The Sierra Nevada Roundup in Sparks, NV

hi everybody my name's John and I'm an alcoholic

I'm glad to be here tonight and

I'm glad to be sober

you know one are

if you're new here tonight and

there probably are some new people there

I hope the word being sober doesn't offend you as bad invented me when I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous

if they are I said in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous on the fourth day of November nineteen hundred and fifty nine and you talk to me about being sober

I didn't think Alcoholics Anonymous had anything to offer me

and the reason I didn't think that because I was just physically is over when I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous as I am right now

as physically sober

but that all came to be my problem

if I go to stay loaded forever I never came to alcoholics not

but I kept getting interrupted out there on my happy road of destiny

five people in a little black and white car

no I get a kick out of you know the big deal going on about all this new stuff that goes on nowadays they got a big thing going down in my part of the world called intervention

I want you to know the Los Angeles county sheriff knew about intervention in nineteen forty

and they still do a pretty good job of it

but I'm glad to be here and I

I hope I just hope that you hang on and

I hope to hear all that anything that I say keep you from attending another meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because I'm by no wild stretch of the imagination a consultant a counselor or North Korea our program of awful it's not

I'm example good bad or indifferent to program our college anonymous works

nothing else

and administered me to drink anything

swallow anything smoke anything or taken anything mom for twenty nine years and ten months in two or three days

but that has got anything to do with me

I'm glad that I'd like to thank Gordon or whoever's responsible for me having the privilege of participating at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting

you see I have always considered it a privilege to be allowed to come here and sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I have always considered a privilege if you let me do anything an Alcoholics Anonymous I have never been able to get it through my head and I pray god that I never do that I have some type of an inherited right to be here just because I don't drink alcohol

I don't have that right it's a privilege for me to come and share with you the people because I didn't do anything in my life

fire to the fourth day in November nineteen hundred fifty nine that would allow me

the privilege of living the way I live today nothing I have looked at it a long long time many time

I would love to be able to say all

I did that now I get this

because if I could do that I go back and do that again

I have to assume

the visor riding as a gift from god

it's a great privilege for me to sit around you fantastic people

the people of alcoholics not

he taught me

the love you very deeply

probably more than anything else in the world the network itself

the feelings I get when I'm with you

are things I did not bring the Alcoholics Anonymous with me

now I'm extremely pleased to be here tonight fully clothed in my right mind

but I don't tell you that for any particular reason other than the fact that the longer I stay sober narcotics anonymous to more necessary it becomes for me to remember from whence I came

and I never want to forget that little over thirty years ago I was crawling around on my knees in the cell in solitary confinement in a maximum security penitentiary barking at the moon

because of a loving god is expressed himself through this program called Alcoholics Anonymous

it's no longer necessary for me to crawl around Miami like an animal

if I get nothing else out there deal I guess I could live with that for a long time makes me feel good

I'd like to be able to stand here tonight without any shadow of doubt my mind and tell you that for alcohol and drug took me to I'd like to be able to say that would you say that I took me to

the only thing that alcohol and drugs in my life that kept me alive long enough to find Alcoholics Anonymous that's all I'm assured I'm standing here without off all over my life out of loan my brains out before I was nine years old I've always been an emotional misfit I never belonged anywhere I never liked anything I didn't care about anything I was better and I was angry and I look hot style right I don't know where all that came from I had even had a drink when I felt that way I just felt that way I do like where I was who I was who I was around

I don't know where that came from my family were all drunks everybody in my family right they made whiskey they drank whiskey and they sold whiskey and they did all the things that that type of environment comes two days together up on Saturday

they were drinking each other's whiskey and spirits others women beat each other up

so they had a hell of a time down yeah I guess whoever survived was appearing for the week I don't know how they work a deal done I really have to understand but she I understand that I understand violence I understand hostility so bad and better that you just want to lash out and pick something

it's almost like a spiritual experience when you put your foot in somebody's valley all

gotta give me goose bumps to think about it right now I do

three or four faces flashed in front of me

I was able to see what I would never ever understand what I was never able to confirm

to grasp what the confusion in my life when I saw the same people on Wednesday who beat each other up and did all these things to each other on Saturday would put their arms around one another on windows and say we love one another because we're a family

can I guess I said to myself I don't know

if that's what love is you can keep it

because I never remember ever one time in my life ever uttering that word of any other human being lit up on the face of this earth prior to coming into the program of awful it's not

that word was not in my vocabulary there's a very good reason for that taker

I'm a taker thanks I'm a user of people so therefore I'm a loser I'm selfish and self centered and self serving and I got an ego bigger whole room you don't need much more than that to have a bad start life

Utah governor the bad attitude right dead and you can see people like me takers yeah I I never fire people off I cannot talk about I drank up this might make up that I did drink up nothing I used up everything that came into my life and everybody who came into my life how long have you had something that I wanted I used you

and when I got through with you I just precious I liked so much trash going on about my business that I never Tory I love Jeff because people like me don't tell people we love them because at a very good read if I told you I loved you that I gave you an edge and I didn't give it you I kept edge

the card takers and users don't give it just takers and you'd have to have the edge because if I don't have the edge I can't use you

so therefore

I never said that

you see I knew there was something wrong with me I don't know what it was there was some sort of a a rational assist deep inside my soul that I didn't understand and I knew I had an adventure and I would place of looking for answers and whenever I got there expecting the answer from people who were supposed to know the answer hi we came away from their more confused I was when I went there to see my grandmother

if you were nine years old he never drank alcohol my grandmother my grandmother said right in the middle that sea of insanity and watch him crazy people kill one another

I refuse to be in the kitchen cooking they come flying through the kitchen with blood dropping off Roman grandma just jump back and say off yes Jesus love you yeah I just

and through there I just

I look a granny and look at them and

by the way I think of the word granny goes into a granny does I'll be like training

but I never figured out one very simple little thing

wherever I went I went

I knew that would be a little deeper reading over try to hang on to much issue can be

but I don't get any deeper than that if you want anything anymore intellectual immaculate because plants here to talk with

I'm a simpleton

thank you David I got yeah I took that bad attitude with me that rotten attitude that bitterness that hate for most the feeling of difference and anxiety and all that stuff I took it with me to church

and I sat there in the back row church in winter for a guy to get up there with his long road to the Florida tell me why I felt that way

do I want to tell me want to tell me what to do about it morning using a world and he said are supposed to love and honor respect my parents

photo of my brothers and my sisters and I didn't I hated

I'd encourage I don't even understand got off of guilty about that

we're here Friday afternoon people gonna find out what it was supposed to be eleven I don't know what to do about that I walked outside the door church I did your man standard drunk and hungover he tapped me on the head and said son

if you intended to go to church you're gonna grow up to be just like me

I don't know what that did for mile ma'am but I haven't been back to church St

I never got anything to do with her got to do with my man I like moment I hated my mom I was wrong headed out for the two drunks working that's frightening

little kids van at Hotmail and I listen to the sound of a drunken out scream and yell and cuss and inflation inflation breaking furniture and deadly violence or what about the man come got me to start kicking me around it my brother did to me

that was the most terrible time

the most frightening time is when they weren't there

and they were out there and I knew they were out there I knew they were coming in

and I had to think

I lay there and caught up in that little corner behind my brother and think about the things are gone my uncle who lives in penitentiaries

why aren't you working house on the other side of the tracks

Y. O. man who beat up my mother my mother beat up my old man the dawn on me when I what the problem was is off all they drink and they did those things I'm not going to drink I'm not going to be like them I'm going to be better than they are

with your curiosity one that took a drink alcohol

just out of curiosity I got into my own Mandalay who can take a break I'll call

what happened to me that engine was that I saw myself into bondage

at that instant not alcohol

one out later to the drugs it came into my life but the feeling I got when I drink alcohol

he left out the wind down inside of me and still the screaming madness it took me from the black but have nothing that just took me into the great friends in the business of living it installed and made an arrogant but that damn you worlds are

I'm not good enough to be around the good people but I'm too good to be around the bad people okay right here that's what alcohol did for me

and I'm gonna tell you a strange secret

developed all still did that I just don't drink it

but you don't do that anymore

thank god

it could work and I had to find another rancher because I've always needed an answer and for a long time there alcohol is an answer

with an answer to the alcoholic alcohol is not the problem

alcohol is the answer

would you save your alcoholic sooner or later your answer would turn into your problem and beat you to death and that's what happened to me and what happened to me when I drank happened to me every time I drank

there was no difference in the sequence of the sequence of events I took a drink of alcohol and three days later they pulled out from underneath the bridges to admin front of a judge and then to me the Hutchinson state reform school

twenty years later I took a drink of alcohol they pulled me out of the car constant good methanogenesis me twenty years to penitentiary

what happen to me when I drank I got drunk and went places

I just travel around German from reform school reform school to junior penitentiary to penitentiary to not houses

now the column treatment centers

if you have a little kinder than they used to they taught me things like better living through electricity

will I get the point right died you ought to get areas about that

I remember I was on a throw from reform school and I am

well I don't know I'm never twelve years old somewhere around there

on the street corner with a gallon of market victory red wine with my drink

hi Greg Hogan alignments over him right now

scared to death I don't know what was riding on what to do my magic with magic anymore

I had a guy come along and have unit George wanted to try these

the game is the fill

I remember saying to him what are those

do you think they'll bother me if I take a

hi if

thank god they were net flex

so I could be standing here tonight is

as an adult child of a laxative taker

I would've been functional but mother was on the toilet all the time when I was little

you know it's funny is that sound I hear stuff stupider than that now call it's not

like I had some to do with me

hi I never knew that you could hate something it'd make you whole

I would never had to come to you if that was the case

I came to you and did what you told me to do when I run out of excuses people places and things to blame for my dilemma nobody's fault

my fault

I did it to me whatever happened to be in my life I did it to me nobody else did it I did it

I put it on that same street corner for from another reform school not long after that and I'm eating pills and drinking wine doesn't work and I got stuck a needle in my arm

and for the next fourteen years of my life I stuck needles in my arm and then out of institutions that's what I do

I rip and I run and I use my views I destroy everything that comes in contact with me

I like a plague on life out there you come in contact with me all this droid because I'm a user on the taker for their former lives here I cared about nothing or nobody I had no conscious concern for any other human being live on the face of her only my own well being only my own comfort my own my own sickness because of me myself it's just myself and that's my sickness

thank you fifty one away the penitentiary my mother stood in the visiting room many of us out of county jail and screamed at me to there of the murder

this is my seventeen year old brother got in some of my point and took an overdose of indicted

I don't know how to handle it very well and I can handle most things you get mad at it made it go away

three days later I could hand up between two detectives underneath a tree with a very the only thing alive I cared anything about My Baby brother

but all the guilt and shame and humiliation and degradation of lifetime hang around my shoulders I like to cry but I didn't know how

I don't have a simple good to hear that god gives every creature born on the face of this earth read I don't have it but I don't think they were necessary

I went out of the penitentiary and I stayed there for a half year they came other point if you're sick and I was going to win the next

because might is he doesn't get any better just because I don't induce any chemicals into it gets worse

never better always works

so I came out the second I was when I went in there trying to prove it is attached to the San Quint only looking through

he said Johnny people like you don't change

they're here doing the diet institution

the debate on a short middle green room which is you're gonna end up here hot shot I told him not me I'm different I'm different

the alcoholics theme song

I'm gonna tell you somethin focus very frightening to me

the people in this room

we're gonna die drunk

I want to die drunk with one thought in your head

my case is different

hi may die drunk but if I do that will be my theme song

my case is different I don't have to do this anymore

my case is different

I live with that idea in my head my case is different my case is different and I damn near died the only time it's ever stood me in good stead there's one that's a character to send Clint wanna give me a lot about it me

my case was different

how come what that institution Bonnie drummer had a deal be six months later I'm gonna not have to kick and scream and and that's where I made my rounds some of the better laughing academies in the country interviewing psychiatrist

articulate my wraparound overcoat on a talk to me about my mother not talk to them about their mother

that's when they introduced me to better living through electricity

well

what about the third day after that

treatment

I try to remember what they were doing to me

and I got angry

and it takes me right back in front of that same guy again I'm not a techie

they take me back and give me another little joke for three days you ever try to attack us a cartridge with a straight jacket on

what's real wonderful

they just sit through the pipe and smoke and say

my god

it would be a little strange I guess he will sit on the other side to death great jacket over nipple

you know a

what I've regarded my last interview was it kind of just happened to me in a federal government hospital in fort worth Texas

thirty some years ago

it's what I pray to god of my last interview with one of them had doctors I just

the monkey scare me to death

I remember moving into this man's office and sitting down across from the desk and looking up against the wall and looking to degrees in the plaques and IT deployments

I thought maybe this guy knows something you say

I still felt the same way that day as I felt sitting at my grandmother's need church when I was a child

I feel that all the same thing going now I've got a problem much worse all the rest those problems put together now the thing that I put in my system make those problems go away no longer make him go away

now I can get rid of the nightmare

now I can't get rid of the faces of the people out harm the thing on the now I'm in trouble now I'm in deep trouble and the doctor looked at manager Johnny

he didn't drink these things follow these things as well please thank you should do you think you would have a problem

you know when I was a kid and how his day reform school my counter top if I didn't drink I'd be okay

when I was in juvenile hall in Los Angeles

my counter top if I didn't drink I'd be okay

I wouldn't wear state reform school my counter top if I didn't drink these things this fall the thing to smoke these things you should do things I'd be okay when I press in school for boys they told me that when I was a Sandpoint Marcia character told me that when I was in full from they told me that and now my long last year anyone all things right here across this death you know what none of them monkeys ever took into consideration

every time they told me that I was physically sober as I am right now

every time

how many times I want to scream out I'm good god doctor don't you understand because they don't understand

don't you understand take it take this madness from inside of me I wouldn't put those other things in me make it nineteen fifty again please

wipe out that nightmare I won't have to do this anymore

but I didn't know that

I had no way of knowing

so I had to go out there and live for a couple more years

in the land of the living dead

hello over thirty one years ago they tie me down a bad deal las Animas county jail more dead than alive with hundred twenty pounds I was out of

there was a medical doctor tend to put in my bed time is going to die

credit to years of doing to me exactly what I want to do to me anytime I want to do too and that's what I did to me that's what I did to me that's my own self will my own self centered that's what happened to me my own best judgment that's what have to be when I run my life that's what I did for my life running myself

that's me I live in a deathbed that doctors it's on you're going to die nothing I can do for my city okay

okay

I lay there all day and all night to come dancing back in my room the next morning and he said son you're gonna die nothing I can do for you and the third day came to my room I had a terror group me that I've never known before center my entire lifetime the idea came to me I was going to live and not die going to get up out of that bed and go to the penitentiary and come back on start that rat race all over again and I didn't want to do that

I lived there for eighteen days and eighteen I've got an eight five record do anything I just lay there

and one night because I knew nothing better to do I screamed out the only player to return my life I said oh god help me

I thought for a long long time nothing had happened there was no blinding flashes of light nobody come running down the hall with a dozen donuts and we got in a meeting down there hi

I just went to sleep a little off

I don't know how many very gifted to your heroin habit but that's what I was doing it the first time I've been asleep for a long long time I tell you how sick I was

two weeks later two short weeks later I'm up run around a jail looking for him all the poor to put me back in a bit I just gotten off of

not a very good reason for that because in the back of my mind but my problem seems to be centered was the knowledge that once upon a time when I could not stand it any longer I couldn't geschaffen into my system and it was okay right now

right now it's all I ever wanted

right now and even though it wasn't working anymore I knew it wasn't working anymore I knew that I would if I could just find the right combination because it's the only thing that ever worked

good god it's got to work again so I got a lot

I stood in front of a judge of the center twenty years the penitentiary

I mean anything to me that's where I live

what he said to me naked call me a blood sucking parasites into society

he said I had no right being around the people he told the woman who was sitting in the courtroom with Karen my child ticket in all about a child that I'd never be allowed in the eyes on

and what that man said that day

he put into words what I had always known

what I was

I have never been able to hide me from me hi interminable lied to me about me I have always known what kind of a scrum I was

that's why I tried to desperately to get rid of me that's why was so necessary for me to block off me view I always knew I was a taker I have a long list of faces

the things and people that I've tried to my selfishness and my self standard

trying to make me feel better at the expense of some other human being

I knew that

that's the first time I've ever heard it

and the evidence was so damaging that my brain literally exploded

and for the next nine months of my life I crawled around the shelves solitary confinement barking at the moon drifting in and out of total insanity coming to ever want to watch baby my food off the wall one high got it up there but it should in St rage

and on the first Sunday in November nineteen hundred and fifty nine I wandered into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous

I don't take any credit for coming Alcoholics Anonymous nor do I take any credit for staying here from that day to justify their own private coming I wouldn't even come

I was an alcoholic

read I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because institutional and that women come in there

hi again my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous almost thirty years old smell perfume

robin hawk and sniff around rivers hit

you gotta you gotta be careful to get those circles in here all day then hi member I'm I moved into third down in the back row and what a loving life to call my throne of contempt

I had my coat collar up initiated on because our school

if I have been in a cooler when I got here out of froze to death for god's sake

members of on a backboard us out to the gate and I thought to myself my god I've wandered into an aircraft at gate I don't know what all of all economic what agenda discounted Nick what is that he should adopt a holic sonata

well I found on my feet

gangsters were thought to be hanging out with a minor

the vin gangsters anonymous or over hip anonymous

how about

I don't

eighteen to not

Peter Marshall

I mean I certainly get your teeth into here I mean it makes attic team kind of candy **** to me I don't know about you but you get your teeth into that

fine heading into that hang in there

I thought well

I'll wait for the women to get into other races storage

so you got to remember him

when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous there weren't very many young pretty girls narcotics not there just wasn't there is all god got up top they said they drank for a long time

hell you can look at they've been somewhere for a long time

did they should I used to think I thought that you did

bed through I know you can tell me I mean if you want to know anything going to the back corner

they know everything but they don't know how to stay sober active

federal hung up

with Meyer contempt environment

but the people of our colleague Robert hook me that if because it was on the bottom I didn't understand

I couldn't understand why they drive a hundred eighty five miles up the road back row to talk to a bunch of people did wonders and doing nothing

I can understand that there would be on my description would be on my part capabilities to understand that and they run to talk about god I ran out of room god was reading a lot it was not my fault that run out of people places things circumstances and conditions demand for my dilemma but I still had a kicker

do you have people like me the thing to keep him from going totally insane is my ability to blame somebody other than me for my own actions

and when I run out of people places things circumstances and conditioning of name got four you don't talk back

god's fault

listen from time to time dire nail time well

yes god wants me to have a job you're sure to down here to the club

next time you get hungry go lock yourself in a closet and pray for a hot dog

if god forbid you on through the keyhole you call me

I've been looking for a deal like that all my life

today I am

I'm not a I'm not a very spiritual or religious man

Friday I've learned one very simple little thing about god since I've been around here you can cut me very well

I've learned that my god will not do anything for me that I can do for myself

there's only been one simple little thing in my life I have never been able to do one thing on

I couldn't do it before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I have been able to since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous I won't be able to do it from this day forward of myself and by myself I cannot keep from taking a drink of alcohol

I can't do that

and yet

for over twenty nine years and ten months I haven't had a drink of alcohol mood changing altering chemical in my system whatsoever however blows my mind even more than that as I haven't had a conscious thought for a conscious desire to put in that stuff in my system from the first moment I laid eyes on you this instead

and that doesn't make me wonderful our special

my god I just seem to understand that anybody is sick as I am cannot harbor of thought needed for over thirty seconds without put it into action

I'm just that way

my problem lay between nine years it doesn't lead anywhere else I don't have any desire to take a drink

I don't have any craving for alcohol

Vetr federal

a lot of people that I know that I sponsored they didn't want one is actually took it

the alcoholic like me there comes a time when alcoholic like me have to drink

do they have to drink to preserve your sanity

alcoholics like may blow their brains out cold sober

cold sober that's when I'll call it commits suicide

if they do a drinking it's accidental

alcoholic Najaf I don't know about anything else but alcoholic school I'm not talking about drinkers

for heavy drinkers or non drinkers or non alcohol I only know about alcoholics because I R. one

and I discovered that here I kept coming back to your meeting you kept talking about god I can't believe it

one day I said in a retro I don't remember my attitude being any different than it is I don't remember anything different about that day at all if if I do know that that's the day I live my entire lifetime for

that every rotten thing I'd ever done and given me right up to the very gates of hell said even though I was in hell I had no way of knowing when I woke up that morning that I was going to go sit in a room and some and we're going to put the key into the gates of hell let me out of there I did notice if I had that knowledge I did never came to an a a meeting

I wouldn't condition to go to a meeting I was conditioned to go to doctors and teachers and preachers and wardens into cartridges to colleges and all those people who have been given me all that bomb information all these years

I would condition to go to drunks

but I didn't know that that day so I went to sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and little guy that I knew to twenty three five years the penitentiary

little guy the nameless Hammond is dead now

the report of Alcoholics Anonymous and told me that something that all those educated people have no

here you have a sixth grade education

he told me I'd have to live that way anymore but I did want to

he says you don't have to do it like this no more nobody's ever told me that they told me all my life don't drink swallow smoke issue but you never told me how to live without doing it

how do you live in a world that you don't understand that you don't belong in the what's the part of you you don't want any part of

and the only thing that makes it bearable forgets to mention something to put into your system after being I went up to him I said how do you learn how to live with

you tell me about a book called Alcoholics Anonymous as you look at that book Johnny ofgem pray that you find some party you and I guess he prayed real hard at them fella I've been a student of the book Alcoholics Anonymous from that day to this day

and the only thing I've ever found it look at me I have a look for anything else I'm not looking for a way to sober up the world or cure all of society's ills

I'm looking for a way to live peacefully and comfortably enjoy Ashley with me and eleven got it made me

there is a strange phenomenon that takes place in my life

it seems like to me that the closure I'd here to the principles that are written in that book

and the more willing I become to share that knowledge in this fellowship just for the sheer joy of doing it the more painful and more comfortable and more joyous I live with me in the living god made me but I had a lot of trouble when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I was confused I was confused here more than I've ever been anywhere I said image of Alcoholics Anonymous I heard people get voted file just say I used to drink now I don't drink anymore and everything is wonderful

I said I'm not a hologram

I'm not very good I'm a sober you are but you're not crazy

so I'm not always sure footed logical

alcoholics are largely

the alcoholic mother

if you ever stop to think about the only people talk about the king of all these minor delta Holik's

you don't hear non alcoholic talking about taking off a holic mine

yeah the king of all of mine came in last night and Pete Melin closet

tell me about the holiday tonight but I heard people get up and voted like did you say you got to get active in Alcoholics Anonymous I got a run around like a chicken with my head cut off

I picked up ashtrays and poured coffee and smiled as people

well the wonderful here Hey

thirty days ago I was just dead

well I wandered through them wonderful dollars

got around you magnificent people and god has blessed me and a few newcomers keep coming back click here to

when I went back and said inventory point died

are doing everything they told me to do and I'm crazy I don't understand I said to myself if not I'll call

if I was off a holic all I would have to do is not drink and pick up the damn day straight I'd be okay

I didn't know any better

and every time I talk to one of the people that say

it in the book

what's in the book

all Fitch there

mac with talking about it this afternoon

I'm gonna tell you what it is

so I don't have to confuse you

what is written that book at least in the first hundred sixty four pages that I've tried incorporated my life one day at a time what it is

that's what I thought it was but it really wasn't when I took my first drink

what it is

what I thought it was but it really wasn't my fault my first pill

what is

what it really isn't what I thought it was when I took my first fix

what it is

is that a piece of my life

but I seemingly was born without it was the end of my search