Specific Group, Las Vegas, NV June 22nd 2000

Hi, I'm Cliff Roach and I'm an alcoholic and I'm absolutely delighted to be here. I'd like to thank Bob for inviting me and picking me up at the airport today.

Soon as I got off the plane, he says you want to go to a noon meeting. I said, hey, why not? He said that detox. I said even better.

He did not tell me it was in purgatory, however.

I just left the coast in the in the meetings outside

in a in a concrete cubicle

call on Cliff. I went.

Then he took me to the Bates Motel.

So, Bob, I really like to thank you.

Oh, you guys, when you start a meeting, you don't screw around, do you?

My Home group, we started with 12. It took us about five years to get 100. You guys start right off the bat. Of course the first week you have Johnny and all in prison and gangster there dying in prison and you know the next week you have Clancy

down and out on Skid Row selling his blood

with his with his teeth all kicked out.

This week we have Cliff,

the little fat school teacher to drag too much.

I'll do the best I can with what I got. Tom Sanders

Well, it's about time you head off functioning alcoholic here anyway, huh?

Two losers in a row.

Now you got a real alcoholic. A functioning alcoholic,

The experts, whoever the hell they are. I think an expert is a guy who has a pH D who's still drinking

and I think they all live in Fresno, CA. That's my personal opinion,

but anyway, the experts, whomever they say that the 95 to 97% of the people who die of the disease of alcoholism, who become dead from alcoholism are people just like me,

fishing Alcoholics, One guy out in the coast said a functioning alcoholic is one whose wife works.

Don't tell that in an Alan on the gun over. Where this shit

remarried guys, remember that?

Don't you think you had a few too many?

Let's just say you had a few too few. That's your God damn problem.

Have a couple of loosen up baby. What the hell?

Counting. Remember the counting? That's your fifth one today. You just shut up and eat your breakfast for Christ sakes.

But I'm a function. I I go to work every day. My old man told me if you eat breakfast and go to work, you're not an alcoholic.

Made sense to me. He never said a word about puke and breakfast back up again. But you know, do I go to work every day and I do the job I got to do 10 times more than you to prove I'm half as good. Anybody identify with that? You're in the right place. You're in the right place. A gore and a doer and an achiever.

No Skid Row bum

prison.

The week I came to college, the week I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I weighed 163 lbs. I used to surfer like 3 hours on on the week and then get out and run 10 miles. Used to bench 285. Took me 25 minutes to pass a mirror

sometimes had to be forcibly dragged away. Wait, I'm not thrilled yet.

My daughters used to get money from me real easy. They'd come up and I'd have. I wouldn't have any shirt on most of the time.

And in church they really didn't know. But anyway, my daughters come up and say the up Daddy V up, you know, And I said, oh, can I have some money? Yeah, sure.

I was two years sober before I figured that out, you know, But I mean, and I want to say that a A is maybe twice the man I used to be,

but I was a functioning alcoholic and I almost died of alcoholism because I could say that I'm not one of them. I don't look like that

when I was in college. I was a freshman in college many years ago. I had just won World War 2, as a matter of fact, and

and I'm going to College of San Jose State there in California. And, and my buddy and I used to walk to school every morning briskly and we were cutting through Saint James Park in San Jose there one early one morning on our way to class and we heard some noises. We walked by this bench and there was this derelict lying on the bench.

That's the filthiest thing I ever saw. I mean, I won't even describe the whole thing. I used to describe the whole thing. People run out of me. It was horrible. I couldn't, I couldn't believe this, the stench and the sounds and everything. And as we walked on through the park my my friend said that guy was an alcoholic.

And that picture in my brain almost killed me

because I know what an alcoholic looks like.

He's a sorry mess line on a bench in a park. And I'm one of the top three debate coaches in the United States.

That's like one of the top three prostitutes in Elko NV, you know.

Yeah, so

I I've always loved to drink. I really loved the 210 minute speakers. It didn't really need me to write the truth, but we'll just add another story

another school teacher. Thank God, I I thought I was the only one know that's not true. They're both attendant speakers sell it beautifully. And that's the kind of person that I was that both of them were a lot like me. I I really enjoyed drinking. I love to taste a booze. I can't identify with people. Can you that

we get up here in an AAB and so I never cared for the taste of alcohol.

I always want to say, would you care for the taste of these?

I

love to taste alcohol. I love it all. I love it all. I like sour mashed bourbon the best,

but I like Scotch too. I'm not knocking Scotch and rum. Oh at door. Rum rum and coke,

vanilla extract. And I'm not real crazy about it,

but if that's what you're drinking, hey, OK, let's go. You know, pour me one, baby. If you're buying, you have to admit it has bouquet

and I, you know, you notice how the third speaker tonight and I Oh, by the way,

Marnie, I come from an alcoholic family too, and mine was much more violent than yours and nobody had then we never tried to hide anything. When people are flying through windows and you know, guns being shot now that's kind of hard to hide. As my wife married me. She she had her mother was an alcoholic and she could her mother's this little 4 foot 11 foot lazy. They could hide her, you know.

You don't hide Why? I'll tell you.

But anyway, I'm I'm going wild here tonight. But anyway, my family was alcoholic and so I came by alcoholic drinking. All of us tonight have talked about our first drink, huh?

The Netanyahu, That's a surefire deals. You know, everybody might not be paying attention, but when you say I took my first drink here,

did you ever notice that everybody said what? Yeah,

go up to some non alcoholic and say when was your first drink?

OK, So what the hell do I care? I don't know

when was your first Taco,

but it costs. It's a big deal because it was the beginning and it was the beginning of the end.

You can't, Clancy says. It can't do it to you unless it does it for you. And I'm just like the other two speakers tonight, Hollow, empty, lonely, whatever. And you're not enough, never enough. Had a drink. I was 16, four foot, £1189,

12 lbs of that was pimples. And I'm going to a high school dance and I'm a hell of a dancer. See, I'm a hell of a dancer. My sister taught me to dance in the great jitterbug in those days. And but there were only two girls in school, like a dancers that were small enough, you know. But I choked down 1/2 of a half a pint A10 high,

and I went through that dance and I danced with all of them. Come on baby, let's go.

I didn't care where my face was

and I had the time of my life

and I said now I know why my folks drink and I couldn't wait to do it again. The second time I drank was three weeks later. I drank 1/5 of port wine. I figured that'd do it better and it did. And I had a blackout. You never had those in the desert here, I don't imagine, but over on the coast you have Black

and I had. From now on, most of my life is hearsay.

I I just spent most of my life seeing I did.

I said I'm sorry.

Your mother, huh? Oh God,

I might have been the father of Marty's child. Who knows? I've been

Reno,

they tell me. I've been to Reno

and after I got married it became her. Say

I met my wife when we were in college and she was down on Skid Row looking for an alcoholic to abuse her

and you want to be abused? Here's your boy right here, I'll tell you. And we entered this 20 year suicide packed together and

it was wild. It was wild. It was crazy, crazy, crazy. And we had that dreaded dual disease, alcoholism and Catholicism. And we had a kid every nine months and 20 minutes, seemed like to me

every time I'm coming up a blackout.

Who in the hell is that?

And then they grow. You know how they grow their when their kittens are all right, but when they grow. And I became a school teacher. We moved to Oceanside and

and I became a very good teacher and a very well respected teacher and the, you know, a highly successful teacher. If that's not a contradiction.

And anyway, my drinking got worse. Oh, really? Yes. And

but I became very paranoid about blackouts, you know, when I'm already, when you're a school teacher, you kind of hate those blackouts because they, you know, especially I commit felonies in blackouts. It's kind of a hobby with me. Anybody otherwise felonious blackout drinkers here? Oh, I'm a fighting fool and I'm in a blackout. I love to fight. Oh, fighting's good. Better

sex anytime veteran sex makes you a real man, you know. And unfortunately for me, at the very precise millisecond that I would get enough booze to be brave, I would lose my muscle coordination.

Ah, you can get hurt doing that. You can really get hurt doing that. But I became terrified of blackouts because I do those felonies and not, you know, when you're a teacher, they call you up to Sacramento, take your license wage. So I, I try to stay away from black. But I came more and more and more and more and more and more

a daily drinker. And that's my part of my alcoholism. I like to talk about. That's what I like to remember that getting up every day, every day, and saying I'm not going to do it again today. I'm saying that as I'm kneeling at the porcelain altar calling Ralph

Memorial. I hate that part. You're just down with you and Ralph. I hate that part.

Eat breakfast is called Ralph. Go to work, go in there and teach school. These kids that adored me talk about love and honor and truth and justice. Dying, dying of alcoholism, talking about honor. And I was working for this jerk principle that was out to get me. And he'd get me. He'd get me and get me and get me and get me and get me.

Then I'd go home and I was married to her

and I had all these long haired doping children and died.

Life was bad, it was really bad

and I'd go in the bedroom in the evening, get out my pistol.

I always had a pistol. I mean, you guys pistol carriers too. I just want to check and see if the barrel is still cold and,

you know, just an old Bob had come by and say, hey, Cliff,

let's go have some

fun. Remember fun getting the crappy Italian going to jail? Fun. Find your car at the bottom of a ravine in the morning. Remember that? Would you win it?

When when Bob would say that, I always hit the same reply.

For you new guys tonight, welcome. Welcome. If it's never been defined for you before, that's called alcoholism.

Unable to remember with sufficient force the tragedy of the night before. Tonight it's going to be different.

And that's the way it was well in 1965, before most of you were born, probably. But I judge no man's

I. I was a surfer dude

and another surfer dude and I decided in the summer to open up the surfboard shop down at the beach. Guy donated this building right on the water. The whole building been vandalized and we're going to open this surf shop and give surf lessons and rent surfboards and fix surfboards, make a fortune, never have to teach school again. The guy gave us this building, we fixed it up, painted it, put windows in and we got a refrigerator.

Couple months later we got some surfboards too. What the hell?

And we had these two shades, lounge chairs sitting right on the beach. I mean, on the water. We were on the ocean. These two shades. We became sunset connoisseurs. Were did not people come down to you and say, I'd like to rent a surfboard, Get the hell out of here. We're watching the sunset now. And we, we used to measure sunsets by martinis. I was the mixer. It looks like about an 8 tonight, Woody.

The best one we ever had was a 15 martini sunset. Oh, you should have seen it. It was glory

and the sun, and Woody and I went right together.

They found us in the morning with sunburned mouths. You remember that?

I think that ought to be on the 20 questions, don't you? You ever had a sunburned mouth? No. I get the hell out of here. You're not ready. Come back when you're ready, for God's sakes.

I talked with this old guy Bill be down in Texas. So Texan guy. He said that on the 20 questions he wants. But have you ever been run over by your own car

while you were driving it? I've done that twice. I belong here,

but in the February of 1965, I went down to repair a surfboard was a Sunday morning. I went down to the shop and I had a hell of a hangover. Really. Yeah. Sunday morning. And I know you'll find that hard to believe. And I was really thirsty and I went to the refrigerators. Not a morning drinker in in 1965, I was a weekend drinker member. Take Thursday off,

I only drink on the weekends, get off my back and

open refrigerator and I'm just looking for a Coke or something to slake my thirst. And Woody had been there the night before and he left about this much vodka and 1/2 pint and there were some horns juice in the refrigerator. And I said that would put the fire out, you know, because I felt crappy. And I mixed up that little bitty drink and I drank it and went on about my business. And I was saying it on this board and the resin was cooking there and that little bit of vodka, you know, circulated

all around my system

pretty soon went blue.

And my mind talked to me.

My mind said, shame on you, Cliff. Shame, shame, shame, shame. That was Woodies booze you drink.

Why don't you go up to the liquor store and get your old pal Woody all pint. That's the kind of guy I am, you know. Matter of fact, that afternoon I got Woody 1/5 and

ended up Bori. I drunk my dad used to say just falling down resin all over me. The board was a mess, the shop was screwed. Crawled home on my hands and knees about 11 blocks and got up the next morning sick and said to my wife I got to do something about my drinking. I get drunk now and I don't even mean to and my wife has had one of those pre al Anon ticks at the time arrived

had her sense of humor surgically removed many years before.

And she'd cut this little thing out of the paper about the A&AI. Don't know why she thought to do that. And it said what it has always said since we started If you want a drink, that's your business.

If you want to quit, call Alcoholics Anonymous.

I love it. It's just perfect as far as I'm concerned. That's just how I feel about it and the people that I love feel about it. If you want to drink, I would not stand in the way of you drinking for a second.

But if you want to quit, there are people in this room, I'll guarantee you, who go to the end of the earth for you if you want to quit.

And I called A and went to a couple meetings and realized right away I made a grievous error in judgment.

I wasn't really that bad.

And these people seem to have the collective IQ of an orange.

I'm highly educated, you know, I have degrees. You know, my sponsor always said you're educated far beyond your intelligence.

That hurts. Well, and I said I have degrees, you know, he says. So does the thermometer. You know where they stick, that sometimes

narrow man, narrow man.

And

I tried to help them. Have you done that forever? I try after explaining Nietzsche to them one night and

so I don't know they were. I quit going to meetings. They were just too boring. And

once in a while I would go to the speaker meeting there in Oceanside at 6:30 on Sunday evening. At that time had maybe 30-40 people. And I, I would wait in the car. Any other losers here? I should be in the losers Hall of Fame hall of shame. I would wait in the car for the meeting to start because I didn't want to hang around with you, you know, And after the meeting started, I would skulk in the back door, get the loser's chair, you know, you know the one, somebody else said it. I'd say I'm the loser here. Give me that God damn chat and

I was sitting in the back of the room

and all my majesty and judge the speakers.

Fat chance I had sounded me like everybody's name was Clem.

Been out of bib overalls about an hour and a half and wifes name is Martha

and I heard them say this. If you're new tonight and there are new ones here. Not what they said. This is what I heard them say. There's a lot of difference here.

Self delusion is in the book

and I heard them say that they had been good, decent, happy, sincere, worthwhile folk their whole lives, but they had drunk too much

and after they drank too much for a few years it started interfering with their lives. So they'd come here to the A NA and put the plug

and they had returned to be in good, decent, happy, sincere, worthwhile folk again. It sounds to me like they had been rehabilitated.

You know, rehabilitated. My hero in 65 was a guy named Eldridge Cleaver, who was a black militant terrorist. That was my hero.

That's my politics in 65. Blow it up or burn it down. I didn't really give a shit with

I was for peace,

Linda. If you were for peace, I'd kill you

or at least hurt your body.

And elders are giving us incredible speech. A few months earlier, he was talking that night about the prison system, about how they were always trying to rehabilitate him. He says you know what? They've never known He had never been ability. And you can't rehabilitate somebody who's never been rehabilitated. I don't know about you, but that's how I felt in the Ana.

I have always been crazy. I've been nuts since I was born.

The earliest recollection of my life, I was four years old. We lived in Venice, CA. I used to stand by the Speedway there in Venice when I'm four years old, wait for cars and a car would come, I'd go

then. How to do this yet? You know,

I'd wait for another one. People drive along, say look at the little bit.

That's how I felt when I was four years old. It never changed.

I had this big Black Rock, right. I heard people talk about the hole in the belly and say to me it was this Black Rock right there, jagged edges to it, like a piece of volcanic rock right there. On a good day, it was about the size of a tennis ball, and on a bad day was the size of a basketball. But it ruined my life.

It was an absolute control of my life, that black bull.

I never had a thought or a reaction or an emotion or a or an emotion in my life that wasn't generated and controlled by a black ball right in the middle of my belly.

That's a horrible way to live. I can't think of a more painful way to try to go through life,

but when I was 16, I found a great secret.

I found that after I drank about 40 minutes,

something happened to me.

Looking back on it now in a A, it was like I would disengage whatever lobe of the brain was connected to the black ball

and then fly like 8 minutes.

Everything in my life was alright.

There wasn't a thing wrong with me. For about 8 minutes.

I was enough

for 8 minutes

and we do P and I talk. You guys do that too probably. You know, I go to the Lions Club. I don't tell them about the 8 minutes. They look at you funny. You know, I can tell you because there's people in rooms, head is going like this. You know what it's like to live without the 8 minutes. Thank God I'm an alcoholic. I could have just been crazy.

Thank God I'm an alcoholic. If it hadn't been for that 8 minutes, I would have killed you. Or you would have had to kill me. One of the two. I could not have stayed alive in the world without that 8 minutes.

Thank God for it, It got me here to you.

But I'm sitting in that Sunday night meeting one night listening those clowns, and I thought they want me to give up the 8 minutes to hang around with Clem and Martha.

And for the next five years, I'm in and out of A. A gets worse every time I'm in and out. I'm drunk most of the time. I come to AA for 30 days or 40 days or one day or whatever. And I've always got drunk again. And it always got worse and I my life was falling apart, but I kept functioning. I became one of the top speed coaches in the United States by accident. I was teaching a speech class among other classes. The principal called me in one day and he got this flyer in the mail,

but a debate in a speech tournament down San Diego State, just 30 miles down the road. He said, oh, it looks like something your students would get a lot out of. I ought to do that. You ought to do that. So being in the trouble I was in, I said what a good idea and got about six or eight dummies wanted to give it a go, and we went 30 miles down the road to San Diego State.

We were astounded when we got there.

There were like 500 contestants in these debate, speech conscious, 50 schools, They're all dressed up, boys had three piece suits, vest ties, girls in these lovely business. And Levis, what the hell do we know? You know, and they killed us.

They slaughtered us. We didn't win one round. Not one crowd is. That's what they did. Those

I know kind of drunk you are, but I don't care for losing.

Kicks me off to lose. And I went in the coaches room there, about 20. I'm in there. They've their buddies. Their pals have been doing this for years and they just snubbed me, it seemed to me. So I hung around all day. You know, we can be snubbed longer that way.

One guy really pissed me off. He had a lot of hair that bothered me right away. And beautiful, beautiful Gray hair, steel Gray hair. I'm looking at him right now,

beautiful 9 barbers to get it right. You know, he had about $1000 suit on and the other coaches did this when they went in front of him and

in the afternoon this guy turns to me and says where are you from? God, I was grateful to be spoken to. Finally I said Oceanside,

and he said, oh, where's that?

30 miles up the road?

Where's that?

The guy gave me a resentment

and I went back to Oceanside High and I built a speech team and I did it with sheer hatred.

I built a juggernaut space teams. What I did, I built a para speech team and I did it with sheer anger. Get up at 7:00 in the morning, go all day all day in their faces screaming and yelling and coaching till 9:30 at night interfaces.

Guy next door said I'd love to watch him leave in your room. Wiping a spit off their glasses,

the reporter said to my my captain one time. What's the secret of your coach's success? The kid said Terror.

She was a lion,

I will tell you that, kids. The chair, chairman of the speech department in San Francisco State and the chancellor of Women's studies. So didn't do her any harm, you know. But she was in sheer terror for four years, too. I'll tell you.

And you, I go all day. See, I don't drink all day. That's kind of alcoholic. I'm, I'm a fungic alcoholic. All I have to know is in the glove compartment of the car when I get through here tonight, there's a half a pint of hot vodka waiting there in the glove compartment calling to me. Go get them, Cliff, baby. I'm waiting for you, darling.

Oh, I'd love to talk about Hot Vodka and Al Anon meetings. They go,

but we know. Huh.

Oh, anything get the bloodstream faster than that? I don't know

when I finished with that lad out, lurch out to the car 9:30 at night, 10:00 and not open up that hot vodka light up on those cheap stogies. I smoked in those days and I always drank half the half pint just

and it would go down there just into the bloodstream,

not puff on that cigar and think God damn you're a good coach.

Then I go home and destroy my family. I'd have my 8 minutes in the car

go home and destroy my family. We had three kids in the late 60s. Now we have 3 kids in high school. Now in the late 60s. My oldest son is working his way through high school, is a heshy salesman.

Oh you should have seen him hip boy. He had hair down his ass. You know, his head went like this all the time.

Call his mother, man. Hey man, what's for dinner?

Ah, he loved LSD. Some of you probably had that stuff. Oh, they see things all the time. Scare the hell out of me. You know I'd be right in the middle of a sentence, he said. What was that? What was that?

Of course the shape is and I said I don't know what, what was it? Where what?

My drunken mother-in-law live with us and she would lean on her Walker and say I'll explain it.

And all these years later, I think we used to listen to the God damn explanation that's

we used to listen and listen to her explain it to us.

And my daughters had boyfriends, looked exactly like my son. The three I'm used to get on the couch together and that place was a zoo outside of a locked ward. You will never find several lunar tunes in the history of the world. Crazy people, all of us crazy. Whenever they do, the ABC's always say no human power could have relieved my family,

but God couldn't have thought and we sought God through AA and Al Anon and I put my family against any family in the world today. And the only therapy we've ever had is a A and Alan and I. I tease Alana, but I adore them. They have a great program. I've seen miracles just as great as ours. May be greater than have happened in the Element program.

They're magnificent people and I hate people who sneer at them until Al Anon jokes. I'll tell you an Al Anon joke. I'll tell you a real Al Anon joke

now. This is an Al Anon show. What's the difference between a dog and an alcoholic? If you let the dog back in the house, he quits whining. Now that's an Alalon job.

Yeah, my wife's a 22nd degree black belt al Anon.

She has the smile down.

I'm releasing you.

Oh, I said the Mona Lisa was an Al Anon.

Believe we were all totally insane, but I built that speech team.

Thought I forgot, didn't you Buck? After a couple years, one of my teams won one of those speech tournaments

without anything. The Gray haired guy wasn't time yet. We know when it's time, don't we? The next year there were 12 / 14 terms, 30 schools in each tournament. My team took first place in every single tournament. I can wait.

The next year there was a tournament. There were 25 schools competing in the tournament and my team scored more sweepstakes points than the other 24 schools combined.

Then I went up to the Gray haired guy and I put my nose right against his and I said,

do you know where Oceanside is now?

And he just looked blank. He said what are you talking about? I said, don't you? Don't you remember four or five years ago you said to me, Oceanside, where's that?

And he said, we just moved here from Nebraska. I didn't know where it was.

That's the story of my life. This guy, for four years is in his bed every night in San Diego.

I'm of a note just

couple months ago my wife and I were driving into LA and some guy came over 9 lanes just to cut me off you know what I mean?

See that the guy was not it can clear over here and she said they all get up this morning said let's go on the freeway and get click.

So right after that Pat and I had one of our main events which the neighbors have come to miss so much and our neighbors never had television till after I got sober. They didn't need it, you know what I mean?

We were the entertainment, you know what I mean? They all had those Venetian blind marks on their foreheads and

and I moved out and living down at the beach where I wanted to live anyway with my surfboard and this dump with a couple other, the guy and his girlfriend and and I had said for years, didn't you, if I get rid of them, I can drink like a gentleman again, you know, and I could. It was awful. I was missing work. I was drunk all the time, and I went by the house one afternoon, so ranging my wife about money, as I remember, and the hashy salesman was kind of bobbing in the background there,

humming a tune from the planet Pluto

and think it back is maybe the dumbest thing I ever did. I turned him and I said, Dave, what's it like not to have your old man around the house?

And old Dave licked me right in the eye and he said it's beautiful.

And I didn't know it for a couple hours, but that was my bottom.

That's as far as I'm going.

I lost the respect of a 16 year old kid

and I realized myself later that afternoon that I had lost my own self respect

a long time before that.

And I sat out the screen porch and that dump where I was living down at the beach, and I watched the most beautiful sunset that I've ever seen to this day.

The sky and the water and the wet sand, everything was just magenta.

And about the time that the sun sat down into the water, I had what our big book calls a moment of clarity.

Polly, my friend, your friend calls at the moment of grace. The

I like that. I like that. It's all a gift, didn't it? It's all just a gift,

but you can't receive the gift until you're empty.

It has to flip you. And when the sun went down that day, I was just out of answer, Simone. I was all out of excuses and rationalizations,

theories,

and I went in the bedroom and I dugout the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is offered to you newcomers tonight. When I came in, they used to say, steal the son, bitch. You'll get on us later,

and I recommend that to you. If you're embarrassed about asking for credit, just steal it.

Bob doesn't mind a bit.

It's plenty of money leftover from the hotel room.

And I read the book for three days and three nights. I called in sick. I didn't go to work. I just read the big book. I read it. If you're new, I read it cover to cover. I read all the stories. I read the appendix at the end. And in the second edition, which I was reading, was a story called A Professor and the Paradox.

And that's the man that saved my life.

He's another egotistical school teacher and he rang my bell

and on the third time through the book, on the 13th of January 1970 at 3:00 in the morning,

I was on page 63 again.

And if you're new, on page 62 there's a little prayer and it is Step 3.

I've always called it the formal terms of surrender,

and in my befuddled condition, I knelt down on that filthy linoleum floor on that dump on the beach where I was living, and I read that prayer out loud to myself.

I read God Ioffer myself to need to build with me and to do with me as you will

relieve me of the bondage of self.

And when I was new, I looked up the word bondage. You know what it means? It means slavery

relieve me of the bondage of self.

For more than 30 years now, that's what a A has been doing for me.

It's been getting Cliff out of Cliff.

I have learned a great lesson. You can't have it unless you give it away.

I was sober maybe two years when I was reading The Promises again, and I'd read the book about five times. I'm reading along. It's about 2:00 in the morning. I can't sleep. I'm up reading the Big

and after two years of sobriety and two separate inventories, I saw the promises.

You know why I could see him then?

Because they had started to come true a little bit my life. And so I saw them.

It says you're going to know a new freedom

and a new happiness. Why would it say new? Because my old ideas of freedom and happiness suck

and tells me all these other wonderful things are going to happen to it. And right in the middle, right in the middle, the promises. Bill Wilson sneaks in the solution, too. And I saw it because I had already been doing it. It says no matter how far down the scale you've gone. And a lot of people like to read that, to say, well, all the way to the bottom, no matter how far down the scale we have gone. Whether we keep whether we were functioning Alcoholics or prison inmates doesn't make any difference

no matter how far down the scale you've gone. We'll see how my experience can benefit others. And my favorite sentence in the whole book,

that feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear.

Bill was a grammarian. Why did he? Why didn't he say these feelings of uselessness and self? Why didn't he say that? You know what he was doing? He said that feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. It's the same feeling for people like me.

As long as I'm living for Cliff, I'm a dead man.

As long as I'm walking around the world seeing what you're going to give me, I'm screwed. And I still do it a lot of the time, but not nearly as much as I used to. We will lose interest in selfish things, gain interest in our fellows. I have a meeting every month one of the guys house or my house. We had at my house this month of all the guys I sponsor and I said somebody leads the meeting. They take something out of the book and we go around the room and talk, and I get to sit there and remember what they look like

when they got here,

to see the miracle after miracle after miracles happened in my life. I could have missed that altogether if I'd have been useless.

And I learned everything from a guy named Bill Blake. And that night I was at his house.

Five year loser over educated, pompous, obnoxious loser

and Margie Buck Bills wife opened the door and I'm standing there in the porch,

Miguel on the forehead, loser

and you pretty new guys, let me tell you. Let me tell you what happened.

I have never seen anyone so glad to see me in my life.

Can you imagine this loser? She just split up, Mark, he said. Oh, Cliff. Oh, well, come in, Cliff, come in. In the house. I go pours me a cup of coffee. This is wonderful, she said. Bill's been nuts lately. He's had nobody to work with. He's just been crazy. Oh this is so nice that Bill comes in and says

in about 1/2 an hour. I'm thinking. Anything else I do to help you folks out,

be glad to help any way I can.

They made me feel like cliffs. Here. We can start a A now, you know,

but three weeks later I was in meeting with newcomers, all newcomers, me 2-3 weeks later. By the way, you read better than I did after 12 years. So.

And one of the guys, one of the other newcomers says, what do you mean? This is a selfish program.

And I knew the answer when he asked the question. I knew the answer. See, Bill and Margie were tickled to death for me. They've been praying for me for five years. But Bill and Margie knew the great secret. You can't have it unless you give it away.

You can't keep it unless you give it away. And boy, those two gave it away. Margie just celebrated Thursday, Monday, 37 years, Bill Stead now for about 11 years, I miss him. Every day of my life I miss him. He was my sponsor for 20 years. And by the way, that was the last nice thing the man ever said to me.