Steps 1, 2 & 3 at the Stateline Retreat 2006 in Primm, NV

Venice, California, Clancy Eye. Good evening. My name is Clancy I'm an alcoholic. Good evening. I'm very glad to be here tonight.

Glad to be safe and sane and sober as I like to say. Because I didn't used to be and I may not be again sometime, but I am tonight. And I'm, this is really a remarkable congregation tonight. It's, we have I mean this weekend, Bob has put together a remarkable program, I think of, I don't know. I've never been to a place where there are more distinguished speakers taking part in a in a program.

And I've I've heard them all at least 5 times, I think, and some of them more than that. And, there are still people who I would get up in the rain and drive across town to hear if I had an opportunity. The, it's an interesting thing. We're here to discuss the steps. And the steps are, I should say something else too.

I doubt very much that there are any newcomers here. There's no one here who's come to learn about the steps. There's a bunch of old timers who maybe were gonna tune up a little bit. But, we really don't have to talk about the what this where they came from. But here's the interesting thing, I was sitting listening to what he just read, Casey just read that last reading, and it's exactly correct.

It is a 100 percent correct. It is absolutely true and I hope my own experience. And yet, that's very same literature type of reading kept me out of AA year after year after year after year. That going through a new arch, finding a new god. I was I was a simpletons, dummies.

I could get that reading a lot. To me, the first three steps, we often take them for granted. Yeah. They're for yeah. They're they're not very romantic.

But to me, they've always been the cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous, at least for people like me. They are the most important things. They are the gateway. Unless you get in that gate, it doesn't mean it was how pretty how pretty the scenes are inside you. If you don't get in, you'll never find out.

And you can come to aid and sit there as I did time after time after time, and just get gradually more frustrated, more anxiety ridden and think, what the hell am I doing here with these people? And leave again and drink. And it's almost impossible to describe that to anybody. Look, we're all doing well. Why aren't you why aren't this happening for you?

I don't know. I just maybe I see it more clearly than you do. This isn't this doesn't mean anything. This is like church. This is like all the philosophers who sit around starving to death and talking about the meaning of life.

The people who go to India to find out how to live from people who are starving to death, you know. But a great, great move. I, and so I will I had a great, great antipathy over a period of time to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I never really thought Alcoholics Anonymous would ever work for me because I'd stayed sober briefly here and there. And I had We had that set up to in indicate my infallibility. But I think that the first three steps are the most difficult to accept for people like me.

And I know there's a lot of people like me because I've worked with a lot of people like me over the years who came to AA. And there are some people come to AA and the first three steps are quite clear. They're, yes, I belong here. I I I'll call my problem and I have a problem not drinking and I there's a power here that I can return to and it's gonna be wonderful, but I'm gonna turn my life over to god and they they flourish. But there are 10 times as many who fight it and can't make it.

They may be eventually some of them make it, but most of them don't. And, you know, we can hype each other all we want about how many a big AA is how wonderful it's become. But you and I both know on the front lines, it's still as great a battle. Everyone has to be converted and a lot of people don't wish to be converted. The wisdom is there but the I mean when I go to work every morning, I get up in a house out by the ocean in Los Angeles, and I drive downtown, and I park in the basement of our where I work, and I walk around the building, and I step over the bodies of men, women, and children, dying from alcoholism, and drug addiction, and craziness, and abandonment.

And I have an answer that will solve their problem, and they decline to accept it. And it used to make me crazy. Why can't we accept this? Then I don't remember, why didn't I accept it? Because I was unwilling to take actions I did not believe in, that I thought were stupid.

And that is the number one cause of death from alcoholism, as far as I can tell. I know you mean well when you give me this information, but you don't understand. My case is different. My problem is not alcohol. I can't return to God.

There's nothing here that, that's very nice. It's nice, but doesn't help me. And so I as a result of that, as most of you know, you heard me talk, the day came when I was thrown out of the front door of a skid row, Michigan downtown Los Angeles, and I stood in the street corner with my bleeding and sick and desperate, no clothes. I'd lost my clothes. I'd lost my ID.

I'd lost everything. I couldn't think of anyone in America who would accept to collect phone call from me except my mother, and my stepfather would not allow her to talk to me. And I had a terrible feeling. It's a terrible feeling when you realize there's no friendly direction. I'll tell you that's a frightening thing, and it's raining, and I was cold, and sick.

But for one of the things I've learned about in the almost 10 years I had slipped around in, went and left and went and left and went and left, is that I learned one thing. When ever you look terrible, there's only one place really that'll accept you, and that's an AA club. That's the only place in the world where the the worse you look, the more they like it, you know. Oh, this one's mine, Jim. And so I found out where the AA club was and it turned out to I didn't know where it was.

I found later, I counted some years later, it was 7 and a half miles away through the rain, through Wilshire Boulevard, Long Walk. And I just walked, and I'm sure some of the people in this room have done that, made that terrible discovery. When there's no one to call on, you have to do what you have to do. No matter whether you can or not, you have to do it. And I got to this club, but I hung around there and it's dreadful, and I wound up with it better.

That that first night I was there, they had a meeting, and I'd had to lurk stayed out of sight, and I had about £4 of cake because I could chew that. And, then they had a meeting on gratitude, and I almost vomited it up again. And just just what dreadful. Dreadful. I wound up living in the back seat of an abandoned car at the end of the a club parking lot.

A guy named Joe Quinn had left a 49 Merc there, the summer before, and he let me sleep in that, the club did. And the man the manager of the club, a guy named John Sullivan, said, you know kid, you're supposed to be a member to come in here during the day. On weekends, you can get all that. But on Monday, if you're right, you have to be a member. But you're such a mess, you'll die out there in that rain.

He said, but you what you have your rules are this, you can't ask everybody for money, and you can't make any more of your smart, nasty remarks, and you gotta go to a meeting every night or else you can't. And that was really dreadful because I felt, God I've been to meetings and all these success stories. I came through the golden archway, and God, I wish I were stupid. I wish I could Why have I been cursed with intelligence? And I, I remember lying on that abandoned car, night still rained day after day, and I was cold and sick.

My mouth was bleeding. Everything, maybe I'm dead. Maybe maybe this is what hell is. Maybe hell isn't fire and brimstone. Maybe it's just being sick and cold, and your mouth hurts, and everywhere you go behind you, you hear people laughing and ridiculing you.

And there's nothing you can do about it except just keep moving. That's a terror and I had no idea that would be my sobriety time. I didn't intend for it to be. I didn't want it to be. I had no intention of becoming sober, staying sober.

I just wanted to get live another day to see if I can get out of there when it stopped raining. And I, I've, you know, thought about many times. Right? What would what would create I had no desire to stay sober. I mean, I would like to be comfortable, but I hate pain, but that's to me, sobriety does not indicate comfort.

I stayed sober once, because I was in jail one night. I went to jail a lot overnight. I'm never a big felon like some of the speakers here. Sandy beach in that crowd. But I'd go to jail, because I I have a tendency, when I get to a certain level of alcohol, I have a tendency to counsel police officers, and I point out their errors and they throw me in jail.

And I came out of jail one morning, I said, I'm down to an hour, I can go home, take a shower, and go to work. And the guy said, boy, you you should've stayed home. I said, your little son died. Well, you were out drunk and we couldn't find you, and it just about killed me. I had some little girl, some little boy, and he he was an apple to my eye, and he died, and I just couldn't stand it.

And I remember the, still remember taking putting my hand on his casket when nobody was around and saying, John Nimbuslin, this will never happen again. I promise you. This will never happen again. And, I went back to Texas where I was working, and I I really watched my drinking for a while, And then it started to get bad and it pointed out to me that I was getting in trouble again, and I stopped. And I stopped for my son John, and I maintained sobriety, and it was great.

I remember this taking my daughters, coming home after work, going living in El Paso at that time, and going out of town, there'd be ups and downs. We were laughing about that up and down, and finding the cars, and doing things together. 1st, we hadn't done for years, and I didn't have to go to Juarez or Downtown El Paso getting drunk again. And it was just ideal, almost like Easter. Somebody died, but for he died for our sins.

And then something happened. This happened to me with amazing regularity. I thought it would not happen this time, but it always did. Someone snuck into my bedroom in the middle of the night one night and put an invisible spring in my gut, and the next day they start to tighten it. And it doesn't come out as I need a drink.

It comes out as just a little growing restlessness. Just a little irritability. Just a little tired of the sermons all the time of what I did. Come on. Get off it.

And go to work in the morning and see that these people are kind of crappy people really, and it And I don't much like this town and I have my kids and I'm doing it for it. Their noise starts to get merry. Take your sisters and go to your room for Christ's sake. I'm sorry we'll play later. Yeah.

I just hate myself but I don't know what to do. But I can't drink. I'm never going I promised my little boy that wouldn't happen again. And one day my wife took the children to church and I I just put the car in the garage, hooked up the hose and exhaust pipe, turned the motor and went to sleep and died. And a neighbor happened to me watching out of his window open a cup of coffee and I didn't come out, the motor was running, so we ambled over and found me dead in the car.

They pulled me out and beat on my chest, rushed me to the hospital, examined me, determined I was seriously mentally ill, and committed me to the state of insane asylum for an indefinite period, up to the rest of my life. And that's how I get what I have find long term sobriety. That's not anything I'm ever looking for. It's a dreadful dreadful thing because it's a bad painful thing. Now why would I stay sober this time?

I've thought about it and talked different things about it over the years, but I've I've evolved, I think, what I believe to be the facts is a second second. It was due to because I had to go to those damn meetings at night. And in one of those meetings, couple of those meetings, I saw a guy that I had seen in the movies, a movie actor. Movie actor? What does movie actor tell you?

Rich and famous. Maybe he needs a new friend. I could just make a score and get out of here, and that'd be alright. And so I went over and, he would he didn't warm up to me much. A couple days later, they started doing what they always do where there's fanatics, you know.

Time to get a sponsor. Ready to get a sponsor, boy. You you really need a sponsor. I'd have a lot of sponsors. I had the editor of the El Paso Times as my sponsor.

I had a pediatrician in Dallas that I asked to be my sponsor because my children need a doctor that work free. I've had a lot of sponsors. But so I thought, well, here's my chance. I went up to old Bob the actor. Bob, I really admire you.

Would you be my sponsor? He said, sure kid, and I want you to do it and tell you. Oh sure, Bob. You know, they said he wasn't a very good actor. I I found out later, he's only been in 3 movies.

Character roles. He's done some work on the radio. I've been in more movies than he ever was, but I didn't know that. Here was a guy and I, they said he wasn't a good actor, but he was a good actor because he acted nicely in meetings. And that took a lot of acting for him, I'll tell you.

He turned out to be a right wing fascist AA pig of the worst sort. Just do this, do that. Remember thinking, why am I taking this crap from this guy? Only one reason, he was the only meal ticket I could see to get out of there. And it turned out later, he didn't like me.

And I, I understand that. Because I know I don't wanna brag, but I was the worst type of newcomer there is in AA. And I know that's true, because I've sponsored a smaller and less threatening. I said, Jesus Bob, what's wrong with that? He said, because it isn't really happening you idiot.

And if you're like these if you're like us, eventually you will drink to excess, you'll drink, sets up this phenomenon of craving. I don't understand it at all, nobody ever has, But eventually, you get sober again. I've thought about that a lot. You know, no one has ever to this day come up with an explanation of the phenomenon of craving. Now look at my life, maybe there must be other people, as best I can tell.

When you're feeling that you've gotta have some something to fill those holes to overcome your inadequacy and fear and despair and separation, you can do it by taking a few drinks. After you take a few drinks, it's better, but you start to sag a little bit. So you instinctively have another drink to hold it. And you keep going. You see guys so drunk they can't stand up.

Hey. Give me a drink. You go, what do you want a drink for? They don't want a drink. They're trying to hold it.

They're trying to they don't even know. Don't even know. I'm not aware. I never was aware I'm trying to hold this. Like, but that's what it is.

What do you mean? He's drunk and he gets sober. I said, Bob, okay. I understand that. And now you know that drinking is eating your lunch, why would you drink now?

He said, That's the other part of it kid. That's the other part of it, I guess you never learn much. When people A guy gave me a tape of a talk I gave when I was about 3 years sober, a few years ago. And I heard him I heard me describe this. I hadn't talked about it in 35, 40 years.

I I just staggered how correct it is. I've been talking about it ever since. He said, when people grow up, you face a lot of problem. You're born, you grow up, problems, situations, conflicts, people hurt your feelings, you learn how to deal with that, you learn how to get along with people, you learn what you gotta give to get what you want. It's you have to learn to live in the world.

You see that process is called maturing. And if you become a mature individual, you have a comfortable life. You can hold jobs. You can get along with the neighbors. Get along with your family.

Play with the kids, go on vacations, have fun. It's great life. So this almost never happens to alcoholics. Why not, Bob? Because when we have problems that don't find instant resolutions, we have found that a few drinks gets rid of them.

Here's to you, household finance. Here's to you, bitch. I never liked you anyway. Hey, mister Collins, take your job and shove it up your nose, will you? And it does work.

But what I don't realize, I'm establishing a closet full of immature emotional reactions. Conditioned almost the condition reflexes like doctor Pavlov's dog. And, we call them alcoholic emotions. They are childish emotions. And if you're like me, the time comes, it's came to my life several times.

I'm tired of being taken this crap all the time. I'm gonna straighten out. I'm gonna I'm gonna start going to work in the morning. Not gonna stop at night for getting drunk. I'm gonna come home and do things and do take care of things, work a little longer, make some money again.

Great. And never realizing that it is impossible for me to do that. Never. That was impossible. Why?

Because sooner or later, someone will trigger some of those emotions. Someone will hurt my feelings. Someone will put me down. Someone will make me look as though I'm kind of dumb, and I react. And I might not as I get older and wiser, I might not physically react.

I might not scream at them or hit them as I did when I was young, but it's there and the tension's up. And I find ways so I can get equal even with that son of a bitch somewhere along the line. And the pressures mount, and the pressures mount, and the pressures mount. And, there's only one I've tried. I've spent 1,000 of dollars in psychoanalysis to find a way to get rid of those pressures.

I've read books. I've tried to do things. I've listened to recordings of philosophers, but nothing works like 2 or 3 drinks. And that's why I drink. I don't drink because I'm a drinker.

I drink because I'm a feeler. But how do you explain that? And the day comes when I'm gonna drink. In fact, some doctors who study alcoholics say that people like us get to a point where you literally must drink to preserve your sanity. Isn't that ironic?

And I drink, and then sometimes I drink too much again. They say, see your problem was alcohol, wasn't it? I say, I I guess it was. But inside you just wanna shriek, no it wasn't. You don't understand.

My problem is not alcohol. My problem is idiots like this that won't let up on me. And drink again. Maybe go to AA. Maybe it'll be different in this town.

Till you find the guy who's I don't know if I ever heard this talk, but it seemed to me this was the epitome of AA talk. I stayed drunk around the clock for 20 years, night and day. One day I walked through that door and they told me to put the plug in the jug, and I did. And I've just never been so goddamn happy. Either that or it's a religious preachment.

And I, I said, Jesus, Bob. Nobody explained that to me before. That's the story of my life where the last numbers all during the 19 fifties and forties and Jesus, Bob. He said, there's a name for people like you. I said, what could it be, Bob?

He said, you're an alcoholic. I said, I'm an alcoholic. I'll be damned. I've been going to AA for 10 years and I knew I wasn't an alcoholic for for any number of reasons. First of all, because my problem was an alcohol.

When I drag it, it'd make me crazy. It'd help me. There's I they those people couldn't quit. I always could quit. My problem was to stick in that spring in my gut a few days later, but I could quit.

And on I what's your what's your saying to Bob is an alcoholic? Because that's what I am. He said, I guess you are, kid. I said, why doesn't AA explain it that way? Simply, it's directed into this crappiest pseudo religious obsession of the mind and allergy of the body, all this crap.

He says, they do kid. Look up there on the wall where it says after number 1. They ask you to admit you're having some problems with alcohol. Then there's a dash, which in the English language means end of thought, beginning of new thought. Then it asks you to admit you're having some problems without alcohol.

And that was in December of 1958, I guess. I was sober about 6 weeks, and I, I came to believe I was an alcoholic. It didn't change my life. You may I never had another drink. You think, it's his wife.

Life turned out wonderfully. Not at all. I was still a mess, because I was I had no tools to live the world. My defense was always a smart aleck answer, sarcastic, intellectual put down. I didn't get along with people.

I was wearing hand me down clothes, crappy clothes, and guy put me let me sleep in his basement and his wife didn't like my attitude. She made me get out and I went back and out of bed. Just terrible. One of the reasons I guess when I look back why I didn't drink is because now that I was an alcoholic, I've been hearing so much about what happens to alcoholics when they slip. I couldn't afford the risk.

If it's this bad sober, Jesus, if I slip what'll happen, you know. And, but I stayed sober. And I, sometimes it was nip and tuck. You know, they, an analogy I remember thinking years ago, in the early days of aircraft, these old guys would be up in their planes, and they'd be flying around, and and the one thing that couldn't was undoubtedly fatal, was the tailspin. When they got into a tailspin, I'll let the pilot talk about it if I'm wrong, But they got into a tailspin, and they would pull back that stick and try to pull back, and just boom.

And one day outside of Washington, some army young army pilot got into a tailspin. And he tried to pull the stick back and he couldn't pull out of it and he thought, I might as well just die quick. And he pushed the stick forward, which would make you dive even faster. And that day they discovered that's how you come out of a tailspin, you come out the other side. Still the way they do it in airplanes.

And even after that, there were still people dying in wrecks because, well I, they say put the silk forward, I haven't got time for philosophy. I'm gonna pull the son of a bitch back, you know. Boom. But eventually everybody got to know it. And that's the way my life was sometimes.

Has been several times, especially my early sobriety, where I knew the answer, but I knew I had to pull my answer. I do and eventually push the stick forward, I've come out of those with grass stains on the top of my head, and back at the meeting the next week explaining to people, asking them why they don't do what we do to stay sober. But I stayed sober, and I my sponsor would make me get little jobs, ask them little jobs, I got fired, and I had smart aleck attitudes. And and, but I was I remember one thing that saved me a lot of money. The guy gave me a razor, and I shaved in the second floor of the club, in cold water and soap, everyday.

And eventually I moved into a nice apartment where I had warm water, but I still use soap that I did tonight when I shave it. Think of those fools spending money on after shave lotion. You cut yourself once in a while, but that's for you. But the problem is this, the first step for some people who could accept it, for people like me it was such an enormous thing to understand. They're not saying your problem is alcohol.

They're saying that you eventually have to drink because sobriety is unbearable, and you eventually have to stop because drinking is unbearable, then you must eventually drink because sobriety is unbearable. Not a matter of going to jail or insane asylums or all these things, which a lot of us have done, but that isn't necessary at all. Our sponsored guys who, are very famous and rich and doing very well, Never was any trouble that of like that, but they hurt as badly as I ever did. The trouble is is it one long little while, of course, what happens to you and you're an a and you're new. They start these old fanatics start with the next thing.

Well, better start working on the steps. Jesus. I had to tell Bob, I can't I can't return to God, Bob. And I had a good reason for that. I always knew I couldn't return to God.

Not that I didn't believe in God, just the opposite. I believed in God. I was raised in a as a God fearing little boy in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I know where God lives. He slowly circles the Our Saviors Lutheran Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Gives it to sinners, Catholics. And I had become 1 and married the other, and it's just. And at first when I first started going there, I didn't think much about it, but the last time I got sober, I thought about it. See, I've broken all 10 commandments now. I've broken all 10.

And no matter how you slice it, there's no way coming back from that. If god exists, I am damned. And you can talk to your blue in the face and tell me all sorts of hyperbole, but that is exactly the way it is. It's like Hitler said, you give me their minds till they're 12. There'll be a part of them that's gonna be nazi as long as they live.

That branding. And I sometimes I like A, but when I start talking about God and all this wonderful thing that happened with God as they read tonight, I just I don't wanna share that crap. Why why do they spoil a a with all that crap? And I explained to Bob, Bob, I I can't return to God. I wish I could, you know, but I can't.

He says, nothing today. He says, you have to return to God. Oh, to a power greater than myself, Bob. Does that fool the other boys and girls? It doesn't fool me.

You know damn well who that is. He says, it doesn't say that. I should read it. Came to believe. Nothing in AA ever asks you to return to anything cause you're going back into sickness if you do that.

We're trying to pull you out of it. You come to believe in something. Can't you come to believe in God? I said, no I can't Bob. I'd like you but I can't.

He said, can't you believe you you believe in AA? I said, no. I like it better than I used to, but not much. He says, you think I'm doing better than you are? I said, of course you are, Bob.

He said, congratulations. I'm your new higher power. And he became my higher power. And I could accept that, because he couldn't send me to hell, he tried. I remember on the club he would say, there's that crazy bastard who thinks his sponsors God.

I didn't think he was a god but I came I'll tell you what happened. I'll tell you what happened. In my early days of sobriety it was so painful. I'd get these little jobs and I'd lose them and I'd get these and I felt so bad and so inadequate and so terrible so much of the time That I did something I had never done before. I'd never sunk to this before.

I began to I began telling Bob, when I really felt bad, how weak I really was, that I really was nothing behind my facade. I was nothing. I was weak. You know, strong people don't mind admitting your weaknesses, but weak people hate to admit it because that's all you got. You're seeing nothing, pal.

And he never once ridiculed me or laughed at me or joked or made fun of me. Didn't talk about me to others that I know of. A strange thing happened in those 1st months I guess. Somehow in my mind, I began to think, Jesus, Bob seems to know how I feel. And I had never known someone who I believed knew how I felt.

My dad said he did, my doctor said he did, my psychiatrist, my minister, all a lot of people, oh, we know how you feel. You just it doesn't take long to discover they know how you feel at all. You have to say thanks, but he might as well as eat your hands off me. Now what's so important about having somebody that knows how you feel? And it gets down to this in my for people like me.

Everyone in this room has had enough advice to last them 10000 years. People give us advice unasked for Here's what I think you ought to do. So you get so much, you just have to you just learn to shine them on. Yeah. Thanks a lot.

That'd be really important. I'll try that. Get out of here, you But if you can find somebody that you believe knows how you feel, that advice is transformed into meaningful information, And you may find yourself doing things you would never do if anyone else in the world said them. I still remember standing at the Brentwood meeting, about 6 blocks from where, sometime later, OJ Simpson did not kill his wife. I signed up to me, drinking my coffee, and Bob said, see that woman over there?

Yes. I see her. I don't like her. She said, I want you to apologize to her. Why should I?

Someone told me at the Monday night meeting at the club, you called her a bitch. She is a bitch. Why do you think she's a bitch? She told her new girl to stay away from me. Well she's right.

You apologize. I can't think of a person in the world would have told me that. I wouldn't have said, screw you. Over there and abase myself to that old bag, so she can go around, tell all her friends how she made me into nothing, so she could laugh at me and ridicule me some more. That old beast, I'd rather die.

But someone who believed know how I felt told me that. Sorry. You bitch. I understand that you're thinking about quitting your job. Jesus, Bob.

You got me to stop an envelope for a dollar 9¢ an hour. I used to be something. I'm a good writer. He said, well, you stay on the job until you get a better job. I'm, Bob, I can't stand it.

Well, then get a better job. Understand you didn't go to the Friday night meeting. Jesus, Bob, it's a big click. They all well-to-do and they laugh at people like me and they ridicule me. I would 3 years ago, I wouldn't hire those people to mow my lawn, but they they got me.

They'd pick me like I'm a piece of crap, or maybe they know something you don't know. And on and on and on. And somehow as a result, when I look back, I thought it was just coincidence, but my perception seemed to get a little better. I didn't get any better, but the rest of the world shaped up little by little, Which I guess the point of A is to make the world shape up. And I, I began to do what he said.

I a little bit more without fighting in my mind. But that second step, in case there's anybody here, I doubt it, who still fights it, because there are parts of it to fight. There's something else that in that. You return, you come to believe it's okay to what? To restore me to sanity.

Will you please define sanity for me? You can read 10 medical textbooks and they'll have 10 different definitions of sanity. What the hell is sanity? When I was in the nut house, then that's bored with the guy laughed all the time. He's never gonna get out of that nut house till he stops laughing.

It isn't because it makes you feel good. What is sanity? Well, it's hard to define. Insanity, however, is easy to define. When the mind is under sufficient conflict, so intense conflict, irremediable conflict, irresolvable conflict, it can't stand it.

Sometimes in an effort to maintain its neural integrity, it will resolve itself by making portions of reality look different than they are. That is called psychosis. Psychosis is when you see things differently than other people see it, or interpret them differently perhaps. And it resolves that terrible conflict. And people in a we all say, Well psychotic.

No, it wasn't. Once you become truly psychotic, you just about always stay psychotic. That's not something you come in and out of. We get very neurotic and pained and think we're in terrible shape, but psychosis is something entirely different. And, this psychosis is a dreadful thing, but the interesting thing about it, is that alcoholics almost never become psychotic.

Isn't that funny? You think people like us, neurotic, childish, little pukes would be become psychotic a lot. And, why not? Why don't we become psychotic? Because when it gets bad enough, long enough, I drink alcohol.

And it alters my perception of reality. I have the ability to induce temporary psychosis. Never knowing it, have no idea. And then get sober again and go back. True psychosis is what, you know, sometimes when the whole thing is psychotic, they put you away.

Sometimes you just rifle about it, like you read in the paper. Oh, I live in the story of this guy for 10 years. And nice guy and his family, came home all night and just took his rifle and killed his wife and all his kids and killed himself. Something triggered that psychosis in that man. Now alcoholics don't become psychotic because they have the ability to drink and relieve their conflict.

So when I begin to understand that, I begin to understand what the I'm sure it wasn't no one thought about this when they wrote that step, but the step bears quite true. I have to come to believe that there's some power here, whatever that might be, will enable me to live in the world without having to drink to stand it. And that really is what it boiled down to for me. I know as the years went along, of course, my appreciation of the steps matured a little bit, and I saw a little more fleshed about. But still that is the basic tenant.

And the only problem we have with that step is a lot of new people going through it think they have to know what that power is. And you have to explain to them, no. You don't have to know what the power is. You don't have to understand the power. All you have to believe is all these people are here.

They didn't come here to lie to you. The powers work for them. All you have to try to come to believe there's some power here, whatever the hell it is, that's gonna enable you to stay sober comfortably. And if you can do that, you've worked the second step of my opinion. Then the third step gets a little bad because it gets quite religious.

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood him. What does that mean? That means over to God as we understood him. I could not take that step in my first few months. I had to rewrite it in my mind, I guess.

I took a vow, I will try to do what my sponsor says. And I look back in absolute surrender to the 3rd step that time. I did what my sponsor said. I tried to do what he said. I think if there was a if there was a line of demarcation when I was about 6 months sober, I got fired off another job.

I thought it was gonna hold us when I got fired. And I I decided to commit suicide. Goes back temporarily for a few days, sleeping in that abandoned car again. And Jesus, people I got sober with, they're doing well and they're all people are back to laughing at me again. And I just had to kill myself.

I just gotta kill myself. I just I And, but I I never lose my basic romanticism. This time, I remembered A Star is Born, where Fredric March walked into the ocean. And they were all sorry later. So I started to walk to the ocean.

God, I just felt like Hamlet walking the battlements of Elsinore. I just thought I must have been a very dramatic figure. I'm sure people going by said, what's wrong with that jerk? But I couldn't find the ocean as it worked out. I knew it was west, but I I walked and walked and I find something to gas station, Jesus pal, where's the ocean?

So what? You're just West Beverly Hills. You have to go out here past the veterans hospital, and then about 5 more miles after that. I thought, well screw that. I don't mind dying, but I'm not going to walk myself all afternoon.

It got so bad I decided to call my sponsor. I called and said, Bob, they they fired me the dishwasher today. He's, for God's sakes, can't you do anything right? Let me explain something why that was. It wasn't as bad as it sounds.

I was washing dishes to the gady delicatessen on Sunset Boulevard and I swear the busboys were bringing more dishes and the waitresses were taken out. And that made me think they're getting them from other restaurants to humiliate me because I'm an Anglo. So I just stacked them up, well, wrong comp, bad comp. I said, Bob, I I just can't take anymore. He's why don't you write your inventory like I told you?

And I just told him the week before. I said, Bob, I've taken my inventory with psychiatrists, trained people. Why do I want to take my inventory with, out of work actor? What the hell is that gonna do for me? That made him cross.

Everything made him cross. Bob, I said, I know you mean well, but God, I'm a depressive by nature. I've been my life I've gone to terrible depressions, and going writing down terrible negative things about myself just plunges me deeper into it. I just know that. That doesn't help me.

I need something much beyond that. In my judgment, I need something to break me out of it. You said in your judgment, who cares about your judgment? You're living in the back seat of an abandoned car for Christ's sake. If I wanted your judgment, I'd come down and put my head in the back window and ask you for it.

Said you're a loser. And I slammed that phone down, I came out of that phone booth, and I turned left, Thank God. If I turned right, I'd have been in the ocean in 3 steps. Got to the a club. I said, Sullivan, give me some paper.

I'll write my inventory. And he gave me some paper, I wrote Oh, I wrote terrible things. I never would tell the psychiatrist these things. People say, why don't you tell your psychiatrist? Because I When you're paying that kind of money, you can't risk rejection.

That's why you don't tell your psychiatrist. I'd want someone a little wussy to say to me, you did what, sir? Get out of my office. But first of all, wash off that chair, will you? You know.

And I wrote this terrible stuff. I just vomited on the paper. I got done. I felt a little better. At least I proved writing an inventory didn't work.

And I jammed into the back seat of the car in a couple of days. Well, you're gonna take your inventory today. I don't think I really am I'm feeling a little better, Bob. I won't need to take it quite yet. I'm I'm really I'm working on a job application and I he's, oh, shut up.

I'm coming down. He got in the car and he drove from Santa Monica to Oxnard, gave me a flashlight, and I read this stuff. Oh, God. It read much worse than I remembered. I was just, I thought, he's gonna make me get out of this car and I'd have to walk 40 miles back to auction.

That's what happened to me. And I got done. Well, I thought, Bob, you're sure you're done? You know, that's the best thing you've done since you got sober, kid. And I said, I thought it was.