Toluca Lake Speakers Meeting in Toluca Lake, CA

Bill Cleveland, alcoholic. Well, you never stop learning in AA. Tonight, we've already learned that the Tehachapi men's prison has a house band and, it isn't often that you hear about the hokey pokey in an AA pitch. And, I challenge any of you here tonight that do go out. When you go out, try not thinking about the hokey pokey when you go out.

I was a surfer and a biker and a tough guy, and I never went to the beach. My motorcycle rarely ran, and I was afraid to fight, but I looked really good. I had a chrome Nazi helmet for a hat and a primary chain for a belt and black greasy Levi's, big black boots with chains around them. I've got tattoos all over me, but I had a clip on earrings. I didn't wanna hurt myself.

Would you people over there please help the girl that read chapter 5 kind of hold her in her seat? It's a little just a little perky. So that's my story. I'm one of those guys that when I started drinking, my life just stopped, And, and for the rest of the time until I was 37 years old, I was pretending to be something. I'm a child of the sixties, like our 10 minute guy.

I graduated from high school in 1965. It was a great time to be getting high. Matter of fact, we weren't getting high. We were making a political statement. We were changing the world, and if you hadn't noticed, it has changed.

We were successful in the endeavor. Every decade since has wanted to be us. You know, and, and we were cute. God, weren't we cute? Oh, my sponsor got me for for my birthday.

He got me a book called Hippie, and it's, like, that thick. And I looked through there, and I just I had to put it down, or I was gonna go smoke a joint. You know, I just you read that book, it's just a slip. You know? It's you know?

But the road from Los Angeles to San Francisco was the road to nirvana. Golden Gate Park was the center of the universe. They weren't eating hitchhikers yet, so it was safe to travel. It was summertime all the time, and the young ladies were discovering their sexuality, and we were helping them as best we could. It was a tall order.

And, you know, you tell me there's no God. It was like, my goodness. It kinda scared me, actually. It was frightening. And, you know, I mean, remember the party?

Remember the whole idea behind this thing, this drugs and alcohol thing was to have a party. That was the whole idea, was to get out of the house and have some adventures and meet her, get lucky, have a good time, do some stuff. I don't know about you, but I ended up naked in my living room watching religious television taking notes. Party. I mean, I'm having sex menage a uno.

We're partying with Billy now. I mean, we're just we're getting down. What the hell happened to the party? I mean, you don't need proof that alcoholism is a physiological disease other than the last 2 to 3, 4, 5 years that you and I spent out there. What were we thinking?

Nobody would consciously do that to themselves if they had a choice. There's no party. You know? Jesus. Don't read the notes in the morning when you're sitting there taking the notes.

And why the hell are we always newed up? What's that about? You know? Because I don't really remember what starts the naked process. You know, it's like, I guess it gets hot.

You know? And you know? And you have the alcoholic chair, you know, the one that's all broken down and stuff, and you're just sitting there, and I'm, you know, I'm I'm getting there again. But I weighed over £300, and I sit there slouched in that chair naked with a big puddle of drool on my belly in the morning, you know, thinking and I what and you get up and you say to yourself, you know, I I gotta cut this out. It doesn't feel like a party to me.

I started drinking when I was probably 14. I mean, that's when you finally get it done. You know, you sip a few beers here now and then. Finally, you get the job done. Finally, you go out and you get hammered and You throw up, and this is where we talk about we can't wait to do it again.

I mean, there's a sign right there, you know. I mean, your face is stuck to the pillow. You're or you're laying on some lawn somewhere stuffed under a bush, or there's a big bruise on the side of your face. You know, you got somebody else's clothes on, and you wake up and go, yeah. Yeah, man.

Damn. Jeez. I can't wait to do it again. I never crossed a line. I didn't know there was a line.

You know, some people some people do. They drink for a while, and they do it successfully. They have a good time. They go to college. I couldn't find the place.

You know, and, you know, and then then it gets worse and it progresses, you know. I mean, I drank for effect right off the bat, you know. I mean, you know what the problem with moderation management is? You've ever heard of that moderation management? The woman that started it just killed some people on the freeway not too long ago.

The problem with moderation management is I don't know any of my brothers and sisters in Alcoholics Anonymous whoever wanted to moderate a goddamn thing. That was never the plan, was it? I mean, Bill Wilson says it is a great obsession of every abnormal drinker that he drink I don't know, Bill. I never wanted to drink like the lames. You know?

I mean, I never did. I wanna get off. I wanna go away. I don't like it here. I'm drinking for the blackout.

Let's get the job done. You know? No hokey pokey. Both feet in. So 14 years old, I'm drinking, and at 17, I was a bad drunk in high school, you know.

I was I was I was gone. I was irretrievable. At 17 years old, I'd already been to jail. I had the uniform. It says in the doctor's opinion that the alcoholic life seems like the only normal one, that even though we know that it is injurious that after a while we cannot differentiate the true from the false.

How the hell do we do that? I mean, it takes some pretty aggressive mental exercises to make alcoholic the alcoholic life seem normal, like throwing up on your friends, hitting on the neighbor's wife, you know, face stuck to the pillow, puking on stuff. How can that be normal? How do you do that? What do we come up with?

Number 1, it must be someone else's fault. I can never take responsibility for my behavior. If I do, I can no longer justify that behavior, so it's gotta be your fault. And my first persona that I came up with to make alcoholism okay was I was the rebel. I was the bad kid.

I had the jacket. I had the sneer. I had the look. I had the hair. I had the uniform.

I tattooed it on myself. I mean, it was the sixties. Of course, I was an alcoholic and a drug addict. What's your problem? You know?

I mean, we walked around. We looked like that. I was proud of it. I was one of those guys. I was out there on the lunatic fringe, and I liked it very much.

And if you had any authority whatsoever, I had a bit of a problem with authority. You know? Now you'll hear guys in AA say that, sober guys. You know, I have a bit of a problem, and they they talk about it as if it's a badge of honor. I'm here to report to you that is a character defect.

And then when you're 14, 15, 16, it's kinda cute and it's kind of expected. When you're 40, it's just stupid. You know? But at 17, I had it. I had the problem.

I was the bad kid and I had the problem. At 22, I ended up in the Oregon State mental institution. I needed a rest. Anybody else here been in a mental institution? Okay.

I'm gonna ask the question again. I'm gonna clarify it a little bit. If they lock the door behind you, it's a mental institution. That was better. There was always somebody out there going, well, they were just observing me.

It it really wasn't an institution, really. You know? Little erratic behavior problem. Only those of us that have been in a mental institution know that it's not that bad. You have some sparkling conversations in the mental institution.

It is an eclectic crowd. And it's a great place to look for a bride. This is my wife, Karen, right here. I did not find her in the mental institution. That was another one.

At 13, my mother sent me to my first psychiatrist because I had rage. Alcoholics don't know much about anger, but rage is an old buddy, isn't it? I mean, anger is an appropriate emotional response to a negative situation. Been normal, regular people have anger. Rage, on the other hand, you can get off on rage, And I had rage.

I hated my parents, which is a requirement to be an alcoholic. You must hate your parents. They're handy, and a lot of them really deserve it. And I hated my father. I I absolutely despise the man.

And I would I would double over in fits of anger, and I'd hit the floor on my knees, and the bile would come up from my stomach into my throat, and the veins would throb in my neck. Eyes bulging out, fist in the wall, head in the headboard. And my mother looked at me and said, there's something wrong with the boy. And she sent me to a shrink, and, and he really helped me. He really helped me.

I spent about a year and a half with this shrink and the best thing he did for me is he introduced me to my favorite subject, me. That lifelong pursuit of self discovery. I think Wilson calls it that bitter morass of self pity. It's kinda I think that's the AA approach to psychotherapy, you know, is it because it's never ending. Ever noticed how that job of finding yourself is limitless?

It just goes on forever. I have no problem telling you my secrets. I do psychotherapy extremely well. Matter of fact, if the conversation lulls a little bit, I'll just make some shit up. You know?

Keep it interesting. You know. And my first shrink was at 13. As I mentioned, when I was 22, I was in a mental institution on more than one occasion, and, I spent two and a half years in group therapy at one time. I've been to various other psychiatrists and shrinks.

I've been gestalted and and primal screamed. I know more about myself than it's safe to know, but I can do it forever forever. So after the mental institution up in Oregon, because I met my wife, my first wife, I met her at Bass Lake on the 4th July in 1965. One of our favorite alcoholic buddies, Hunter Thompson, wrote a book about that summer, and, I was there. And, I realized my career path when I saw the boys ride into the valley, and and then I met her.

I met my hippie girlfriend, and we went up to Oregon to grow our own. And, up in Oregon, I'm we married, I had 2 children, and I ended up in a mental institution. I'm running with an outlaw motorcycle gang. I'm sticking needles in my arm every day and I'm not coming home to that family and drinking like a fish, and I lost a wife and 2 kids and a house and a couple of cars and several jobs, and I was essentially living in my car. Actually, I was living in the mental institution.

I had nowhere to go. Go. And when I got out of there and the state of Oregon decided it was time for me to leave, and I agreed, I came back down to Los Angeles. And when you hate your parents, if you need something, you can still ask them for stuff, you know. And I came down here and swallowed my pride.

What pride there was. And, asked my dad for help and he let me sleep in his garage and he gave me a job in his machine shop, and I tried to become normal, and what normal is is you can't quit doing heroin because you can't find anybody to go along with the concept of social heroin use. It just it's a lifestyle and, you gotta quit taking acid because you gotta talk to people, and, and you can only drink on the weekends because normal people have jobs and, they show up on Monday. They follow that up with Tuesday. I've seen it.

I've seen it. They do right after that, they do Wednesday, and then Thursday, and then fry and they do this week after week. It's incredible. And, when I drink, I don't show up no matter what. I mean, like, nothing happens.

And, so you can only drink on the weekends. What you do during the week is you smoke pot because it's green and it's from God. You know, it's not really getting high. It's what you do in between getting really high. It's maintenance, and, see the problem with me is is that there has to be a cushion between you and I, because the impact of your personality on me is absolutely devastating.

You know, I I can't deal with it, so I need some kind of cushion, some chemical cushion in order to get through the day. I mean, this isn't we're not talking here. We are not describing partying. This is survival now. I'm 23, 24 years old, and I've already moved into survival mode.

At 22 in the mental institution, you don't end up in a mental institution because you had a bad week. I mean, the partying for me from 15 to probably 18, 19 years old, I was in trouble. I was in serious trouble at 18 19 years old. And at 22, I'm in a I'm in a nut house. Now I have to remember, like, an integral part of this story is the way I ended up in a mental institution is I called the police on myself.

In AA, there's sometimes there's a controversy, but between about the alcoholic and the drug addict. Are they the same? Are they different? People call themselves alcoholic addict. They should.

They shouldn't. All this stuff. Well, every anybody that's been on the street knows there's a difference between alcoholics and drug addicts. And here's an operational difference. No self respecting drug addict would ever call the police on himself, but an alcoholic will do it and think it's a pretty good idea.

You know? There is a level of lameness in the alcoholic that simply does not exist in the hip contemporary rock and roll drug addict dude of today, you know? So you gotta find your place, so that puts that to rest. Right? All you GSRs can report that in at the next district meeting.

And, So I'm trying to do normal now. I'm trying to do normal, and I pretty much I put down all the hard drugs, and I just drank for another 15 years. You know, supplemented it with this and that with no consequence, really. I just drank. And in the end, when I was 37 years old, there was me in a gin bottle.

That was it. There was no hypnosis. There was no party. There had not been a party for a long time, and in that time, I met another woman because an alcoholic of my variety, you can never ever be alone. It is a group effort getting me through life.

It takes a village. And they have a tendency to stray, and you gotta kinda gather them back together and get them all going in the same direction, you know. And it's easy to find a victim. It's, you know, volunteers, whatever you wanna call them. You know, I found her, and we had 2 more children.

And at 37, when it was time for me to get sober, evidently, so far, I lived in the house with that woman and those 2 kids, and and there was no screaming, there was no fighting, there was nothing going on. I mean, we hadn't had sex in years. And, there was that deadly crashing silence. I had no emotional connection to another living human being. One of the most powerful lines in the big book to me is my opinion.

One of the most powerful lines was written by Silkworth, a non alcoholic just observing us. A man who observed us for years, and he said, we lose touch with all things human. Isn't that the truth? I mean it's incredible, and most of us don't realize that, don't realize how profound that is until we're 3, 4, maybe 5 years sober, when the self centeredness begins to flake away enough to where you can look back and you go, oh my god. I had no idea.

I had no idea that it was that deep, that I couldn't feel you in me. I didn't have the capability. You know, regular people, whatever you wanna call them, just people out there on the street, part of who they are is the other people in their lives. Part of who they are, these aren't people that they're just sharing space with. Part of their own personality, of their own makeup is the other people in their lives.

They identify when you ask somebody who they are, they'll start talking about their children and their wife and their mother and their father because that's who they are, is these other people. But you ask an alcoholic and he'll spend an hour and a half talking just about himself, because you know why? He can't feel the other people in his life. He can't feel them. Guys will come to me today and say, I love my children.

I look at them. Do you really? Haven't you just heard that said and you know you're supposed to say that? Because aren't they in the way just a little bit? Because you were in my way.

You were trying to dampen my fun. You wouldn't let me get my medication. You'd give me that funny look. You ever had anybody say to you, he's not emotionally available for me? Usually, in family group right near the end of the 30 day session at the recovery place.

You know? You know what they mean by that? When she finally looks at you, he or she finally looks at you and says you're not emotionally available for me. What they're saying is that I've got something that they want and I'm withholding it. The truth is worse.

I don't have it. It's not there. If you want me to be emotionally available for you, wait about 10 years and only if I do certain things. I can be sober 10 years and be completely, emotionally unavailable for you, completely just as self centered as when I was drinking. We all talk about intimacy.

We all talk about relationships and what we want out of them, and the struggle that we have keeping them and and wanting to have healthy ones. How do we get there? By doing an inventory and ones. How do we get there? By doing an inventory and making amends?

No. No. That's the doorway. Working the steps like that, doing an inventory, making an amends is 20% of the program. 20%.

It's sober 101. We have to do that work in order to get through that so that we can begin to grow. This program is not about this is the opinion section of the pitch. This is not about inventory after inventory after inventory after inventory inventory, and changing sponsors in order to get a new experience out of Alcoholics Anonymous. Guys come up to me and they say, I wanna work the steps with you, and I go, no.

Why not? Because you you're looking at me like I'm gonna fix you, you know. I can see I see that look in your eye, you know, and, but it's not about that. So at 37, I called my mother. No one loves you like mom, hopefully.

She came and got me and stuck me into a place. I should mention to you that when my father died in 1999, he was 45 years sober. My mother died in 2002. She was 48 years in Al Anon. She helped start the Al Anon central office in, in LA, the inner group.

My father hung around with Chuck Chamberlain. We all did. I'm I'm an AA kid. You know, I don't recommend it. There's nothing worse than living in a house with 2 people with clear eyes that know exactly what's going on in your head.

Now you know why I hated him. Right? He's looking at me, one day at a time. I grew up in AA. The last place I wanted to come was here, my old man's club.

This was just not real hip, you know. But my mother came and got me. She stuck me into a place in Costa Mesa called Starting Point. While I was in there, they made me wear a sign around my neck. I had to make the sign.

We made it in crafts. It's a rectangular piece of cardboard with a string that went through it and said, I am not a counselor. There was some confusion about that. So I get out of there after 35 days, and I come to to AA, because I'll tell you something. When they're all done gestolting and rolfing, when all the insurance money runs out, they send us to the world's aftercare program, Alcoholics Anonymous.

This is it. It's linoleum floors and metal folding chairs for the rest of our natural lives. So don't screw up. There are no referrals from AA. This is it.

This is it. And I had a bad attitude. I was too hip for AA. You know, there's nothing sadder than to watch somebody trying to be cool in all places, AA. You know, this has offered me a available.

Scott Redmond. Great line. And, I'm standing in the back of the room, and I'm too hip you gotta picture this. I'm too hip for AA. I'm fat, bald, and 40, and I think I'm too hip for AA.

You know, that's not denial. That's delusional. You know, you gotta know some shit to be in denial. You know what I mean? I when I look in the mirror, I see something different than is there.

You know? I mean, it's like, I'm in trouble. So I asked this guy to be my sponsor. He says, be at my house Thursday at 5 o'clock. Read the doctor's opinion, make notes in the margin about what you agree with and what you don't.

So I went and I I I read the doctor's opinion, I made my notes in the margin, and and I showed up at his doorstep at 5 o'clock, and and he did not trust me that I had read it, so he had me sit there and read it to him out loud, And I made my notes in the mart. He stopped me at one point, and he he said, there's 4 or 5 different kinds of alcoholics that describes in there, and he said, which one are you? We discussed it, and I said, I think I'm this one here. He says, well, circle it. Put a star next to it.

You're in the book. I kinda like that, and and he he he explained to me, he says, this book is written about you. You should find yourself there, and if you can't, there's a problem. But you said you found yourself. You're on the path.

You're Here we go. This is it. You identify. It says in there the only thing that's gonna save an alcoholic of that variety is a complete psychic change, and he explained to me that his job as my sponsor was to help bring about this psychic change that had occurred in him, and that he would guide me through this process. So hopefully, I would have one of those because my perception of the world around me should never be confused with reality, and I need to look at the world differently than I do.

The thief thinks everyone else is a thief, and I'm a thief, and I'm a liar, and I'm a lowlife, and I have a low self opinion of myself, so I look at the world with those kinds of eyes. The psychic changes and evolutionary process takes years for it to occur. It's not a spiritual awakening. It's a psychic change, a different way of thinking, a different way of perceiving the world around me. That's not gonna happen overnight.

Isn't it true that you and I, when we started drinking and using, we stopped growing emotionally, you know. So what we do with that is we call it alcoholic thinking. Once again, self obsessed to the max, we categorize this as something new and very different To once again prove our uniqueness, we have alcoholic thinking, which is the excuse for all kinds of bad behavior. Oops. There goes my alcoholic thinking.

Now Silkworth looked at that and he says only an alcoholic would come up with that. They are emotionally immature. That's what we are. I'm sorry to be the bearer of such bad news. When you go to your therapist tomorrow, tell him, oops, I made a mistake.

I'm emotionally immature. You know? So we're gonna grow up now. We're gonna be middle aged. We're gonna grow up now, and the odds of you and I doing it and looking good are really slim.

Doing this with style is not gonna happen. We're not gonna slide right into spiritual hugeness, you know. We're gonna screw up. We're gonna say the wrong thing. We're gonna do the wrong thing.

We're gonna have to write a lot, you know? It's gonna be painful, but there's an awful lot of fun about it. We are and people say, well, I want balance in my life. Give it up. Part of what people love about us is our spontaneity.

Very important to be cute while you're going through this process. Don't lose your sense of humor, you know, because when they look at you, go, what the hell did you do that for? Go, wasn't it cute? My sponsor said I would be glad to talk to you about what you think your problems are so that you will not share about them in the meetings. He says, the meetings are for recovery from alcoholism, not about how your day went.

I didn't know any different, you know. I just believed him, you know. Now AA is a safe place. You can come in here, you can say whatever you want. It's a safe place, but the only thing you can't do is really is that you can't smack somebody during the course of the meeting, you know, but I'm sure there's some places that's kind of a It's okay.

He didn't really mean it. I mean, it's a safe place, but let's not get it confused with other things. This is not a self help program. This is not a support group. It's much bigger than that.

There are some things you'll hear around alcoholics anonymous that I think are dangerous. One of them is this is a selfish program. No, it's not. We just say that so we'll feel better about coming here, It's not a selfish program. It is the antithesis of that.

It's all about you and I getting out of ourselves. It is the end of the selfishness, and we can drag it on, can't we? The other thing that you hear that goes along with that is there's a different program for everyone in AA. That was made up by an alcoholic that doesn't wanna work the program. There's only one.

It's real clear as to what it is. Matter of fact, one of the great lines in the book is, we have a way out upon which we can all agree. We all agree on it. That's why we're able to sit in this room together. All different ethnicities, all different religious religions, sexual persuasions, we all can sit in the room.

You know why? Because we have a way out upon which we can all agree. Our problem isn't that we're black. Our problem isn't that we're gay. Our problem isn't that we're Catholic or Jewish.

Our problem is is that when we start drinking, we can't stop, And there's a way out of that, and we share that common problem together. We all agree on what that way out is. The other thing that you'll hear is you've been your own worst enemy. Put yourself at the top of the amend's list. That'll pretty much kill you.

That one is especially deadly, because if I put myself at the top of the list, I will never get to you. Remember, this is my favorite subject now, and I'll spend the rest of my life making amends to Billy. You know? You wanna make amends to yourself? Put yourself at the bottom of the list.

By the time you get there, you'll have some self esteem. That's how it works. What's the other one? It was oh, you've gotta learn to love yourself before you can love others. Isn't what you and I have been doing is loving ourselves?

You know? Really. I mean, maybe it's in a dysfunctional way, but I'll never get to you if I'm working on me. I think the way I learn to love myself is by putting myself at the bottom of that amends list of pretending that I love you and getting some self esteem, some self worth. That's how I make love to myself, you know.

I'm serious. That's how I I give back to Bill, what I took from him. You know? We're always on this search for ourselves. We're going back in the past to come out for the with the root cause of our problems to find out, I don't think there's anything to find.

The depth of my shallowness knows no bounds. Isn't it true that what's happening to us is that we are unfolding into something we have never been. We've never been this. We're not recapturing anything. You talk to any alcoholic and and if you really get down with him, he'll say, yeah, man.

You're right. I don't want my old life back. I want your life. That's why I'm here. I see that light in your eyes.

I want your life. You look like you're having fun. You look like you have friends. You look like you have a message that has depth and weight. You ever heard people in AA say the longer I'm sober, the less I know?

Don't you wonder about those people? I mean, aren't they paying attention? I mean, you can come into the rooms and not do a goddamn thing and pick some shit up. You know? I mean, isn't that false humility couched in spiritual pride?

Well, if I pretend to be humble, maybe it'll happen. You know? Great Virginia wolf line. You cannot find peace through avoiding life. You can't find peace through avoiding life.

Don't pretend you don't have opinions. We all know you're full of shit, you know. Don't don't give me this spiritual stuff, like, you know, all you sit and meditate 9 or 10 hours a day. You're an alcoholic. You can't sit still for 5 minutes.

You know? Please. If I get on my knees and I ask god for help, I should not send him away when he shows up. Wouldn't you agree with that? And you can bet that when he shows up, he will not look like I think he should.

You know what he's gonna look like? You. Now at this point in my sobriety, I'm completely, absolutely, utterly bored to tears with myself. But you, on the other hand, are a never ending font of weirdness, you know. It just never stops.

80% of the program is working with others. It's what my sponsor taught me. You're gonna have the psychic change. We're gonna get you working with other people as soon as we can. We're gonna develop in you a message that has some depth and weight and understanding of the steps and understanding of the book and understanding of alcoholics anonymous and what it is.

It lives and breathes. It is an institution, and then we're gonna have you start working with others. And if you're working with others, Bill, he said, you will always be in the book. You will always be in the inventory process. You will always be in the amends process.

It will never end. It will never stop. And if after 8 or 10 years, you're still going to 7, 8 or 9 meetings a week, we're going to wonder what the hell is the matter with you, Because you shouldn't be able to go to that many meetings because you're working with 8 or 9 or 10 guys. And you're doing it in your living room or out in your garage somewhere. And you go meet them at meetings, you do what you're supposed to do, but the whole idea is to carry this message to the alcoholic that still suffers, to make yourself an attractive package so people will come up and ask you for help.

Now, if you open your heart to this work, if you open up to your heart to this work and you always answer your phone, you never monitor the phone calls because that's how God gets in touch with you. It doesn't matter who's calling. What do I got to hide? Am I gonna put myself in the decision of making a decision of what I will and won't do? Here's another one that'll kill you that goes along with that and justifies all that kind of behavior.

Just take what you can use and leave the rest. Isn't that how you and I lived our whole lives? Isn't it time to cut that crap out now and do what we what we're sent to do, do what we're supposed to do, do what we're asked to do, not what I choose to do. If I do that, my life will be as narrow as it was when I was drinking. Let's go to the prison panel.

Hell, no. I'm busy. I'm playing golf. Thank you very much. You know?

Now if you have any kind of prejudice in your heart and you open yourself up to this work, you can count on the fact that that prejudice will walk across the room and ask you for help. Now you can maintain the prejudice by saying no. If you think I sound arrogant, here's arrogance for you. This is arrogance. Me determining whether you're correctly alcoholic enough for me to work with.

That's arrogant. Do you suppose that's where we really are? Is it really true that when someone reaches out for help, the hand of AA should be there no matter who it is, no matter what it is. I don't have to have the same problem as you to be able to help you. I used to stand up at these podiums and say that if you were on medication, you weren't sober.

You know why I said that? Because I heard some of you say that, and I wanted to be a right wing badass desk squad, AA dude. You know? Do it the right way. Do it the correct way.

Be sober correctly. It only work with correctly alcoholic drunks. You know? So if you wanna maintain that prejudice, send them away. If they come to you and they're not correct, send them away.

If they're a cocaine addict and you don't have any experience with cocaine, send them away. You'll never learn a goddamn thing about cocaine addiction if you do that. And aren't you supposed to be here to be the best person you can, to be the best conduit for god that you're supposed to be? Don't you suppose god sends those people to us to teach us, to make us larger than we were before, to give us the bigger life that we say that we want? I think that's what we're supposed to do.

This guy walked across the room at me and he says, I want you to help me, but I gotta tell you I'm bipolar and I'm on medication. You went, oh, jeez. But I've been taught you never say no ever. There is never a good reason to say no, ever. Period.

It's easy to do. You just never say no. And if they're not meant to be with you, they'll go away. You don't have to fire them. They just leave.

You know? If they're looking for a therapist and I won't be their therapist, they'll take a hike. You know? So I started working with this guy, and I had the experience of peeling them off the ceiling and lifting them up off the floor. Now when I see him come and I say, have you taken your medication?

Because you're sick, man. So I had an opinion, then I had an experience, and it changed my opinion. I'd like to close with something that means an awful lot to me. I know I'm running over here, but, this is my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. This was a poem that was written by Sam Shoemaker, the guy that ran Calvary Chapel that Debbie Thatcher came out of when he went to go get Bill Wilson, the worst drunk he knew.

60 days sober. It clearly worked. Thatcher was 60 days sober, and he went on a 12 step call. Shoemaker wrote this poem. It's not about AA, but you tell me if this is not this this doesn't really describe Alcoholics Anonymous.

This is my experience in AA. If it's not yours, maybe you might wanna go look for it, because it's there. I stand by the door. I neither go too far in nor stay too far out. The door is the most important door in the world.

It is the door through which men walk when they find god. There is no use my going way inside and staying there when so many are still outside, and they as much as I crave to know where the door is. And all that so many ever find is only the wall where the door ought to be. They creep along the wall like blind men without stretch hoping groping hands, feeling for a door knowing there must be a door, yet they never find it. So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world is for men to find that door, the door to God. The most important thing that any man or woman can do is to take hold of one of those blind groping hands and put it on the latch, the latch that only clicks and opens to the man's own touch. Men die outside the door as starving beggars die on cold nights and cruel cities in the dead of winter, die for want of what is within their grasp. They live on the other side of it, live because they've not found it. Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it and open it and walk in and find him.

So I stand by the door. I admire the people that go way in, but I wish they would not forget how it was before they got in. Then they would be able to help the people who have not yet even found the door or the people who want to run away again from God. You could go in too deeply and stay in too long and forget the people outside the door. As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place near enough to God to hear him and know he is there, but not so far from men as to not hear them and remember that they are there too.

Where? Outside the door. 1000 of them. Millions of them. But more important for me, 1 of them, 2 of them, 10 of them, whose hands I am intended to put on the latch, so I shall stand by the door and wait for those who seek it.

I had rather be a doorkeeper, so I stand by the door. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the single most significant social movement of 20th century, and you and I are the instrument of god's will. Thank you very much.