Clancy I. in Hub-Of-The-Plains in Lubbock, TX

My name is Clancy Inmosland and I'm an alcoholic.

I assume this is for someone previous to me. I hope it is because in a nice way. Let's try on along

that's we want to go down to the next trophy.

This will be good training for me. We're having the Olympics in Los Angeles next summer and I thought they would play the state songs for the winners.

I want to welcome all of you to the Saturday night meeting and special welcome to all of you folks downstairs in the Half Measures room.

You want to get too far away? The Pepsi machine

covered other sandwiches and wonder what that arrogant some and son of a bitch upstairs looks like.

I want to thank the committee for inviting me.

I I've heard many fine stories about this conference. My sponsors told me about it, the number of times she's been down here several times and

and it really is kind of a staggering thing. You know, 600 people at this convention,

That's, that's just how many we have on our weekly Wednesday night meeting in Los Angeles,

only it's a little better organized.

They but it is we don't have all the we don't have hardly anybody who talks funny there and

am I off on the wrong foot? I

I've enjoyed the convention very much. I'm sorry I missed Frank. I missed Hank Kirsten that I had to be at where I work on Thursday afternoon because one of our guys are dying one of our long term employees

and so I couldn't get out until Friday morning.

But I've I've heard Hank talk probably more than anybody else here over the pastly exception of his wife and I wasn't I've enjoyed him very often. I'm sure you all enjoyed him too. And on Friday, I'm sorry I was near the gym tournament. I could have used another trophy. I and Friday night I was nice hearing Frank talk. Who is

America's substitute speaker? It's just anywhere you go in America,

whatever your whatever your program says, Frank Milos Talks is just

it's a touching story. And I want to tell you something, Frank's I want to make friends with everybody here. You said that you were disappointed when you came to Dallas and you couldn't find any Cowboys. I'll explain that to you. They're all being indicted on cocaine charges.

Maybe I could make some friends later, aren't I?

We're all very arrogant Los Angeles. I see that in the paper today that they have allowed the Los Angeles Raiders to stay in Los Angeles, not have to move back to Oakland. So we're all feeling good and and I very much enjoyed Beth talk this morning at she she doesn't look like someone who's been through a lot of trauma and she doesn't sound like it. But boy, I tell you, her talk was sent shivers out of my spine. Anyone who missed that,

I would suggest you get a tape of that talk. It's an excellent talk to show you when Alcoholics Anonymous can do.

And I want to I want to also say one thing. I see it among the committee here is Pat G in Al Anon and I heard Pat talk last Saturday in Atlanta, GA, and she gave an excellent talk and

it's her husband was not there to defend himself. And so it was an even better talk than your usual. Let me tell you about that. Son of a bitch did to me

that change. He's not here to cuff me around in the room afterward.

So Shirley, why don't you give her a few laughs tonight after the meeting just for Will

and I'm looking forward tomorrow morning to hearing Bill I from North Carolina. I have, I've not heard him talk, but I know that anyone who's last initial is I has got to give a good talk.

Tom, I, I mean Tom, I right

anything except red eye.

I was thinking not very, not very far from here, from Amarillo. 17 years ago was the first time I came to Texas to talk.

And I came to Texas to talk and I was a little apprehensive because at that time I was still technically a patient at Big Spring State Hospital.

And IT

and I had any, all they ever needed when I was the state of Texas was a phone call from my wife for me to be returned to the electric shock board for the rest of my life. And so I was somewhat apprehensive when I came to Amarillo at the top of Texas. But as it turned out, I, I ran into some nice people. I ran into Francis Newsome from Midland and Joe Clary, whom some of you know,

and Shelby Parnell, and they invited me to come down to Midland and I went over and talked to that hospital. I've talked there every year since. I was trying to get down there one way or another and talk to the current student body and

push them deeper into their apathy.

But I I very much enjoyed it because I remember, I don't know how I have to think about this. I remember starting off my talk, I didn't know what to say. I said, because all weekend long people have been talking about how wonderful is they were alive in Texas and so on. And I remember saying that it's nice to see so many people living in Texas, but I thought I might be the only one at the convention who died in Texas.

And I, they didn't know what the hell that meant, but I had like to explain to them. And most of you know,

I, I committed suicide in Texas, which

at that time today when you commit suicide, they give you 2 aspirants and tell them to call back in the morning. But in those days they were kind of cold about it.

And they examined me for some time at the Psycho ward. And I tried to explain to him that there just must a series of

misunderstandings because I,

I had just got done directing an opera at the University of Texas at El Paso.

And I, I was working days at an advertising issue as a sports writer for the El Paso Herald Post. I was the official statistician for the college football team. That's when Texas Tech was in our conference. And I had had some depression. But I I the only thing I couldn't get around was how the hoes in my car happened to be running from the exhaust pipe into the car and the garage doors were locked and I was in.

I try to explain. I couldn't explain that very well and so the doctor talked to me for a week or two on a continuing basis. Incisive questioning finally determined I had a badly split personality of schizoid personality and committed me for an indefinite to indefinite period to the Texas State Hospital Big Spring, TX. Now most of you younger folks think that the Texas State Hospital of Big Spring, TX and these other state hospitals are primarily designed to go there and do 30 days for

and come home in my when I was committed there, there was number alcoholism commitment in the state of Texas that I know of and I wasn't committed to alcoholic anyway. I've been I was cold sober and all this happened. I was committed as a mental patient and I had to there, go there and stay there until I got well.

And if I wouldn't have found a way around it, I might have had a call in my talk tonight, as it was a I'm sometimes not certain that I would pass their graduation exercise examination.

But I, I remember being committed in there and thinking how dreadful. And it categorized among my other defects that I was a severe depressive, which I had been. And I, I remember sitting at Big Spring in that old red brick building there and thinking, Jesus, I thought I was depressed before. This is really, you know, when you get an indefinite commitment to the Texas State insane asylum

That is almost a basic resume Buster.

That is, you really have a bitch working that in later, I'll tell you. And then what did you do during the next five years? Well,

self-employed.

The only funny thing I ever thought about that is that I brought back and that is later. I was going to go back and get that psychiatrist. I almost was going to prosecute him for malpractice because his he misdiagnosed my case intensely.

I was going to go back there and say you goof,

you know, if you call yourself psychiatrist and call me a split personality. If I could get my personality down to two, I could make it from there.

It's this group therapy or I'm alone in my car, you know?

And the reason I was in such a severe depression was because I had been forced to stop drinking to hold my job. And I had to hold my job because my wife was pregnant again.

And I had just recently come to El Paso to start over from the last time I busted open. And I

the, IT was just,

I was under a lot of pressure. I was holding three jobs, trying to pay a rent in a home two states back that I was behind in trying to do something. And

and I drank because drinking provides relaxation for me. And I was

under terrible tension. I was so very intense. And the Dean of the university called me in and he told me that he understand. He understood I'd been acting bizarrely in Juarez.

And I,

I have a terrible time. Some of you have been in the athletics, realize there's something called choking,

and it's when the pressure is on and an invisible hand comes out of your shirt and goes

and it makes you miss the third striker, drop the punter, do whatever is. But it also happens in the real world, and it happens to be I'm under a lot of pressure,

and it may happen to you, too. A hand comes out of my shirt and my mind thinks, but I can't say it. And I want to just shriek at this guy, but I didn't. I just thought at him, yeah, I'm not acting bizarrely in Juarez. I'm under a lot of pressure.

I'm trying to make up for lost. I have a terrible life. I I'm holding three jobs, for Christ's sake. Most of the people I know can't have trouble holding one and I'm holding three. I got a bunch of little kids. They cry all night. My wife is pregnant again. Sometimes I just, my mind goes around, I get

can't stand it. I, I can't sleep. I just like maybe get up at 2:00 in the morning, just frantic, and I may go to Juarez where I'm known and loved,

and I may go to the Chinese Palace or Las Kata Kumbas

and I may go in and stand on the bar. All the tourists have gone home, just the regulars are there and balance on one leg to show my cuteness

and ordered limo eat tequila isar

and sing my little song Yo soy El maestro de Los loco Senchiwa.

God damn it, that relaxes me,

that helps me sleep.

But that's what I thought what I said was.

And the condition line in front of us, I could not drink anymore. When I can't drink, I

it makes the pressure intolerable because as long as I can remember, drinking has been a pressure reliever for me. Drinking has been a something that eases off the pressure and sometimes when the pressure is too great or I'm not watching myself, I lose control and I drink too much.

And when I drink too much, sometimes people think that my problem is drinking. Really well-intentioned kindly people think my problem is drinking and I have. I can't even think of an answer to explain to them my problem really isn't

drinking so much. It is now when you see me drunk. But that really isn't it. There's something about me. I don't think I ever put my finger on the phrase, But if I could assimilate all the ways I felt, if I could have said it, if I could have thought it, if I could have collected it, I might have said

there is something different about me, but I don't know what it is. I either got to find a place where I fit in,

I got a drink, but I do the best I can and it goes good for a while but then it dissipates and I do not know why but people act differently towards me as though they have found out something about me. I don't know what they're finding out. And I just feel different. And I get frustrated and I feel,

I feel almost as though there's something on the back of my shirt that says treat me different and I can't see it, but everybody else can.

And I wind up feeling frustrated and full of anxiety and I feel separated. And people who I was chummy with two months ago, somehow they're not chummy anymore. Something's different. And I don't know what it is, but there's got to be some place where there are people like me who have

strange sense of humor. Or

when they say things, it isn't always the wrong thing, but they understand what I meant by it,

or that understand that I'm doing very well, doing the best I can,

and I can't find it. I found it again and again, but it never lasted. It never lasted. I remember a couple years ago I was up in Portland talking at a convention

and sitting around the coffee room. People were sharing their experiences dealing with

the Mount Saint Helens explosion about how they felt, the people who lived in that area north of

Portland, because they didn't really dislike lava coming. You get that in Hawaii where the lava comes and burns you out. But there were just that, your far away little noises. And they had saw no evidence of it. But everything. Little by little their whole town turned Gray, just as fine powder came down

and the long turn Gray, and the house turned Gray, and the car turned Gray. And the children outside came in, would come in, and they looking a little Gray. Just a fine, fine dissemination of this volcanic ash. And I got thinking about that

on the way home. I think that's almost an exact description of my life. I go to places, I make go out of my way to find a colorful place where it's going to be colorful and keep me interested and fun. And then there are some faraway noises after vile and things begin to turn Gray.

The house that looks so nice is now getting to be Gray, and the car is getting Gray, and the new job is getting Gray

and their neighbors are getting Gray. And my chums, my new chums are turning Gray. And little by little it gets grayer and grayer. And somehow inside of me there's something that cannot stand. Perpetual greenness I got to have.

I want some fun and excitement and occasionally I want to have some pleasure out of life

and I can't get it in a Gray world.

I to this day, when I look at over the look at the Wizard of Oz, I, I cannot identify with Dorothy giving up

the Technicolor of ours to go back to Kansas where it's not even Gray, it's a sepia. It's just a just yeah,

Auntie M may be a nice old broad, but she ain't that nice to make it everything Gray forever.

And that's why I drink a little bit. I drank because drinking puts a little color in my life

and I started going to a a way over 30 years ago.

And a A is a nice place, but it's another almost a perfect example of training for a Gray existence.

You step into a A and you realize that you are at the beginning of an endless Gray tunnel,

just an on and on and day after day and sip those goddamn meetings and there's those people give you non applicable cliches. They are going crazy. Wow, you keep coming back.

There's something not intellectually exciting about the answers. You get here

and you could get up every morning and wow,

another wonderful Gray day

and there's no relief anywhere.

At the end of the year, you watch people get a year. Is there some break? No. A little hatch opens and a scrawny arm drops a 39 cent cake.

That all there is

home and

on and on,

and there's got to be more than that. And so I tried a lot of things. I realized that I went to a lot of places, I worked in a lot of towns, I did a lot of different kind of jobs. And all of them were just the answer till they turn Gray. I had it again and again.

And I have new, I'm going to be a wonderful father, but I bring my children out of this town. I was always a town or two ahead of it seemed like I'd bring them in and get settled. I remember in El Paso, gentleman here from El Paso, when we, when you come here on the airplane to Lubbock now, it really is fun coming out of Los Angeles. You see the entire Southwest. You go to Phoenix and stop. We stop there a long time because there was a lady got on so fast the safety belt wouldn't go around her.

So they had to go to a different plane and get another safety because

there's only 105. And then we went to Albuquerque and then we went to El Paso. But I liked going to El Paso because I used to live in El Paso

and I remember, but I brought, I went up north to get my wife and kids and I brought them down to drove them to Texas, drove to El Paso. We came in from Kansas last night at midnight and I took them up. There's a road that goes over the mountain before I woke them up and I put them in this mountain right in the middle of town and woke him up and said this is the place

and there are gold of their lights to all. Everything is going to be fine here. And a year and a half later, she had to get on and sign that commitment to put me in the insane asylum for as long as I'd take. And it just went on like that. And when you feel like that, a few drinks sometimes are necessary.

But the problem is how in the world to keep from getting in trouble.

I want the relaxation, but I don't want the things that happen when you cross that line of where you start getting reaction.

I've often thought my efforts to control drinking were very similar to modern man's attempts to control Atomic Energy. When it works, nothing works better. But every so often there's a another three mile island that you didn't expect to. Instead of waking up feeling relaxed, you're leaning against a wall like this, or you got your hands handcuffed behind you, or three guys just get done kicking the bejesus out of you on the back of a bar.

And and think I got to avoid that.

But I also know if I've tried psychoanalysis over 30 years ago, I got into metaphysics. I read Nitri and Schopenhauer. I did everything I knew how. I went to A and a heard these guys and my perceptions, but were so prejudging that I never heard any. I'm sure they must have been saying the same things in a a 30 years ago they're saying now,

but I never heard it once. But it seemed to me I always heard

for many years, night and day, around the clock.

One day I walked through that door

and the desired a drink left me like a cloak fluttering to the floor.

I now have $3,000,000 as in that pocket.

Several different families have returned to me

and I owe it all the one thing. I put the plug in the jug

and the only alternative to that was the other guy who said

and I've just never felt so God damn good.

And I, I didn't know what to do.

I fought and thought I went to a A and I went to therapeutics. I did different things. I went to jail. 30 Sometimes that's hard when you're trying to keep up an executive career.

Been in hospitals. I've been strapped. Tomorrow night I'm going to visit Albuquerque. I have a bunch of kids who, through a series of bad breaks and misunderstandings, live in Albuquerque. And it really is kind of funny. My oldest daughter and her husband

we're teaching in Kentucky at the university and he got a very, they both got a very good option, University of New Mexico. So they came down to New Mexico and one of their sisters visited him and she was at Long Beach State and she just loved Albuquerque. So she moved to Albuquerque. He's working on her degree in nursing education. And another sister graduated, she and her husband and little girl, they graduated from University of Hawaii. They didn't have the master's program they wanted, so they visited Albuquerque and they loved Albuquerque.

And next month my youngest child, my son, is going enrolling as a freshman at University of New Mexico. So it's a I, I sometimes think my older daughters don't understand why they have such an empathy towards Albuquerque because they've ever lived in that kind of a climate. But I think I know what it is because

that's Albuquerque is very similar to El Paso. And I think they, when they were little and they loved El Paso, that's what they kind of remember is that

Albuquerque. But I'm going here tomorrow. But one of those daughters is working on her degree in nursing education.

I remember when she was born

today, mother went to the hospital. I was already at the hospital,

strapped down to the next floor, chained down. I think

now a lot of husbands get there with the wife for a day later. But to be there a day ahead, Dredd, anticipate labor and just get up there and chain yourself out.

God damn it. I hate that. Because they'd look at you funny, it seemed to me. Nurses go by, is it

this makes you crazy? I've always been very sensitive to people doing things like that to me.

My oldest stories of the faculty at the university there when we lived in Dallas, where I when I finally got out of that Texas, I finally beat the Texas nut house because

they put in an alcoholic program, the first one the state of Texas. And through I have manipulated them into allowing me to become, I believe the first psychiatric patient in the state of Texas to be allowed to go to alcoholism to the alcoholism unit because I've been going to a a six or seven years. By this time I knew how to act like an alcoholic

and I, this old man, nice man, Les Ross, I manipulated him terribly and I got, you know, the others just came and went every 30 days. But I was there like God. Well, so I became the best patient they could have had. Old Mr. Ross would give us a talk for an hour. He said. Going to tell you about the 12 steps today, boys.

Here we go. Ah, but not me.

He'd get all done each other. Any questions? Only one question. Is this not cruel and unhuman punishment?

But

I have a question, Mr. Ross, perhaps you could tell us some more about the 4th step and how we put this stuff on paper and reached out and get the garbage out of our system and, and find out a way around it, he said. I'll tell you about that right now, Clancy and the whole rest of the room would say, oh shit,

but I wasn't trying to impress them. I had to get him. You know, it was

really what you call sincere alcoholic recovery. You say the guy next to you, what are you going to get out of here, Fred? I'm going to kill that bitch.

But by attrition I got to be secretary of the group.

And pretty soon I start sending me out to little towns to give a, a talks, you know, take a couple of patients or take me over to Odessa or Midland or Big Spring or San Angelo or someplace. Not give little talks. Just wonderful

friends. I'm just proud to be here tonight on behalf of my fellow patients, to thank each and everyone of you for carrying a message of faith and hope to us at the Big Spring State Hospital. Many of us were going across the vast desert of alcoholism and I our legs were weary when we came to the tall green hills of sobriety, and they're too steep for us to climb. But folks such as you showed us 12 golden stairs that we could climb one after another,

and they were difficult and they were hard to climb, but we climbed those steps in it.

Now we stand nearly up on top of the hill of sobriety. We're looking forward to going back to our homes throughout the West TX to transmit the message you have given us to other lost wayfarers on that desert of alcohol.

And May God bless you and your wonderful ongoing work.

Are you going to laugh? I got me out of the Texas nut house.

And The funny thing is, I've said many times, a lot of people think that kind of therapy doesn't work. But I never had another drink because I ran out of Thorazine.

We're living in Dallas now. Some people give me a chance again, and now I'm going to make my move. And I've learned my lesson. And after taking my 48 electric shock treatments at the Big Spring State Hospital, my head was coming back. I didn't know I had that many little years later when Doctor Preston on there told me if I'd known that, I'd never been able to think. But since I didn't know, I was able to come around,

but I was working in the largest advertising age in the South firm called Tracy Locke. And

I was working on these old ads for the Borden company, these Elsie and Elmer ads. And I was making my move. And when things started graying out again and I determined this couldn't happen again. And I, because I was still an outpatient from that nut house, assigned out to my wife. Can you imagine that She had to file a report every Saturday to how I was doing and send it in, and all she ever had to put on there once was he's acting funny and that's the end of that.

So that makes a little tension around the house, you know,

had you ready get the garbage out.

Wish I'd have thought of that. Sure.

And you just said, if she goes near that phone, I'm going to kill her.

And I was determined to make it up to my children. I little daughter Mary, who was nine, and I loved her and and she fell off the porch one day and turned out she'd broken her leg, although I didn't know it. And I rushed up. I just have to be home watching a football game half in the Bay. And I picked her up. I said, honey, I'm glad daddy here. And I rushed in the house and she was longer than the door was wide and I broke her leg again.

Yeah,

things like that.

You just wonder what do you have to do? For Christ sake, when you do act well, it goes bad. And it went on like this and I went to 80 and I went to a lot of things and nothing ever was the answer. And it got grayer and grayer until one day I found myself

hearing the guy say get out and stay out. And I looked up and I had been 86 out of the Midnight Mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles, and my family was still in Texas. My parents had written me off. And I couldn't believe it. I was dying and I don't.

I thought if I only would have found that place,

it isn't from lack of interest to lack of desire. Remember, many times I have taken vows that would I would no more break that vow that I would I'd rather be died and break the vow. For example,

time after time I have taken intense vows once.

We're talking about a couple weeks ago.

You know, Once Upon a time I was in jail for fighting a cop in my hometown. I was a young guy and my father came to the jail cellar early morning says I hope you had a good time last night when you were out drunk. And I said, no, I didn't. I'm going to do better. He said, I hope you enjoyed it because you let your little son die at home. And I could. I almost went crazy without. I'll tell you

and the judge let me out. He is a friend of our of our families. I hope you remember this. And he said, I hope every time the guy like you goes by a bar, you see your little dead Sonny's face on that door and never go in. You cannot handle it. And I, we went to the cemetery. It was winter time and up there in the winter time, they don't bury in the ground. They put them in a in a holding chamber to look ground thorns and it's just a little casket. Remember. I felt so bad that

relatives came in, looked at me funny again, as though to say, look at that son of a bitch, and I couldn't stand it. So I wouldn't let anybody be at pallbearer. I said, I'll be his pallbearer. I took him from the after the funeral on the hearse and over the little house and I put him in there. I was in there alone. I put my hand on this casket. I said, John,

this will never, ever, ever happen again. You will never have to be ashamed of me. I hope when you're in heaven you will look down and know you will never be ashamed of me again.

And 29 days later, sitting in a room where I was working in a different city,

I began to drink. So I hadn't begun to drink. I'd have gone crazy thinking about my son John. And now that isn't a problem with drinking. Putting the cork in the bottle doesn't change that. Stopping drinking becoming good doesn't change that. Yeah, I'll be glad to go to a, if you can make it 1948 again, if you can make it 1951 again, if you can make it just a week before

up in another place where I was working for this guy and I were,

I'd met him in a market. He was a clerk and I was an executive at Fairbanks Morris and he said, I said, is there any cheese? He said there's some cheese. I said, any good? He says it has a certain authority. I said, what the goofy clerk in a store docking like that for? So I I got talking to him. Turned out he had been just expelled from the medical school of University of Wisconsin,

and he'd been caught in a compromising homosexual situation.

And I got here and I got to be good friends. And I said, listen, I'll tell you something. I don't know much about homosexuality. It never bothered me. But let me see if I can help you become straight because I've read theories where homosexuality is kind of a retarded sexual maturity. And I was directing a play A night affair

and I put them in place. I'm called my 3 angels and I've I've made a point of getting them together with a leading lady and they

came to fruition and you starting to like it. And his job was to help me so I wouldn't drink. I was going to watch him so he didn't become homosexual and he's going to watch me, so I didn't drink. Well,

that was all right, and

but one day, as it must, I didn't know why, nor does anybody here know why when it happens to him. I just wanted to get drink and I got to God damn tired of the Gray world and I drank it. So, I mean, shouldn't you get ahold of Bob? To hell with Bob.

And I drank and I got drunker and I got then I got mad at myself. Maybe some of you done that. And I start breaking up things in the living room and my wife didn't know what to do. She's she got a hold of Bob and said, Bob, can you come over? Maybe you can help Clancy. I can't. So he came over and he looked at me at that look. And maybe you've seen that look again. I saw it again and again all my life, that look of disappointment, that look of all. How could you do this?

Just that? Don't even say anything. Just look at you and it makes you feel so bad.

And I shrieked at him. Get that God damn queer out of my house. I got children in this house. I don't want to queer around my children. And on and on. And he just turned white and staggered up. And the next morning his mother called him, said, what happened to Bob? I said, I don't know what should He killed himself last night. Oh, geez. And that day I started Hitch, gave up my job and wound up hitchhiking W to play piano in a cheap bar in San Francisco

and left everything I had if everything I touched turns bad. And yet I can't find a formula for it.

And maybe I'm crazy, but I'm not crazy. I gotta find a place where there's some where I can sustain it. And I can't sustain it. I can't believe it. I've been singled out to just be feel bad all my life

and I in a sense it was almost a relief. Standing on Skid Row in Los Angeles, I had a T-shirt, an old pair of pants and some tennis.

I could look down and see the scars on my wrist where I had my wrist slashing. I could think back up. At least I can't hurt anybody now. And I remember thinking, I wish. I wish I would have known what the hell was wrong with me. And I went over the next morning to sell a pint of blood, the Skid Row blood bank, and they took a drop of blood in my ear and said, you don't have enough iron in your blood to sell blood anymore. Couldn't get a $4.00 for a lousy pint of blood.

And it was raining and it was cold and I felt bad. Then one

The funny thing, suicidals always never want to commit suicide when they're really at rock bottom. You got to have something to make people sorry about. It's just when you're rock bottom, you fight to stay alive. It's the damnedest paradox. And I walked 71 blocks out to the AA club and I walked in there something called a 6300 club, and the guy says you can't come in. And I said why not? I couldn't talk very well either because I just had my front teeth kicked out. The Phoenix drum tank,

which cuts in your ability to do consonants.

I said why not for Christ sake,

he says. You've been banned out of here. Remember, 2 weeks ago you stole the coffee money at the Friday night discussion group?

I said, Oh yeah, I remember that. No, yeah,

I remember thinking, I better tell this guy that,

pretend to be an alcoholic, I guess I had a little slip, he said. You didn't have any slip, you're just a phony puke. So I guess you're right, Tom,

but I thought someday I'm going to pull out your fingernails, you son of a bitch, one by one and listen to you scream. But I can't do it today

is Why don't you just go in the backroom? Don't everybody know that I let you in because you make me sick?

God bless you, Tom,

but I thought, I'm going to heat up those fingernails and stick them in your eyeballs. Just scream. Scream, mother, scream.

I went in the backroom and I laid down there and thought, what am I going to do? I remember thinking briefly, that sounds funny, but it just wasn't at all funny. Remember thinking I thought maybe my suicide in El Paso had been successful

and that I have. This is where it's gonna be for eternity. When you're a Lutheran, you think those sort of things. And I thought I better pretend to be an alcoholic for a while just to get these people off my back. Just to get em off my back. I don't know what the hell went wrong, but by God, I was better at 15 in the Pacific and World War Two. That I am now when I've had success.

I only wanted to be a good man in a good world, and there's something inside of me. Maybe I'm possessed by some kind of devil.

Maybe there's something that every so often just comes and gets me and I don't want it to happen, but it happened.

I could only find a way to keep the color without the result,

and I decided to pretend to be an alcoholic until I could get a score and get to Seattle.

And I it was so bad that I couldn't even get a score and I wound up stuck in that damn club for weeks. For days and then weeks and then months, I lived in the backseat and abandoned car in the parking lot in the tall weeds and I just lurked out there and came in the morning and went out at night

and I have no idea then and I didn't after. I remember when I was 30 days sober thing. Jesus, I'm 30 days sober,

there must be something wrong.

And I had no idea that that would be my sobriety day. I didn't intend for it to be. And sobriety doesn't help cases like mine. And that's why I'm glad tonight to give my sobriety date, as you say here, through the grace of God and the power of Alcoholics Anonymous. Not necessary for me to take a drink from sedating or tranquilizing pills since that morning, October 31st, 1958 and for which I'm very grateful.

And a couple months, if I survive and I knock on wood that I won't be

carried away by gypsies, I'll have 25 years of sobriety. And it's,

I sometimes have questioned the quality of my sobriety 'cause I suppose every alcoholic sober alcoholic does has been sober longer than 20 minutes. But I sometimes think about where I came from. I'll tell you I will settle for any quality sobriety. I hope to make it better because it's more comfortable and I want to regain my comfort When I get these, I get the situation they're bad. But I'll tell you this, that I

I sometimes find myself,

as you would expect, when I'm reminded of things, almost tears in my eyes of gratitude because the best professional people in America that I knew threw up their hands at my case,

and the best AAS that I knew threw up their hands in my case. And nothing really traumatic happened.

Nothing really traumatic happened. Somehow, some way, something

made me desperate enough to do something that I would have usually not done. And that is for whatever the motive. I began to change my actions. The only reason I changed my actions was I could hustle these people and make a score. So I began playing their sick little game and their sick little game that I played worked and I was in that club all the time. So how to act better all the time? It really got to be a drag.

I'd have no place to go and let it out.

And those old guys that I got a sponsor, I had many sponsors. I had editor of Elder El Paso Times was my sponsor and and the head of the largest public relations firm and a big doctor society doctor in Dallas was my sponsor. And I've had sponsors in every city I've ever been in that I went to a because I said get a sponsor, get his fancy. So I got a sponsor, but this sponsor was turned out he didn't have

unjudged love. That's

if you wanna make it easy around here. Look for a sponsor that has unjudgmental love.