The 16th annual Hiawathaland Get-Together in Austin, MN

Hello, everybody. I'm an alcoholic. My name's Keith. By god's grace, Alcoholics Anonymous runs full of people like you and a little effort on my own. I haven't had to take a drink or do any, kind of narcotics at all, since May 11, 1976, and for that, I'm especially grateful to that.

Glad to be here and glad to be sober. Niles, he tried to do his he's an absolute miracle. He tried to do his own version of the Texas chainsaw massacre, and he's very fortunate to be here. I'm glad to know that he made it, thanks to Mayo Clinic. He lisped a little, but that's gonna heal.

I'm glad to know how to spell, how you pronounce that name because I called you Lefty. And the taper, don't even ask about him. If you wonder what that is over there to my left, that's, friends of mine came all this way so that I could say I had friends. A bunch from, Minneapolis and the the Garage Dogs and, and, the Deal, guys from, Des Moines, Iowa. I wanna thank them for coming over this weekend to support our being here, Sue and I.

Sue and I are fortunate we get to do these things together and have been for a long time. I'm very blessed. My wife, stayed with me. We just celebrated 42 years of marriage. And, and, we've been together so long, we're starting to get replacement parts.

So we just had a titanium hip replacement. And today, we were in Minneapolis trying to get a cart to get from one gate to the next, and she threw 2 old people off the cart and their baggage. She said, look, turned around to me, and said, don't you think I'm getting better? She's not a doormat allen on it, I'll tell you that for sure. But we have a lot of fun.

The security guard wanted to frisk me, and she hit him with her cane. And I said, so you're going to Minneapolis, I always send her to the the counter to you know, she goes up to the counter at the airport. She does counter a lot better than me. And she'll go out and say, has anybody told you they love you today? And we're on the next flight.

I walk up to the counter, and the guy says, take a seat. Sit in that section, and I'll let you know when to come up here. I just, I don't know. They profile me. I don't know why.

I laugh. She smokes, and so she has to go to all these different weird places in the airports to smoke with all these weird people. You know, she said, I'll be back in a little bit. Yeah, you will. And, she goes off and smokes in the bars.

And it's a good thing she's an Al Anon. She can sit in the bars with the drunks and smoke, you know? And she was sitting in there. Some gal's pounding down doubles. And and, Sue went in there and sat down and said, okay.

If I sit next to you to smoke, And the lady said, Sure. And, Sue's smoking in there and she looks in all these empty glasses around this lady and Sue says, Isn't it terrible that they isolate the smokers and the drunks? And the lady says, I beg your pardon. I didn't think of myself as that. Pretty soon, here she comes running back.

We always have a lot of fun in in the airports taking trips and stuff. That's good. We went to Arkansas a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, they've had all those hurricanes down in Florida, so that has an adverse effect on Arkansas. The tidewater or whatever it is underneath the land, under the water, backs up, and so do all the sewers in Arkansas.

And so we get into this motel on Friday afternoon and having a convention there, and all the sewers are backed up. And I don't know, man. The people at the desk, I went in there and said, You got a room? They said, Yeah, but no toilet. Alright.

I'll take it. I've just been flying for 12 hours without a toilet. I can surely go all night. But what they did, they plugged my room into the desk. So everybody that called the desk complaining about toilets or needing toilet paper or whatever, they call my room.

And so like, from midnight on, people would call up and say, I've called 6 times for toilet paper. When are you gonna bring it? I'll be right over. What room are you in? 2 o'clock, 3.

And you know what? The next day when I talked, I told that story and all these hands went up. It was all the alkyes calling all night. What were you doing up wanting toilet paper? The toilet won't even flush.

Well, I wanted to be prepared, so when it did, I'd be ready. And I tell you, funny, funny. But, I tell you, it wasn't always funny. It wasn't always funny to me, anyway. I don't know if I was born an alcoholic or not, but when I had my first drink, an alcoholic was born.

And I was born into an alcoholic family. You know, everybody around there pretty much was alcoholic. That's good if you're a budding alcoholic because there's plenty of alcohol around. And so there was always alcohol hit around everywhere and, and whatever you know. Rir Rir What does that mean, Beth?

Rir Raised. In California, you're raised. I'm from home of the fruits and nuts. I'd like to have Andy introduce Bugs Bunny. I need to get him out there at the Holiday Inn there at Disneyland to introduce Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny instead of spam.

Let's get him to do something. But as soon as I got here, I called California. I said, you're not going to believe it, but I'm in the spam capital of the world. There was a long silence on the other end. Anyway, I was reared in Oklahoma, and where the men are men and the sheep are unscared.

But they had county option, and they, sure the Baptist bought all the liquor license. So, you know, they had a lot of bootleggers and and, home brew and White Lightning and, you know, stuff you didn't put no floating umbrella in it, I'll guarantee you. It didn't have an all labor, anything, a little, fufu thing hanging off the side of it. That thing looked like white gasoline. And the closest thing I ever came to drinking like I did in Oklahoma is when I got to California.

They had 102 beer and Yukon Jack whiskey. You could get a 5th of Yukon Jack for a dollar 98 dollars and a 6 pack of 1.02 for about 92¢. And I was drinking. For a fact. But I grew up, and they had the in Oklahoma Panhandle and my dad's an alcoholic.

He's, by his own admission, he's just celebrated 26, 27 years of sobriety. And, he's 89 years old. He's still alive. He's out there hanging on, man. He's hanging on.

January 1st, he'll have 90 years. I called my sister the other day and she said, Oh, I don't know if he's ever gonna die. I said, Well, not before January 1st. I can tell you, he's gonna hang on till he's 90. Don't make no difference.

What? And, that's my dad. And, a hanger on her. I was going down the road the other day and I remember when my dad said, I just want to live to the year 2000. And he overshot to Mark by 4 years.

That's alcoholic, you know? But, then, where I grew up, they drank like that, home brew. And, I started out on that kind of stuff. And, by the time I was 12 years old when I was 12 years old, I got a farm permit I could drive and to drive farm vehicles and what heavy so you got a driver's license. And I had a car when I was 12, and I had my first hit and run and leaving the scene of the accident when I was 12 and 3 months.

Yeah. Started out early. I didn't know that's what it was. I just was leaving, driving off. I was sitting on a pillow, and I couldn't see what I'd run over.

And the car just went bump bump. So I But I was going to get some beer. I was going to get some beer. I know that. And the 3 guys in the car with me didn't say, stop.

You've run over somebody. Said, Hurry up! Let's get out of here! They're all 3 dead because of alcoholism, though. But at any rate, I as a result of that little incident where they locked me up with a bunch of other little terrorists, I didn't realize that's what it was then.

But I, from the time I was 12 and a half years old, I was locked up in some kind of a reformatory school or something. I had barbed wire around it and the girls were over on the other, in the other compound with barbed wire around them. And, nothing special, you know, just that I didn't want to, really. Growing up in an alcoholic home, being locked up over there was better than my house. You know, My home wasn't dysfunctional.

It was just insane. It was like a combat zone in my house. You know, it was just, crazy people. I love them. You know?

I tell you what. I never ever put down my family because of, alcoholism or anything. I I grew up with selfish, self centered, self seeking, neurotic, insane people, and I got out of there alive, baby. I wanna tell you something. At 36 years old, I dropped into Alcoholics Anonymous sober, and I sat down in a room full of selfies, self centered, self seeking, neurotic, insane people.

And they said, welcome. You're home. I'll tell you, the things I learned to survive in my own family has helped me many times right here in AA. I don't put them down at all, man. I'm grateful for the teachings.

My daughter grew up in just an insane environment. And when she was, 17 years old, she was a model. She wanted to be a model and she went to Japan ground or, you know, buses and trolleys and what have you, whatever. She couldn't really speak Japanese and there was a lot of wild things, people, what have you, gangs. Said these some gang guys took out after and she just stopped and turned around.

Yes. Yes. They just ran off. She said she called me and said, Dad, it works. I said, what?

She said, I faked it, but I don't know where all that came from. I saw all these teachings, teachings how to survive at home. Yeah. Then she went over to Milan, Italy and went into some NATO base to go to an Al Anon meeting and she had to ride on a train with all these jarheads, drunk jarheads, and they were all hitting on her and, Allen and our newcomers. And she could speak I tell you and whatever she could speak English so these were all talk drunk talking trash about the girls and my daughter said she turned around and said United States.

And I said, Boy, they sobered up real quick and just Oh. She called me up and she said, you know, they asked me, aren't you afraid to ride on that train with all those jarheads and all those people that, you know, trying to be mean and ugly. And she said, no. I told them they're just like your friends. My dad had friends like that around the house all the time.

So you know, teachings aren't all bad. If you live long enough, you'll get to use them. But I got out of, my little educational period there when I was 16 and a half years old and I'd learned a lot of things. And I also got involved with some outside issues, but that was okay. 16 and a half years old, I was very well educated grandmother said grandmother said it doesn't take any more effort to marry a rich woman than it does to marry a poor woman.

She just didn't tell me it takes more effort to keep one. But, I married this little gal. Her dad had all kinds of money. He was one of the 10 richest men in the state of Texas at least. And he was giving us some money to live on, what have you.

And, it wasn't enough. It's never enough for an alcoholic of my type. Enough is never enough. And so I was, transporting this automobile for somebody and to enhance my income. And I was in Fort Worth, Texas headed for Dallas, Texas and I had another hit and run, leaving the scene of the accident.

I don't know when I go, boom, boom. I just go on. Anyway, I got arrested, and there was some burlap bags in the trunk of this car I was transporting for this guy. I didn't know who he was. I stole the car.

And that's my luck, isn't it? Oh, man. I told the judge, what if there had been a dead body in that car that I stole? Why don't you just send me to jail for stealing the car instead of transporting marijuana? I said, you better be glad there was no dead body in that car.

You'd be going to jail for a lot longer. Anyway, as a result of that, I had to go do 18 months in a place that had a taller barbed wire fence and bigger men. It was a lot more outside issues, which is the beginning of my abandonment issues. Fast track education. And I got out of there, a couple of years or so later, called my 2 very best friends, Oyle and Goose, and I told them, I'll be coming in on the train.

And so they, got a couple of fruit jars full of white lightning, a jar full of beanies, and some home brew. Went down to the train station waiting for me to come in. They went down there 3 days early. So when I got there, they drank everything up almost, and the battery was dead. We've been listening to radio for 3 days.

But I was home, and so we went down to Wolf Creek to the dance. Wolf Creek's where there's no law comes to Wolf Creek dance, I'll guarantee you. And intermission, a big stage. Then I walked through the back door, grabbed a Coke ball, and spun it down across the dance floor and said, let the meanest sucker in the house bring that back. I'm home.

And it looked like a stampede coming in my direction. Because all them old hairy legged boys that have been hanging against the wall, not dancing, were looking for a fight. They took off after being. I hit the first drunk leading the charge, and then I ducked into the woman's restroom. I may be sick, but I'm not stupid.

And, as I went in the door of the restroom, there was a lady standing there and I said, tell me when the fight's over. And I went in a woman's restroom and hit out. Dance. I'm a quick study. I found out she had a job, a car, a driver's license, place to stay, money in the bank, none of which did I have.

And, so I said, how about taking me home with you? And that was, almost 45 years ago. You betcha. I know a deal when I see one. She still has a job, a car, driver's license, money in the bank, none of which do I have.

No. I said, where have you been all my life, baby? I've been looking for you everywhere. And she she said, Where you been? I haven't seen you around.

I said, Well, I just got out of prison. Where'd you? She said, I just got out of an unwed mother's home. I said, Hell, we deserve each other. Lest you and I get married and give 2 other people a break.

And we did. We dated for 2 weeks, and it was so it was so traumatic that the people in the community nicknamed it hatchet and hammer. Had to be loved too painful to be anything else. But, you know, I mean, we just went through living, screaming hell for years, 15 years, and then we But I'm telling you, nowadays, you know, when we're in a program we've been married a long time and in a program over 28 years and couples come up and say, well, do you think this is a I said, I don't know. Maybe you should just go beat the hell out of each other, claw and scratch and fight and throw each other out of cars, jump off of buildings and go to hospitals and nutworts.

And then if you're still alive, maybe you ought to get married. It's what we did. Really, it was we gotta be soulmates. It's just impossible to hang on that long. Really, the truth is, it's not because I'm a good guy and loved her and always wanted to be married.

The reason we're still married 42 years is because she does not believe in divorce. Homicide, but not divorce. But we set out a life of just absolute insanity and running and gunning. And I'm I love the deal. I don't care if it's 50¢ or 50,000,000,000.

I've always been in a deal. I always got something going. I like the action. I'm always doing something. And, and I'm always in trouble.

Yeah. I'm one of the kind of guys that'll have rent money on 5th and I'll spend it by 10th just to see if I can make it back by 29th. You know? I love it. Yeah.

And, but it just makes non drinkers crazy. Enablers just go absolutely insane. I had all kinds of enablers around me all the time, always fixers, always wanted to fix it. And I never knew what needed to be fixed. If I had a problem, I'm the kind of guy that'll wreck the car, come home, she'll say, the car is wrecked!' And I'll set the house on fire so we won't talk about the car anymore.

No problem here. Man. And, he got on. We had to move. I didn't really geographic my family a lot.

I went a lot of places, but I had a drunken uncle who lived in California and there. Had an old Chevrolet station wagon, laid the seats down, piled everything in there. Had a trailer with all this stuff piled in the back. It looked like the grapes of wrath. Had a 120 pound German shepherd dog that chewed all the hair off his body everywhere his mouth had reached, you know, just had a twitch in his lip.

Know, one of them where half their mouth is dry, so the lips always hung up there. Had an Easter bunny with ringworm. Toss him in there. You know? He stayed put because the dog always licked the rabbit, you know?

They always licked the rabbit. Looks like a furry ball over there, all licked up. The cat had a permanent puff tail. By then, we had a kid. The kid looked like a wounded animal.

Sue Sue had her hair up in a big old thing, you know, with about a can and a half of spray net in it. You know? It always looked like the Leaning Tower of Pizza. I went by a drugstore and got this girl that I knew that dated a guy that I knew to fill my my baggy prescription bottle. At 3 o'clock in the morning, go through the pharmacy and fill your get your prescription filled.

That's a sandwich baggy with everything that's got an open top on it. You know, you pile all that stuff in there and get you a case of beer, get ready to go. Most people could make the trip I made in, well, maybe 3 days. Took me about 32. I was lost a lot.

I remember one time she said, why don't you pull in here and ask somebody where we are? I said, I'm not gonna do that. Then they'll know I'm lost. I don't want anybody to know I'm lost. Yeah.

We got there. We got there. Well, I knocked the mirror off the right side of the station wagon, and she was hanging out the window to see if anybody's in that lane, you know. I got busted. As soon as I got to California, I got busted for heavy.

They don't have they have a law against human rear view mirrors out there. And, drunk and uncle got me a place to stay, moved into this house. Nobody lived there in a couple of years, couple of antiques in the front yard, a netzel. Goes with it. You know?

And, I live we lived there for, I don't know, how many years. I've we quit paying rent and the guy said, you know, you're not paying rent, you might as well buy the place. I said, okay. So we bought it. And, you know, once you buy a play if you're living, you know, one of them rent to buy things, why then as soon as you buy, well, you need to start doing home improvement.

So I started, you know, figuring I'd paint the house, you know, but I lost interest easy. I always was drinking in somebody's garage that had some paint. You know? What's that over there? Oh, I had some paint.

I was gonna paint something chicken coop or something, you know? Well, I'll paint. I'll take it. So I'd go home and I'd paint one side of the house with that paint and then I'd be I'd lose interest and I'd go to somebody else's garage for a while. I'd lose interest, and I'd go to somebody else's garage for a while, sit around.

Hey, man. You got some paint over here. Yeah. So I get another color of paint and I come back, paint that end of the house, you know. And my house is painted 4 different colors.

I mean, you know, it wasn't like red and yellow and green. It was brown and cream and red and yellow. You could see it. When you went down my street, you knew somebody impotent lived there. Yeah.

There wasn't a door jam in that house. It wasn't kicked off the hinges and stuck back up on you. You know, some of the door jambs are all split. And, you know, there were pictures hanging down low. We could go get those, satin velvet pictures of those ladies and bowls of fruit.

You know? They're cheap down in Tijuana. Sometimes it took 2 or 3 days to get 2 pictures out of Tijuana. But we made it. And, hang them in the house down low.

No frames. Those pictures have no frames. So she told me one time, you know, all our pictures have no frames. No problem. I got a friend with a pickup.

We went to Tijuana and we bought some picture frames. We brought all these picture frames back to my house and hung them on those pictures. And some pictures were this big with a frame that big. And so I took pen and tailed pen and wrote little pictures in between the picture and the frame. Fill in, I called them.

None of my friends ever said anything bad about that, but when those 7 Day Adventist people or whatever come over there, the church drive people, you'd let them come on in. They'd sit down in there and they'd be looking. They'd start looking. Look, you can tell when they start trying to read that stuff in between the picture and the frame. Strange.

-People would come to our house, try to help us, and we'd beat them up. Sue and I, we'd be fighting, and well meaning people would come over and say, if you'll come down to the church and get baptized, I know everything will be better. And we'd beat them up and send them out, and then we'd go in and make love. It's the best thing I ever saw. Passion.

Some people call it foreplay. Well, I had a run of bad luck. I ended up in jail, and I was in front of a judge who remembered me. And, I'd been arrested 57 times for assault and battery and resisting arrest within a 10 mile area of my house, and he had it all right there in front of me. And he said, whack, you're going to prison.

Alcoholics, man, you gotta get up early. I was sitting out in the hallway before I went to see that judge chained to a bunch of losers. I mean, convicts. And some guy came along down the aisle there and he was handing out AA literature. I didn't know what AA was.

I've been doing B and B myself. And I held it in my hand. So when that judge said, I've got all your information here, you know, all this and all this This was before anger management, folks. No. Back in the good old days when the cops were afraid to shoot you.

Anyway, he was gonna sentence me to 3 to 5 years in prison and I whipped this AA pamphlet up, stuck it right up there. Oh, AA, are you willing to try AA? Sure. I might have been drunk, but I knew that there was people in prison that I owed money to. I did not wanna see them.

I don't know anybody in AA. Whatever that is, I'll go there. You give an alcoholic an even break, and he'll take the path of least opposition. So they had an old guy come and get me, and he he brought me. Good to see you folks.

Come in late. You probably start reading in the middle of the big book. Oh, that's alright. Those are Al Anon's. They've driven a long way.

Find your significant other and sit down, please. Sit by your sponsor. We know them. I normally wouldn't give them that much time in my talk if I didn't know them. Anyway, I'm over there, and, the AA guy comes to get me.

They had Ivan Miller come and get me. Ivan Miller was sober 26 years, and he looked like he was drunk that afternoon. Ivan Miller's hands drug on the ground. He was an old machinist and they had all the oil and grease and chiseled hands and a beautiful little guy. And Ivan Miller came, got me over there in the courtroom that day.

And, if you want what I have and I followed Ivan out to his old pickup, man. It was all twisted and torn, beat up. And, he took me over by an AA meeting. He said, this is AA. Oh, boy.

And took me and dropped me off. He said, There's a meeting there tonight. And I went in. And I'd been in a fight and lost. Very unfortunate.

But, guy hit me upside the head with a crescent wrench and almost tore my ear off. And so I'd been I spent Saturday night Sunday in, jail ward at the hospital getting my stuff sewed back on. And then I had this big turban on my head with this blood soaked ear muff. Had a beard down to here and hair down to my butt. No underwear, no socks.

Traveling pretty light, really. No identification. Don't need any identification. You go out in front of a judge that knows you. And so they, said, alright.

Gonna go to a and a. So I went home and laid on the old vinyl couch and bled and stuck to the couch. And she came home and said she'd been to see a lawyer, and that lawyer said I should go to AA. So I let her think it was her idea. Okay.

So meeting starts at 8:30. It's over 10. So at 8 o'clock, she come over there and got her butcher knife out. That was her weapon of choice. For 15 years, we slept with our weapons of choice.

Every time we slept in the bed with each other, she slept with a 12 inches butcher knife stuck either with the handle sticking out of the mattress there, had a little special place, holster. And, and I slept with a loaded 45 with a round in the chamber and the safety off on my nightstands. And those weapons were not for people outside of the house. And, so she peeled me off the couch. We get out.

That time, our family wagon was a pinto, an old baby poop brown pinto with no reverse. Went down the road crooked, had a hole in the muffler. Inside of it was all the dog lick and dog hair all over the windows inside there, and we got the dog and the cat and the kid, me in there. And we headed for the 1st a and a meeting and pulled up in front of this church, big AA sign out there, you know. And I remember looking at that AA sign thing.

Oh, man. I've sunk to the bottom now. If any of my friends see me going in here, I'm through. That's called low bottom snobbery, baby. When you're down there on that level and you're afraid somebody will see you get recovery.

I used to drive. When it would rain, I'd drive through people's front yards until I got stuck and then just leave the car. Now here I am in my neighborhood, on my street. I did that several times. And, and now I'm about to go to an AA meeting, and I'm afraid somebody's gonna see me go in here and get sober.

You think I'm crazy drunk? Wait till I sober up. And I went in there. I looked around. I wouldn't even have drank with anybody in that room, man.

What a bunch of losers. I got my ears soaked, blood muff, and she's waiting right outside the door. Sponsorship? Yes. I have a sponsor.

See that woman in the piddle? She's got a 12 inch butcher knife. That's my sponsor. Nobody offered me a ride home. There was an Al Anon meeting right next door to the AA meeting, but there was nothing wrong with her.

So, I did that for a while and beat the deal down at the courthouse. And then I got drunk. That's because I wasn't through. You're not through till you're through. If you ain't through, you ain't through.

And I wasn't through. So I drank from 1970 to 1976 trying to get through. And, when I want to drink, I drink. And God never did come down and knock a drink out of my hand. I remember pulling up in a bar one time, set a drink down there and said, okay, God.

I'm getting ready to drink that. If you don't want me to drink that and run through the lives of others, take that drink out of my hand. Took that drink, put it right in. Okay, God. Okay, god.

Thanks. I'll just go ahead and drink now. And, got baptized. I went and got baptized one time. I had a half a pack of beets nut in my mouth.

Had the holy robe on and nothing else. Dumped me in the holy water and I threw up Have you ever seen what happens with a half a pack of beech nut floating in the holy water there? That ain't good. Guy said, you're going to hell. Believe me, I'm already there.

Nothing worked. Shock treatments. They shocked me into the state of smallness. And it was just good. I didn't have the quite have the same results because I was doing LSD at the same time.

I had some really good trips. Kind of like watching 2,001. I did a lot of speed. Now, I know it's an outside issue, but 43 stories and there's 17 stories out of there that talk about substance other than alcohol. So if you did a little dope or drugs or something like that, you could fit in there.

You know, you young people that do drugs only keep coming back so that you can keep the old folks from taking pills. Anyway, I did it all. I'm I'm a pig. Only thing I've never had is a pap smear. Sue went and got one the other day.

She said, you better quit saying that. You don't know what you gotta go through. But I drank with people who would have given me one, given a chance. And I'm a blackout drinker, so you never know. I, man, it was rough.

It was rough. I all people say I came today and I fell at home and I never drank again. I think that is fantastic. But I I had a long journey. Once I came to AA, I would sit in meetings drunk, and a guy would say, you need a ride home?

And I'd say, I don't know. What stepped you on? You know? Have you read the book? Yeah.

I walked home. You really get mad at your group? Get drunk and go to an AA meeting and then get up in the middle of the meeting, sit outside the door and listen to them laugh in there. Like those plastic people. They don't know what real living is.

And they all come out the door and go home and they don't even say nothing to you. You're sitting outside the meeting hall. Dark, lonely night. Doesn't work either. I got a big book, poured beer on it, threw up on it, tore pages out of it.

I take a page out of the big book and take it to a meeting and hand it to a guy. What do you think of that? They'd say things to me like, probably work better if you keep the rest of the book. I did the steps drunk. I'm powerless over alcohol, and I threw up on my book.

My life's unmanageable. Yeah. I just crapped my pants right here. That's crazy. Okay.

I never got so bad that I was sitting at Kinko's, naked at midnight, though. I'll tell you that. We got some weird ones in California. But I went to AA meetings drunk. I went to AA meetings sober, got on wood, got drunk.

Came out of a blackout in the AA meeting. That's scary. I would've left, but I didn't know who brought me. But I'd go home from an AA meeting and, and she'd wanna have a meaningful conversation about money. And I'd say, well, don't worry.

I'll give you a check. I'm the kind of guy that would put $100 in 8 different banks and write $8,000 worth of checks. She'd go to jail for my checks, kite and paper, you know? So when I'd say, I'll give you a check, the fight would be on, you know, and then I'd be drunk again. And then I'd go back to AA, and then I'd sit in AA meeting, honk and sniff on the ladies, go home and tell her, get in the bedroom.

I'm horny. I've been to an AA meeting. Those women smell better than you. And then we'd have a big discussion about who's who's lore companion. And, then I'd big fight and then I'd be off down in Anaheim Street in Long Beach with the ladies of the evening, drunk again, come back to AA, go to an AA meeting, you know, and come home and, you know, they say, we cease fighting everything and everybody.

And she'd take one step close to me, and I'd say, don't take another step or I'm gonna hit you. And she'd take one step closer. Bam. The fight would be on. And, I'd be drunk again.

And, I was going to A meetings but I was going home to a drunken house. I was going home to a crazy house. The same me will always drink again. And that nothing was changing. I was going home.

There was no recovery at home. And I was just getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And I stand in that kitchen to take a drink off a bottle of vodka, look down a hallway, 9 year old girl standing at the end of the hallway, her chin on her chest and her hair in her face. She didn't say anything. She was watching me to see which direction I was going.

So she'd go the other way. I'd take a drink out of that bottle and look back and she'd be gone. I didn't have to have that drink because I was ashamed of what was going on. I had to have that drink because there was a phenomena, a craving that made it necessary for me to take a Once I took a drink. And I didn't understand.

And I know what it's like to crawl across the floor. Own, kitchen, reaching in there in a cabinet for a bottle hidden back behind the pots and the pans. And a lip dragging drunk and dragged that bottle out and I'm sucking on that bottle laying on the kitchen floor and look up and a little 10 year old girl is looking at me with that pitiful incomprehensible demoralization. And I gurgle around there and say, what are you looking at? And she'd run away.

She just wanted to know which direction I'd go, so she'd go the other way. We live like that not a day or week or a month. We live like that from by 1972 to 1976 sometime in 1976. We bought the house and paid 20,000 for it and by 1976, owed 150 on it. The property had come up though, don't worry.

But I had borrowed and borrowed on that house to get bondsman and lawyers and corrupt the whole place. And, I had one last deal. I would Aetna and I Avco Finance. It was a gold card carrier for, Aetna and Avco and household finance. I owed about $260,000 to people.

And I had nothing to show for. And I needed some money. And, so people gave me an opportunity to transport some cocaine from Los Angeles to San Francisco and I took the job and a vehicle and I got me a quart of whiskey. And I went about a 100 miles up the coast and by there, I had drank a half a quart of whiskey and I had an alcoholic idea like, I think I'll steal the Coke. So I turned right and went inland and hid a quarter $1,000,000 worth of cocaine, drank the rest of whiskey, and forgot where I hit it.

That's how I know I'm an alcoholic, not an addict. But I sobered up and knew I was in a lot of trouble because I couldn't remember where I hid the stuff. And so I went over and hid out sometime in January of 1970. It's out in a little small town up in Mid California there, about outside of Bakersfield called Taft, California. Has anybody here ever been to Taft, California?

I hope You have, dude. You know what I'm talking about. If the world's got an asshole, it's Taft. It ain't hell, but you can see it from there. Right?

Right. But a good place to hide. I mean, all the way up to You've got to know somebody. The room was $50 a year out of that old barracks. And I locked in there somewhere in January of 1976, and by May hadn't gone anywhere, couldn't get anywhere, wasn't sobering up, wasn't getting drunk.

And I crawled out there and went back to AA because that's what happens to you, man. If you don't die and you go out there and drink, you're gonna have to come back to AA. That's it. Back to AA. I mean, back to I went back to man.

And, took a while for getting anybody 12 stemmed me, but a guy finally 12 stemmed me and put me in a detox, something I'd never done. I'd been And these people locked me up and detoxed me with nothing. Nothing. I said, how about some hard candy or volume or something? Said, no, eat a banana.

You need potassium. And, they locked me up, and I'd take 3 steps and laugh and 3 steps and cry. And it was just I detoxed about every all week, 10 days. I'd kick something else. I It was bad, bad time.

At 52 days sober, I remembered where I hid the cocaine, and I went in an AA meeting, 'I know where it is.' I didn't ask my sponsor if he wanted to take a ride with me. I went and got the stuff and gave it back. And the people said, you know, don't call us. We'll call you. But I learned something.

I walked across the parking lot and got in my car and drove back to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I walked across that parking lot, I knew that every good thing in my life is going to be preceded by a wall of fear. If I want the good in life, I'm going to have to walk through those walls of fear. And I drank and used to keep from I ran through those walls of fear, but to get to good. And I have I can assure you in over 28 years I've walked through many walls of fear and many to come, particular story, not in Braggadero or Outside Issue but in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, there is a part and in the 12 and 12, there's parts that allude to the fact that your enemies will welcome you.

Be cautious of that. And, Be cautious of that. And, I have some experience. And I rushed in there and took care of business. No big deal.

And I started going to meetings and I had a sponsor. I've always had a sponsor. Product is strong sponsorship. Worked the steps. They weren't that hard.

And, you know, soon went to Al Anon. My daughter went to Al Anon. My dog went to Al Anon. My cat went to Allocut. And, they released me into the arms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was just absorbed.

I don't know why I sobered up and stayed sober in May, but, I did. And I'll take it. Other alcohol. Sponsor told me, you know, help you'd help me. I got to be a secretary of a group and, you know, I had to do all the things, hug people and I had to count the money and not steal it.

Well, I'd leave I owe you. But, you know, I had to I had to, you know, start making amends at home and and those kind of things. Sue had, got involved in Al Anon and my daughter got involved in Alateen. A team. And I'm grateful for that.

And, you know, by the time I was 3 years sober, I was stark raving sober. I was just I worked the steps, I polished the chairs, and set up the stuff, and got a new big book, and went through it 4 times with Joe and Charlie. And I just was dying. Setting a meeting with alcoholics, and I was dying. It's like it's tattooed on my forehead.

Loser. I was paying the money back. I was doing everything right, and I was just sober. And Al Anon sponsors said, what if he's as good as he's ever gonna be? She said, well, he's still better than he was.