The 49th Florida State Conference at the Wyndham Palace Resort in Orlando, FL

Hi. My name is Cliff Roach, and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is 13th January 1970. My home group is the Carlsbad AA Workshop, meets on Thursday night in Carlsbad, California at 8 o'clock. If you're in town, give me a call.

My name is spelled r o c h e. I believe in anonymity, but you can't look up Cliff in the phone book. R o c h e. I don't spell it like the bug. They got one of these Mickey Mouse Lee's big idea, around my neck.

So I'm used to talking to a microphone and I'll get used to it, or you'll get used to it. I'm just so grateful to be here. It's just been such a fantastic weekend so far. Just love I just this hotel, did how kind they are. They have padded walls.

Isn't it wonderful? You know, we just feel so at home now. They just just take the doorknobs off the inside here. We'd really be comfy. And, as, and I really wanna thank Tom and Connie.

They've been just outstanding host, just wonderful host for me, just treated me great. And Anne and all the people that worked so hard to put this on the whole committee, I thank you because, you know, we couldn't be here if you hadn't done all that work for a year. I, I love Mari, from Canada. She's one of my favorite people. And I'm very sorry she's ill.

But I I was certainly glad I got to hear Dolty and, and her other half, the thug. Oh, those 2. I tell you, I I had to go up to my room and take salt tablets. I cried so much for those 2. I'm gonna cry again.

You you we're all miracles. Everybody in this room is a miracle, But there's just some miracles that are just so obvious, you know, you can't get here from there. A certain guy that I wasn't in a bar with him because I thought I was tough. He was tough. That they were just incredible to hear them back to back.

It just was wonderful. And, you know, as Tom said, I've been married, over 55 years in that workshop. I want her. Yeah. I always call her my Al Anon.

You know how they introduce us. Have you met my alcoholic? Sit up, boy. Sit up. Sit up.

Tell them how long you've been sober. But, you know, we've been married going on 56 years now, but I sat in that workshop that, Scott and Linda put on, and I I learned some lessons, some things that I could be doing in my marriage. And I thought about twice as many things that she could be doing in the marriage. So I'll take her the tape. Listen to this.

And then she'll throw it at me. And, you know, I always hate to follow speakers like Lotte Dholt and, what the hell is DeMarq? I worked so hard to learn her name, I forgot his for course. But I hear speakers like that, you know, rough and tough and hard to bluff and, you know, prisons and back to prison again. And I'm a little fat school teacher, drank too much.

Then do the best you can with what you have, you know. Thank God, Charlie was such a weenie. He makes me look pretty good, doesn't he? And I've known Charlie since the day he got sober, and I've loved him all the time. He's always been a great friend.

And, of course, the reverend, Ed, he whom you'll hear Sunday probably. The reverend Ed. When I met him, he was living in Clancy's garage. And he he was as big as he is now, except he weighed about 1:30. If you want an x-ray of him, you just held him up to the light.

And he wasn't the Reverend Ed then, was he? He was a lunatic. He was lunatic. Oh, I loved him right away. He was a lunatic.

Clancy made him right. He was, 4 step living in the garage. And Clancy had a goat in the backyard, and he slaved over his 4th step for days days. Got it finished, and the goat ate it. Try to tell that to your sponsor.

Well, you see, the goat ate mine. And, Clancy, wouldn't have believed him except that the goat died. True story? The goat So I'm I'm so grateful to be here. I'm just so very, very grateful.

And you people have been so kind and so giving and so friendly. I I didn't feel like a stranger at all. I never do an AA anyway. What the hell? So my, my story's kinda humdrum, ho after these 2.

Miss Cochise and her husband. When I I had just won World War 2, And, I was attending college on the GI Bill ride at San Diego San Jose State College in Northern California and, just gotten out of the service. And, another guy and I used to walk to school every morning, but we marched. You know, we're gonna have it. We would march to school every morning.

And one morning, we were marching through Saint James Park, which is right in the middle of downtown San Jose. And we heard this noise, and we're cutting through the park. And about 7 in the morning, we turned and looked, and there was this remnant of a human being lying on the bench there. He was he was so dirty, he shined. And he making these noises and bubbles were coming and that then he stank.

And we both retched when we saw the guy. So we hurried through the park, got to the other side. And, my buddy, Richie, said, that guy was an alcoholic, so I knew what you looked like. And I made a little picture in my head of what an alcoholic looked like, and the picture almost killed me. Now within a week within a week of seeing that guy on the bench, I had done about a 40 hour blackout.

And I had this old car and there's a town over across the mountain called Santa Cruz, and they tell me most of my life is hearsay. Okay? Spent most of my life saying, I did? Oh, I'm sorry. Your aunt, Oh, that's it.

But they tell me it took months to put to piece it together, but I had driven back and forth about 40 miles between San Jose and Santa Cruz over this mountain road back and forth. And in Santa Cruz, I'd been thrown out of this bar. I bit the bartender in the face. Okay? But he refused to serve me.

What the hell? You know? And so we were rejected from the bar, of course. And this new best friend that I'd met that afternoon, he worked in a yacht club, okay, down by the harbor. And so we broke into the yacht club and stole the starting cannon and came back and fired it into the ball, which pretty much cleared the place out.

Whereupon the young arms arrived and beat the crap out of us and put us in jail and let us out several hours later in back and forth. And that that I did that in a 40 hour blackout and the guy on the bench was an alcoholic. Okay. And I don't know why I would make a mistake like that. I come from a long, long, long line of alcoholics.

Everybody in my family is an alcoholic. A few years ago, the scientists came up with a brilliant deduction. They said alcoholism is genetic. They said it's a a a recessive gene, not in the roach family. It's a dominant gene in the roach family.

Little blue gene down at the end of chromosome going, oh, and he has to say, it's one more. One more. My mother died on Skid Row in Los Angeles at the age of 43. She fell down a flight of stairs in a drunken stupor and broke her neck. And on her death certificate, it says accidental fall.

My daddy died of alcoholism. My sister died of alcoholism. My aunts and uncles died of alcoholism. My grandparents died of alcoholism. I'm the only one alive, because I came to the a and a.

It was an Irish Catholic family. Really? If it weren't for us, you'd have these things in phone booths. But if you're new here tonight, I'm not an alcohol I'm not an alcoholic because my father and mother and my grandpa because of the little blue jean. I'm not an alcoholic because of that reason.

When I was new in AA, and I think Ed knew this guy, he was 35 years sober when I got here. He was a judge up in, Ventura. His name was Dick Heaton. Wonderful, wonderful man. Was so kind to me when I was new.

And, Dick Heaton was the president the national president of MNSA. That's the smart people's club. I learned to spell it about 2 weeks ago. He was the president of Mensa, and he and this other guy in MENSA had done a study of Alcoholics Anonymous. No.

Study of alcoholism, while drinking. And they studied it for 2 years and damn near died. But Dick Heaton discovered that the cause of alcoholism is drinking. Good enough for the president. I mean, it's good enough for me.

I'm an alcoholic because I'd rent enough alcohol to get there. I've always been an alcoholic. When I was 16 years old, I swallowed a half a half a pint of 10 eye, and I crossed the invisible line. I don't know anything about social drinking. I don't like social drinkers.

Do you ever drink with those weenies? Come on. You know, you take the cap off. They say, I'll get it. No.

I don't trust people like that. I just don't trust them. God Almighty. And, of course, Al Anon's are the outstanding social drinkers. My Al Anon's sickening.

She's just sickening. One time I was with a bunch of Al Anon's, we're going somewhere, and I drove them very bright, very bright. And we stopped and that waiter comes over and says, would you like a cocktail before dinner? And they all look at each other. I want one.

You want one? I don't know. Do you want one? I have one of you. They had to make a decision.

Did you ever make a decision? I throw the towel over the arm. Yeah. Right here. Right here.

Let's go. Yeah. And this one, she says that to the the waiter, she says that, do you have kumquat daiquiris? I said, no. We don't have any of those.

And she said, never mind. I said, Sarah, will you look behind the bar? There's 500 bottles back there and they're all for the old one. You married guys. Do you remember that?

Don't you think you had a few too many? I used to say you had a few too few. That's your problem, lady. Have a couple of loosen up for Christ's sake. Oh, and mine was the worst kind, the worst kind.

She was a counter. Oh, I hate those counters, don't you? That's your 5th one today. You're gonna shut up and eat your breakfast, will you? Leave me the hell out of here.

I met my Al Anon in college. She was down on Skid Row looking for an alcohol to abuse her. And, you wanna get abused, you got your boy here all good. And we entered this 20 year suicide pact together. And, I I don't know how many of you, but we had the dual disease.

We had alcoholism and Catholicism. Consequently, we had a kid every 9 months and 20 minutes. Yeah. What it seemed like to me anyway, you know, every time I came out, I have a blackout. What the hell is that?

They're alright when they're little, Like kittens, but they grow. And the older they got, the weirder they got. God knows the older she got, the weirder she got. Oz the head nut. And, after a few years, I became a school teacher.

I know. I like the women clutch their children to their bosom when they hear that. You know, a guy commits felonies and blackouts, becomes a school teacher. You know? Just a hobby.

Lighten up. And I I became terrified of having those blackouts because I never had a good blackout. Did you? I've looked for years for somebody in the AA. I said, why delightful blackouts?

Yes. Not what? You know? When I woke in the morning, it was bad news. Bad, bad news.

Always blood. My blood, unlike you, you know, and, wrecked cars on it nonsense. So after I became a teacher, I just became paranoid about not having blackouts. And and so I guess in substitution, I became a daily drinker. And I had to drink every day because that's the only way I could live.

Now, I'm a functioning alcoholic. I'm the kind of guy that goes to work every day, does the job, does it better than you, who does it better than anybody. I'm a goer and a doer and an achiever. I'm a functioning alcoholic. My buddy at home says a functioning alcoholic is one whose life works.

Don't tell that to an Al Anon meeting either. Well, I talked for a few years up in the San Joaquin Valley, and then we moved to Oceanside, California. Oceanside is 30 miles north of San Diego, right on the Blue Pacific, and I got a job at Oceanside High there. And I was a very good teacher. I loved teaching, like Charlie said.

And, kids love me, and I love the kids. I don't care for administrators, but what I'll call it does. You know what I mean? They didn't like me much either, but I was a good teacher. I was my somebody asked my wife one time, why is your husband such a good high school teacher?

She said, well, he's a very well educated adolescent. I hate it when they're accurate and cruel, don't you? And naturally being macho, I'm a macho drinker. I became a surfer dude. And, I this is Tom said, I served till I was 74 years old.

Not many of them out there at that age. The kids love me. I'm I'm out there. The kids say, help us remote back any sport. There you go.

You know? And, but my back gave out. I mean, I just couldn't do it anymore. But I loved surfing. And I just loved surfing.

And, I got a buddy. We got a surfboard shop down on the beach there in Oceanside. Can you imagine? Right on the beach. The mayor of the town owned this little building and been all beat up.

So we're gonna open the surfboard shop and make a fortune, give surf lessons, fix surfboards, rent surfboards, never have to teach school again. So the guy gave us this building. It was all beat up. We fixed it up. We painted it.

We put the windows in, and we got a refrigerator. Couple months later, we got some surfboards too. Nobody hurry there. Oh, we love that. Can you imagine for a couple of budding alcoholics, we had these 2 chaise lounge right on the water.

I mean, it's on the beach. We became sunset connoisseurs. Somebody come down in the evening and say, I can rent a surfboard screw off, Charlie. We're watching the a sunset. These 2 shades, lawn chairs.

We used to measure sunsets by martinis. As the mixer, I'd say, it looks like about a 6 tonight. The best one we ever had was a 15 martini sunset. Oh, you should've seen it. It was just glorious, you know.

And the sun and Woody and I went right together. They found us in the morning with sunburn mouths. You remember that? I think that should be only the 20 questions. You ever have a sunburn mouth?

No? Get the hell out of you're not ready yet. Come on back when you're ready. Come back when you're ready. But amazingly, we did really well with that place.

We did made a lot of money. We did well, but the winter came. It was freezing cold. And in February of 1965, I went down to the shop to repair a board on a Sunday morning. And of course, we weren't open and it was cold.

And I had a hangover on Sunday morning. Oh, really? Yes. And I was really thirsty. And I went to the refrigerator to see if Woody left a Coke or something in there.

It wasn't a morning drinker then. And Woody had been there the night before and left about this much vodka and a half pint bottle, just maybe half a shot. And there were some orange juice in the refrigerator, and I said, oh, that'll put the fire out. So I mixed up this little dinky drink and I drank it and went on about my business, had the resin cooking, and I'm standing on the surfboard there. Now Now I hope there's some new people here tonight.

They used to drag me to these things when I was new. And, we're gonna go the whole weekend. Oh, swell. We'll just have meeting after meeting after meeting. But if there are new people here tonight, I'm gonna tell you about this because that little bit of vodka got in my bloodstream.

You know how it'll do? And you know how it'll circulate about. And it went. And my mind talked to me. If you're new, you understand, don't you?

My mind still talks to me, but I don't pay any attention anymore. I have met the enemy. He lives here. Only enemy I have in the world is right there. But that morning, my mind said, shame on you, Cliff.

Shame. Shame. Shame. That was Woody's booze you drank. You're ahead of it.

Why don't you go up to the liquor store and get old Woody a pint? That's the kind of guy I am, you know. That afternoon I got Woody a 5th. And you know I just ended up, Boring eyed drunk my dad used to call it, you know. Just resin all over me.

The board was screwed forever. The shop was a mess. And I literally literally crawled home 11 blocks on my hands and knees. Hate it when down to you and Ralph? I hate that part.

And that morning, I just called Ralph for an inordinate amount of time. And I said to my wife, and she had one of those pre alanine ticks in the eye by now. And, we call it the pre alanine tick. And I said, I gotta do something about my drinking. I'm getting drunk when I don't even mean to.

And, she had cut this little thing out of the newspaper about the a and a. I don't know why she thought to do that, do you? And a little ad, the only ad we've ever had as far as I know, I hope we don't ever have any other one. It says, if you wanna drink, that's your business. If you wanna quit, call Alcoholics Anonymous.

That's AA to me. We're not a hospital, and we're not a treatment center. We're not a halfway house. We're not a do good hell, we're not very nice people. But if you're new in this room tonight and you wanna quit drinking, we'll go to the ends of the earth for you.

I know people in this room who go to the ends of the earth for you if you want it. Now on the coast, I know you're not like that, but out there, we have if you'd rather drink, we have a salute for you. We're kinda crude out there. I don't care. I don't care.

That's the difference between me and a guy who gets paid for it. I don't care unless you want it. Then I'll go to the ends of the earth for you. But, anyway, I called the a and a, and, old Stan came out and got me and took me to some meetings. There were, like, 12 meetings in the in the Oceanside area at that time.

About 7, 8 people around the table, staying sober. They seem to have the collective IQ of an orange. God, I tried to help him. But the 3rd night I was laying a little Nietzsche on him and, this guy said, hey, we keep it simple here. I said, no kidding.

You could have fooled me, Leroy. So I went to a few minis, and then I resigned from AA. Have you ever done that? That really upsets them, doesn't it? No.

Except who? Yeah. And, I hate to tell this part of the story, but by God, it's my story. And I for the next 5 years, I was an AA loser. And I mean, if they ever have a losers hall of fame, I'll have a bus right by the door.

I mean, I was a losers, overeducated, pompous, smirking, smart ass, user. I can't even get that smile down. I just got that little sneer. Can't even do it anymore. You know what I mean?

And I'd sit in the last chair of the last row, one foot out the door. You know? It sounded to me like everybody's chair's name was Clem and his wife's name is Martha. They'd been out of bib overalls about an hour and a half. And they were always talking you know what it sounded like to me when I listened to AAs in those days?

It sounded like you had been rehabilitated. See, my hero in 1965 was a guy named Eldridge Cleaver. He was a black militant terrorist. That was my hero. You know, my politics were blow it up or burn it down.

I didn't give a shit which. Okay? And Eldridge had given this speech a few months earlier, and he was talking about the prison system where they're always putting him. And the prison system was always trying to rehabilitate him. He says, you know what they'd never known?

He had never been habilitated. And you can't rehabilitate somebody who's never been habilitated. That's how I felt in the a and a. At some point in your wretched lives, you've been alright. I have never been alright.

I was nuts when I was 4 years old. When I was 4 years old, I used to stand on the speedway in Venice, California. I'd stand there, little tight about this big. When a car come, I'd go. You know, people come driving along.

Look at the little bit. What the hell is that? And I like a little soldier, I'd wait for another car. Didn't know how to do this yet. You know?

If I had known how to do that, what I'd have done. And that's how I felt my whole life. I I lived on the edge of psychosis my whole life. Just one step either way, he's gone, you know. But drinking helped.

Okay? So anyway, I, I resigned from AA. And then I'd come into AA for, like, 40 days, and then I'd be drunk for 2 years. That's a slip. Then I come to AA for, 40 days or 30 days, then I'd be drunk for a year and a half.

In and out. Out. One time, I came in in the afternoon about 4 o'clock, and they 12 stepped me. These guys quadru stepped me. They got on all four sides and he just oh, Oh, I got the message that day.

Oh, I levitated out of the building. I was I went over my buddy, Big John's house. He was worse than me. I pounded on the door. Said, John, we're alcoholics.

We have to go to AA. Big John said, oh, okay. He's about your size. I led him to the meeting that night and became his sponsor. And the next day, we both got drunk, In and out.

What a loser. But I'm a functioning alcoholic. That's why I think I almost died of alcohol because I just kept functioning. The week I came to Alcoholics Anonymous this time, I weighed a £163, had like 4% body fat. I used to surf for like 3 hours and then get out and run 5 miles.

What do you mean alcoholic? I could bench press £285. Took me 25 minutes to pass a mirror. And for god's sakes, don't ask me for directions. I said, it's right over there.

My daughters used to get money from me. They'd come up and, you know, when they have a shirt on which is most of the time they'd they'd say, v up daddy, v up. And I oh oh, can I have $5? Yeah. Sure.

You know? I was 2 years sober when I figured that out. You know. I was an Adonis. What the hell are you talking about an alcoholic?

I was gorgeous. If you're new, AA has made me twice the man I used to be. And I was one the top 3 debate coaches in the United States. Uh-huh. That's an honor roughly equivalent to being one of the top 3 prostitutes in Elko, Nevada.

But among speech coaches, it's a big deal. You know? I became one of the top speech coaches in the nation by mistake. Principal called me in one day. He said, he did a lot of that.

And, but but he got this flyer in the mail about a debate in the speech tournament, which was being held 30 miles down the road, San Diego State College. And, I was teaching a speech class. So he said, you ought to get some of your kids to go down to that. I bet that'd really be good for them. I want you to get a lot out of them.

And I was in big trouble, so I said, what a good idea. You know how weird. And, I found about 6 dodos. I wanted to give it a go. And we went down the road 30 miles, San Diego State College.

We were just blown away when we got there. There were like 50 schools participating in this tournament, like 500 contestants. All the boys were in 3 piece suits with vest and ties. Girls were in these lovely business clothes. We're in Levi's and sweatshirts.

What do we know? And they killed us. We did not win around. I mean, they scraped something, touch but they did. Don't know what kind of drunk you are, but I don't care for losing.

It ticks me off to lose. And I went in the coaches room. There are about 20 of them in there. They're old pals. They're buddies.

I'm steamed already. And they've been doing this for years and they just love one another. And they snubbed me. It seemed to me. And so I hung around all day.

You know who we are. They snub you longer that way. And, one guy there really ticked me off. He had a lot of hair. That bothered me right away.

No. But not just hair. It was that steel gray, you know, not a hair out of place. Took 9 barbers to get it right. Had about a $1,000 suit on.

The other coaches did this when they went in front of him. And about 2 in the afternoon, this guy suddenly turns to me and says, where are you from? God, I was grateful to be spoken to. And I said, ocean soft. And he said, oh, where's that?

30 miles up the road, where's that? I don't know what kind of drunk you are, but he gave me a resentment. And I went back to Oceanside High, and it took me 3 or 4 or 5 years, but I built a speech team. And I never forgot that gray haired SOB for a day. I went from 7:30 in the morning till 9:30, 10 o'clock o'clock at night, and I'm peachy.

Guy next door said, I love to watch them leave in your room wiping a spit off their glasses. Reporter said to my captain one time, what's the secret of your coach's success? The kid said, terror. She won an iron. Hey.

She's the chairman of women's studies and this dean of speech at San Francisco State College today. Didn't do her any harm. Bruise on her butt perhaps now and then. You know? I wish I felt so sorry for Bobby Knight.

They fired him for choking one guy. You know. And it was a guy, But I don't drink all day. See, I'm a functioning alcoholic. I don't touch a drink all day.

I don't eat all day either. Better than that, isn't it? And I drink 400 cups of coffee and I stay pissed off. And so by the end of the day, you make it a 150 people do what they don't want to do. That's hard work.

By the end of the day, the nerves are hanging out there on my fingers about that far, man. Brain's too big for my head. Every muscle in my body's in a knot. But out in the glove compartment of the car waiting for me, I'm a functioning alcoholic, is a half a pint of hot vodka. Oh, I love to talk about hot vodka at Al Anon meetings.

They go, hey. Hey. But you and I know. And this hot vodka's in the glove compartment talking to me all day. I don't touch it all day.

I don't take a drink all day. I only have to know that the half a pint of vodka is in the glove compartment when I get through here. Anna would call to me and say, go get them cliff baby. I'm waiting, darling. I finished with Alaska at 9:30, 10 o'clock at night.

I'd lurch out to the car and open up that hot vodka and light one of those stogies I smoked in those days. And I don't know what you did, but I always drank half the half pint. Just oh, is there anything in the world like hot vodka into the bloodstream? The nerves go back up in the fingers and the brain subsides and the muscles relax. That puff on that stogie.

Damn, you're a good coach. And I killed a half a pint, and sit there in the darkness of the car. Have my 8 minutes. In all years, I was a loser in and out of AA. I never once told you about the 8 minutes.

I don't know what your story is. This is my story. After I drink about a half an hour, and I don't care what it is, after I drink about a half an hour, something happens to me and everything in my life is alright for about 8 minutes. Nothing wrong with me. Hell, you're not so bad either.

I am enough for about 8 minutes. And, I almost died for the 8 minutes. And I never once told you about it. And then I would start the car and I would drive home and I'd really start drinking. And we had these 5 kids.

And I'm a violent, violent drunk in a foul mouth, critical, sarcastic, mean drunk. And I got drunk the last 6 or 7 or 8 years every night at home. And I turned that house into an insane asylum. Everybody in that house was crazy. God knows she was.

3 of my kids are in high school. We're talking the late sixties now. 3 of my kids are in high school in the late sixties. My oldest son is working his way through high school as a hesshe salesman. You oh, he was a pimp.

You should have seen never had to give him any spending money. I used to hit him up for a 5th about once week. Yeah. Dad would Dad hair down to his ass. You know, he's had men like this all the time.

Called his mother man. Hey, man. What's for dinner? Oh, he was a pip boy. He loved LSD.

He took LSD like popcorn. And those guys, they see things, you know. I'm sure some of you know. You know? He used to scare the hell out of me.

I was right in the middle of the senses. He said, what was that? Of course, the shape I'm in, I said, I don't know. What was it? What?

My drunken mother-in-law knew this, and she would say, I'll explain it. My wife and I got hysterical a while back. We we we used to listen to the explanation. But everybody was nuts. My daughters had boyfriends looked exactly like my son.

The 3 of them used to get on the couch together. The little kids just wet the bed and walk in the walls. Everybody was nuts, and a lot of hatred in that house, a lot of anger in that house. Just a terrible, horrible place. You know, I was raised in an alcoholic zoo, and I've listened to look at my parents and say, I'll never be like you.

I was 10 times worse than them. But just in passing now, I love to watch my grandchildren. Everybody let's get back to that. But, I built that speech team. I destroyed my family, but I built that speech team.

And after a couple of years, we won one of those speech tournaments. And I didn't say anything to the gray haired guy, it wasn't time yet. We know when it's time, don't we? The next year, there were 12 or 14 tournaments, like 50 schools in each tournament. We took 1st place in every single tournament.

I can wait. I think revenge is better than Christmas. The next year, there was a tournament. There were 25 schools competing in the tournament, and my team scored more sweepstakes points than the other 24 schools combined. Then I went up to the gray haired guy.

Remember him? And I put my nose right against his and I said, do you know where Oceanside is now? He just looked blank. He said, what are you talking about? I said, don't you remember about 4 or 5 years ago, you said to me, Oceanside, where's that?

And he said, we just moved here from Nebraska. I didn't know where it was. That's the story of my life. This guy's in his bed for 4 or 5 years. I'm up in Oocha and said, I'll get you.

I'll get you. He didn't know it. He didn't know it. I gotta I gotta I'd hardly ever tell a story, but I gotta tell you this story. For the new people here tonight, in case you think we get all well here, Few years ago, I had a a a prostate trim, And this guy did not do a good job.

And I'm in pain and I'm getting pissed off. And I wait too much, so I'm really pissed off. So finally one day, I couldn't stand anymore. I pick up the phone, dial a doctor. Little girl comes on and said, doctor's office.

I said, this is a cockroach. That butcher really screwed it up. I'm in terrible pain. And I told her where the pain was and where it went. Back in the I almost must have done 5 minutes just screaming.

You know, I ended up by saying, I ain't pissed with bad. I didn't do that one as good for Christ's sake. Little girl said, Mister Roach, this is your eye doctor's office. So I know we don't get all well here, you know. But I showed growth.

She and I laughed and we almost got sick. She said, her and the phone eye of mine, we laughed and we almost died laughing. And I went in the office about 3 weeks weeks later in the eye doctor's office. I said, where's Evelyn? She's over there.

I said, Evelyn, I'm mister Roach. She says, hi, mister Roach. And everybody else in the office went, what I think. But right after, right after that deal with the gray haired guy, my wife and I had one of our main events, which the neighbors have come to miss so much. Our neighbors never got television till after I got sober.

Weren't you weren't you the entertainment for the neighborhood? We were always the he's coming back. He's coming back. They all had those Venetian blind marks on their forehead, you know. But that night, we really had a minivan and I threatened to move out.

Everybody said, yay. Go for it, dad. And I moved out and I'm living down at the beach with my surfboard and with my buddy and his girlfriend. And I'd said for years, if I can unload that witch and those long haired, dope themed children, I could drink like a gentleman again. And I'd got rid of them and that wasn't it.

And I was drunk all the time. I started to miss work, which has always been my badge of courage. I always showed up for work. My daddy told me when I was a boy, he said, if you eat breakfast and go to work, you're not an alcoholic. He died of alcoholism, but that yeah.

It was a good theory. Sounded good to me. But I was missing work. I'm missing a lot of work. And, I went by the house one afternoon to hang my wife about money, and the hashi salesman was kinda bobbing in the background there, humming a tune from the planet Pluto.

And I did something really stupid as I looked back. I turned him and I said, Dave, what's it like not to have your old man around the house? And Dave looked me right in the eye and he said, it's beautiful. And I am eternally grateful to that 16 year old kid who was really afraid of me. I was harder on him physically than any of the other kids.

That he had the courage to look me in the eye and say, it's beautiful. And I, I went back to that dump in the beach and I had sniveled and whine and pissed and moaned and screamed and hollered, but I did not take a drink that afternoon. And it had been a long time since I had not taken a drink that afternoon. And I, I went out in the screen porch and I watched, which is still today, the most beautiful sunset that I ever saw. The sky and the water and the wet sand were all just magenta.

And about the time that the sun was going down into the water, I had what our big book calls it, the moment of clarity. And Polly calls it the moment of grace. I love that. The gift. Grace.

The gift. It's all a gift, isn't it? Just a gift. And I, I went in the bedroom and dug out the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd added some stuff.

I've been I'd read it one of my travels through the program. Being an English teacher, I thought it was very poorly written. Boy, it read a lot better this time. And I read if you're new tonight, I read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous for 3 days 3 nights. I called in sick.

I didn't go to work. I ate a little bit, slept even less. And I read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I read all of the stories. I read the appendix in the back.

And in the second edition, there was a story called The Professor and the Paradox. He's in the new book, Experience Strength and Hope. And he saved my life. He was another egotistical school teacher, and he's got me right to the heart. And on the 3rd time through the book on 13th January 19 70 at 3 o'clock in the morning, I was on page 63 again.

And if you're new, on page 63, there's a little prayer, and that prayer is step 3. I always call it the formal terms of surrender. And I knelt down on that filthy floor and that dump in the beach where I was living, and I read that prayer out loud to myself. I read, god. I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as you will.

Relieve me of the bondage of self. I've heard over 200 fist steps in my years in the program. And the number one defected character of every man I've ever worked with is self obsession. Believe me of the bondage of self. And I had a spiritual awakening, much like one of the other speakers had where I just knew I was gonna be alright.

I tried for years to tell you what happened to me on my knees there that morning and I never could. And 2 years ago, 3 years ago, this little girl had a grapevine article. She's 22 now and she was 17 when this happened to her. She was in a drying out joint, you know, a treatment facility. And she did the exact same thing that I had done 32 years earlier.

She knelt down and read the prayer out loud to herself. And in the Great Britain article, she said, I was engulfed by a great laughing love. There is. I was engulfed by a great laughing love. And I knew I was gonna be alright.

I knew I was not in charge of my life anymore. And I got up and I went to Bill Blake's house. Bill Blake was a little electrician, you guys. The 2 people in this room knew him. He was just fanatic little AA, you know, just little Benny, rooster.

You know, that real pain in the ass when you're a slipper. You hate those kind. You know, you go to a meeting, they pounce on you. You know that kind, like I am now. And he would come up to me and he'd say, you wanna go to Los Angeles with us tomorrow night?

No. I felt like saying, I don't care if you creeps here. What the hell am I gonna drive a 100 miles and meet some more of them? You No. Hey.

But I would just say, no, thank you. He was always trying to help me. And within that night though, I was at Bill Blake's house knocking on the door. Margie, Bill's wife, opened the door and here he is on the porch, 5 year loser, obnoxious, overeducated, pompous ass loser. Are you new tonight?

I have never seen anyone so glad to see me in my life. This loser. She saw me. In the house, I go. Pours me a cup of coffee.

You know, she's, oh, this is wonderful. This is great. She said, Bill's been nuts lately. He said, nobody at work but look at this chocolate. Then Bill comes in, no.

Clear. In about a half an hour, I'm thinking, anything else I can do to help you folks out. I'm glad to help any way I can. They made me feel like Cliff's here. We can start AA now.

And, you know, 3 weeks later, I was in a newcomer meeting and one of the other newcomers said, what do you mean this is a selfish program? And when a guy asked the question, I knew the answer. I got the answer the night I got here. They've been playing for me for 5 years for God's sakes. But Bill and Margie were more glad for Bill and Margie because they knew the great secret.