what I had anymore. It was over for me. I mean, when I got here, my family was dead. I had no friends. I had no place to live. I had no money. I had a box of clothes. I had broken everything in my body. My spirit was crushed.

I did not have a relationship with another human being on the face of the earth, and I had no relationship with God. I was completely and utterly alone in the universe. I knew it, I felt it, and I didn't know how to be any other way. I had no tools for living at work. And that for me was the only way I was going to get here.

I wasn't going to get here with one thing working in my life, not one thing. And all I knew was that if you drink, you die. And Alcoholics Anonymous is where people go when they don't want to drink and they don't want to die. So I came and I sat in the back of my arms, folded, my best tough guy look on my face. So if you sit in the back with your arms folded with your best tough guy look on your face and you a bad ass, God bless you. Welcome.

You're in the right place.

We didn't all look like this when we got here either, you know?

And I sat in the back and, I mean, I was glaring. I was crazy, mad, angry and all, you know, all the guys with time saw those subtle little signals I was sending out, you know, I mean, which was getting near me. And I'll try to kill you.

They just said, they didn't come near me. They just said, rather, the coffee's right over there. Grab herself a cup of coffee and seat. And we'll be, you know, welcome. They did that from about 20 feet away. But every meetings got the new guy, you know, six 8-9 months of sobriety. He just caught fire with Alcoholics Anonymous. And he's going to give it away tonight. And that meeting had one. And his name was Vegas N. And Vegas saw me, and all he saw was a new guy. And he came flying across the room with his hand on, a big smile on his face. And I sat there thinking, oh shit,

look at this, what am I going to do with this guy? You know, look, he's smiling. I hate that.

I don't know. I don't have anything to say and he's going to find that out. So I got to back this guy off. He came up and said hi, I'm Vegas, I'm an alcoholic. And I said, So what?

Me too, man. And it ain't exactly the highlight of my life. I don't know what you're so God damn happy about. Get away from me. And he looked at me and he did that newcomer thing, you know what I mean? He did. Oh, man, they do this in my neck of the woods. I don't know about you people, but he gave me that real knowing luck, you know, And a couple guys kind of stopped right there and kind of going to do it to him.

And I looked up like what? And he looked at me and he said keep coming back.

Aw man, I was thrilled to hear that. I said great, thank you. Let me see if I let me realist review this here a minute. Vegas. All right, you've given me this big look like you're about the latest thing with deep spiritual significance upon me and and it's keep coming back. I don't get it. I do not see the deep spiritual significance of this, but clearly you and these bozos behind you think it's a pretty heavy statement. So am I wrong in things that you all know what it means? I don't.

I'm the loser. You win. I feel much better now, thank you very much, Alcoholics Anonymous. That's a tremendous import to me. I won't even think of drinking tonight. I'll just think, well, I'll keep coming back, whatever the hell that means. I hated that. I hated it.

And then, I mean, they said, you know, one day at a time, keep coming back. They said all that kind of stuff

over my head, man. I had no idea what these people are talking about, why this was such a big deal. And I'll tell you what,

if you knew I got a suggestion for you the next time somebody walks up to you and says, hey, keep coming back or one day at a time partner or my personal favorite, hey, just turn it over. All right. They do that till you step up to the play and say, excuse me, but I don't understand the deep spiritual significance of that. Would you mind expanding on that for me a little bit? Well, if they tell you if there's my neck of the woods, if they tell the truth, about 80% of them would have to say, you know what? I don't really know what the hell that means either. You know, they said it to me when I got here. And I've been saying

since I've been here, you know, I said I don't know. But you know, there's a guy over there that reads the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Why don't we go ask him? Maybe he'll know,

so just step up to the plate

anyway. Just an opinion. Another alcoholic with an opinion

that's shocking.

So I ended up in the back of the rooms in this old timer got up. You're 65 years old. He was a Skid Row bum, he was an X boxer and he was a wino. I immediately noticed those are things I am not because I am excellent at spotting the differences between you and me immediately.

I don't look through the similarities. Never did I do now, but I didn't then. And he got up and he said those things and I thought, you know what, I'm none of those things, man. This guy's got nothing for me. I was very good at that. I mean, if you but before I got here, man, I mean, if you're a woman, you don't know about me. You black, gay, Hispanic, you come up in something else. You don't you don't know about me. You're five years old or five years younger. You don't know about me. You come up in another time. And another thing. I spot the difference between you and me immediately. I got so good at circling those wagons as tight as I could. By the time I got the Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're not an oral, you don't understand me. I just,

no, nobody understood me. That terminal uniqueness that is not unique with me.

Luckily, Alcoholics Anonymous has robbed me of all of that. If you're in this room, you know all about me. You know all about me. You know, you need, you know, everything you need to know about a guy like me.

So anyway, the beauty of that moment was that if I had anywhere in the world to go, I'd have gone right then.

But I didn't have any place else to go. There was nowhere to go. What was I going to do? I mean, when I got the Alcoholics Anonymous of data said, you know what, go to a meeting a day. And our meetings are from noon to midnight. We have 12 hour meetings every day. There have been no conflict in my schedule.

I didn't have a job, I didn't have family, didn't have friends, I didn't have a place to live. I mean, I was, I was homeless and didn't know it.

And he got up and he changed my life. He got up and he shared two things that blew my mind. He talked openly and honestly about his feelings as a man,

and I had never heard anybody do that before. And I was I got to sit back there with my arms folded, looking like I hated this whole thing, presenting the whole deal. But inside I just kind of went wow.

And then it was like he looked right at me and he said, and I don't care whether you like what I got to say or not, you don't like what I got to say, go to another meeting. I love that. I love that man because it made it clear to me, this guy's not selling me something. He's sharing it with me. He's not selling it to me, he's sharing it with me. If I want it, I can have it. There's something there I can use, Take it. If not, go to another meeting. And eventually you're going to hear somebody else say something that you can use in your life. And that blew my mind. And I thought, you know what, this is cool. I'm coming back and something happened like there that changed my life.