The Orange County AA Convention in Costa Mesa, CA

hi I'm Sam an alcoholic

and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous

course Frank Frank I'd like to thank you for taking me over to the adult bookstore last night

we just went to reminisce about any big deal

but while we were there I got a little nosey and I went over to the a a section

and then we went from there to the Allentown section

but it was empty they were out of whips and chains

I know there's Alan on here I can feel your releasing me

I got him back this morning I

I went out on the balcony early right after sunrise and there was a bunch of running around the parking lot looking for somebody to release so

my modem

so

you're wondering why there's no shirt and tie I'm dressed up

where I came from

got to work your way back

I have I'll try to leave you with some hope today to

been sober a long time but there are some days when I pass is a newcomer

I don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up

I come from a family of alcoholics most of them drink those a note should

my earliest memories are of my aunt Bessie

drinking and telling me bedtime stories at which she only had two

he said do you want to hear about the time your uncle it was a bootlegger when I was a **** in Peoria

so I learned the facts of life although I didn't know that's what I was learning

I M. S. they got me into a lot of trouble she'd give me a quarter if I'd say **** in the grocery store in America my mother

I got a dollar by said insured

my mother decided to send me away for the cure so she sentenced me to eight years in a Catholic school

where I majored in guilt

with a minor in shame

I taught the nuns a lot of new words

they taught me about staying every night after school

helping the janitor which I did took me two and a half years to learn to say yes ma'am and No ma'am but I did

and I went in the opposite direction I became an altar boy I sang in the choir and I got straight days and I got them off my back and that's the only reason I did that

because my aunt Bessie and warned me she said you're just like your father so don't try and be good just drop me a son of a **** like him

but by the time I was twenty five I'd overshot the field

I saw I had met the one down the street and we're both drunk and she looked at me and she said you are the grand finale of son of a **** in this family

twenty five years old and she

anyway I

wonder to that school and the nuns kept me out of trouble but I stayed in the family business which is stealing

but when I got out of there I didn't have anybody to protect me so I got sentenced to a reform school

and it was pretty much like the Catholic school uniforms discipline that sort of thing but well I was in there I I was thirteen fourteen years old

I went through a change I went through puberty in about twenty minutes

and I came out of there I was nothing but a **** little kid loose on the streets

with nothing but a hard on in a bad attitude

and no place to put either one

I don't mind hearing that as long as the rest of you do

huh grab the newcomer

rehearsing is first talk

I went to a meeting of the night it was like a master class and whining

and

that is pretty much like that he went through the pressure

but I I need to go to meetings like that you know I just agree with people to say they've never been to a bad meeting because I will come with me I know where this

zero three right up the street

I came out of there needing a meeting every time

so what I don't want it any other way I'm tired of sticking my head in the sand and pretending everything is wonderful I disagree with people that have trial sobriety everything just mall Willis all the time

or the woman up in Venice I used to ask her how she was and she'd say you know I'm in the middle of America on thank god damn really

she would always say to me you know when I die I'm going to the big meeting in the sky

I'm going to talk to the Big Boy upstairs and sit around the big coffee pot

I had about three or four days and sobriety when I heard her say that I thought not me I'm going straight to the big liquor store

then on to the big drunk tank cell be with my friends

sobriety was not all that appealing to me she just yet side I was still smoking marijuana

which city is the pain of meetings

anyway I got into a lot of trouble and and I got married and didn't know what I was doing and I went to the penitentiary when I was eighteen years old and I still haven't had anything to drink because I did one end up like my relatives I did all that without anything to drink so you see I can't blame the bottle on everything I was the son of a **** and then I drank

and then it got worse and when I got out of the penitentiary I started to drink I started to smoke non habit forming marijuana I took every kinds of help that I can get my hands on and I liked him and I especially liked amphetamine because yes the enhanced my intelligence

and of course all they did was speed up my mouth

so I had an amphetamine mouth in a general brain

get into lots of trouble by the time I was twenty two years old I was hooked on everything I tried and was wanting more and I didn't care where they came from they might work

and so

I knew I was hooked I knew that I couldn't change there was no hope for me and I really didn't give a damn about but that's the way it is because I've inherited all this crap from this family I've inherited the major defects of character both sides

and I ran into a mathematical genius that

I've gone to school with and he figured out how to fill out income tax forms and get money back although I hadn't worked where he said I did

we got a thousand dollars the check arrived and we cashed and split the money we just did it again the following year

two weeks after that check arrived the police arrive

I'm in trouble again but I use my father's name so they arrested my father for my father was drunk all the time he's already done it so

no big deal

he went into court and pled guilty and they put him away

well he was in the federal penitentiary terre Haute Indiana he found Alcoholics Anonymous and he's still he sobered up and there was the worst man I've ever met in my life and I live to the end of the century and vote for **** a century I'm voting for pop over a Hitler and all those other fun people that we've had in our lives this year this century

because he's the worst man I've ever met but at the same time he was the one that showed me the weight Alcoholics Anonymous because anything that could straighten that man I've had to be very very strong because you say parole officers guns knives women anything nothing could ever straighten up manta he got out of jail he's still going to these damn meeting so I thought well he has to the parole officer sent him over there

you got offer only still going the meeting well is this he's the treasurer

and he still is continuing to go to meetings and he stayed sober the rest of his life

and that was what showed me the way

I was hanging around with a lot of Italians at the time I thought they were gangsters

they weren't they were just the Titans

but I was out in front of the restaurant one evening and there was a bunch of drunks out there for shooting it out and one killed another one and I was a witness to the killing and I knew how to be in a a live witness when in doubt get the hell out of there and change your name and I real man Billick accordion and went home to mama

mom I have been to Alan on

she had those little beady eyes and that smile

she got my **** up against the wall and released me

told me I could stay there for a few days and then I had to get the hell out of there and while I was there my youngest brother came running from the cops and others and one morning he and I were kicking together

and he says to me

our luck holds out will be dead by noon

then later on

we got this

able to keep a little bit of wine on our stomachs and he said you know as soon as we get off of this one let's really go on one

thank you see that magic thing was there always in that bottle for us

and a couple of days later he and I woke up in a wrecked car in the backseat of the of the damn thing and it was in a junk yard full of other wrecked cars and if you want a little paranoid in your life try that at five A. M. with a lot of fog around

erase the realistic

he wakes me up and he says wake up I think we've been thrown away

and I believe that I panicked

I moved to Venice California where I was to live for the next thirty years of my life

I had two more years of drinking

to do and of course taking all those drugs

and I have moved into the worst place in town by this time I knew enough start at the bottom because that's where you're gonna end up anyway in the worst place in town inventors was well the worst

I live next door to a girl who was a manic depressive schizophrenic suicidal

Kerry three suicide notes in a razor blade for emergencies

she would come home every night from work brush your teeth turn on the gas and go to bed

my kind of girl

his natural for us to fall in love

because I was bragging at that time about being a schizophrenic also so it was a group thing

I still drag that into Alcoholics Anonymous I told my sponsor I'm a schizophrenic I I'm a lot of people you know I could pose for a group picture by myself

because well I hate to tell you this with all of you have to work the steps

I didn't want to hear that I got integrated

anyway I called my father Christmas time after I lived there a couple of years which is the only time he would accept a collect call from me and he suggested that I go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and for some reason I paid attention time

and it took me almost two days to quit taking everything I was taking because he told me that don't smoke any marijuana before you go over there because you're not going to hear anything and I didn't know marijuana affected my hearing that much

took me two days but I did it I left it on the ten o'clock bus to go into Los Angeles defined Alcoholics Anonymous and it took me all day to do it I walked into a meeting at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax at the sixty three hundred club it had about ten minutes to go I was carrying a trombone I am not a musician

but you can sell trombones and I knew that

just lying there on claims by the bus stop anyway

there was a

the lady Schering

when I walked in and she said that she'd wetter pants twice and come down to Holly synonymous I have a boy would only find out what I've done

that never bothered me I mean I drank in bars where hell that they didn't even bother with that sort of thing you just sat there

I used to drink in a bar that had a sign ups as men's room you open the door you're in the parking lot

I class bar

anyway

hi Matt Mister Quinn that evening

he had fortunately been to another meeting but he

he came by the club and

he gave me some hope because I there was a man sitting there any near Quinn and I and I heard him say I'm sober today and I'm not unhappy about it and that was the problem I hated sobriety I couldn't stand it I feared it I could not let go would not let go of that bottle and related things because it blotted out gallery that I was so deathly afraid of I did not know how to live

Quinn and a bunch of people were laughing and having a good time they said come back tomorrow night nobody had said that in a long time

I mean even bartenders my got it two weeks before I quit drinking

I was in a bar in Santa Monica California I was kicked out as I went in

please help help help just like that and he said and take your grandmother with you

I've been dating her two years I

well I don't know how your sex life wasn't

mine was run by a little boy

anyway

I went back the next night and I continue to go to meetings nobody mentioned marijuana so I didn't mention it

somebody mentioned pills they didn't mention here Ryan

other wonderful things that I liked or cocaine so I didn't mention it

and so the end of ten days of moping around

I was with a bunch of people and we smoked two or three joints I got thirsty I drag

I got drowsy I took some pills and natural progression

I stayed loaded

for a week and I came back Alcoholics Anonymous I walked back into the sixty three hundred club and I asking did where the hell is a lower companion meeting

by this time I knew what I was I've been going to meeting try just wasn't identifying at all I didn't know enough to identify with the emotions I was busy with other things at the time of course

this guy took me to a meeting over in the corner of peak on Eldorado that was called the end of the line

and that sucker was the end of the line

the beginning of the meeting the German your shelves everything inside you said there are no conditions here it's every man for himself

yes pronouncements the guy stood up over here and he said I'm thinking into depression he said I'm very depressed I think I'm going to kill myself this week

I won't be here next week I want to say goodbye to all my friends

all right

Germans that go head no just out of a **** nobody likes anyway

I found a group I could identify with

I used to see those guys you're years later a guy named Jake Sean was the one who's going to kill himself in the German was again any rule hawk there's a name for your rule hawk love does within everybody had nicknames in those days I love that used to have to made a face Floyd

thank you the dike

they were there it was wonderful anyway

years later I'd see Jake and rule in meetings and they still hated each other maybe sitting on the opposite side of the room and during the lord's prayer I used to watch it and J. could look over there and I can see maybe just Maling use out of a bit Jack

one ninety just bluntly said it rule it right after

great

nowadays we leave that the newcomers but

and those anyway

but ten minutes into the meeting through the side door came three dikes and

the the two silver ones were carrying a drunken Monday helping her along as they came through the door she dropped her person out but hello again a bottle in a deal though

standard equipment for diapers role I know

the two server ones got the fighting over the contents of the person

rule kicked him out and they left that either and she sobered up and never took another drink the rest of her life and she said that she was over because she was made welcome at that group

and I believe that should say it for alcoholics anonymous because I go to some groups of lately when I got so damn many rules I mean Wilson can get a cake there

we're in this together enough of these elitist groups and separatist and all that sort of thing I think the only report

the only requirement for membership is breathing

what we used to have in the Venice group we had to sign up for that we had to make our own signs that we finally started a group in Venice and it was wonderful we we were poor we used to go to the right would meeting pass our own basket

we found two groups the gateway book the newcomers so we had to professional newcomers we sent another

and we had a bunch of others that went out on raiding parties to get us literature different groups

so our literature rack was a who's who of Alcoholics Anonymous and went all over the place

I went to a meeting that started at two thirty A. M. there was a late meeting at the sixty three hundred clubs on Friday nights and then on Saturday night there was one in Santa Monica twenty sixteen Broadway I used to go there with Joe and a lot of other people there were some wonderful meetings there one of the very first ones I went to I discovered that we're not headline locked

your neighbor well was there bill Wilson was there and

very well said to him we'll send you ever stop to think that that big flashlights spiritual awakening you had was the guy in the next bed turning on his night life

I've been there that gave me some hope they gave me a lot of home

so I kind of miss that thing that we read you know we are not saints because every time I hear that today I look around I think well maybe

I know that there's a few in my area that are waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity

or the very least I have their indigenous thing glass window in a club someplace I'm certain centers holding cults like we have up the road here

yeah well for the

in this together nobody's ahead of anybody else some of it's been here longer than others so what

have you read this book his name is up the road to as Clancy sees what bill thought he saw

well I. after I'd been sober while I I jumped right into the program I was going to be the best one that ever I'm gonna work the steps I'm running around bragging to people I'm doing this I'm doing that I would talk about the Greek philosophers ninety well yes you know this four step that the unexamined life isn't worth living you know at

there was a lady there named Charlie O. Herron should say to me well

the N. live life isn't worth examining either

but she had bullshit fillers inner ears and I didn't know that or with the top Jr

I found a whole lot of people that handle should filters in in their ears and consequently they saved my life by translating for all these wonderful things I had to say because my communication with most people was consistent the consisted of this I waited for you to shut up so I could say something important

all we did was **** facades

there was no communication in my life I learned that after I got here there was no love in my life just a vague sort of communication with people I've had so much to learn the only quarrel I have the program is you can't be restored and nothing he never had

had any sanity to start with but you can take your basic insanity here so come on in and do that and get involved zero the people I love around here that wants to invest their experience in others and newcomers pass it on because I was always turning around worshipping my sponsor you said you're facing the wrong way turn around

I get into gigantic arguments with him and he could cut through anything I had to say in one sentence usually

so many times I take your wet brain **** just leave me alone with and he said well you started the conversation and

sometimes he would say did you hear that noise so what nice to say I heard your mind close

I kind of overshot the veil I used to walk there in the meetings with the big book under one arm in the Bible under the other arm and I got so obnoxious around the sixty three hundred club but I suspect is names here and the manager of the club got together they used to send me out on take twelve step calls to get rid of me

being a fanatic I brought people back

they were a little reluctant but what the hell

Brian with a bottle of wine and

and some of those people are still summer today they don't know they're in a by mistake

then I had a hell of a depression in the middle of all this spiritual giant thing I was going through

I had this this depression came around I didn't know what the hell to do and I remember running out of the Venice meeting screaming at him you son of a **** I'm never pressure me into happiness

and I realize what I'd say

I've had so many wonderful times here and I've had so many bad times here because it's called living do you come in here and stick your head in the sand good luck

that's why don't trust people believe people that have this trial a lot sobriety all the time

I I love people that say I'm screwed

I have had it

or is it a high tower up in my neck of the woods does he said he had all these things coming down on him and finally one day just looked up and he said make your point

there's a lot of wonderful people and a lot of great experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous avail yourself of them use it otherwise it's just a bunch of talk a lot of research lab

around here it doesn't take long for that to happen usually this over a few months and enjoy a year I got very glib an intellectual and I hope but the spiritual giant I could knock and I went on down to twenty feet with my five

I shook hands with a newcomer the whole right side so we're not

I got a meeting one evening or I've saved a whole lot of souls an ****

and I was on the way home I stopped in the grocery store and I'm standing in line and I thought why can't these people feel my advice I'm sending them out here

just radiating all over the place

then the line moves slower and slower and slower and I reverted to what I'm really like

if you center this is news that there was an alcoholic and a potential killer in this line to get the hell out of my way

and that's one of the major

the reason is that I need meetings

I keep coming back here because I need to keep on an even keel I'm here today to continue what I have found here to continue my sobriety if I stay away from meetings is the same as pouring miracle grow on my defects of character

I'm old now I don't Kerry to many of them with me I left him in Indiana and

Serra in the garage meeting as we speak

by the time I get home they will head pops on the kitchen floor and they're waiting for me

so I will need a meeting when I get home

and home was wherever I'm at

I feel very much at home here you guys have a good time at this convention I have notice several hundred of the world's worst predators here we are

well that's what I think what I'm going to meeting some nice and again the world's worst predators here we are good thing we interact and

although some I I know that they get in dollars Prozac thing I I think in the town where I live I think they're going to Prozac Olympics there this year

because they can settle on a date

and remember it

there's a guy in my neck of the woods that for Prozac today for that accident and twenty six yeah

and he has the longest the summertime of anybody in my neck of the woods and I saw him last summer and out of this corner of the mouth was a cigarette this corner of the mouth he was growing a little and that was twenty seven cents with the shelling on its thirty teacher any of just what his pants and I said Jerry how's it gone he said wonderful walked right into the wall

so much for Zanuck

well that ship

we will abuse anything here

I heard years ago and you guys said alcoholic and I don't think it's a person who can use up a year's supply of anything in two weeks

thank you

the ride motorcycles but I have to

one is never enough to

I've always been like that some of them have carried over into my sobriety but I still work on others defect I live with them I accepted now

comfortable with some of them

and some felt so good I invited him back

I got the wrong detected Jr I still had a lot more spending to do I discovered some years ago

I'm for relationships get into now

they don't because nearly as much trouble as book study group

how else you gonna learn about him

watching other

that's the way I did with living for so many years I have been ocular my father used to say put the binoculars down and join us on the murky road is happy to I thought it said Burberry road happy destinies in your cases mark you

you don't tread you lurch

I've been to so many wonderful meetings over the year

some years ago I went to a

R. as in group the way here

said one of the inmates read chapter five

took almost thirty minutes

we got to the part where it says we're not thanks he read it we are now thank you stop to look around if it isn't that wonderful

and I was meeting up with the union hall in the Hollywood one night Saturday night meeting good speaker meeting their little do get out the same as well the higher and he was talking on a few minutes and he said you know I think get rough I take a drink

all right

hi I have six weeks so right by I think it's a no no

Larry Blake was in the front row and like looked up at him and said use of a **** he goes right up on the stage literally grab this guy around the throat over to the car we have this door slam bang comes like

believing that way I don't need thirty five pounds I'm an Irish Catholic in your sticker for this evening

it's like nothing ever happened

see if I stayed home watching television I missed that

I don't want to miss anything I want to participate in this is very important that you be here I realize there's some people that aren't I don't have a trip out on me someplace else my god damn girl still come to the door and I look at him and before the coffee break we've got two kids in the station wagon

I had a twelve step called once on a transvestite and I kept taking taking into meetings and he wasn't identifying and I didn't know what to do I check into the bright wood meeting rooms there's a lot of female impersonators of both sexes there I thought surely you'll sit in here

I didn't work so I took him to the women staggered to that's it is your last chance and then

he came back after the meeting and he's got all these phone numbers and he's talking to the lady second what happened he said well they discovered what I was pretty quick they made him go outside well they took a vote voted to let him stay and he asked them why they said because we're not afraid of you and I believe that should say for everybody I mean there's some strange people come here those dark but so what let him in here I don't give a damn who

I had at the twelve step call on a a little gauges named Alexis and he was cute as they could be by the way

you want a ride on my motorcycle I said Alexis no just shut up

forget it come on I want to finance it okay that's it yeah we went up on the freeway I want a hundred and five miles an hour about that up here this little **** get rid of it

we came back to the meeting they got off and he looked at me said I've always wanted to be a motorcycle based on yours

if I stay home I missed that

I can't afford to miss

I was with Jeff Davis and don't broke and we had a twelve step call Dan at General Hospital this guy's dying is Belize after here with cirrhosis and yellow and green and all kinds of colors and he knows that he's dying he said you know I wanted to join Alcoholics Anonymous you guys are so nice and I just wish I could get out of here enjoying and adjusted well that's no problem we grab the big book and had him put his right hand on the big book and raises left hand we sworn into

very nice

why not

so he died of so remember

yeah they quit

so then the rules a little sometimes ten plus welcome everybody in here

I'm grateful for the people that I have now and I'm grateful for the people that have been tragedies that have come through here also that hurts a lot of times you see some of my

we consider potential and what they can be common in the trash it but identify with that because I spent my life trashing potential and a lot of other things I never like those words I want to grow up I wanted somebody to take care of me I've always been a spear Kerrier in an opera called mommy

got to be some way to plug this in

stand on my own two feet support myself not this year

but I do I work I like it I go to work I just I only have to go to work and one day a week but I love my job I go in there and do it that only happened because I came here and there were so many examples of experience in front of me

all the vices showing the hell with it but the experience and somebody else's experiences we can even share that with you commerce and say well so and so did this one if you try that and advise hell no but experiences might got it we got him in this room in any room that you go into well the luckiest people in the world you know that look where we used to be on Sunday morning I don't want to think about it and

because I hate to get arrested on Saturday night because I couldn't go to court on Sunday I had to wait for Monday for the judge to tell me one more time you are a social irritants

no it's just a fancy word for what it really meant

so come on in here and have some fun star a little **** there's a lot of people here to give you lessons if you don't know how

I love to go into meetings and just say some outrageous thing I one of my favorite years ago it was I think well bill Wilson didn't write that book it was another guy with the same name

and they said one to do things like that

I sometimes I say well I had a dream last night a voice in the night whispered in my ear there's no such thing as a voice in the night

there's so much to do you know your life if you'll just get out there and experiences do yes put your binoculars down and join us as we all looks along the murky road happy destiny together

some days I need a seeing eye newcomer to get the meeting

yeah they save our lives but we don't always tell him that it is easy to work with I'm going to do is just not your head once in a while he went over the line

and you can always to point to the book I think well I your answer I mean if they call it two in the morning I say yeah you're probably on page sixty three of the book and then hang up but I don't know what's on page sixty three and don't Kerr but

please guys or start reading it and they'll think well he gave me the wrong page and they'll keep reading to only find their answer

again

easy to work with

I had a twelve step call once I get the guy to Malibu where I was speaking of cars

after the meeting on the way home I said well what did you get out of that

he said well I learned that you can't catch to it came through

I didn't say that he said I know it's on the men's room all I liked so for myself I have discovered that there is no healing alternatives to the truth and the continuing to be an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous and I don't mean it grew I still have a copy commitment where I belong

instead of running around all the answers and standing up and by the coffee pot and posing as a human being

looking good

I spent a period of time like that I didn't work with newcomers you came to me and that was almost fatal yeah I was I got so depressed over doing things like that that I came from a meeting one night left the car running in the garage determined to kill myself I went in the house did the dishes rose three suicide note went back out and laid down in the backseat of the car and discovered I have to go to the cannot going to be found those wet pants I get up I go back in the house well I mean they're the phone rings I have on my desk that I will answer the phone I'm nosy

and it was a new comer into depression

he's interrupting my suicide at him

naturally I had to tell him how good I felt

how wonderful life was

you see they do save your life

many nights

I am I'm very happy to be here today I'm

or

Pat nine people that asked me to come here and I've met so many wonderful people here spend a hell of a time it's a hell of an experience for somebody like me you know the reason I'm old because I got here when I did

doesn't both members of my family can't plan on drinking a few years ago my aunt Jessie died and she's land there in the coffin and my her husband my uncle bill standing here by the coffin with a can of beer in his hand thing doesn't you're exactly looking great tonight well yes but she's dead

forty eight years old and she looked like she was a hundred and ten and I've been sober for four years and I'm almost seventy years old still out there Kickin **** once in a while enjoying life how lucky can you get my god people like me I know I drank as long as I possibly could and then two years longer

yeah my higher power hit bottom long before I did

come on in here and enjoy yourself go through your own experiences meet yourself here and if you don't like it changes enter long away enjoy life and get out there and do things that

my god I've been to so many wonderful meetings and through so many wonderful experiences only because I was lucky enough to come here and find people here that shows me the way by their example I consider myself the luckiest person in this room but we probably all are those of us that are here and participating in this so let's all works along the murky road of happy destiny together and don't forget to grab the handle that newcomer because we might need him that's it