Charlie C. from Burbank, CA at Lakeside Conference, TX

Morning. My name is Charlie, and I'm an alcoholic. And before I embark on this odyssey of woe, I want to thank my friend Joe for inviting me to be here. It's it's really an honor to be asked. It's a pain in the butt to do it, but it's, you know, if you know Joe, he'll get you to do it. Alcoholics Anonymous, for those of you who are new, is a terribly, terribly inconvenient thing. I got to tell you,

God knows. God knows. We sympathize with your lack of sleep and everything, but

you'll find that the more willing you are to operate within your inconvenience, the better you feel. So it's a good deal everywhere around. This is a this is a great conference. I didn't realize I knew so many people who were involved with Texas. I've never, I've never been to Brownwood, TX before. It's not one of the whistle stops for American Airlines. And I was like,

this is good. It's all about 8:00 in the morning in Los Angeles, so I can, I'm giddy as hell.

I love Sheila, I love what she had to say. I'm looking forward to hearing Leo and Larry tomorrow. I want to thank everybody for there was a whole crowd of them that came and picked me up at the airport. Larry and Sam and Gracie and Jimmy who the reason the flowers haven't opened yet is because they're they're still not sure they're out of Jimmy's van yet.

He's not driving anymore. You can open now.

Jimmy got that thing going on. I thought wings are going to come out of the side

Airstream. I've seen with a flight attendant

somebody tried to steal it the other night at that ground counters needing some crazy guy jumped in and tried to steal Jimmy'z van. And

I know I can say he's lucky Jimmy's sober.

He doesn't know how lucky he is. He's been touched by God. He didn't even sober yet. The better guy. He all have something to say, but we just had a lot of fun. I mean, it's, it's a

now the sorry part.

I got a comment on me, on the people who are at the commitments here in the in the Jim Saw Jim Shaw jumpsuits.

Nice touch

and he's still here.

Jim used to have a damn car kind of jumpsuit. You can see that. You could see that guy from an airplane

lime bringing. That was unbelievable.

We are a lot of fun, Jim and his jumpsuits. So now there are a lot of people here that people mentioned over the over the weekend, Calvin and Jim and and I've talked a lot with Joe and we're talking about Bob White, who I never got to meet, but have heard his tape and have enjoyed the message. I mean, the message carries on and it's good to see that there's such a continuum of sobriety at a conference like this. I mean, it's amazing. I go to a lot of conferences and I

see that there are people there and, and there are people there who've been there for years, but there doesn't seem to be that interconnection

that most of them that that I see here. And this is, this is a great fun to see. It's fun to watch. I've never experienced before and God forgive me, don't tell anybody outside of here that I said this, but it's actually fun to watch other people having fun. Usually. I just hated to watch other people have fun. Public displays of affection were offensive

and all that hugging and touching and just. I don't think so. I

had to start telling my story, right. We want to get out of here about in time for Gracie to have more, about 12 minutes.

I had a hideous childhood. Both my parents adored me and it was it was really difficult because as far as I'm concerned, love is is harder to take than hatred. I would much rather be hated than love because at least with hatred you can get some torque going. You know people don't like you. You can go back against it. But when people say they love you, you get the sense, at least I do that, that there's some kind of transaction going on, that I don't know what my part is in it, but I better say something quick and

it's usually I love you too,

and then walk away grumbling hard. I've been conned again. I've been pushed in the corner again. I'm an only child. My father was a Carpenter. My mother was, I'd like to say, was a humble virgin woman. And

I

don't know any Baptists.

For your information, there is a P in that word. I've got 2B's but

my my parents didn't have many resources. My mother had had my mother had four full term pregnancies and all all three of the other babies died at birth. And when I was born, you know I would cost and that house would become sterilized. My mother would be trying around washing. We had we had non allergenic Christmas trees for as long as I can remember. I remember one time I was,

I read someone topic Christmas, wondering what's that smell? Someone said it's pine. I thought, I've never smelled that before. We never had a real tree. I always because I was sick and I was sick a lot as a child and would sit at home and I would watch television and I would watch great, these great old movies with William Powell and Errol Flynn and David Niven and all these guys who have such style and such, you know, panache. And I thought, who do I want to be like Errol Flynn or my dad?

Let's see.

No, it's a difficult one. And I and they always had

something in common that wasn't, they always had, everybody was always mixing up a shake or drinks in those movies. And I thought that was cool because, you know,

William Powell and Myrna Loy would come home and find a dead body on a living room floor. They wouldn't call the police. They'd go make martinis. This to me is what a gentleman does,

especially if you're alone in the room with a dead guy and run away. But that's another story. But I

fantasy #3 you know, I thought I,

I, I thought this is what men were supposed to be like. Not like my father who was my dad was a DI in the Marine Corps for eight years. And he, he would, he liked, he worked in the garage all the time. He sawing wood aren't that sawdust on his glasses and not one of those crepe sold shoes. And, and when he go to work in the morning, he take a lunch pail instead of a briefcase. Everybody else's dad seemed to have briefcases and they all seem to work on Wall Street, even though I knew that Wall Street isn't in Anaheim, CA. But

now I think the tryout looking snappy and ready to go on. My father kind of walked out and went to his job. And I was embarrassed by everything. You know, there's never enough for me in my life. I always felt like there was something missing always. And I was brought and when I got into, when I was in school, my parents were always brought in before some

magistrate, whether it was a teacher or a principal or a counselor or a priest. And, and

they were always informed that Charles has potential.

I just don't know why he doesn't do anything about it. And my response is always the same. Great. I've got potential. I know I've got potential. I've always known that my parents now know I've got potential thanks to you. And you know that potential. It's like all gods kill them. No, Charlie's got potential. So why don't we just leave it alone?

I'll use my potential when I'm good and ready to, but I'm just not ready to. Now, Skippy,

maybe you can pick your concerns about my potential and work them on some other stuff. I'll use my potential when I'm ready to use it. And when I do, I hope you were on sunglasses because I'm going to light you up.

But until then, just let me give you a little suggestion and suggest that you go wipe your idiotic concern on somebody else, because I'm not buying. And if you were such hot stuff anyway, you wouldn't be a high school counselor. And I would you,

I, I felt it. I felt fine. It never came out in so many words. And then I said, I said I'll try harder. But I,

I've always been, I've always remembered going around with a sense of absolute

unexplainable anger at everything, just anger at everything that I didn't have, at everything that everybody all seemed to have. And it was impossible for me to see the goodness in other people. I could not. It just irritated me. I would watch. I hated my own generation. I hated my parents generation which put me in a very difficult position,

a lonely actually, and I was no shining star at school. I got out, I graduated when I was 17. I went right into the music business as I was a clerk in a record store. And I,

it was there with some of the, some of the hoodlums of my school who are by today's standards like like a Boy Scout. But these are some sort of tough guys at school. And they came and started hanging out in the record store and they invited me to a party one time. And I went to this party and which was an unusual circumstance because there were other people at the party. And I, I have one thing that I remember very well and that is I have a,

an uncontrolled anger and hatred of the human race. I despise people, but on the other hand, I demand their love and approval at the same time, which again, torque the city. And I don't know if anybody else experiences that, but I, I just, it, it caused a lot of pain, but I went to this party anyway just just because I had my, my dance card, what was open that night. And I went and

I somebody gave me a can of malt liquor. I didn't know what to do. I was standing there at the party. I was not a drinker. My parents weren't drinkers. I thought the drinkers at my school were were weak willed trash bags.

Been working on Mount to anything and now I was right.

I got this can of malt liquor and I started drinking and by about halfway through the 16 oz can of liquor, malt liquor, I started to feel something completely different. And the only reason I tell anything about the time

before I started drinking is that I always have to remember exactly what alcohol relieves me of before I can ever appreciate what sobriety is all about. Because alcohol at that moment that I had that first can of, of booze made me feel different. It made me feel complete. It made me feel as if that missing piece that I've been looking for, I didn't know I was looking for it. And for those of you who are new, trust me, I, I knew none of what I'm telling you this morning at the time that it was happening. It's only been, I forgot to mention

I'm sober since the 11th of June of 1981 and it's only been since then and lots of a, a meetings and doing the steps. So I have any inkling as to what was going on at the time. But it wasn't coming to me at the moment that it was happening. But I started to feel happy. I started to feel connected to the people in the room. I didn't have that, that sense of separateness from everybody. I felt like I was at one with everybody in the room and I felt joy where I, I've never experienced joy. It was coming from the inside out and it was radiating

me and I felt so damn happy. I just wanted to run out and start, you know, barking at cars. I was, I was excited to to feel that way and I felt a sense of hope that that was

uncharacteristic of me and I wanted to drink some more. And I drank till the end of that night. I drank more and more and I wound up in a blackout, running alongside of my best friend's car, throwing up in the wind and just laugh and my butt off because I had been there. And if you are like I am and you're an alcoholic like I am, you never drank to get drunk. You never drank to get stupid. You never drank to embarrass your family. You never drank to lose your job. You drank like I did, I believe to get there.

That place where I go when I drink, it's that safe place where everything is going to be OK and it's about to get better. And we may have had, we may have all different stories and all different circumstances in our lives. I guarantee you that most Alcoholics that I've met, I

drink to get. They will. We will drink under the worst circumstances with the memory. At some point we're going to get there just for a little while, that place where everything is going to be OK and I can kind of get some control over my life. Because what alcohol did for me was it gave me a sense of control. I was married when I was 25 and my wife was not an alcoholic. And I kind of tore that one into the ground. But

she would drink. She tried to drink with me and she would drink and she'd say I got to stop. I'm just trying to lose control.

I thought you're just not committed.

I don't understand that because when you drink, I thought everybody felt the same way. I do. I drink. I start to feel a sense of control for the very first time. I I'm out of control Silver.

I hate things sober. I'm brittle sober. I burn up sober. I grind sober. I'm like, you know,

I'm like Captain Kangaroo with a loaded weapon. I'm trying to be nice to everybody, but shape up or something.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to kneecap Mr. Greenbean

Go.

So I started my drinking career at that party, you know, and I drank anytime like I was 18 years old at the time and I was a

I had some goals. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to do speed useful and do something. And I found something equally fascinating about alcohol from the fact that it gets you there. And that is that alcohol gave me the satisfaction of a job well done without ever having to do anything.

I have a couple of drinks. It's done as far as I'm concerned

and well, it's not exactly done. I just have to do the paperwork. But as far as I'm as far as all the other stuff is I'm writing the novel. As I'm sitting here, I'm down with the Humdinger and and Anaheim, CA having some beers with all the other intellectuals in there and the the brain surgeons and astronauts waiting for a flight. We are all in there.

Fix some things, you know, I'm coming up with ideas. You know that was a hotbed of ideas, the humdinger and

I started drinking my drunk while I was really boring. I have the most boring drunk, a logging Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm, I'm a sick twisted drug on A at a minor key and

I've heard your story. So I know how how wimpy I am. I mean, I've come to meetings, I've heard people talk about stuff that just amazed me. I was newly sober. I was just sitting there going. I only came to the meetings to hear the drunk logs you know guys talking about. I remember hearing a priest one time saying he came out of a blackout in a hot tub with a couple of hookers.

Go, Father,

I heard, I heard people talk about fireballing cars. You know, I took out 16 parked cars when I was brought one New Year's Eve. I thought

I used to just drive mine across a wall as I'm backing up, you know, or bumping into a post or or rear end somebody at about 6 miles an hour

just to have to have somebody pull me out of my car.

I have

you all right now. I'm going to be in a second.

I have. I've wedged my car between news stamps and on the sidewalk

in front of a fast food restaurant while people are inside,

and I'm just coming out of the blackout, you know, and there I am, stuck. And I didn't put the car here. Somebody did. I'm just trying to get it out. I don't know how I got here. Don't look at me like that, you moron. If you had any class at all, you come out here and help me out.

I just sit there with your little hamburger looking out the window and

so annoying and

but never a fireball. I roll the car once that, but it didn't burn. So

I've never, I've never come out of a blackout yelling cover me, I'm going in.

It's more and more depressing the more I think about it.

I get the AA and hear what I miss.

I never took a morning drink except on weekends. I get an A and I hear that's the way you stop feeling bad in the morning.

Oh,

I was just there for hours, blonde, my nails across the Formica County going, oh God, somebody killed me. I get into A and said people say, yeah, you take a morning drink, it goes away.

Thank God. I'll just take a word for it.

I'm a blackout banker. I'm just, I don't have many great blackout stores. I came out of blackouts in places like the dry cleaners

with a guy leaned over the counter going boxed or hangers,

and I'm sorry,

I always just sort of materialize somewhere

for a while. It was great. It was like it was close to to

metaphysical transportation as I can get. That's like being beamed someplace. I'd be, I'd be working at a party in Long Beach and I blinked twice and I'd be standing in my apartment to Santa Monica, where my car keys in my hand going. Bam.

The the travel time I'm going to say

didn't break this one wall and put I'm going also my my living room. But unfortunately, you can't plan where you're coming out of these things. And I'll come out of blackouts trying to get on the freeway the wrong direction.

Yeah. And and not feeling

horrified or embarrassed, just feeling angry that they don't put better signs up. I was getting on the off ramp and

I thank God that there were people coming off the off ramp who were sitting at the light bumping my bumper to get me to back off and and blinking their brights at me because I could easily have done that,

easily have done that. I don't believe God was with me that night. I hear people say, well, you know, God was riding with you that night. Got no fool.

God, I was not. I was not blessed that night. I was not gifted by God's grace. What happened was I was lucky.

I'll just plug lucky. A lot of us who are Alcoholics just like I am, who are good people, and you look around in a meeting and you see people and they talk about the horrible things they've done. You go, you sometimes question, can this person

be that bad because they're such good people, You know, they're selfless. They're they're useful, They're full of joy. It's hard to imagine sometimes that people were, had had passed that caused them to do things that are shameful and that they've had to take dramatic steps to change in their lives. But I don't believe, I think that there are people just like me and just like you who are out in Los Angeles right now who are getting on the freeway in the wrong direction and killing people. And I know worse than I am. But they just want lucky like I was. I just thought I was lucky.

I have a friend named Paula in Southern California who was not lucky. And she killed a guy, hit him head on in her car and killed a man. And she spent the rest of her life and the rest of her sobriety trying to make some sense and some use out of that man's life. And I don't believe that God was with me and not with Paula. You know, I have to believe that God is with everybody, but that some of us are lucky and some of us aren't. And I miss the bullet. You know, I just happen to miss the bullet. It doesn't matter. It's not.

There's no sense of sanctity and I'm not one of the chosen ones. As I hear sometimes in meetings, people say I was chosen to stay sober.

No way, no way. I was lucky to stay. So if I was lucky to find people who brought me into a A and were able to help me, I was lucky enough that my, my feelings of, of

I was beaten down enough to be willing to listen to what people said. And like I said, I was married my to back up a little bit. When I was 23, my father died of cancer. He had about a four months or three months bout with lung cancer. And I couldn't get out of Santa Monica to go down and visit him. And it was about 40 miles away. And by the time I got into publishing, you know, I was in a receiving clerk at a bookstore. And I was,

my mother would call me and say, are you coming down to visit your dad this weekend? And I would say, you know, I got so much stuff to do. I just started this new job and

I go down to this place called the Ore House in Santa Monica and just sit there and drink and not go down and see. And, you know, I always kept my father sort of at arm's length because I never felt connected to my parents. You know, I always felt like a stranger in the house. I always felt like somebody who didn't really belong in this family. Like I've been placed there and I don't know who they are and they don't know me and I don't want to talk about it, you know, And we were my parents are of a generation that you just don't want an area of linen. You don't talk about your feelings and which some days I

yearn for now, but since most people never met a feeling they didn't want to talk about. But

my parents were, were lovely, loving people. My dad was, was dying and I couldn't get down there to see him until about the last week before he died. And then I didn't drink that whole week. I didn't drink and I, I, I couldn't eat. And I, I lost about 17 lbs in a week. I just, I just dropped it. And then at his wake, one of his best friends came up and handed me a water glass full of vodka and said, you know, here you go. And I, I started off drinking again and that was, you know, I just started moving

hard liquor and I, I drank because I love the effect that alcohol has on a guy like me. It gives me hope. I can never forget that. The thing that's troublesome about alcohol is that the very thing that

causes me later on the most trouble physically, emotionally, spiritually and within relationships with other people is the only thing that makes life worth living for me.

And that kind of contradiction, that kind of dilemma that alcoholic space and Gene Duffy used to talk about, because Gene Duffy was a, a sober a member who died about 10 years ago. He, he had a, a ranch in Northern California and, and a lot of people got sober at Jeans ranch. And Gene said that there's a point where an alcoholic sits at a bar and looks at a glass of whiskey and says, if I drink this, it'll kill me. But if I don't drink this, I'm going to die.

What do I do now? You know? And I reached that point on the 11th of June of 1981.

I burned up my marriage. My wife, unfortunately,

I loved her as much as I was capable of loving anybody, but I had no concept about love. I mean, I've got I've got no trouble with relationships until another persons involved. Then I told, I mean, I always had a cash me out and I thought being married would somehow give me that that elusive missing piece that would make me feel better. I fired a lot of different stuff. You know, I have my drug story. The only problem I had with drugs is that drugs got me loaded,

you know, and got me high. I don't want to be loaded. I want to be there, you know? I want to be sitting around smoking pot till 3:00 in the morning and listening to one course of a Steely Dan song for about four hours and then they wind up in the kitchen at dawn eating ketchup packets.

That may, that may get some of you a big rise. But then you think for me,

I took amphetamines for a while. Nothing quite like having the sensation of your eyes trying to beat you in the next room. You know,

your whole life is

or you take you take down a Valium and just sit around the house going.

I've been going to the hospital for a while. So I was peeing blood and I was at my, after my wife and I separated, I was having some difficulties, some physical difficulties, probably just emerging childhood illnesses like

urine in the bloodstream. But

I call my remaining friends that I didn't have friends who abandoned me. You know, I just disengaged my friendships. I just stopped calling people. I just stopped seeing people. I just stopped being involved and kind of disengaged everybody so that I was under the illusion that I had no friends. What had happened was I was a friend to no one. I couldn't be a friend to anybody because I had to protect what I was doing. And I had to protect that little fantasy that someday

I'm going to get off this receiving dock and I'm going to wear a shirt that doesn't have my name on a patch in it on it. And I'm going to go out and I'm going to do something and write something good. But I can't do that today. So I'm going to have a drink and I'll do it later. But, and, and then the cycle would start again. And I started going to therapy, which

I was certainly wasn't going very well.

I was. And she was a wonderful therapist. And this woman was was professional and she was kind and she did everything in my interest. She did exactly what a therapist is supposed to do, but you can't.

Her main direction was, I want you to be honest with me.

God, you know, I came in one time smelling of alcohol and she said, if you ever come into my office smelling like that again, I'm not going to treat you anymore. So I break after the meetings and after the sessions and, but I would not religiously not drink. You know, before I'm, I would go in there and, and she'd say, you have to be honest. I couldn't be honest with her. And you make very slow progress when you're not honest with your therapist. I didn't want her to not like me. I couldn't tell her what I was doing. And she said we have to be honest with your wife.

Tell her what's going on.

Good idea. I'll be honest. OK. Yeah, I can wait. I can't wait till that day when she walks in the door. Honey, I'm home. How was your day? Oh, great. Got up about an hour after you did. Hungover. One time a liquor store got a couple of bottles of champagne because I'm sure David Niven drinks that in the morning. And

what's $0.99 a bottle? Why not? But I drank that. I got kind of, I got kind of bored and I didn't decide not to go to work today. And I, I instead, I went down to the Pussycat Theater in Torrance and I, I caught the afternoon showing of Donkey Lunch.

And then I went back to sitting there for a couple of hours just doing a little research for my novel. I went out there. I did something really disgusting in the car on the way home. I got there, I went stocked off at a liquor store and got a bottle of cheap bourbon. I came home, took a shower, started drinking. How was your day? You know, can't be honest with anybody when you're drinking. You can't tell them the truth.

Your Co workers be honest with your coworkers. How was your weekend? Great. Got off work Friday Frank a pint of Jakarta gin went down and got thrown out of your house because they didn't want me to come in. I went back. I smoked a big bunch of hashish with my neighbor. It didn't do much for me but I was wound up. Wound up standing on top of the roof yelling wait all through the cars down below.

I came to the next morning, got up, I went downstairs, drink with my buddy John at the Humdinger down in Anaheim and we drank there for about 14 hours. I came home, my mom was gone for the weekend so I broke into her house and

woke up the next morning. We're on one of her nightgown. But

so I tried to clean everything up, you know, and get the smell of vomit out of the room and, and mop up the floor because somebody had urinated and

damn cats were coming into the dog door. And then I just went, went home and I bought a bottle of booze. I got some change out from between the seats of my car because by that time I was out of money. And I just sat here in the living room in my house and my apartment, and I looked out the window and I thought, everybody else has somebody that they care about and some life that they're living.

And my wife is left. And I'm just sitting here feeling like the loneliest human being in the world. I wish I was dead.

How's your weekend?

You know,

it's you can't be honest about anything. I built such an architecture of lies that I could never figure out what was going on in my life. And So

what happened was I went to a retreat with this therapist on the 11th of June of 19. Oh, I was the 12th of June. I had my last rank on the 11th of June.

I wound up going to this retreat. I had what I believe to be

God's intercession in my life. It sounds very dramatic, but it wasn't. It was a very quiet thing. I was up there. We had a guided meditation. If you have been a therapy, they have these things where they take you through a field and you're everybody in the room got their eyes closed. They're laying on the floor and they're all meditating. They're all about 10 of us in this room. And I was the only one who could feel the shag carpet skewering me in the back. You know, I'm kind of bouncing around with it on the floor because I haven't had a drink at about 12 hours. And

and she was guiding us through all this stuff. And then she said, now I want you to go out on the grounds and spend the next five hours thinking about where you are in your life right now and where you're going to be in five years.

I thought I got a better idea.

Why don't I just put my face right in front of the bumper of your car and you floor it?

Because I haven't got a clue what's going to happen to me in five years. I went out and I was going to hang myself at this meditation retreat, which is certainly, certainly grounds for a refund. I would say

I hope nobody died. I haven't done that since I've been talking. Joe, get out your checkbook.

But

I thought out on the ground. I just so feeling a thought came to me

that I'm nothing.

I'm never going to be anything. I'm 30 years old and

I'm useless

and I wish I was dead. I can't have a relationship, I can't keep my job going. I'm going to be fired for my job in the short time anyway.

I don't know what to do. I just wish I was dead.

And I've got a feeling inside that

was not a voice, but it felt like, it sounded like one that said, yes, you're all the things that you're afraid of, but I still love you.

I know where that came from. I felt completely and indescribably loved

for about 10 seconds, completely filled up with love, and then it just disappeared at

sat there and I cried for about 3 hours out on this ground. I could not figure out what had happened to me. And it's like somebody reached inside of me.

Change, just turn my, my, whatever that little navigational device is, it's inside you. Just turned it a little bit and then walked away. And I couldn't deal. I felt like I was completely off kilter everywhere. And I sat there and cried and I didn't realize until later I, I wound up in sobriety becoming a teacher. I'm not a teacher anymore, but I was teaching for about 6 years. I would teach a class. I taught writing,

ironically enough,

and I taught essay writing, and I'm one of the essays that I would teach my students was how to write a how to essay, how to do something, because it's important to know how to do that when you're in school.

So I'll teach assessment. I would use a model essay by a man who wrote about how to open an oyster.

You know, just a simple how to and an experienced fisherman can take an oyster and you can take, you can take an oyster and pull on it all you like and that thing will not open it all muscle you can tug and pull. You can epoxy it to two cars and have it try to pull it apart. It won't open. It will not open. But an experienced fisherman will pick it, pick it up, take his knife and go and open it right up and you go. How did you do that?

And the, and the essay talked about how you take the knife point and you go along

and you find what's called the purchase point, because eventually that little guy's got a breeze and he opens up a little air hole to let some air in. And that's the purchase point. And an experienced fisherman knows where that is and he can just push the point of the knife in there and slide it wide open. And the, and the, the oyster has no resistance to it because he's opened himself up a little bit and he can't close up that fast and efficiently can just open him up. And you got yourself an oyster. And

I believe that's what God does with Alcoholics. You know, we are so tight and pulled tight,

but there's a point where we just have to drop it. I mean, we can't. And there's a point, I think in every Alcoholics drinking where you have to make

there's a turning point. You know, it says that in the big book and and it doesn't and it's not as dramatic as you think. There's just a point where you go from being absolutely miserable to where you just don't know if you can be anymore miserable. And you pause for a second to see how much farther you can go. And I believe that's when God just takes that, finds that purchase point and just lets his presence be known. I'm here. He opened me wide up and then closed me again and said, now, now what are you going to do? Now you know I'm here,

what are you going to do? And

I didn't know what to do. I went home from that retreat. I I didn't buy any booze, though. I was, I usually bought alcohol on the way home from anything you have to make.

There's a turning point. You know, it says that in the big book and, and it doesn't and it's not as dramatic as you think. There's $20.00 a month. I was about four months behind three or four months. And, and 'cause that's a lot of scratch to get together at one time when you're drinking. And I bought popsicles and I sat on the front porch of that house and ate popsicles and would go in about every 25 minutes and barf up some melted rainbow thing. I'd sit out there and just shook it out. And I, I didn't know that's what you should do. I mean,

you know, sugar helped. I didn't have as grotesque a

a well, I'm not thinking this morning

detox as most people do, or I probably should even compare it. You know, I just had my detox, so I don't ever want to go through that again. It, it was a hot spell in the summer of 1981 and

I shook it out for about four days. I would forget how to walk. I was at work one time and there was some attractive women behind me and I've been on hormone alert since I was about 9:00. So I, I, I know when there's a beautiful woman behind me and I just forgot to walk that I robbery and I'm serious. I go sit down on a planter and stop there, you know, while they pass. That's a

I just almost cried there. I thought, oh, God damn it. What's the matter with me? I can't walk. I'm driving to work and a seagull would fly by my car and I'd have to pull over and cry. You know, which is not one of the one of the excused absences when you're late for work, You know, Eagles crying, flying, had to cry. And you know, it's not. I just would. I was my emotions were just fluttering on the surface. And I realized my sponsor later told me, what you're getting when you're newly sober is raw information

with nothing to buffer against, information that's not just raw, but it's information that I've never seen in a sober light before without something to protect me. And I didn't want to drink because I was sick. I was physically sick. And I had that experience. And I didn't know what happened to me. And I just, I'd be in the car driving along. I hear somebody going Charlie in the back seat. I look around. There's nobody in the car I was having. I saw these gnats around here.

I got those kind of Nats that you get sometimes when you're detoxing where you're talking to somebody and they just appear in your peripheral vision

like that and they're there and you don't, nobody will brush them. Like if I start maths on you, I have a courtesy to brush the maps off. You know, it's just a human courtesy or just pull them off and you know,

it's protein. It's

I at least have a tendency to dust them away, but you're talking to someone who's masked them up and they're just a little cloud right here and you have to turn and look at them,

but they're gone and they go behind you. I guess you no matter where you turn, they're hovering and then that back they come and just go look at somebody again. So I learned I was having some fun. I just would brush them away, you know, So I'm the only guy in the room standing going like this, you know, and.

I got a split. There's when I was when I was about six months over out of the classy's yard and we're playing softball and they were playing softball. I was in the stands for some reason

and I was sitting next to this guy named Bill. And there was a guy named Kenny in our group who was a terrible, terrible drunk. And he would go out on these monument, He'd go to take the garbage out and come back about six months later, you know, and

Kenny was back from a drunk. He was about a day sober. And it was August of that year of 81. And Kenny's out there and he's standing on the plate and he's playing softball. Because nothing is more fun than to watch a guy 24 hours sober try to hit a ball on a hot day.

They put Kenny out there and Kenny standing at the plate and he's got the shakes and he stand up and, and the pitcher throws the ball right through, right into the strike zone. Still like it. Kenny won't swing. Because this big swarm of naps, like this huge swarm of Nats was swirling around home. You know, they find a spot and they just stay there.

And they were swirling around. Kenny and Ken stand there and he's sweating and he's looking. And then when the ball comes by again, strike two and they're gonna sway at him. Ken, that's the best I can give you. And he's looking. And he stole another one and he wouldn't swing at it, you know? And, and finally the guy next to me on the stand says we see him too. Ken Anyway,