The Florida State Convention

My name is Ted Harbonk and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm alive and sober today by the very special grace of a loving God and a loving program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'd, like to thank the committee for, asking us to come here. It's, it's always a great privilege and a pleasure to be one of one of these deals. And I don't know, why everybody gives Ray such a bad time.

You know? Somebody's been around as long as he has is filled with helpful hints, and, I mean, he's just telling me a minute ago how to how to tell if you'd gotten in the old timers meeting by mistake. And I said, really? How's that? And he said, well, if you leave your glass of water unattended very long, you find somebody's teeth in it.

And I I don't know why he gives the Al Anon such a bad time. I have a great deal of respect for the Al Anon's and their program of release and detachment. I I I heard of, one just recently, a black belt Al Anan from just just completed her 5th degree and, she was at home, you know, standing in her spot when, when her alcoholic came home it was only 5 minutes after 5 and he smashed just drunk because a hoodie owl and she said where have you been? He said, well, he says, I've been to the doctor. She said, you liar, you're just drunker now.

He says, well, that was after the doctor. He said, I got some very bad news today. She said, really? What's that? He says, well, I'm not to live beyond tomorrow morning.

And she said, well, that's too bad to hear that. What would you like to do on your last night? And he says, well, I'd just like to just go out and get just continue getting drunk, just stay up all night and just raise Cain. And she said well easy for you to say you don't have to go to work in the morning. Now and I, got up Wednesday morning to, drive to the airport.

I got it pretty early, about 5 o'clock, plane was leaving at 8 and I can do that today, I can take time cause time is really all we have and it goes by so fast. And I I got to thinking about how different my life is today than it was a year ago, a year and a half ago. You see this this last year, a year and a half has been the worst period of my entire life, drunk or so. And that may become as may come as rather discouraging news to a lot of you because on April Fool's Day which is a good day for me I celebrated my 19th year of sobriety program of Alcoholics Month. And, I only came for 2 weeks to get my doctor off my case.

But what I found out in the last, year year and a half is that, that pain is inevitable but misery is optional. And that was a great thing to learn and it took a long time. And this year just recently my whole life has turned around one more time and we're starting over again. And it seems like I've done that a lot all my life. But we can do that in Alcoholics Anonymous because we're given the tools.

And I'm, often reminded of something that my daughter asked me a long long time ago. And I'd taken her to a little park and I put her on the carousel, you know the merry-go-round. And, and she said, daddy why do you always put me on the big horse on the outside? It goes so fast. And I get frightened.

And I said well, because that's where life is, out there on the edge. That's where I've spent all my life, out there on the edge. And I said you see the reason I put you on the outside is so that you'll find out a couple of things. You'll find out that it's okay to be afraid because everything's gonna be alright. You'll find out that out there on the edge is where it happens, it's the only place where you get a chance to grab the brass ring.

See there's only 3 kinds of people in this life. They're the observers of life, they're home right now watching television one more time, they sit on the inside of the carousel where there's no motion, nothing upsets them and they watch everything go on around them always wishing why they, that they could be a part of it watching other people having fun getting the goodies out alive. They're the observers you never see them. Then there's the critics of life. They're in the bars this afternoon.

They're not employed either. And they're sharing these, intimate things in their life with other people that they don't know and criticizing everything in life. But the real participants in life, the real ones, they're here right in this room today. You're the ones that make it move. You're the shakers.

Thing. You're the ones that that come to a deal like this to to maybe get one idea one more time that we got a deal here that really works, something that you can take with you maybe just for tomorrow, make it a part of you and you're the participants in life. So I congratulate every one of you. You're the winners. You're the ones that it's all about.

So as I was driving over to pick up Joyce, and I'd like to introduce Joyce to you. She's a very special lady in my life today. Would you stand up, Joyce? I was driving over to pick her up to come to this deal while I was reflecting about how everything has changed. You see a year and a half ago I separated from my wife of 16 years or 17 years.

And my little daughter and my wife are living down in San Diego now and that was a big emotional trauma. And it took a long time to come to the decision that that was what I had to do to survive because pain is inevitable but misery is optional. And there are many things that I can change. And I really think that I understand the serenity prayer, and I don't believe many people really do. Most people think that that prayer is a prayer for serenity.

Actually, if you're an alcoholic, you should never pray for serenity because the first time that you wake up 100% serene, you will swear you are in a suicidal depression. I mean, I I gotta tell you folks, serenity is nothing. Nothing is going on with serenity. See, your arm is serene right now and you don't even know it's hanging there from your shoulder. But if you'd like to know the difference, why go slam it in one of those doors back there?

Actually, that prayer is a prayer for pain. It tells me to ask God to supply the pain that's necessary by taking the steps, by going through the process. Say, so that after having done all of that, I can then pray for the courage to change what I now know I can change, or the or the serenity to accept what I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt I have no way of changing. There's many things that I can change and so it's because of the program that I'm able to do those things. And a year and a half ago I had a 6 figure income job came in and I had no control over that.

And then I've had to make a number of geographic moves and move from a nice home in Palos Verdes down to a little apartment in Silver City. And I look around at my peers that are getting ready to retire and I'm getting ready to climb back on that horse on the outside of the carousel where it happened out on the edge one more time and start over. But because of you people and the magic deal called Alcoholics Anonymous I can do that. Now I have to report that all through all of this in this last period of my sobriety there have only been a couple of very brief periods of what I would term mild anxiety. No fear at all.

And that's not the way it was, most of my life. See, I was born an alcoholic and the reason I know that is the first word my mother said was my god, you see how much he drank? I was only about 5 minutes old. And that's all I heard for the next, 39 years. Why do you drink so much?

Oh, is there more? See, I I drank like a pig. I just loved it. I loved everything about it. Now I don't understand people that stand at these podiums and say things like, well I didn't like the smell of it and I didn't like the taste of it.

I even love the smell of those bars the next morning at 6. You know, that's a sign of a real professional. And I don't understand social drinkers. I really don't believe they should be allowed to drink. And I often think about that part of chapter 3 more about alcoholism when it says sort of something like medical science has not yet found a way to turn alcoholics of our type into normal drinkers.

I suspect that they're talking about social drinkers and I'm looking forward to the day that they invent the pill. It'll make me a social drinker. Then I'm gonna wonder, one pill will make me social? I'll have a 6 pack. Well, I only wanna be a social drinker for 1 evening, you know.

I mean that's true insanity. Social drinking. I had a secretary for a long long time that was a social drinker. She was a social lino. And we'd go to lunch and she'd say, you know, I think I feel like a glass of wine.

I'd say why? I always felt like one. She'd say oh don't start that again, and then she'd sit there god. She just drink half of it. I could just see it evaporating You know, she'd say things like, oh, that has such a delightful bouquet.

The only, the only time I ever had a chance to enjoy the bouquet was on its way back up. I'd say for god's sake, why don't you drink the rest of it? It's just making me crazy. She said, oh my dear. No.

If I did, I might get dizzy. Right at the moment where it starts to do what it's designed to do, they quit. I said, listen, just get 4 or 5 of them lined up, just blast right through it, and you won't even know be no dizzy. You know, You get right drink right through dizzy and off balance and embarrassed and puke and everything. Just go for it.

You're crazy. All my life I felt like an alien on a foreign planet and nobody given me the brochure. When I found that booze, I didn't need 1, I wanna tell you. Alcohol became the vehicle that allowed me to do all of those things and go to those places I was absolutely terrified of doing and terrified of going before I found alcohol. See, I'd have I'd have sacrificed my life to keep you from finding out who this terrified little wimp was inside here, and I damn near made it.

Yeah. I'm one of those alcoholics that went absolutely as far as you can possibly go on the runaway freight train of the terminal progressive disease of alcoholism and I went one step further, like I always did with everything. And if you don't identify with my story then my story is the one you can have if you have to go out again. And I pray to God that you just don't have to do that. See there's 3 prayers the old timers gave me when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous and and I'd like to pass those on to you right now.

If you're new or even if you're old it might help. The first one is that I just pray to God that you can keep coming back and listening to the music until you can understand the words. Listening to the music of alcoholics may be for the first time able to laugh at themselves. The healing magic of the laughter and the love of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous that I've seen help put back together broken and shattered people that no human power could have ever put back together. And the loving programs of Al Anon and Alatine that I've seen put back together broken and shattered families and broken and shattered children.

Never would have had a chance without you people. The second prayer, I just pray to God that you can just put your hand in ours and come with us because we've been there. See? We know the way, and it'll be okay. But hang on real tight and don't let go because if you let go we're gonna lose you and we don't wanna lose anybody, not if we can help it.

And the 3rd prayer, the really tough one, the really hard one is please pray God let us love you until you can learn to love yourself. All my life I felt alone. And I never knew why. And it doesn't matter why today because I've determined that knowing why is the prize of life. And yet we're schooled all our lives to find out why.

Who cares? Unless it's going to change something, I really don't care about why. And more often than not, it isn't gonna change anything. You know, I had an operation on my knee a couple of years ago from an old skiing accident or some puke hit me going about 60 miles an hour and I couldn't get my legs stop bending and so I determined that procrastination time was over. I knew everything about that operation.

I knew the diagnosis, the prognosis, I knew when that accident happened, how it happened, who was involved, when it happened, where it happened, and I knew everything about the process that they were gonna be involved in in the arthroscopic surgery. And I have to promise you that knowing all of that intelligence did not help the pain one death. I just got to lie there and hang on to my teddy bear and cry for 3 days and so knowing why doesn't make any difference. But when I found alcohol, it did something that nothing else had ever done. I started drinking when I was 16 years old, and I drank for 23 years till I was 39 years old.

And in the beginning, alcohol was very successful for me. It healed that god hole inside and allowed me to do all those things. At 16, why I had a race car on the track behind the forged birth certificate. I cracked up a race car, rolled one over, and broke my back, and the doctor told me I'd never walk again as long as I lived from the age of when I was 17 years old. And I made a decision between the quality and quantity of life and I've done that a number of times.

I think they're repairing the people left over from last night's jazz dancing. Found a few more of them. Find alcohol, I was asked to be a charter member of, the Mount Baldy ski patrol, one of the most dangerous mountains in the world as far as I'm concerned. You used to kill 6 people a year as regular as clockwork, social drinkers usually. They'd have half a glass of wine and then fly off the backside of the mountain.

About all you ever heard them say was oops. You know, you'd never hear that out of an alky going over the backside of that mountain. You had a 1,000 foot free fall right into Victorville. All you'd hear from Manalky is downhill race. Go for it.

I up to the first article for Life Magazine on scuba diving. I don't know how many of you have ever been under the ocean in scuba gear, but it's terrifying. We found out that if you can fill the tanks with 50% alcohol vapor, you can stand right on the deck of the ship and get euphoria of the deep. I learned years ago the difference between a hero and a coward. It's a boob.

Don't ever let anybody kid you. And then I fly airplanes drunk. The age of 24, I was one of the youngest subdividers in Southern California. I was building over 200 houses a year, and already I was in the grip of a terminal progressive disease called alcoholism. Already I was beginning to get indications that I was bodily mentally different than myself.

My partner used to say to me, he said my god how can you drink those martinis at lunch? I'd just go to sleep. And I said, well, a fella like you just shouldn't drink. Then I started having occasional problems with the law, and not very often. I only got 2 drunk driving arrests in my, whole drinking and driving career.

And I always felt if you're going to drive, drink. Face traffic with confidence. I wish I'd had the intelligence of a guy I just heard recently who had a special photograph made of his driver's license, and he had it made out of focus. So the police officers would stop him, ask for his driver's license. Look at him.

They go like this. You can go. But I learned how to drive and drink like a professional, I learned this from an old friend of mine on the ski patrol going up to Mammoth one time skiing and I'd forgotten to bring my drinking and driving in passenger bottle and my booze was up on top of the car inside the ski poles. I'd I'd invented the drinking man ski pole. And, don't laugh.

Each one will hold a pint. Never never stray far away from your supply. That was my motto. I said, do you have anything to drink? I'm thirsty.

And he said, sure. And he handed me this tube box from under the dashboard. And I said, What the hell is that? I wanted a drink, not an enema. He said, well, dummy.

He said, just put that little pipe in your mouth there and, pull the windshield washer knob. He kept a 6 pack of Cuddysock up in the windshield washer bag there, right in front of the radiator where it'd stay nice and cool. I was busy when I when I drove because I was building all these damn houses and I had a Dictaphone in the car so I could dictate all this gibberish to my secretary and a telephone, a two way radio, and I used to smoke. I quit smoking, due to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I I stopped for 3 years, kind of like Anne, stopped for 3 years when I was sober about 3 years and then I too thought I could I thought a little light menthol after dinner wouldn't hurt.

Maybe I'd be a social smoker. So 8,000,000 packs and about 13 years later I quit again. I just quit in January. But in those days I smoked a lot, 4 packs a day. And, so I was busy when I was driving.

And, I mean, my god, you got the cigarette, you know, and then you gotta cover one eye so you know what lane is yours, and you can watch the damn rear view mirror and, you know, and talk on the phone and, you know, all that stuff. So I developed this habit of driving in a particular fashion that worked out rather well, and what I would do, I would just rest my head on the door jam like that. That way the cigarette ashes would kinda drool away, The rear view mirror's right there, you know, you kinda tuck the telephone up under your shoulder like that. You know, you have this little pipe hanging out of the other side of your mouth and you get a little battery charge there every once in a while and you feel your liquid level going down a little bit, you know. The only problem that you have in that posture, I must warn you if any of your friends are out driving that way, is you must be eternally vigilant remembering always that your lane is the one on the bottom.

So the 1st drunk driving arrest that I ever got, I'd run away from home to get married when I was about 30 and, I know a good thing when I have it. And some friends of mine gave me a stag party down at one of those beautiful yachts in Newport, and, they were serving my favorite drink that day, booze. And so I was a little drunkie poo on the way home there and so I was driving in my usual posture. I was driving a little, 56 Thunderbird convertible. It had 2 tops at one time but, it was permanently converted at this point.

The way that happens is you get chilly and decide to put the top up and you're going 90. But we in Alcoholics Anonymous also know release And when the top left, I just said, oh, well. Got another one at home. You know? So I was driving along with my head down like this, you know, and I was clear over the right hand side of the freeway there minding my own business in the dirt and, strung about 5 miles an hour.

So when the police stopped me I was quite surprised. And, I remember I looked up this officer and I said why did you stop me officer? And he said well we don't like to, have people trying to make movies on the freeway, and, we thought maybe you were filming a rerun of wagon train. And then he did what I consider to be a very unfair thing. He opened the door.

I fell out. And when they don't even give you a chance to take a sobriety test that's I think that's quite unfair. And I'd become a professional at dousing sobriety tests. I wanna tell you I loved them. God, I mean if you drive all the way to Mammoth from Los Angeles that's at least a 2 5th drive.

And this is on a Friday evening by the time you get there why it's 6 o'clock in the morning and you're smoked, right? And you're weaving into the parking lot there and you're so drunk you can't even walk and you fall out of the car and some El Anon's been lurking in the snowbank waiting for you all night, and she escorts you into the warming up hut to get tuned up for the day, take care of you, rescue, repair, and save. They love to do that, you know. And, so you get tuned up there on a half a gallon of Grenache Rose and at, 10 o'clock in the morning you find yourself at the top of the mountain and some nut has has nailed a number to your chest and you're entered in a downhill race. And And somehow you're able to negotiate those gates and get through the finished gate without wiping out the entire mountain.

And this comp wants me to stand on one foot, put my head back and touch a nose the size of mine. Are you kidding? What a piece of cake. I got stopped by this one police officer in Beverly Hills one time. By this time I had an alcoholic car and, if you're new on the program you wanna get that patched up because the police have been notified that the drivers of these cars are quite suspect.

And, you've seen them. Mine was long and thin. And it got that way from parking in narrow garages at high speeds. And then the exhaust pipe a lot of times is dragging on the ground. That should be wired up with an old coat hanger and, and then they have the license plates just hanging there by one bolt and has last year's registration on it.

The ones I really love are the ones that have the red cellophane for the taillights. Now they've got red backup lights. You don't know if those motors are coming or going. And then they get these curious little dents all over these whiskey bumps, particularly on top. I found out that that's from trying to open them when their keys are locked inside.

Mine had a curious character defect. The left headlight looked straight down. That was kind of zippy because that allowed me to see the double line better when it got foggy. Every night about 10 when the traffic cleared. So I was driving along in my defective little car there and the police officer stopped me and and they always ask you this dumb question.

And they know the answer to the question, they give them the answer so they can pass the police test. Yeah. First of all, he makes this statement to impress you with how intelligent he is. And he says, your headlight is out of focus. Are you kidding?

It's shining on his foot. What a hell of an observation. And then he gets this incredulous look of disbelief on his little face and he says, had you been drinking, haven't you? Like I'm gonna answer him truthfully. I said, well I don't know.

He says, how much have you had to drink? He's heard the same bloody answers a million times, 2 beers. I mean that's we have an incredibly difficult problem in Alcoholics Anonymous when we first get here with honesty, because lying works. I mean do you think for one minute that I was gonna tell that judge in San Diego the truth when he looked down at me and he said, mister Harbach, I I would like you to explain to the people of this court and the members of this jury why you were going 87 miles an hour on the Coronado ferry. I hold the land world speed record for Coronado Ferry.

Oh, well, it's real simple, your honor. First of all, I'm an alcoholic. I was just drunk out of my mind that night. Actually, we were going duck hunting in Bear Lake and I don't know how the hell you get to Bear Lake on the damn Coronado ferry. But besides that, I was in a blackout so I didn't know where I was.

And all of a sudden I came to and there was a couple of things happening there. Green light flashing and a horn honking. I'm a former race car driver and I only know 3 things to do in a case like that. Just ran the accelerator all the way through the firewall, slide your left foot off the clutch and hang on, baby. Little piles of burning rubber along that hardwood.

God, that's neat, you know. When the red light came on, I turned them on. I said, did we win? He said, you sure did. Said just sign here, press hard, there's 3 copies.

Besides that your honor I really don't give a damn. I'm a scofflaw. I have no regard for people, places or things and especially your property. You know? They'd still be piping sunlight to me.

And yet every word of that was the truth. I simply looked at the judge and I said, well, your honor, I have a certificate here from a certified garage stipulating the fact that the character defect in my automobile, which was the proximate cause of this disastrous thing, which was an effective accelerator cable, has been repaired to the satisfaction of the highway patrol. And I can assure the court, members of this jury, that it will never happen again. Alright. What could the poor man say?

You know, dismissed. So you think I'm gonna tell this cop? And he says, how much have you had to drink? And I'll tell him, sure. Oh, I just polished off a 6 pack of Cutty Sark and started my way home with a 6 pack of beer here and 2 beers and he says, I'm gonna give you a sobriety test.

God, I was so excited I opened the door so hard that when he stopped me the next night I thought I was a different cop. He's talking in a falsetto. And he does this nose thing, you know, and then he says walk that white line and I said what light white line? He committed a cardinal error and he pointed his foot and says that line starting right there. I said fine.

It started right out on the instep of his right foot. And I wanna tell you when he stopped me the next night he was incensed. You haven't gotten that light fixed yet? I said, what light? I thought it was a different car.

You don't have well what light? You've been breaking again. Little vein on his forehead is jumping in and out. Everybody's vein jumped in and out after they talked to me 5 minutes. Gave me a ticket for the headline, ruined the whole day of drinking.

The only other drunk driving arrest I got was, 7 years later and that happened because I took a geographic. I didn't know I was doing that. I went back to Missouri for 3 or 4 years. And Missouri is no longer on my map of the United States. This is Los Angeles, Aspen, Colorado, and the East Coast.

That's all. And, I've been to Glendale, which is tacky enough, and, been to a cocktail party. Lasted until 2 in the morning. I remember I left the house at left the people's house at 2 o'clock in the morning. I had to drive very fast to get home before I passed out.

And, I've been driving about a 100 miles an hour for an hour when the gumball machine came on and I pulled over and it's 3 AM. I, you know, and so I looked up at the police officer and he's still driving like this. Hi, officer. I said, give me a little break. I'm only a couple of blocks from home.

He says, where do you live? I said, I don't know. You have my driver's license. Then he opened the door and I fell out again. Funny one night I decided that I was just gonna end it all.

I came home and there was the animal in the entry hall mirror one more time. So I thought you know it's just beyond any hope by this time I'm just gonna go upstairs and kill myself. So I went upstairs and I dug a 45 automatic out from underneath the pillow I kept it there because they were after me. And you don't have to be paranoid to know they're after you. I qualified expert with a 45.

I hit what I aim at and I jacked a shell in the chamber, took dead aim between my eyes, and blew a $90 mirror off the wall. That's not so bad, but the next day you've gotta repair the whole damn thing. They put these 45 caliber moth holes through my tenant's wardrobe from one end to the other. Besides that, it scared him so bad he ran out and joined AA 6 years later. So I decided I'd go to a psychiatrist.

And and I really wish you people would stop going to psychiatrists. I I've determined that you people are the reason that psychiatrists have the highest suicide rate of any professional. Well I developed this little nervous tic at work, you know, and it's right in the middle of signing something my pen would fly across the room. That's nervous. And I knew then that I had to go to lunch.

Because if I didn't go to lunch now, I was gonna fly across the room, you know. And that's when the whole scenario starts right there at lunch. You get in that bar, you know, the flight attendant comes up and he says, well, yeah. Right? Look at your watch, it only has one hand on it.

It's an alcoholic watch. So I got time for 1 martini. Make it a double, put it in an old fashioned glass, leave out the ice. Alright. Finally it brings it to your face with your first dilemma of the day.

How to get it in your face without drowning this brain surgeon next to you? Finally, through a system of geometric confusion, like, crank it down. Say your first three pairs of the day. Right? God, I hope it stays down.

God, I hope it works. God, I wish he'd get back. I don't know why they're so interminably slow. Finally, he gets back. He says, you have time for one more?

Look at your watch. Hand doesn't move. Yes, I guess I have time for just one more. I'll make it a triple. Finally he comes back and you get that baby down and and that's when it happens.

You know, that's when the magic of alcohol really happens. And that cloud of impending doom begins to dissipate and that god hole begins to heal up and that hand that couldn't hold a pen a moment before is just as solid as a rock and you and you look in that perfectly synchronized reflection of yourself in the back bar mirror, when it eastward, you double. And some Al Anon says, why do you drink? Are you kidding? Are you kidding?

Yeah. John McQueen and, and Charlie from Little Rock, Arkansas finally explained to me in language I could understand why I drank. It's because of the twelve promises in the big book. I don't know if you've heard them do this but I like to do it and I always give Joe and Charlie credit for it because it's their deal. I know a lot of you that read the 12 promises on page 83 and 84 think is this kind of crazy you drank because of the 12 promises?

Let me explain it to you how they explain it. Sitting there in that bar after that triple, Whenever I drank alcohol I would know a new freedom and a new happiness. Whenever I drank alcohol I would not regret the past, I wish to shut the door on it. Whenever I drank alcohol, I would comprehend the word serenity and I would milk tea. Whenever I drank alcohol, no matter how far down the scale I'd gone, I could see how my experience would benefit others.

Whenever I drank alcohol, that feeling of uselessness and self pity would disappear. Whenever I drank alcohol, I would lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in my fellows. Whenever I drank alcohol, self seeking would slip away. Whenever I drank alcohol, my whole attitude and outlook on life would change. Whenever I drank alcohol, fear of people and economic insecurity would leave me.

Whenever I drank alcohol, I would intuitively know How to handle situations that used to baffle me. Whenever I drank alcohol I would suddenly realize that alcohol was doing for me what I could not do for myself. And isn't it a miracle that because of a magic deal called Alcoholics Anonymous, I can live within those twelve promises in my life today almost all of the time without ever having to add whenever I drink alcohol again, not ever. And I didn't know that. When I came out of that last alcoholic blackout, I was in St.

John's Hospital in Santa Monica. And I looked up at my doctor and he was crying. I could tell because, he was getting me all wet. And I said, why are you crying doc? He said, because damn you you've killed yourself.

Finally, I said well what killed me this time? Same thing, booze. You know they're so dramatic almost as dramatic as that psychiatrist that I went to. I didn't finish that did I? He says why are you nervous?

And my mother did not raise a fool. I said let me tell you for $65 an hour you're gonna figure it out. He said well do you drink? I said sure I'll have a scotch and water. He said, that's not what I meant.

He said, how much do you drink? I said, I'm not sure. How much do you have? So that's not what I mean either. He says have you drank all your life?

I said no, not yet. A little rain on his forehead started jumping in and out. He says, what do you dream? I had no problem with with step 2 when I got here. I used to sit in those bars and think up dreams to talk to him about the next morning.

$65 an hour. Finally after a protracted length of time wise, well, I don't think I can help you anymore. You better go to a and a. Then he gives you a little bill there, you look at it. Oh, $35,000 no problem.

You write him a little reader there for it and Bank calls him and tells it's telling tells him it's no good and he jumps out the window. They're very dramatic. Same thing as my doctor. He said, no. My doctor said, he said, you got it all now.

And I said, really? What's all? He said well, yeah, alcoholic gastritis, cirrhosis of the liver. You have hemorrhagic pancreatitis. You know, I've ex broken and bent almost every bone in my body and I have never experienced such exotic pain as pancreatitis.

That hurts so bad you had to get out of bed to turn over. He says besides that you have 2 ulcers that are hemorrhaging and bleeding from every opening in your body and your blood pressure 60 over 40. For those of you that don't know what 60 over 40 is, that's serene. Terminal serenity. And he said, we'd push 7 pints of your blood in the bank empty and at the end of that pin it'd be signed.

I said, oh, is there more? I was bleeding and interested because I determined by this time he was talking about me. And he said, yes. He said, if you don't promise me you'll never drink again as long as you live. I won't even treat you.

I promise. 10 days later I was back out on the street again and I was drunk. He told me I had not do that anymore. I came off that last drunk and I was sitting in the skid row of my very own design which was the unfinished concrete basement of an old beat up house hanging on the side of a cliff in silver lake. And in my hour of direst need, I cried out to the God of my childhood and he heard me.

And the only word that I recall is the word remember. And I'd remembered. I remembered a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that I'd been to, and I can't recall where it was or when. I mean, I used to go to your meetings regularly about once every 2 years. I kept going to the wrong meetings.

I remember one meeting I went to and I don't know where it was. It was in some old French foreign legion hall somewhere and nobody paid the bill and everybody was old there too. And God some of you were 40. All lined up around the side of the room with your head in your hands and nobody paid the light bill. It was dim and Oh my god.

Finally, some skinny little broad was standing up there in the back of the microphone. I didn't know she was there for a long time. She's turned sideways. Finally she turned around and I thought my heaven. She is a sick woman.

That'd be like making love to a gunny soft pull of antlers. And she said something like, if you want what we have, I thought, honey, if you got anything, hang on to it. Then I went to the big Malibu meeting on Saturday night. The only problem is I went on Friday night. I went with a drunk.

It used to be in the old sheriff's station in Malibu and the sheriffs were so excited to see us there they wanted to keep us until Saturday night. We convinced them we'd walked. He said, I think you're chipping around with this deal called Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said, I think that, I don't think you're ready to surrender and satisfy the admonition laid down in chapter 3, which says, We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost self that we are alcoholic. This is the first step in recovery.

And he said, I think you're gonna have to go out and get drunk some more until you can surrender. But he said, I'd like to tell you something. He said, I pray to God that when you finally reach a bottom, which is necessary for each one of us, and it's different for everyone, I bought them either mentally or emotionally or physically or financially or socially or spiritually beneath which you cannot go. He said, I pray to God that you remember a magic place where you can come. Where he said, I absolutely promise you that you can find a way of living your life comfortably with unsolved problems without ever having to drink again as long as you live.

And where you will meet people that will end up meaning more to you than the members of your very own family. Because when you need these people, no matter how long the day you dock the night, they'll be there. And they'll be there just for you. And they'll be there for only one reason, because they care. And they call it Alcoholics Anonymous.

And in this magic place, he said, I promise you, you can find a God of your very own that you can take with you wherever you go. So you need never be alone again as long as you live in alcoholic scenarios. And so I came back to a little park on Roxbury in Beverly Hills where I grew up and used to play as a kid. And that's where I found the old timers with 20 30 years that walked the walk of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it seemed to me they wore their sobriety like a crown.

And they were doing the one thing I'd wanted to do all my life. They were just stepping out easy, but they were doing it without taking any mind altering chemicals or drinking any alcohol of any kind. Somehow in the madness of insanity that was to be mine for a long time I wanted what they had, and I came back. That night when I left that meeting, it was April Fool's Day of 1968. And as I left that meeting, my loving God looked down on me and he removed the obsession to drink alcohol from me forever never to be returned.

And I believe I know just a little bit in part why that happened that night. Our book tells us that that happens to about half of us. And if it has not happened yet, I pray to God that you can hurry on with the program so that that obsession will be removed before the test comes. And the test will come because it's in the big book of alcoholics now. And the test says this.

It says there will come a time in the life of every alcoholic where there will be no mental defense against taking the first drink. But it goes on to say that at that moment my sobriety will be contingent upon my spiritual condition. And it goes on to define my spiritual condition by saying that if I am just trying to do 2 things in my daily affairs, if I am just trying to practice the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous in my daily affairs, and if I am just trying to keep my spiritual house in order, I need never fear drinking again as long as I live. You may add one day at a time if you wish. But there's 2 hooks in that statement.

See, in order to do those 2 things, I have got to know what those principles are and have put them into practice in order to keep on practicing. And I have got to have made some sort of attempt to have gotten my spiritual house in order in order to keep it in order. And that is what steps 4 through 9 are all about. And I enjoy being at these big meetings in the Middle West and in the South Because I hear so much about the program, and I, like Jim last night, am deeply afraid, deeply afraid of the dilution of our program. Because I hear things in these podiums, especially about California, where these gurus stand up there and spout this gibberish, and the newcomer hears them and believes them, and they drink get drunk and they die.