Big Book Seminar Caribbean Cruise

Never did get the soup. Never did get the soup. My name is Don. I am an alcoholic. And by the grace and the power of a loving God, I have been continuously sober since December 26, 1967.

And, I think it's very important that we begin telling people that. There's some a lot of lies have crept into AA over the last few years, and I wanna break one of the first ones. If you're alcoholic, you don't ever have to drink again. Relapse is not a necessary part of recovery. It does occur, but it's not necessary.

So we talk about our sobriety date where I come from. I'm not Cajun, by the way, except in an honorary sense. I I can now cook etouffee. I can even speak it. That's enough of that.

I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and my, home group is known simply as an AA group. And looking for a name for the group, we looked at the long form of the 3rd tradition, and it says that any 2 or more alcoholics gathered for sobriety may call themselves an AA group. So that's what we call ourselves. We meet at 6 o'clock in the morning at, the example of Saint Joseph's Hospital in Denver. Man, I've never played a room like this and had a cheering section before.

May I take this jacket off? It's really hot up here. Thank you. You you promised you wouldn't do that when my wife was in the room. Our meeting is a very simple one.

We cover a step of tradition and a concept back to back whether it takes one meeting or a month or 2, it doesn't make any difference. This is a complete program. Following our regular formal meeting, we all go into the cafeteria and have breakfast and have another meeting because we recognize something in our own weaknesses. I wish this weren't true, but in any formal meeting that I'm in, I'm only partly listening. There is a piece of me that's thinking about what I'm gonna say when it's my turn.

And I wish it weren't true, but it is true. So if you bring new people to that meeting, we won't hurt them. We promise you. And if they need properly 12 step, we'll take them to breakfast and gang up on them. We we, we're not above that.

Lives are at stake here. If it takes 10 of us, it takes 10 of us. I also, go to a little breakfast meeting at 7 with a bunch of wimps who can't get up at 6 on Tuesday morning. We learned from the Salvation Army years ago that people respond better with their bellies full. So we get together and we feed them, and then we 12 step them.

And then, the greatest thrill of my life right now, about 3 years ago, 2 GSRs came to me and asked me because just because of my experience to go through the traditions and the concepts with them. And before we started, it was 6. Last week, it was 42 people. And we're now going through the big book by group conscience, word for word. It's my favorite activity.

And it's young people. Few old timers, Marty shows up once in a while. Dick was there a while back. He came just to show off though. You ever see a man come to a regular meeting in a tuxedo?

That's how I dress it. None of those things keep me sober. None of them. But if I don't do that, I will surely drink. But I'm very clear on what keeps me sober and it's the power and the grace of God because I didn't get to you until I was 5 and a half months sober, so you didn't sober me up.

God sobered me up and then brought me to you so that my life could now have some meaning and depth and purpose. So I love Alcoholics Anonymous because I'm free of you, but I need you. This is where my life work is. This is where the people I love are. This is where the people I don't love are because I don't like all of you.

I will be tolerant and patient if the prayer works, but I love most of you. Some of you are just intolerable. And, well, I can say that because I'm intolerable to some people too. If if everybody likes you, you're still being a phony, you know. There are some people who don't like me just because I came in the room.

Don't even have to do anything. Well, the goodest pieces of freedom I got. I got my freedom, by the way, in a penitentiary. So I'll talk about that tonight because that's part of my experience. I I wish I didn't have to talk about it.

I belong to the only organization in the world where having been in prison gives you status. You know? But I'll give you a little piece of freedom. Mister William, another Denver transplant. There are people who like me no matter what I do, and there are people that don't like me no matter what I do.

And there are millions and millions of people that don't even know I exist and wouldn't give a damn if they did, and that's freedom. One more piece of freedom, then I'll tell some stories. I found a solution to abandonment. Folks come, folks go. Some stay longer than others.

And at my age, there are some of them that are staying a little longer than I wish they would, but you you'll come to that in time. I come from a functional home in Denver, Colorado, and I apologize, but I do. It doesn't mean we didn't have problems, but my family has always met the problems. I'm the only alcoholic in it. As far as we know, we thought my son was for a while, but he went out.

He, oh, this this poor kid. In his early teens, he tried to be a dope dealer. Sell a little marijuana, and he'd come home all beat up. Because we do communicate. He would tell me about it.

He said they took my dope and they took my money and they beat me up. And after a second or third time, I suggested to him he might wanna find another occupation because he really wasn't very good at this one. But he drank and he liked to smoke his weed and, got in some trouble around it. We were looking hopefully for his membership. And he got a job where they did random urinalysis and he quit.

Just couldn't take it. I have an uncle who was a good drinker. He and my my uncle Walt and my aunt Ruth were good drinkers. They were party drinkers. They drank a lot all the time and party.

But uncle Walt drunk was uncle Walt drunk. And his doctor told him one time, Walter, if you don't stop drinking, you're gonna die. So he quit. You gotta be tough to be an alcoholic. Really tough.

People think we're weak. You gotta be tough enough to lie to the people that you love and steal from your children and sleep in the snow and destroy everything you've worked for and then start over. Regular people just can't do that. They just get on a track and they go. And I'm one of those.

Destroy it all. Build it up, destroy it again. Build it up and destroy it again. My brother is a professor of music at the University of Colorado, and I consider probably the world's foremost synthesizer musician. And I'm not the only one who thinks that.

When he's not teaching there, they take him to Russia and the Scandinavian countries in the summer, and he teaches there. He's the head of the Sound Engineers Organization Worldwide. For years, he did a symphony each year for the, Denver Symphony. I was writing music with Stan Kent when he was 19 years old. Grew up in the same house I did.

Lived in the next room over, just down the hall there. We've petted the same dog and everything. So I kinda figured that perhaps my alcoholism is not as a result of my being mistreated anywhere along the way. My sister retired as an IBM executive. She's now dabbles in real estate to keep her hand in and takes care of my mother who's now 94 and still feisty.

Made great babies, great money. Her baby's been busy making babies. And we all kinda look alike. If you meet one of us, you know you've met one of us. And, but I grew up thinking there's something wrong here.

One of my people coming back from out there to pick me up because I'm on the wrong planet. Obviously, I look like these people, but I don't think like them and I don't feel like them. Just that sense Bob talked about a little sense of alienation. I remember when I was 6 to label it, it's just a little trauma. We love to talk a little about trauma.

My best friend, in fact, about the only friend I had was a kid whose birthday was the same day mine was. And on our 6th birthday, I hadn't seen him. So I went down to his house and this lady opened the door and there's a little party going on inside. I heard her turn around and say to the inside, it's that strange little prince boy, Donnie. And I hadn't been invited to the party because I was that strange little prince boy, Donnie.

And I don't know what the hell that means, but that's how I felt. Let me tell you a little about functional. About 4 years ago, and I 4 or 5 years ago, my dad died. And he and I had been 27 years building a a real, honest, fine relationship. I went and made amends.

And we started from there and built something. So I knew all about what he was going through. And he was in a nursing home, had dry gangrene in one one leg, and his mind was beginning to slip a little. My dad was an unmeasured genius. They hadn't found a test that wouldn't touch him.

Incredible human being. But he was losing his memory. He never did lose his sense of humor. Right near the end, he told me, he says, you know, Don, there's a real benefit to this memory loss thing. I only have to rent one movie for the rest of my life.

They They celebrated their 66 wedding anniversary on a Saturday, and on Tuesday, dad went into a coma, and on Thursday, left the planet. That's functional. See, he knew how important that party would be for her, so he stayed. And I know for a fact he wanted out months before that. He was tired.

That's what I come from. I didn't have that kind of staying power. Don't know why. Don't care why. Just don't care to go back to that.

I brought all this kind of stuff to alcohol one night. We, got a guy from our air force base to buy us a bottle of bonded bourbon. I was in high school. Bonded bourbon, of course, is elegant. We thought it was something special.

It just means some insurance company somewhere says Capone didn't make this. We know it was made by Seagram. So, if you can prove it wasn't, we'll give you another bottle. We thought it was pretty special. We went out east of Denver to get drunk and have fun.

Didn't know what either of those things really was. Had a couple of drinks of alcohol, and what happened to me is described in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous by doctor Carl Jung as a spiritual experience. He says essentially ideas and conceptions that used to rule the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a whole new set of emotions and motives begin to dominate them. And that's what happened to me. I had what seemed to be a spiritual experience.

I was transformed. I didn't feel better. I was changed. I went into the evening frightened, stupid, short, ugly. Couple of drinks of bonded bourbon, and I am gorgeous.

But more importantly, what I remember is that I had plans. I up to that point, I'd become a reactor in life, not a responder. I'd gathered my scripts together so that when you said something, I'd have the right response, mostly to keep you back because it's getting confusing in here. I'm starting to become everybody I've ever met or read about or seen in the movies or, I don't know who the hell I am, and I'm on a search for me all out here. I changed.

Good change. I had some plans. I was gonna go back to Bill Bonn Siv's drive in where all the kids hung out and whipped the bully. Not a bad plan. As soon as I was suing him, I was gonna have a visit with the cheerleader.

Not a bad plan. But plans don't work for me. I did not know that I had a condition of body and mind that causes me to once I take a drink of alcohol, I must have another drink of alcohol. I don't have any choice anymore. And so by the time I got to the drive in, instead of seeing the heroic me whipping the bully and chatting up the cheerleader, they saw my partners carrying me around by the elbows while I puked in the driveway.

That's kinda how I drank. I told you my brother was writing music with Stan Kenton when he was 19, I think. When I was 19, I was in my first federal penitentiary in Tokyo, Japan wondering what the hell happened. This is not in the plan, you know. I came out of there with a bad conduct discharge and did some time in the penitentiary and some marine brigs.

I don't wanna do that again. Never did understand what happened because I love the navy. I really did. I ran away from home to join the navy and save America from the communist menace and become home a hero. You know?

My. I don't have time to go into what a hero is. You all know what that is. Instead, I'm in a penitentiary and come home with a bad conduct discharge. It was absolute rock bottom.

I didn't know until you described to me what alcoholism is in its effect, what put me in a penitentiary. I'm on a on a job I love. I was a radio arm man and a radio arm man on a destroyer, the USS Brush. We were 17, 18, 19 year old kids fighting a war, and that's exciting at that age. It's stupid from where I sit right now, but it's pretty exciting then.

Learn to steer the ship. I love this. This cruise is just wonderful for me because I am home here. I've been home on on the ocean forever. But they kept giving me 24 hour liberties, and I kept getting back in 26 or 28.

And this last time, I got a 24 hour liberty and 23 days later when I got back to the ship, it was gone. They were going to Korea, and I was in some deep trouble. See, when I drink alcohol, I get lost and can't find my way home. In this particular time, it was 23 days from the time I took a drink in Long Beach until the drive for another drink ended. Doctor Silkworth calls it a craving.

It ended in Pershing Square in Los Angeles 23 days later. On day 22, you'd had to drag me back to that ship in chains. I could not go. I've been doing things for 22 days that are contrary to who I am as long as it would get me a drink. And the shame was on me when I finally came out of it.

But I turned myself in, went back to face the consequences, and they were severe. I ran with a kid who got us on a Pan Am Clippers, so we beat the ship to Japan. Oh, he was slick. Not a good drunk. He got us put on prisoner at large status, which means I was a prisoner and I was also my own guard, and so was he.

And we got all our records and we were slick. We thought we when the ship pulled into Japan, I got an idea how slick we were. I don't know whether the captain was mad or not when we left, but he was sure pissed when he saw us standing on the dock waiting for him. So we did our time and came home at rock bottom. And bottom is an easy thing for me to define.

That's any time I wake up and understand whatever I have in life, mine for my life, is not gonna happen. And early on, that's easy to overcome. New town, new car, new job, new girl, new dreams, and off we go. And then I get distracted by something and I have a drink. Bottom again, and just bouncing back and forth.

Sometimes they don't even get distracted. I think the horror of alcoholism as I understand it, I can give you a hundred reasons why I drank. The main reason is no reason at all. That's the nature of this deal. Right out of nowhere for no reason at all, I have a drink.

And once I started, I can't quit. Do we have any knee walking drunks here? I'm one of them. Just one. Knee walking drunks is just exactly what it says.

On your hands and knees going down the street, drunk. It's a good place to be when you're that drunk. Because when you finally fall, you only fall about that far. Bump your head a little bit. Okay.

When I was asked to try to identify my alcoholism because I didn't know I was alcoholic when I got here. I was certified by 1 government agency as associate path type 2. Federal parole officer said I was a psychopath, and the psychiatrist said I was a manic depressive drug addict. So I was hiding my alcoholism behind some real high drama. You might get past one of them, but you're not getting past them all.

No clue. It was suggested to me by some fine sponsors that as I go through the big book, I bring my own memories to it. Otherwise, it's just words. It's more than just identification. You they describe something in there that happens to alcoholics.

Does that happen to me? And I began to understand, yeah, the craving for alcohol. See, I tried to duck that very briefly by saying craving is no. Craving is just I went in for 2, now I'm on the 3rd. Chinese described it very simply, thousands of years ago.

Man takes a drink, drink takes a drink, drink takes the man. And alcoholism is the drink taking a drink. But I've got a an actual events that I can remember to describe that craving. I can remember a night so drunk, still on my feet, and so drunk that I knew if I have one more drink, it'll probably kill me. I have too much in me, and it hasn't even processed yet.

And I'm gonna put another one down because I need another one. I don't need it so badly that I stick my finger down my throat and throw that out, so now I've got room. That's not normal drinking. I I compare my mother and I to see get a clue as to what alcoholism is. You love my mother.

Little bitty lady, feisty as hell. 94 now. Watch out for her cane. She's learning how to use it. Got things in her ears so she can hear, and she's tired of you.

She just doesn't even pretend. She just turns them off right out front. My mother loves peppermint schnapps. I mean, she loves peppermint schnapps. Now I like Altoids.

But if I'm gonna drink, I want something that tastes like booze, not peppermint, but she loves them anyway. And I watch her on the day when it's time. She gets a a desire for a drink. And she takes this bottle down, this clear stuff, and she's got a little tall, tiny little glass. Wouldn't help any of us.

It wouldn't hold that much, but she pours this in. Her little eyes are shining. She's drinking for effect. She knows what it's gonna be. She looks at that thing and it looks good to her.

I'm with her all the way here. Then she goes, that's disgusting for drinking. And she'll do that a couple times and then I've heard her actually say, that's enough. I'm beginning to feel it. She loses me.

There's a sound that goes with my drinking also. And that's the sound of relief from unbearable psychic pain. See, that's why I drink. I can't stand being sober. So when I'm working with new people, we don't promise them sobriety.

What a terrible thing to promise somebody who needs a drink. Meaningful sobriety. Yes, that will promise. But I prefer to tell them if you don't quit, I don't say you're gonna die. If you don't quit, you're probably gonna live a while just like this.

How do you like that? It gets their attention anyway. Relief from psychic pain. For some period of time now, I fit. I'm here.

I can do whatever you can do. We can talk. We can dance. We can laugh. We can cry.

I can feel the things that I haven't been able to feel, and then I can't. I drink past it. I'm a real alcoholic. I've lost the power of choice when it comes to alcohol. And I am so glad.

Oh, I'm so glad. I've never been given the choice back. I'm 36 years sober now and I have no more choice over whether I drink than I did the day I quit. And I'm really glad because every time I had a choice, I made the wrong one. K.

What I really wanna share with you tonight is the glory and the mystery of an alcoholic staying sober over a considerable period of time. Early sobriety is kinda fun. And you get a lot of attention, and and you get to talk for hours with guys about or in the same range of early sobriety. Your sponsor won't let you do that. You notice that?

I got a 2 hour bit session coming up. I'm not calling him. I'll get a hold of Marty, and we'll sit there and try. It's just fun. And then the fun wears off.

And you wonder, is this all there is? Some people get it at 2, some at 10, some at 20. I'm getting a lot of them at 20. Wondering, is this all there is? I've heard everybody say everything that there is to say, and I used to say it too.

I've got 2 emails waiting to be answered because I don't know how to answer them. And how do I put the life back in? I'm 20 years sober and the life's gone. I don't understand that. I got into my evangelistic stage around the 8th step, and I haven't left it yet.

But let me take you to the final bottom. I, I'm part of the subculture that came out of Berkeley in the sixties, screaming out where there's dope, there's hope, burned down city hall. And we really tried. We we just couldn't find city hall. It I am not a drug addict.

I'm very clear on that. I had to get clear on that because this deal will work for anybody, but the foundation has to be truth. The recovery process will work. The fellowships don't necessarily work for other people. I've used a lot of drugs and that's all we need to say about that.

But I could start or stop when I needed to, and I've never had to deal with that. What I had to deal with was psychic pain. But as a result of that, Christmas week of 1967 was a bitch. I was down to about a £133 and I was on federal parole for a mistake I made in 1966, which put me in my 2nd penitentiary. Bad company is what did it.

And I began to take a look at my life for what it really was. And I don't know other than God's grace why he sent me I could see things as they were and the lies were disappearing. I'm not here tonight because of the truth. I'm here because I ran out of lies. I gotta look at my life for what it was.

I had 2 little boys at the time who had already been through a federal narcotics arrest, which scared the hell out of them. And the police almost shot my 4 year old in the midst of that one. And, for some reason, they kept giving the kids back to me. And I wanna tell you just one little story about it because everybody has one of these until you get here and die with it. We all have an ace in the hole, brother, father, sister, mother, uncle, good friend, somebody who at the end of the trail, I can go and I got a place to stay and I can get a shower and I can eat for a few days before I start off again.

And, my dad was our ace in the hole. And I was trying one more time to put my life in order. See, I'm I'm cursed with a conscience. I've known the difference between right and wrong my whole life. I just never seem to be able to get the right thing done, and I always did the wrong thing.

And so we were back at dad's place, trying once again to become a good father and a good son. And that's really all I've ever wanted. And I was getting sober and we were trying one more time, got these kids I really loved and wanted to raise. We'd been on the road for about three and a half years, literally. Restless, irritable, and discontent on the road.

But I began to remember things in the clear light. And one of the things I remember is during that time when we were dads, a fellow named Albert called me from, Albuquerque. Albert was one of the snakes that I ran with. Albert says, we got a problem. I, we have 30 kilos of good marijuana we got from mid Mexico up to Juarez and our driver got arrested on a traffic charge and is laying on a hotel and we need somebody to get it across the border.

Do you want the job? And I'm trying to get my life back in order and be a good father and a good husband. And I said, sure, Albert. Of course. And what I recognize in that answer, I didn't do this for money.

This, I became a transportation expert, and I didn't do it for money. My cut was 2 kilos. At that time, that was about $400. That's chump change. I did it for prestige.

I was the only person in the United States they could think of to call to go into old Mexico and rescue the goods like Zoto. K. True. That's the only way I can describe that emotion. Prestige.

I'm gonna be a big timer now. And we pulled it off off because I didn't do any drinking. I dropped everything. I got a sport coat, fattened up a little bit, had them run a VW bus, take care of all the details where there could be no trace to me. Let them get us a place to stay when we got to Juarez.

Did the math because I'm not stupid either. I did the volume. And 30 kilos of marijuana packed that way would fit exactly into a single air mattress. So we got to Juarez, went to their hotel, which is actually just a house of prostitution. As soon as everybody left and the transfer was made, I didn't pick it up.

They brought it to me. We moved uptown where all good citizens would stay to more of a Holiday Inn type operation. And I'm one of those people who's in their rottenness, uses everything available. And we saw an Indian lady with a dead baby coming out of town as we approached the thing. And I tucked that into my mind.

I put dirty diapers on top of that air mattress and I put my 2 little boys on top of that. And when we hit the border crossing, I turned around for no reason whatsoever and screamed at the kids to scare them so they'd be crying because they don't mess with you when you got screaming kids and dirty diapers. Told the border guard they were crying because we had just seen an Indian lady with a dead baby. And I began to look at that kind of thing. That and a number of other memories brought me to what I hope you've come to if you're an alcoholic.

Absolute rock bottom. I'm now a complete failure living, and I can't live with me anymore. I can't think of any way out of this. I don't want to be this kind of person. That those kind of memories just tear me up.

To this day they hurt and I hope they keep hurting. I'm no longer ashamed of them, but I need something strong to change me. And I've tried everything. I've been to psychiatrists. I, have had the privilege of participating in the peyote ceremonies at Easter with the washaw.

Had a great vision with a bird flying high and no head. Understood that. Dianetics. And when I came out of the navy, I turned my life over to the care of a science fiction writer. A good one.

Good books. Church being saved. I've tried it. Nothing changed me permanently. Everything was temporary.

And I came to the place Christmas night when I couldn't stand being me one more time. We had gone down to my folks' place during the day. And, because I would never think of not going home for Christmas. My dad met us at the door and he said, Don, I'm sorry, but your mother said I can't let you in here anymore. She can't stand watching you die.

And I tore up one of my lives. I'm not hurting anybody. Just leave me alone. I'm just hurting nobody but me and that proved out to be a lie. I was hurting her and the kids and him and I could see that.

And then he snuck us into the house anyway and tore up my last lie. Nobody loves us. Nobody cares. Well, he did. So I go home with no more lies to live with and more pain than I can live with because I recognize I've become completely useless now.

Absolutely, totally useless to everybody. Everybody, including my kids, particularly my kids would be better off without me. No place to go. So I did the only thing you can do at that point. You either surrender or you die.

I took a 2 months supply of garbage and shot up my arm and drank everything in the house and laid down and died. And I really believe I died. I haven't had a drink since. Haven't had a thought of a drink since. I'm one of those that's blessed.

I don't even see alcohol. I am so vulnerable that God better be around because I don't see it. Cleaned my mind out of it because the main problem is me in my mind. But I didn't feel good when I woke up that morning. God.

While the police were at the door, my body was saying, you son of a bitch. If it weren't that you can't die, I'd kill you. Now I'm a complete failure at living and a complete failure at dying. The cops take me in. I'm on federal parole and they've got 9 charges against me.

And the first one's calling for 3 years to life in the penitentiary and the DA promised me he'd bring the rest of them 1 at a time if I beat that one, but I was through and I really didn't care. Today, I can describe the state I was in. I couldn't have then. And the reason I can do that today is that I keep looking at my life, and my life is based on one thing, carrying the message of hope to you. So I spend a good deal of time thinking about how can I put this so somebody will actually hear it?

I am not the person that I'm talking about. I've been totally, completely changed. I finally had a real spiritual awakening instead of the one I had with booze. I'm a And that's the only reason I stayed here with you. If you'd offered me something that says we can teach you how to cope with this, I'd have walked away.

I want nothing to do with it. My first experience of power, I laid in the Denver County jail for five and a half months, detoxed out there, wonderful detox. 6 weeks of leg cramps and headaches. And on the 1st day in the jail, my life got summed up for me. We all have metaphors for our life.

I was in a catch 22 one more time. You're required in the Denver County Jail to go to go to Chow. You must go. To go to Chow, you must have shoes on. And when they arrested me, they couldn't find my shoes.

So I'm in a catch 22 that describes and defines my life to that point. I gotta go on. I can't go because can't meet the conditions. And I gotta meet the conditions. So they were kind enough to call my dad and requested to bring me some shoes and he brought a note with it that said, Don, please don't ever call me again.

And final thing, I was set free. There was nothing left here now. Had no idea about God. Had no idea about anything, but I'm failure at living and a failure at dying. And I gotta find some way to live because I am alive.

And I wanna tell you briefly about power as I understand it. On the day of my trial, they took me in a room with my attorney and said, we've been talking to the federal people. They're the ones that own me because I was still on federal parole. We've kinda all concluded you're really sick. True.

This is not new to me. They said to tell you what we've done is made a deal. If you'll plead guilty to a different charge that we have ready so we don't have to have this trial, we'll give you a one and a half to 3 year sentence and suspend it and give you back to the feds because I still owe them 5 years. And they'd agreed to take me to the federal hospital in Fort Worth, Texas and fix what's wrong with me. I'm not stupid.

I signed the papers. God. Now if you know about power, you know that when the state and the feds say Don goes to Fort Worth, Don goes to Fort Worth. But I had somehow surrendered and the power of God went to work. And 5 days later, I was in the fish tank in the Colorado State Penitentiary saying stupid things like you can't do this to me.

I didn't sign up for this. And that's where you came and found me. My a experience is that we need people trolling the beaches, looking. Not everybody knows. One of the great distresses in my life today and in my a life are meetings that are closed.

Unless you say out front you're alcoholic, you can't come. Hell, our job is to help you find out whether you're alcoholic or not. We're cutting off the whole source of supply when we do that. And, that's just by it's my turn to editorialize. I'm not against closed meetings, but I believe in 12 stepping people, sitting down with them face to face, looking them right in the eye, sharing my understanding of alcoholism until they can say that sounds a little like me or they can say, no, that never happened to me.

At which point it's my job to get them somewhere where they can get some help because we'll kill them. But if they are, you can't get away from me and my bunch. Well, you can't even find my bunch. I don't believe in that either. Would you want that in your bunch?

I came into a group that Bill Pittman described. In our 3rd week in the fish tank, 3 guys came over, inmates, numbers on their chest, ugly. Well, 2 of them were ugly. Bruce was kinda cute. Well, he was nice looking fella.

They came over to tell us about AA. And this ugly little guy named Doc got up and he said, my name is Doc, and I'm an alcoholic. And that means that I'm powerless over alcohol and guards and drugs and all of the other circumstances in my life, and my life has become unmanageable. And if any of you smart bastards think you can still manage your lives, look at the reward the state just gave you for that nifty job you've been doing. Straight on.

What am I gonna do, argue with him? Said your very best thinking got you the penitentiary. You're not doing too good, are you? Well, here I am. And then they did the thing that Alcoholics Anonymous must always do.

They went one step beyond. We can show you how to learn to live a way of life that'll make sense to you. We can show you a new way of thinking. And if you're alcoholic, you don't ever have to drink again. Now we weren't allowed to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on Friday night where the real people came in from the outside for 5 weeks.

In order to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, you had to first go through a 5 week, 12 step study school. Then on Saturday Sunday, we gave up our yard privileges and our movies and went to school. The very first thing they said to us when we got up there, these same 3 guys, you knew guys for the next 5 weeks have nothing to say. If you knew anything at all, you wouldn't be here. And they went over the milk alcoholics anonymous with us.

They read it to us. They shared their experience with it and of it. You're getting that this weekend. And then they gave us assignments that came out of the book, not from somewhere else that came out. There's all kinds of assignments in that book.

And I began the journey that brought me here tonight. I went to the 1st federal penitentiary when I was 19 years old because of alcoholism, and I found that in the doctor's opinion. Doc says he'd been working with men who'd been working on a business deal or proposition that will be settled favorably to them on a certain date, and they took a drink a day or 2 before and missed their appointment. I missed a shit move, like, 23 days because I was on a 20 3 day drunk. And I began to get those pieces.

They don't all come. For me, the flash of light is not a good thing. I love flashes of light. I've had them all my life. My sponsor said they've nearly killed you all your life.

Went over what they were. Oh, have you ever had a flashlight? Yeah. First time you made a touchdown, first time you kissed a girl, first time you made some money and more money in one day than you'd ever seen in your life. Anything where you accomplish something, flash a light.

They've nearly killed me all my life because I get to thinking that's how I'm supposed to live from now on. So I was pissed because I didn't have a flashlight. I'd gone back to my cell to, take the 3rd step and had a terrible experience. I said the 3rd step prayer, nothing happened. And I'm waiting for boom.

My cell door would spring open and they'd say, alright, Prince. You can go home now. We don't need you anymore. Nothing happened. And I I can handle if this ship starts going down, I'm gonna finish my talk until the water gets this high.

Okay. I can handle that. That. I can handle all the good things in life. I can't handle nothing and nothing happened.

And I went back to my sponsor and bitched about it. I suggest you do that. And he gave me the guidance that I've always needed. I I was going I went back with the alcoholic war cry on my lips. Where's mine?

Bill had one. How come I don't get one? He said, well, dummy. And that was a that was a step up. In the morning, I was 38, 984, and now I'm dummy.

I got a name again. Well, dummy, you ought to be grateful you didn't have a flashlight. They nearly killed you all your life, and we talked about that. I learned about my kind of insanity from the book Alcoholics Anonymous. They had me certified as a sociopath type 2, psychopath, manic depressive drug addict and anything else they could find because I I can read.

I read those books and that's what they got. Manic depressive was a game for me. My son is a manic depressive. I know it's real, but for me it was a game. You're getting too close, you wanna talk, and I'm busy trying to figure out what's going on.

I found the easiest way to keep people away is throw a little moon swing. You have to get pretty good at it. You do it too much, they lock you up. And if you just do it not quite right, you're the entertainment for the night at the party. I don't wanna go to the party anyway.

In the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the story of the car salesman named Jim, I found me and I found my brand of insight insanity. I won't bore you with it. I know you've all read it 15 or 20 times. Puts an ounce of milk or ounce of whiskey in his milk. His mind tells him that's okay.

Ends up he's been at AA 6 times, by the way. Working with the people that wrote this book, he's been there and just can't seem to get it. But the upshot of it was, it says whatever whatever precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such lack of proportion and the ability to think straight be anything else? And somehow I got that.

My brand of insanity is lack of proportion and lack of the ability to think straight. I don't have it. I don't get angry. I go from calm, cool, and collected to killer rage and it happens just like that. Fierce for sissies.

Take your 50¢ and get on the roller coaster and get scared a little bit. I like raw terror. Stuff that gets you out of bed and makes you feel useful. 2 steps ahead of the feds, Stuff like that. Just madness.

So I lack proportion and I lack the ability to think straight. And without some guidance, I still don't think straight. I am rubber minded. Bruce says, we don't even think the truth is gonna work for you. So you take it into your head and your mind catches it and says something like, I can use that later.