John L at Laguna Beach, CA November 11th 1995

Hi, good evening. My name is John Larroquette, and I'm an alcoholic.

That's like, Craig, you're asking me to drive. Where the hell I am on that

way here. I started getting word that didn't have my passport on me.

My goodness. I was expecting a larger meeting, but I guess I'll learn.

This is great. This is great. I love being in a meeting of Alcoholics nowadays. 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 I have learned some things about myself that have allowed me to space over. I've also learned some things about you that have allowed me to space over.

I think the former is more important, but I'm I'm never quite sure these days.

Quick back story, I was born in New Orleans, LA to a poor black family.

Somebody else is doing everything.

The New Orleans part is truly the only child is true. I was very Catholic and 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, and he died. I had a lot of relatives die of alcoholism. The New Orleans, the definition of alcoholism is very thin and very narrow. Most of my relatives died of falling down the stairs or being hit by a milk truck or we had a weak heart, you know? Yeah, We're gonna be a gallon of wine everyday. Healthy

and being very Catholic, I was. I was always very afraid

when I was a kid. The Catholic Church was not nearly as

Aquarian age as it is today, it seems.

It convinced me that that I was born worthless.

I came here with two strikes against me, and 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 and at some point I might be worthy. Well, I took that very seriously. I, I really felt as though I was not very worthwhile. I'm sure if I if Sigmund Freud were around then I want his couch long enough, I would be able to tell you that it was because my father left, yadda yadda, yadda. My mother's a

yeah. It doesn't matter why. You know, that's 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 up when I was seriously loaded when I was 18 years old. I was in a rock'n'roll band, and we were in a place called Biloxi, Ms. and it was in the height of the Vietnam War, and we picked up some sailors who were getting shipped off the Nam in a few days. And so we got a bunch of booze. I think we actually robbed the liquor store

to get it.

I'm not really robbed. That sounds too dramatically. It's not like Woody Harrelson and apomorphism.

There was some old lady who was head of the and she couldn't see anything anyway, so

and when you turn your 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, LA, it's the only time in the world we're doing signs on the Borussia Happy hour. Any waking moment,

we grabbed what we could

and went to the back of this club where my band was playing and, and we had a very, very esoteric collection, eclectic collection of alcohol, everything from schnapps to Southern Comfort. I had a, 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, they were like eight of us in this band and 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 pallets of the of the different goods

until about 1/2 hour later I just did those huge Technicolor yawn all over the seeds of the.

I don't know if you guys know what a Pus Cafe is, but it's a drink that has different colored layers of liqueur. Well, I put my car seat looked like

and I saw 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 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 gets it is alcoholic 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 or later in the 80s when I couldn't afford that Nyquil.

Well before I started drinking, and I know that's not only in retrospect. I was born an alcoholic. I had the personality defects that every good alcoholic should have. Extreme lack of self esteem coupled with this grandiose self-image. The two did not cohabitate well,

and they produced a 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 involved at the time. I mean, I was nuts before I ever drank. There are people in this world to this day that that had relationships with me for months on end and I was 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 in that.

But it's 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

was made-up a whole healthy human being. And I was very good at it.

And then in the early 70s, I heard it was actually a place where you could go where they paid you to do that.

I was, I, I, I, I. There was nothing else I could be with an actor, you know. I lied too well not to be.

I don't like 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, I was, I was such a coward. I had 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 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'm sure I've been talking to my dog and he had been telling me who to go kill. If I had not had something

that would turn it off, you know, 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, you know, Captain Kirk, I was going with. No man had gone before

and I was, I was blazing and I was in absolutely off the edge from the moment. You know, I didn't get arrested very much. I didn't. I didn't rob the people, which I think 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 was sort of just suck out of you everything worthwhile and then leave you hollow and starving on the ground and say,

as I found it as a host.

It's terrible, but it's true,

you know? I'll tell you how insane I was.

Not that you don't probably already know.

When I was in 4th grade, I was 10 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 to convent for music lesson. And I walked off the schoolyard and I walked past the condom and I kept walking. And I was 10 years old in the heart of New Orleans, very close to the Mississippi River. Levee runs right back of the school. So I got on top of the levee and I started walking downriver toward no man's land. Shawn, that in Saint Bernard, weird places where you go get oysters and fireworks. That's the only reason to be there.

And I was gone all day, at about 4:00 in the afternoon. I hadn't eaten. I was scared

and I thought, well, I guess I have what I have to do now. Well, I can't go back and tell the truth. It's 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. Why?

And that's something I'm willing to take any responsibility whatsoever for my actions. I devised the plan.

So I tore my clothes a bit at 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 assume this sort of quasi Moto pose.

So limp back to school and the nuns come, you know, floating out of their building toward me

#9 inventories in the competition. I 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 that found me outside the condo just before I I got in threw me in the back of his truck and took me away and and kept me all day.

And I didn't know anything about sex at the time. So I didn't even occur to me that you know, you touch me in that special place or anything. I wasn't even I don't even know that far with the story

and with little imagination I had of time. When they asked what he made me do, he said I could think of was he made me listen to the radio.

So my mother was called and my grandfather, we lived here. So my, my, my old man left. So we moved in with my grandmother and grandfather, ostensibly raised by my grandmother. My mother worked. So anyway, she comes screaming and crying and delirious. Everybody been looking for me and Hillary. They Take Me Home and she gives me ice cream and puts me in bed and I think.

Well, at 6:00 there's a knock on the door and there were two men standing at the door and it was the police.

And so the police came in and we they sat me down and said so here and some year we are terrible happening 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, my predicament that day and provided it somewhat and gave a description of a guy who really sort of looked like it wasn't Wells, because I think the, the third man had come out about that time. So that's the image I had in my mind of, of, of Harry Lime. And they, they, they nodded and they, they, they, they gave a lot of sympathy.

They went away and I thought, well, that's all right, you know, I got a cover story. About 3 days later they came back and said they had caught him

and to show you how a good alcoholic is. I really thought from a women did I get kidnapped?

So now I've got a real dilemma here.

Do I fess up to losing a $0.75 book or do I send this fast into jail for 30 years?

I think it's. I mean, the scales were almost even

a little while,

but I didn't I, I, I finally in a, in a heap of tears and and gnashing of teeth, I confessed what had happened and it, everybody knew. You know, that's another 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 from the get that would have happened. These guys weren't cops. They were from school,

they were very loud. I think they were drunk too because they went pretty far with the story. So

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 to deflected away from me, from my own actions. And it went on and on like that. I mean, I, I did that to school. I did that to the United States, maybe, you know, I mean, I did that to the United States government for God's sake. And we won't get it. That's a whole different thing

and I'm not sure the statute of limitations have expired.

So from the 60s I drank a lot and do a lot of drugs. Moved to Colorado for a spiritual reason. The guy that used to make my LSD live there,

I prided myself on taking the purest stuff, you understand? I mean, I'd be LSD 25 or nothing. For me, I convinced myself once toward the end of my drink, and then I didn't have a drinking problem because I only have like $5 on me. I wanted to a liquor store and in front of me were these, you know, bats of Gallow Mountain Thorn wine

for 1/2 pint of Courvoisier Cognac watch shows, the Corvasier. So I figured if you go for quality in that quantity you really can't have a problem. I went to California in 1973 to pursue an acting career and was successful rather quickly as as far as that goes considering the amount of unemployment in my business.

I received roles in television, etc. I married a woman in 1974

and things started going along well as far as my career was concerned. My son was born. My first son was born in 1977. At that time I had a series of regular job on my first series called Ba Ba Black Sheep. And we were, you know, we were supposed to be Briggs and and volleyballs and biscuits. And so we lived 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 the load, it became more important than anything else that my life had to be designed around the possibility of where we going to get screwed up tonight and with what.

When my son was a was a ten months old, I sent my wife and he and my my my adopted daughter to England. My wife is English. I sent them to England because I thought it would be better if we lived alone separately. Financially it would be easier.

I just want to be able to drive without guilt. And I moved on to a friend's sailboat and basically I'm I laid down for three months. I was too big to stand in the boat.

If I guess how I discovered heroin.

I described heroin as like being dead but still able to dance

and I wasn't working. I was living off of residuals and unemployment, etc.

And,

and to provide down to the blood bank for the first time in downtown Los Angeles, some very large black fellow grabbed me and brought me in. Because if you could get an extra 2 bucks if you're on the buddy system, if you brought a friend and they gave you an extra 2 bucks. And I'm lying on this, on this table having the precious bodily fluids, my precious bodily fluids are drained out of me for $12.00. And I look over at the television. There's a little, little black and white television next to the bed. And I see myself on the television.

And I thought, you know, this is really wacky.

And I remember saying at the time for myself, if you don't die, this is going to be a great story on the Johnny Carson show.

And it was actually,

so I got a job and I got enough money to bring my family back from England and stuffed them into a small little apartment in North Hollywood somewhere. It was just horrible. And it just got worse and worse and worse. And I wasn't abusive. I didn't beat my children or, or any of that stuff. I, I disappeared and I was kind of drunk that would just want to be left alone. And so 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 a slob I have become. That was 240 lbs at the time and I looked like my face was just like stuck with door knobs.

In 1980 I got a job in a film called Stripes and we went to Kentucky to do this film. John Candy and I shared a a motorhome and during the time we were there, John Lennon was killed and we got an Irish wake for about a month.

I can watch that show today and literally not remember doing some of the scenes. And this is toward the end. It just got so bad. And I really kind of, you know, in some ways appreciate the fact that Mister Lennon was shot because it put me so far over the edge. And I went to a place I had never gone before.

I went to a place of being alone in a room and I'm not going to be graphic, but it was pretty bass,

pretty base what I was doing to myself in order to try and feel something other than this cold vomit smell. Wi-Fi through this myself.

In May of 1981, I checked myself into a hospital just to escape, just to hide. I didn't know anything about alcoholism. You know, I was ever 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? And he said, I want to be the drunkest man in the world. And that was my goal. I thought all of my defects 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.

Feel free to walk through the fire, Will. God damn. And I'm not. Come on, let's go.

What I wanted, this hospital on the bed stand next to me, was this, this book, this blue book thing that you guys, I guess, are familiar with.

And I stayed up that night and read that book

and I put the book down and I thought, Oh my God, that's the problem.

I'm an alcoholic,

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. Maggie. Why are you doing this? Thank you.

That's an article about seven months and in February of 1982, I guess over for the for the first time and really only time I didn't go in and out of lock.

You know, I just, I couldn't imagine going back out there. I wasn't happy about being here, but I just want to go back out there again. And, you know, in those days it was mandatory that you smoke in the meeting.

And so I'd be sitting in these rooms and basements of churches in Glendale and, and, you know, places that only read about in John Fontaine novels and Raymond Chandler novels. But I know we know existed in all of these old men with these long coats where you could, you know, 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? What this is it?

Luckily I was in one of those church basements and I managed it up. An actor whose work I would mind all my life and told the story. It was so he was so 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 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.

Exactly the same as every single person in this room. Whether you're a woman or a man or you weigh 300 lbs or you were 90 years old, we all had something so intrinsically in common. The thing that I look 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 think it loaded.

As I said, being, you know, 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, it was 3 letter word. And I thought, you know, I don't, 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. 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 high apology greater than myself. And I at that point, even as as what 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. I mean, I read a lot of and land growing up.

I could walk back 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 that I found the sponsor very quickly and I chose an atheist, a Jewish atheist, which is

as far removed from my operating as I possibly can. Again, I, you know, I didn't mean it to you till 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 accept Democrats.

And so I chose this, 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 one home. Is there's going to be a compromise here somewhere?

And so on a piece of paper, he wrote these words. God, as I understand God is they put in the ellipses behind the three dots. And he said go home and finish the sentence.

And so I went to act to my little apartment

and stared at the piece of paper for days on the Goddess, I understand God, and I just gave the grandiose thoughts of every every Alan Watson, all I ever I would watch a book that I'd ever read, Papa Ron Das Krishnamurti, I mean, all of those guys that that I 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 way

and I brought it back to him and it was folding my hand and I said here I finished the sentence. He took the detoured up. He said fine, I'll pray for it.

Didn't care what it was. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it's not new. And that's the only thing I've known. You know, I got really, as I said, very active. I was in salads. I mean, I was an obnoxious bastard about it. So, you know, I would, I would walk into bars with the big books and

find some, some likely candidate, you know, sitting at the bar, like I would

put the book down there. Hey, how you doing,

Lovely, Lovely. A lot of the behavior waned in me as I became

willing to realize that 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 drunk. I mean, I literally took guys from the parking lot and brought it to my house and my wife

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. Yeah. I would take him with me to Barnesville Park is where I found most of my likely candidates. And Vermont and Hollywood, whether there's a huge Frank Lloyd Wright house at the top of the hill and all these bums is this whole city that lives in the perimeter of this hillside overlooking Vermont. And I would go down there and find a candidate and take him to a meeting and. And none of them stays over. Most of them died,

but that didn't matter. Some of the states over for a little while my head guys would actually drink their mother's perfume and stuff when they when I couldn't find any boobs and I thought yeah, I never thought of that. I used to have a mother for a family, and

I want some.

Yeah, the idea of humility is a is a real strong notion with community things and also a very grandiose, pompous asshole most of the time. But at least now I recognize that for myself. 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

to teach me something about my own life.

Growing up Catholic, there was always people telling you about your life, you know, and actually, there are some priests to this day who actually opened me up to a lot of the world, literature and art and music being 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. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's proven to me

that we're all very much aligned. And I don't, I don't say that with any sort of,

you know,

I get tongue tied when I really try to think about the importance of sobriety in my life. You know, I, I,

I would be gathering and you know who referred it a lot from this podium, but there's absolutely no doubt about it. I'd be playing handball with John Belushi right now. And 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. This is no doubt about that. No, 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 have known that have gone out after 20 years, after 25 years and never got back. You know, just one day, boom, glass of Eno just happened to be in front of him. And the guys that do make it fast, 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, where did you get this in your mind? You know, and almost invariably it occurs that they stopped going to meetings,

that they started isolating ingredients,

that they started standing in the back of the room going big bastard up there. I'm glad I'm not that bad.

God damn. Why don't you go get a drink buddy?

This separation, again, You know, I lived most of my life separate

from the rest of you. And once I was connected and I got connected in these rooms and I got connected in hospitals and lockups around this country,

in the world. You know, I go to meetings on in many countries of the world. I'm fortunate to have a job that actually allows me to travel. Just sitting in

Newcastle upon Tyne, England, you know, or Paris, France, or or Auckland, New Zealand, and know that somewhere in that town there are leopards

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, 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 work? My

investments in it. You know, there's a bookstore in Los Angeles called the Bodhi Tree Spiritual Bookstore has been 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. Or.

And I was standing in this bookstore at 10:30 at night and before I got sober and prayed 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 gotta 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 is Henry Miller grave rider once much when Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the late 40s didn't know what it was was in the drop himself one with a friend and after which he wrote an essay. The essay was called The Hour of Man. And then 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 life, in one's life, that we can actually get some sort of fulfillment out of the fact that we lived hollow,

sickening lives,

left people, you know, hordes bleeding and wounded behind us.

And so he wrote in this essay that if the world ran like an alcoholic synonymous, meaning you 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 and 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

a lot of newcomers here tonight. I know that a lot of this sounds like, you know, when I was new, when I listen to people talk, it 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.

I don't think that's enough,

but it can start. You know, it talks about the reason

I saw this, because I think the most important step in this whole bloody thing is number 4, because I think without that, we're able to continually bolster ourselves much longer than we absolutely should.

And I bullshitted myself all my life.

I want to be honest with me because I knew that there was number 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 unless I'm sober. That's absolutely I have no choice whatsoever. But once I stay sober. This talks about the 4th step and it says it's temperamentally we are on the depressive side. We are apartment to be swamped with guilt and self loathing and shitlessness. We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a

painful pleasure out of it as we mobily pursue this melancholy activity when we extinct 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 a as suggested inventory. No doubt we shall point with pride into the good lives 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, haven't 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 revised the moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty nice people all along except for our drinking, what need be there for a moral inventory now that we are sober? Well, it's a real, real important, you know, because

I can lie to me easier than I can even lie to you. 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 of it because I want a confession. All my life

I loved it, actually.

He was a person in a room listening only to me,

and he had to forgive 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 is 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 how what insane lies we LED, you know, and all of a said differently. 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?

As you can, you know, you absolutely can. And we've all heard this, I'm sure The definition of the sanity that an old man once told me when I was nearly 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 at Musa Franks and that's it, I promise. Then it's 3:00 and go, well, you know what, maybe just one tequila,

that's all. Just that you got. I don't like the way that's your taste.

I know it before O'clock in the morning and I was in some fat bastards healing the Hollywood Hills

paying $120.00 for Italian baby laxatives, you know.

And I would cry home at 7:00 in the morning and be so ashamed to go into the house that 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 into bed and sleep at 1:00 in the afternoon.

Maybe there's two beers in this affront. Let's hopefully. And I went on it for years.

It's wonderful to remember. It would be horrible to repeat I America. The same woman today was a macro over 20 years. We had more children together. We have an 8 year old son. She stayed with me. She's a true Alabama

trustworthy. She's having a plane crash right before the ground. Isn't the plane Instagram? 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,

You know, she looked at me one day and she says, I understand you'd like to die. Would you just please not do it in front of the 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 in my business. I have. I have beaten the odds. Many turns in my life I have.

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 was I tell the story a lot, but it is so it just so points for the alcoholic personality, at least mine. I, I want an Emmy Award for, for acting for the show I used to do and

one of the awards show that night and nominated, you know, didn't know I went and I was feeling great, nervous obviously wanted to maybe they don't if they don't give it to me because I mean, I'm a piece of crap. I was sober about 2 1/2 years at this point,

and they Call My Name

back on the stage. And for the first time in my life, I felt the imposter had left. You know, this was me now. Here I was where I belong. 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 limousines and I drove to my beautiful house by the Pacific Ocean.

I walked in and I took this statue. I placed it on my mantle tube. So I stepped back in. My very next part was you only one on the other hand, just to balance it.