The Atlanta Roundup in Atlanta, GA

Guys are scaring the hell out of me. My name is Earl, and I'm an alcoholic. Earl. Hi, everybody. Yeah.

It's it's right. Get me weeping uncontrollably right out of the gate. That's a good idea. I'd like to thank the committee for an absolutely wonderful weekend. And when I wake up, I'll do that.

I it's like it's like 6:30 in the morning for me. It's I don't have a lot to say at 6:30 in the morning except, you know, coffee, which they don't allow in here. So I have water. And a great deal of fear driven energy. So thank you to the committee.

Thank you, Tom, for you were you were a great host. It's, you let me sleep and wander around. I mean, you know, you go some places and they call you, you know, like, 5 o'clock in the morning. Wanna see the city? Oh, no.

No. I want I want to sleep. So it's really been nice. And everybody that I've met has been really kind, and it's been a wonderful experience. And, you know, just seeing Polly sitting over there means a great deal to me.

Polly's, been a good friend to me for a long, long time. And I feel very loved by you, which is a very difficult thing for me to feel. So thank you for everything that you are and that you've been to so many people in this program. It's, I'm I'm honored to call you a friend of mine. I talk about Clancy, but he's not here.

He's here. He's still here. He's reverberating in the room. I'm here too. Anyway, I, I'm an alcoholic.

I, I did not start drinking until I was 12. I, I held off as long as I possibly discontented for a long time prior to that. Just, you know, if there was just something wasn't right with the world, you know, just, you know, they just couldn't figure it out. I just something was wrong. Something was wrong.

You know what I mean? And I at 12 years old, I went and did a IQ test on me and then, like, a 5 and a half hour exam I took to get into this boarding school. I didn't know that's what it was for. I just was being tested again. You know?

When you're an odd child, that seems to happen a lot. You know? And it turned out I had a very high IQ. I don't have it anymore, so I'm not bragging. That that, took care of that around 17.

Just and they shipped me off to boarding school, and it was a traumatic experience for me. And I met the you know, I was the smallest and the youngest kid of 250 boys. They'd scoured the earth to find 250 of the brightest, most disturbed young men they could find. You know. And it, it's like the lord of the flies in this joint.

And, I met Tiny and Tiny's the biggest guy and I'm the littlest guy and we had a fight and I got, you know, annihilated and went back to my room and and was just thinking my life sucks. And then, a guy came around. Matt came around and said, do you wanna smoke a joint? And I said, yes. I do.

And I didn't even know what he was talking about. I mean, all I heard this is 1964, man. He's all I heard was, do you wanna come with us? And the answer was, yeah. I felt like I was alone.

And, we went behind we got picked up Steve on the way and Steve had a container full of cheap red wine. Cheap red wine. No grapes involved red wine. And we drank and we smoked, and, I didn't get it. And then I just look at these 2 total strangers, 2 13 year olds and and a 12 year old.

It happened. That thing that makes me bodily and mentally different from my fellows occurred, man. I'm suddenly, I was comfortable standing where I was standing and doing what I was doing with the people I was doing it with and I never felt like that before in my life ever. And I don't know. Is it the pot?

Is it the wine? Is it the fact that I'm standing here with my 2 very close personal friends, Matt and Steve? Yeah. So I'm feeling that connection. Right?

And I don't care. Nobody died that night. Nobody went to jail. Nobody went to the nut house. I mean, all those things were gonna happen, but they didn't happen right there.

So my experience in that moment was smoke a little weed, drink a little wine, feel better than you've ever felt before in your life. No downside, get up the next morning, go on about your business. I'm in. You know, I made a commitment. I need to do this as often as I possibly can.

And I did every day for the next 16 years no matter what. And I think that no matter what part's what separates me from the problem drinker. Problem drinker, you give them a good reason to stop. They do. Problem drinker gets another drunk driving charge, goes before the judge.

Judge says, you know what? I'm sick of you. See you one more time. You're doing a year. We'll talk about it after the year.

Problem drinker hears that and says, I don't wanna go to jail. Makes a decision to stop drinking and driving and actually can follow through with that decision. Me? I'm wondering what it's gonna be like in jail because I'm going. Because, you know, I can do the same thing as a problem drinker.

Like, Clancy talked about, you know, we look a lot alike, problem drinker and an alcoholic. The difference is is that a problem drinker, given a good reason to stop, makes a decision to do so and then acts upon is able to act upon that decision, actually stops drinking and driving. I'm I look exactly the same as that guy right up into the point where I have a couple of cocktails, you know, and I feel the need to go somewhere. Right? I can't follow through on the thing.

Anyway, I mean, that was my information real early in the game. 13 was pills. Only reason I took a pill is somebody said, would you like a pill? I said, yes. I would.

20 minutes later, I'm laying on the floor. I'm very happy there. 14 was psychedelics, you know, drinking and dropping asthma. Child of 60. You know, we were very, very focused on the drugs.

You know, our parents were the alcoholics and we were carving out our own identity here. You know what I mean? We weren't gonna drink ourselves to death like they were. We were gonna kill ourselves in a whole new way. Right?

And the truth about that is this. And I might tell you, my name is Earl, and I'm an alcoholic. And the reason that I talk about drugs is it's just the truth of my story. But the facts matter are this, the drugs had come and go. My drug of choice is what do you got?

Right? I mean, it's all anti Earl medication to me. You know? I prefer alcohol, heroin, barbiturates. These are a few of my favorite things.

You know what I mean? Might have a good night sitting around checking my pulse. I don't need a window. I don't need a woman. I don't need a television.

I'm just right in here. You know? But if you don't have any of those, I'll take a big bag of the cocaine. I'm perfectly let's just drive the freeways, decode the license plates. You know what I mean?

You know, it's just but it means to see because the fact of the matter is it's not up or down. It's the point. The point is I gotta get out of right here, right now. And right here, right now, I'm self centered. I'm afraid.

Right here, right now, I'm restless, I'm irritable, I'm discontented, and I can't live in this moment. I have to get out of right now. And that's ultimately what I'm robbed of, as an alcoholic, is the moment, being in the moment. I can't be in the moment. I'm just it's way too much for me.

I need to medicate that right away. And in the end for me, you know, the drugs were irrelevant. I mean, you know, the bad boys, alcohol. Anybody who's done it all knows that. You know, I can get a $300 heroin a day heroin habit and go sit on the couch with a, you know, box of candy bars, a carton of cigarettes, some orange juice, a bucket, and blanket, and a remote control, man.

I'll ride that bad boy out. You know what I mean? You get a couple of quarts of Jack Daniels going again going a day and try that, you'll convulse to death on the couch. That stuff's that's the worst kick I ran in my life. It's alcohol.

I'll get to that. But, anyway, 15 was just shooting drugs. The only reason I shot a drug is because a very attractive young woman came up to me and said, would you like me to stick this in your body? And I said, well, yes. I would.

And she did and I went And on the way down, all I was thinking was if I'm not dead, I'm doing that again because I was there. 16 went to the nut house. Already 16, a guy called me an alcoholic, and I said, what's your point? You know? If this is what you call an alcoholic, then fine.

I'm an alcoholic. But if you think I'm changing one thing I do just because you're calling me that, you're out of your mind, man. I mean, we wouldn't even be having this conversation if I hadn't had a few belts. You know what I mean? It's how I get out of the house.

It's how I breathe. It's how I talk to other human beings. It's how I'm in the game at all. I can't do it without it already by the time I'm 16a half years old. 20, I got diagnosed with malignant cancer, flew me back to LA, did major surgery on my upper back, prepared me to die.

They said, you need to get your affairs in order, and I just started laughing. I said, I'm a 19 year old alcoholic drug addict. I don't have any affairs. I gotta make, like, a couple of phone calls and we're good to go. You know what I'm saying?

Hello? I will not be paying you back the money I owe you. Oh, man. You should see the inside of my head right now. I, like, just woke up.

Anyway, the hell was I talking about? Alright. So 20 years old, malignant cancer, you know, nuclear, you know, surgery. They called it nuclear medicine back then. I did that for a while.

I'm a long term cancer survivor. 22, I was we were putting the family back together and we flew to, we're flying to Guadalajara on the way there. The plane crashed and mother, father, little sister all died in the crash. And I woke up on a mountain in Mexico and, renounced god. Said I have no use for a god of this type, you know, let something like this happen.

And, and some guys came up and they scavenged the plane wreck and, had no more love for you either. I was out of the game. Had no love of god, no love of man. I'm out. Got off that mountain.

Got smuggled out of Mexico, by some, friends of mine. Friends. Some associates. I love how drug dealers talk about their associates. It's ridiculous.

By a bunch of, you know, immoral, right, loose cannon maniac guys that I knew Smuggled me out of Mexico. I ended up in a hospital in, Santa Monica, California for a long time. Arm was crushed, leg crushed, skull fractured, back broken in 3 places. I was I mean, ankle. I mean, I was just busted from head to toe, broke a lot of bones.

And I came out of there strung out on Demerol and as crazy as I've ever been in my life, man. I had pictures in my head I knew I couldn't live with. I knew I couldn't live with the stuff that that I had seen. I had no idea how to resolve anything. I've been, you know, under the influence since I was 12 years old.

So that whatever emotional growth process normal human beings go through, I hadn't been going through it for a decade already. So I had no tools to deal with what was going on inside me at all. Just this crazy, angry, lunatic, isolated kid. Hit it hard. And I did that for the next 6 years no matter what.

I was sober on 3 different occasions. I'd go into this bootleg sanitarium in in, Hollywood where you had to know the guy who knew the guy who knew where it was this week. You know? And you go in and you go in and talk to the nurse. Right?

And you give the nurse a 150 cash, and they'd strap you to a gurney, shoot you full anti convulsants, and let you rock for 72 hours. You just kick like a dog. I remember the last time I did that, I reintroduced myself to the god I had forsaken. And I said, you know what? You get me out of this sane and alive because both seem to be up for grabs.

And I'll never drink or use again as long as I live. And I meant that with every fiber of my being. Every fiber of my bank. I got up off that gurney and that nurse said, Earl, you know you're an alcoholic, don't you? And I said, yes, ma'am.

And she said, you know, for you to drink or use is just complete madness. You haven't been getting high for years, man. You're just feeding the beast. And I said, yeah. Yeah.

I know. I know. I know. And she said, so now armed with this knowledge, you're gonna be a good boy. You're not gonna drink your use anymore, are you?

And I said, hell no. Not an idiot. Got up off that gurney and walked out to my car and threw down 50 milligrams of Valium because I was shaking like a dog, and it seemed to me that Valium was medically indicated. And I came to 4 days later in a different city wondering how it happened. See, I knew I was an alcoholic.

I knew that. I'm alright with that, but I didn't have any idea what alcoholism was. I didn't really know what I was up against. And if you're anything like me, you're out there hitting it the way we hit it, and you're thinking, man, I don't wanna I don't wanna kick again. I mean, what I'm worried about is the kick.

I don't wanna kick. I'll get I'll get high for 2 more years just to avoid the kick. Right? And when I do finally face that, the physical detox, when I come out of there, I'm thinking, well, you know, I feel better. I feel a lot better.

You know, pretty soon, I'm actually sleeping more than an hour a night. You know, body functions are returning to normal. I'm having actual conversations with other people. Not long ones, but, you know, pretty good for me. How how are you?

I'm good. How are you? Alright. Let's stop there. I'm not good at anything beyond that.

And anyway, I just used till I was dead. You know? I mean, I was just I came out of my last I drank for 2 more years after I got out of that last detox because I couldn't stop drinking. At the end of that 2 years, I came to and I both my hands are broken. They were deciding whether or not to charge me with attempted murder.

You know, I had hair out like this and a beard like this. It's lunatic crazy. 70 4 broken bones, 650 stitches, enemy stabbed twice, shot at, family's dead, got no friends, got no place to live. Means burn the ground. You know what I mean?

There was absolutely as I scan the horizon of my life, there was no place I could look and go, well, we're doing pretty good over here. Let's just focus on that. Right? Yeah. You know?

I was gone. There's nothing left. And I had the we call in here this moment of clarity where I recognized that I was not connected to another human being on the face of the earth. And that was the direct result of my actions, my behavior, my alcoholism. God didn't do this to me.

My father didn't do this to me. Interpol didn't do didn't do this to me. This is on me. And if I didn't want to die, I was gonna have to find a new way to live. And I had no idea what that meant.

I didn't know what that meant. I just threw up my my busted paws and I just said help. And they took me to a bi ambulance, no place, and they they, pumped my stomach, and they said get him out of here. He's gonna die. And they took me to another place, and they kept me for 5 days, and I got worse.

And they took me to another place. This Long Beach General Hospital under the care of the doctor Vicky Fox. And everybody on the West Coast, I mean, they know who Dictor. Yeah. Polly knows.

She was something, man. She was the Georgia peach. I mean, she was the kind of person where she walked in a room and everybody went, oh, you just noticed her right away. She had this hair piled up on her head, you know, with, like, a pencil stuck in it. She wore glasses that were hanging on a chain and a a sweater.

I always wore a sweater, and she always had files under her arm. And she'd put a she was a kind she'd put a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and light it and just leave it there. You know? There's ashes down the sweater and on the bottom. And I'm in this detox.

This detox was just Dante's inferno, man. It was, 42 guys in 1 room with 21 cots on each side of the room with sheets drawn between them. And how you earned your cot was you got it. You stayed there. You kicked.

You know, you had a seizure. They hit you, and then I convulsed and stabilized your vital signs, throw you back in the cot. You just it's just not a pretty picture in this joint. Nobody ever swung by and said, how are you feeling, Earl? Yeah.

Alright. You know, you know, because I mean, they knew how I was feeling. Just holding on to the cot, trying not to just buck right up out of the van. Nobody slept like you're gonna sleep anyway. Yeah.

And, I remember she came walking in. Doctor Fox came walking into the detox, and we're all just in there, you know, just shuffling around, barking, and somebody's freaking out on it. And I'm sitting in a chair just, oh, Jesus. You know what I mean? Just hanging onto the chair.

And she came walking in. She looked around the room. She looked right at me, and I was like, I stopped breathing. Just and she looked right at me. She walked over, and she put her hand on my cheek, and she said, and I quote, baby, you really do need to be here.

It was like my first direction. You know what I mean? I just kinda went, yeah. It was like she was talking to a dog. You know what I mean?

She just kinda looked at me and she went, stay. It was, like, the perfect way to talk to me, man. I was like, alright. And I stayed in there for 47 days kicking and doing all the stuff that we do. And at the end of it, this guy, Ray White, god bless him, man.

God bless him. And he said, Earl, you gotta you better you're an alcoholic of a hopeless variety. If you don't wanna die, you better go to AA. It's the only chance a guy like you has. Now I'm grateful that man for the rest of my life because he did that's the only thing he could have said to me.

If he had said, Earl, we got a couple of options for you. Dead man right there. Two choices. Really? It was like Earl, alcoholic, bad.

Go AA now. Alright. So I mean, it's like I too loud in here. Too crazy. If you started chatting away, it just freaked me out.

I'm not I don't understand what you're saying at all. Earl, how are you? I don't know. What's going on? Don't know.

It's starting to aggravate me now. So I ended up in the basement of a church on a Friday night, 8:30 PM a and a meeting. Going to a and a. Here we go. Lucky us.

Going to a and a. Sat in the back of the room, arms folded best, tough guy look on my face, mad dogging everybody. Just you know? And people looking at me, you know, like newer guys were looking at me going, Jesus. The old timers were just like, yeah.

We've seen lots of him. You know what I mean? They knew they knew exactly what to do me. They don't they knew you don't let's, like, come running up on a guy like that because we're a little jumpy. They like from a distance.

They're glad you're here. Coffee's over there. Get yourself a seat. Good luck with all that over there. You know?

Which was the perfect way to talk to me. I was like, yeah. Screw you too. I'll get some coffee. You know?

Because I'm not a tough guy or a bad guy. I never have been. I never will be. What I am is a self centered, frightened alcoholic. And when you come up, you're gonna start doing stuff I've watched other people do all my life.

You're gonna start chitchatting with me, and I just don't chitchat. I don't know how to chitchat. I can't do it. It makes me very, very nervous because you'll say, I it feels like like tennis to me. It's like you hit the ball over at me, and it's just like, you know, how are you?

Jeez. I'm good. Do you know what I mean? I don't it's like you know know what I'm thinking? There.

Don't do that again. Don't hit it back because it just gets deeper and deeper. Now you're gonna go, how was your day? What day? I don't jeez.

Go away. You know, old timers are watching this going, this is gonna be fun. And I remember and they said so I sat in the back and, like, this guy started, got up to share. And I remember thinking, what? You know?

And he talked openly and honestly about his feelings as a man, and he did it with his grace and a dignity that I'd never seen before. I'd never seen anybody look like that and feel like that saying those things. It just made no sense to me at all. Just that's not what it's like out there. And I just thought, man, that is weird.

But and I didn't get a lot of it, but it was that feeling, that sense of things that came from him that I thought this is different. This is different. And then it was like he looked right at me, and he said, I don't care whether you like what I got to say or not. You don't like it? Go to another meeting.

And I thought, that's cool. Love that. Because it made it clear to me he's not selling me something. If I want it, I can have it. It's for free.

If I don't want it, go to another meeting. Maybe you'll hear somebody else that you can identify with and good luck with that. And I thought this is cool. I'm coming back. And I've never left after that.

I mean, I drove home, cried all the way home, paced in my little one room apartment. Right? Got an hour sleep, got up, and hit it again. You know what I mean? Just trying to get to bed without drinking and using because you said one day at a time, and I took it seriously.

I took that seriously because I thought maybe I can do that. Maybe I can get the, you know, bed sober tonight. Maybe I can do that. And it would just one day one day and it was just painful and slow and grinding. And then, and then it was day 2.

And I was like, oh. And one of the greatest things I ever heard from a guy was he came up to me after a meeting and he looked at me and he was just dead serious. Guy's about 26 years old. He's been drunk since he was, you know, 5. Who knows?

And he comes up to me and he said, seriously? Kinda concerned. And he's I said, what's going on? And he goes, I had no idea days were so long. Long.

Yeah. I'd say, yeah, man. You're away for the whole thing. It's just a stretch, isn't it? God.

And then I heard this. Somebody said, you gotta get a sponsor. And I said, alright. What's sponsor? And I said, sponsor's somebody who's got what you want.

And I said, I would like to drink, which makes perfect sense. You know what I mean? It's not like you come running into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and they go, you're not going? You say, yes. And suddenly, all the heat turns down.

It's just not what happens. Because see, I was always worried about the kick. You finished the kick, you did the hard part. Incorrect. You know?

You do the kick, I feel better, but then better turns into not so good. And not so good turns into, well, this is not any fun, which turns into oh, my god. Which turns into the immediate need of relief. And I only know how to get that one way. Right?

I didn't know that the obsession of the mind, the greater aspect of my illness was in full effect. Me sitting in an a and a meeting. I'm sitting in the back. Physical phenomenon of craving, gone. Right?

And most people say, no. No. No. I've had the physical phenomenon of craving sober. I said, well, Actually, I think that's the obsession of the mind.

Have you ever been in a love affair and then the love went bad and you were so emotionally despondent that it physically hurt? Yeah. That's the mind doing that. It hurts. Right?

Same thing with the drinking and using, man. I Physical phenomenon of cravings relieve for me when I finish my detox, you know, which can take a long time. Most people think, oh, I was in the hospital for 3 to 5 days and I finished my detox. No. You've just become ambulatory.

You have not finished your detox because I remember 4 months in this meeting, sitting in meetings and just going, what? Oh, that was out loud, wasn't it? What I love is the guy be sitting around in a group or in a meeting, you'll hear some guy in Newnan in the back go, do you see that? It's somebody else and I think, I like get him. Get him.

I like that guy because the other guy's going, see what. Tweaking in the back of a meeting, man. I did a lot of that. What's the guy talk? Somebody would say to me in the back of a speaker, and I'd be looking right at the speaker the whole time.

Some guy go, what do you mean by that? And I'd think, I don't even know what he said. How would I know what he meant by Just trying, man. Trying. I mean, that's that victory of a newcomer sitting in an AA meeting.

You know what I mean? You know? I remember having some, you know, a little bit of time and and taking this guy's sponsor to a meeting because Al was talking, and Al's it, man. I mean, Al throws those pearls of wisdom out just left and right. You know what I mean?

And I take my guy, Louie. Louie, we're sitting there in a meeting, and Al's throwing it down. And I'm thinking, this is amazing that I get to be a part of this, that I get to be a part of this human chain of Alcoholics Anonymous, where I bring Louis to Al, who I and Al, I've come to love and respect, and Louis that I love and adore. And I bring them together, and Al talks in the meeting and just showers Louie with the pearls of wisdom. This is fantastic.

It's not what's going on. Louie and I are having fundamentally different meetings. Louie's got 90 days. I got a few years. We're having a different meeting.

You know what I mean? We're looking at it from completely different angles. And I gotta remember me, and I think it's incumbent upon all of us to try to remember what we were like new, to give that new guy a shot. You know? Because I take the perspective I have now, and I try to lay it on a new guy, and he just looks at me like okay.

Are we gonna eat soon? You know, it's ridiculous. I mean, I remember me sliding up on Ohio Street, Saturday night, Ohio Street, man. Brand spanking new. Driving up and just going, there it is.

There it is. I found it. I found it. I found it. I found it.

I found it. Good. We're going and we're going to put the keys on the chair. Put the keys in the chair. You know, that's how you do it around here.

Put the keys in the chair and everything will be fine. I'm gonna put you in the where where where I said where where I said there's a guy with a red coat. Sit next to the guy with a red coat. Put keys on the chair next to the guy with a red coat. We're gonna be okay.

I'm fine. People are coming. How you doing? Fine. How you doing?

Fine. Okay. Don't ring the bell. I gotta sit down sit down sit down sit down. Good.

Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.

Good. How you doing? Great. Great. Great.

Great. Stop talking to me. Great. Alright. Guy's talking.

He's talking. He's down. I have no idea what that guy said. Another guy's up. He said, but he rarely saw something.

He rarely saw something. He rarely saw something. Twelve things. Twelve things. Twelve things.

Twelve things. Twelve things. Twelve things. Twelve things. Twelve things.

A b c. He's down. Twelve things, a b c. Twelve things, a b c. I got it.

I got it. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good.

I'm good. He's down. This guy, he's up. He's up. He's up.

He drank. He drank. I drink like that. I drink like that. Hey, that guy's great.

I drank like that. That guy's great. I love that guy. I love that guy. He's down.

I love that guy. Oh, I'm sorry. Am I talking out loud? I'm sorry. He's down.

They're they're passing a basket. They're passing a basket. Don't take the money. Don't take the money. Oh, everybody's getting up.

We're going outside. Where are we going outside? Smoke. I smoke. We'll smoke.

Okay. Good. Good. Good. They're ringing the bell ringing the bell.

Going back in. Going back in. Going back in. Where's the guy? I gotta sit down.

Gotta find the seat. Where's the guy with the red? Where's the guy with the red? Good. Good.

Good. Fine. Fine. Fine. Great.

They're reading 12 more things. It's not the same 12 things. 24 things, ABC. 24 things, ABC. This guy's yeah.

Pizza. I drank like that. I drank like that. I felt like that. I felt like that.

This is amazing. I this I felt just like that. I can't believe this guy's reading my mail. I can't believe it. I can't believe it.

He's down. I love that guy. I love that guy. He's up another guy. He's up.

He's up. He's up. We're up. They got me. We're praying.

We're praying. I know this prayer. I know this prayer. I would leave the meeting and people would say, you know, what'd you think? It's a great meeting.

It's a great meeting. And I cry all the way home. You know what I mean? Just like, Jesus. What was all of that?

I was I'm never gonna get this thing, man. I would go home and paste in my apartment. I gotta find out what the 20 more things are. I gotta find out what and I would get up the next morning and people would look at me and all they'd see was a guy sitting in the seat doing this. Mhmm.

Just as a testimony to the human skull. You know what I mean? How much pressure it can take. I mean, we should be sitting around in meetings like this, and every once in a while, some newcomer's head should just blow. And they have a special cleanup committee to run over and clean it all up, and I'm oh, I gotta remember, man.

That was not easy. That was not easy being new. It was just you every time you just go home and go, what'd you do today? I got up. I went to work.

I went to a meeting. Man, I'm just exhausted. You know what I mean? Because everything was so intense, and you would listen to people share. I mean, the worst thing in the world to take a newcomer to a sharing meeting.

You know what I mean? People just share what'd you do? Well, I got 3 kids, you know, and I'm raising them on my own. You know what I mean? And I'm learning how to play the guitar too, you know, and I'm, you know, and I got 2 jobs and I'm, you know, I'm thinking of going back to school.

You know what I mean? And I'm thinking I'm dead. That's unbelievable that that human being is too I mean, I go to work meeting. I go home. I'm like, oh my God.

And I thought, this is never gonna happen. I'm never gonna be able to say I'm I work OTA and do anything else of any time. It's too much for me. Right? But what I've discovered is if you're new, don't sweat it.

Don't sweat it. Because when you're new, you know what I mean? That alarm goes off in the morning. You jump up and you just kinda go you know? I'm gonna say so well damn whenever you know, and you're grinding through every step of the way.

What time is it? 9:02. Great. Right. Right.

I'm just doing that. I'm doing that. Oh, jeez. What time is it? 903.

Good. Alright. Got it. Got it. You just grinding through a day.

You know what I mean? It's about staying here, working the 12 steps, being relieved of the obsessive nature of the mind, walking the earth a free man or woman and starting to flow through a day. I mean, my schedule today I look at my schedule today and I go, well, that's ridiculous. The amount of stuff that I can do in a day. And be and it's because I've learned it just you know, I got a plan, and I just do the next indicated thing.

I just do the next indicated thing, and it turns into a remarkable, full, complete life. Just doing the next indicated thing. And that's all Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me. It's is everything. It's all it's done for me.

It's everything. I mean, it's given me a way to be in the world. It's given me a way to have some grace and some dignity and some purpose and some value. You know, little things. Just little things that have happened to a guy who came in here with absolutely no tools for living whatsoever.

And they said, get a sponsor. And they I said, they said I said, what is that? They said, well, somebody who's got what you want. I said, I would like to drink. So maybe a little early to be throwing the ball back in my court.

They said, well and I've since come to believe I want a sponsor who's got what he wants. Best definition of happiness I know, wondering what you have. Right? So I looked around. I found this lunatic.

It was a lunatic. I listened to his story, and I said, he's crazy. I love him because he'd been thrown out of the nut he'd been the only guy I've ever met he'd been in the nut house 23 times. Only guy I ever met who'd been evicted from the nut house. But they finally just said, you have to go.

Get out. And he ended up in AA and he'd been there for 10 years when I showed up, And he had this passion for life. There was the thing about him, the late, great Donald Mann, this passion for life that and I wanted that. I wanted to feel strongly about something because it felt so dead inside. And I asked him to sponsor me, and and he said, yes.

You don't have to like what I tell you. You don't have to think it's a good idea. You just have to do it. I thought, alright. I don't know what that means, but okay.

I found out what that meant. He would say stuff like and and he didn't tell me about Alcoholics Anonymous. He showed me. He'd say, we're gonna go to we're gonna go to Ohio Street tonight. Meeting starts at 8:30, so you'll be there at 8.

I remember thinking, why? Why would I be there a half an hour early? Well, because there's gonna be new people there with no place to go, and we wanna be there for them and talk to them and see, make sure they've got a big book and they know where some other meetings are. Kinda just kinda bring them into the fold a little bit. I went, oh, that's very nice.

Alright. Yeah. I'll do that. He says, and I want you to pick up Ad on the corner of 6 of Santa Monica on your way. And going, jeez.

It never ends with this guy. You know what I mean? It's like, now I'm, you know, going and I'm just a disgruntled guy and I'm going I'm driving down to 6th Santa Monica. I'm thinking, this is ridiculous. I don't even know this guy named Ed.

And for that matter, there's 4 corners of 6th in Santa Monica. How the hell am I gonna know which guy is Ed? You know? Which is funny because, you know, when you're driving to meet Ed with 6 days, you're like 2 blocks away and you go, oh, there he is right there. Because Ed's the guy standing on the corner doing this.

That's gotta be it. So you pull up and you go, get in, Ed. He goes, alright. Ed's in the car. We're on our way to the meeting.

I'm still just this crazy new guy. Right? And I got Ed with 6 days. I got, like, 9, 10, 12, 18 months. Who knows?

I mean, and we're driving along, and Ed's going, hey. Well, how are you doing? I'm Ed, and, you know, and I, you know, I got 6 days. And my wife took me back, and I got my job back, and we're gonna get a car. And we're gonna.

And I also look at them and I go, shut up, Ed. You got 6 days and you're already doing better than me. I hate you. They're once again displaying my magnificent social skills. And I said, yeah.

I'm gonna take you to the meeting. We're gonna have a meeting. If you need a ride anywhere at the meeting, I'll take you, but knock it off. It's like, alright. And we go to the meeting, and we I didn't know what Donald was doing for me.

I didn't know he was slowly breaking down my resistance to humanity. I didn't know that he was showing me that I could do things that I didn't understand that would reveal more and more and more about how to be in life. I didn't know that. He went so far beyond the call of being a sponsor. I don't even know how to describe it.

I mean, I remember one night, I was homicidal, and I don't use the term loosely. I was not in a good way. Not in a good way. And, I was showing up to Ohio Street, and it was an 8:30 meeting. My commitment was the the, cleanup commitment because that way you don't have to talk to anybody.

Just wait till y'all leave and you clean up the place and lock it up, and you're done. You're participating in Alcoholics Anonymous, but you don't actually talk to another alcoholic. My crackerjack plan. And, I'm showing up at the meeting because I can't be alone one more second, and it's it's not even 6:30 yet. And the and the setup guys and the coffee guys and Donald are there.

And I had to get there, and I had to get there fast because it was not going well in here. And I've got over there, and I remember thinking, I'm just they're gonna look at me, this crew, this band of misfits that Donald sponsored. He was known as the sponsor to the damned. Right? Because his, you know, you could go into a big meeting, you look down in the row of Donald's guys, and they stuck out in here.

You know what I mean? Which is tall order. Yeah. And you did you know? You just people going nice meeting.

Nice meeting. Oh, what's going on with that row? Because you got the angry nun and you got the giant homosexual. You know what I mean? And then you, you know, you got a Loma with the, you know, the earrings and the pearls and the hats.