The Padia Beach Conference in Bangkok, Thailand

I've been thinking ever since I was back there. I was wondering if I could no. And I I did this when I talk, so maybe I won't talk so long. Drop your hand. There's there's a blessing in that.

Well, are y'all nervous? Maybe you should be. My name's Danny. I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Danny.

That's my AA birthday. 25 years as you witnessed. Whoo. Yeah. There's a lot of sobriety in there.

So 55 years. Holy cow. I was pretty young then. Oh, that's bright. I I I went to the restroom before I came up here, but that was an hour ago.

And, so I have a deal with somebody. They're gonna come up and take over. If I leave, they don't think anything about it. It's, just we can't have any accidents up here. Not with new people.

No. Anyway, my name is Danny. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Danny. And, Jamie and I have had a wonderful time.

This is, this is an interesting place. It's it's not not really like Texas, actually. It's quite different. That, and the food's different too. It's hot.

Food's hot. I was, and Jamie wants to try everything. She's the red head back there, and she wants to try everything. I'm I'm not so adventuresome. You know?

I find one thing I like and eat it over and over again. I've had watermelon. A lot of it. And, when I when we first got here, Eric picked us up and we went we were in Bangkok. We spent the night in Bangkok after, like, a, what, 85 hour ride over here.

And, I mean, what a trip. But fortunately, you sprung for economy. So which is great because I'm only 63, and it really worked out good. I got to know everybody. You know?

They wouldn't let me go upstairs. You know? And, anyway, it was it we're we're very grateful to be here. It's, I wasn't gonna be places like this. I can tell you.

25 years ago, I was on my way back to prison. And and that's true. But it you know, Alcoholics Anonymous just intervened in my life, and I'm, man, I'm grateful. The greatest thing that ever happened to me. People that are new here, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous.

We're really, really glad you're here. I know you're thrilled to be here, aren't you? Yeah. Oh, great. Hey.

Hey. I finally did this. Yeah. How good for you. Yeah.

I know. That's what I was thinking too. And and Toy was reading, reading how it works in Thai. That was amazing. That's exactly the way it sounded to me 26 years ago.

I didn't I didn't know they could do that again. So holy cow. And it's a lot longer in Thai, isn't it? That's what Tony and I told my buddy Tony back here from England. We were talking.

I said, that's a really a lot of words. What? Oh, yeah. I've I've already introduced myself a couple of times, so I'm I must be nervous too. Let's see.

I like to I like to tell you, you you know you remember doctor Bob Smith's son, Smitty, you know, he passed away, what, 2 years ago, I think. What a wonderful aliment. Greatest sense of humor in the world. And he loved to tell this story because he thought it it was apropos when you consider us. He liked to talk about the, the 2 the 2 rather wealthy moose hunters or they're just hunters.

They like to fly from Texas and go up north, and they would fly they would get this bush pilot to fly them in onto a a nice lake, and they would get out with their guns and their whiskey, and they would spend a week hunting. And, you know, this this year, they dropped them off, man, and they go out and they have this great time, and they kill 2 moose. And when the bush pilot, who's a new guy, he comes in he comes in a pontoon plane and he lands and he comes in to to pick them up and he sees these guys over there just wiped out. You know? They got they got shell casings up to their ankles, beer bottles, whiskey bottles, and these 2 big moose.

And and he looks at me. He says, listen. We can't leave with all of that. There's too much weight. And they said, well, why not?

We did it last year. Well, this guy's new with the company, and he's thinking these are good customers. They're drunk. They're idiots, but they're good paying customers. And he said, well, maybe I'm wrong.

He said, okay. Load it up. They got in there. They took off. They got about 300 yards, and they crashed.

And the the drunks come up out of the out of the wreckage and look around and say, where are we? And the guy said, I think we're about a 100 yards from where we crashed last year. Oh, look at this. Well, I like this guy. I was starting to do this one.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, good. My arm is going to sleep anyway. So anyway, that's, that's the only funny story I can ever really remember other than my life, which is, you know, it's kinda like yours.

I usually start my talk off telling you about the, the first meeting that I consciously remember attending an Alcoholics Anonymous. My wife had pushed me out of the car, in front of the 7 10 club in Midland, Texas. I didn't really wanna go, but I was too weak to resist. And, she the reason she did it is because she had a date with her boyfriend. And I thought that was going to I thought that's gonna ruin our marriage, you know.

And and I had I had hepatitis, had been drunk for several days, and she pushed me out there and, you know, so, of course, I've gotta do something. I've got to, you know, I've gotta save my marriage. So I go inside this club, which I don't know what it is, to get a ride, you know, to go do what I need to do. And hell, I went in there and they were just thrilled to see me. You know, they said, man, this guy just walking in, a a wet drunk, just what we needed.

We're all depressed. Here's somebody to work on. And, so you know how they are, man. They just gather around. You want orange juice?

You would like honey? How about some chocolate? If you don't drink, you won't get drunk, he said. I said, yeah. I know that.

Yeah. I I've got that part down. And he was said, you know, this I said, I need a ride out here. They said, well, we're gonna have a meeting. I thought, well, I guess I'll have to wait for the meeting and then get a ride out of here.

So I go to the I get in there and I go to this meeting. And this meeting, people get up behind the podium and they they say that they're alcoholic, and they tell some horrible story, and everybody claps. I thought, man, this is a long meeting too. When it was over, they all got up and held hands and said a prayer, and then they broke. And I thought, well, I can get out of here.

And here come a guy with a flat top. You know? He's just a redneck. It's what he was. He's a lot worse than me.

And he came right straight for me. He had a bunch of young guys with him. And he came right up to me and he said, we're going to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. Would would you like to go? I thought, be still my beating heart.

And then, of course, in my head, what I thought was there is no way on god's green earth that I'm going off with a bunch of geriatrics for ice cream on Monday night while my wife is out with her boyfriend. That ain't happening. What came out of my mouth was, you know, sure. I'd love to go. So I'm sitting there holding a rocky road ice cream.

It's melting, and these guys are talking to me about Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, this guy, again, he says, you know, Danny, if if you don't take a drink, you won't get dropped. Good. And the the guy the kid with him, he said, listen. Let me let me explain it to him.

He said, it's not the caboose that kills you. It's the locomotive. I thought, I should have brought pencil and paper. This is deep stuff, but right now, I need to go find my wife. So you want if you're worried about what you're saying to the new guy, don't worry.

He's he's got his whole little script going all of his own. You know? He just standing there looking at you. He's like, oh, man. Sober.

And it you know, being sober is an interesting event for an alcoholic, isn't it? It's the greatest thing in the world that's ever happened to me. Alcoholics Anonymous is the most amazing movement in the world. It's the largest growing fellowship in the world that no one wants to join. I got my little key with the bell on it.

That over the thing's heavy. Have I started drinking yet? No. Well, I, I'm gonna I'm gonna cut out about 2 hours of my talk since we have a big countdown around here. And, that's the biggest countdown I've ever seen.

I mean, thank God you didn't have a 1000 people show up here, or that banquet would be it would be pretty cold right now. No. This is the most important thing. It's the most important thing in the world that you know that you're loved here, you're recognized here, you're needed here, you're wanted here. If no one else if you ever felt like no one else wanted you, here you're wanted.

Here you're needed. Here you count. You have work to do here. The fun and games out there may be over but in here your life takes on meaning. In here things be you you realize that everything you've been through, everything you've felt, all the separation that you've had from humanity will melt away and you'll be able to use that to reach other people.

And it'll be the greatest thing ever happened to to you ever. And you won't wanna do it when it's your turn to do it. It's I mean, you know, we want we I wanna be a sponsor, but I don't wanna have to sit and listen to you. I mean you know what I mean? I mean, that's kind of the way we are, but my sponsor says you have to sit and listen.

You have to share. You have to read the book. We have you know? So you you do what your sponsor says. You don't know what it is that he knows, but you're afraid it's something that you've got to have.

And so you do what he says because you want what he has. Because I wonder what my sponsor had. He had a blonde wife. He had a really nice car and a good job, and everybody looked up to him. They liked him.

And I wanted to be just like that. I thought John Henry McDonald was the best thing in life. He was the first guy I ever heard and identified with. He was the guy that when he sat down, he talked and they listened, he said he said, come on in this house. Get a cup of coffee and sit down.

You know, I told him, I said, I'm an alcoholic. He said, yeah, you are. Yeah. You are. And I said, man, I'm at home.

And I've known him now for 27 years. In fact, I I didn't have any friends from my past. I don't know if I had any friends back then either. But but, you know, today, I mean, I I go all over, and I don't even know why. I mean, anybody in this room really could clear their throat.

If I if I catch a heart attack and fall over, one of you could just get up and say, our next speaker, you know, because that's just the way it is. I mean, we're all here because we're not all here. You know? And we can all talk about that. I would, I want you to pay attention when I share because there's some things that you need to know.

Get a get a big book. If it's time, we'll get you one of those that are hard to read. But if you read English, get just a regular one and just read the black stuff. You know? I do we just do that.

And the reason I I wanna tell you, you don't wanna go just strictly it's I was never released. I mean, you know, it's I got away, and they just said, well, we'll catch you money these days. So and it you know, if you're new here and you're wanting to find a direction and hope and happiness in life, If you'll look around this room, what you'll see is we we have people here who have divorces. We've been in mental institutions. We've been in in the gutter.

We've absolutely destroyed our lives and the lives of people around us, and we'd like to guide you into your new life. This is the place where the inmates do run the asylum. You wanna know who's in charge? Ask any one of us. We won't we're because of humility, we won't say that we are, but we won't say we aren't either.

But this this is a great this is a great place. You know? I remember trying to find the the one in charge. You know, deal's dead. There's gotta be an opening.

And, no. I I came from a I came from a mother that was very young, which, right after that, my mom was 14 years old when she married my dad. He was 19. They she had me when she is 15. They've now been together for 62 years.

Is that cool or what? I I haven't even had that many wives. I mean, and I'm a married man. At, they, they were just terribly poor. I could talk for a long time.

I I was the only child until I was, almost 7 years old. I had I felt different. I mean, I didn't and I don't know how you tell people when you're 7 years old that you feel different. You don't know that you feel different. You just look around.

I fit I would just look around and seem like everybody seemed to be fitting in and okay, and they knew what to do, and I didn't. I just I felt better when I was alone. I've I had my fantasy world, my invisible friends, you know, which I still have. You've told me to quit listening to them. And, but, you know, I had all those things going with me, and what I really needed was a drink.

But, you know, I mean, I'm 7 for crying out loud. No one no one really was interested in seeing if I it would help. I did okay until I was, like, 13. When I was 13, 14 years old, I took my first drink. I took my first drink because I wanted to impress some some of the older guys that I wanted to fit in with.

I wanted to be like them. I wanted them to like me. I I didn't know what it was that it took to fit in anywhere, but I wanted to be with with these guys. So I took a drink, and, man, it just went down, and my fingers tingled. My toes warmed up.

My stomach got all warm. I felt you know, I just felt free from that thing that kept me apart from everybody else. I just felt I'm I'm in charge. I'm okay. I can fit in.

I got in a lot of trouble. I wrecked my mother's car. I wasn't supposed to have it to begin with at that age, but I wrecked it. I got in a lot of trouble. Everything that could happen wrong, it did happen.

And, all I can remember is woke up the next day. I felt terrible. I was in a lot of trouble, and I thought, I am doing this again. And that's a, you know, that's a common theme in Alcoholics Anonymous. It does some alcohol did something so significant for me that there was no way in the world that I was not gonna do it again.

Now, like you, I paid a terrible price to have that experience over and over and over and over again. I mean, the consequences, to me and to my family, and to, in fact, to society that I came in touch with was just massive, just like with you. But see, I couldn't live with it. I had like an internal storm inside of me. You know, it's just the swirling feelings and thoughts and just I just couldn't I couldn't bear to live with it.

You know, it just I would try to repress it and I would get depressed. I'd I'd have explosive feelings. But if I took a drink that externalized, I calmed down inside and I felt like the eye of the storm. But, man, you know, everybody around me said, oh, he needs to quit drinking. That's not good.

And I I didn't know how to tell him. You don't understand. If I quit all that stuff comes right back inside me. And then you don't have a problem, but I do. And I'd much rather you have one.

So without being able to express that or have any idea that it was having a different effect on me than it did on anyone else, that's where, you know, that's where it led me into prisons, mental institutions, several marriages, which I'll tell you about a few. I I'm I don't want you to be late for your buffet. I don't know what we're having, but I'll bet it's fish. But at any rate, I, I joined the navy. Actually, before I tell you before I joined the navy, I need to back up.

I didn't tell you about a couple of things that happened to me very early. They said they thought this boy is crazy, so they sent me to the to the insane asylum, a mental institution, Big Springs State Hospital in Big Springs, Texas. I went over there because I ran away from home and I was depressed and I couldn't fit in, and, I stayed for 3 months. They introduced me to Thorazine. Thorazine is a is an interesting drug.

If you if it's properly administered, it doesn't, it doesn't really affect your thinking all that much. It just affects your motor skills. So that I'm an anxious person who needs to go somewhere, but my body won't cooperate. So you'd be sitting in a locked ward on in in a, mental institution. They open the door, and they go, I'm getting out of here.

And when they all come back in and close the door, you think, well, the next time they open that door, then I'm gone. So, eventually, I got off of that stuff, and they they thought I was better. I think, you know, when you keep a a kid on Thorazine for, like, 3 months and then you take him off, I mean, I guess it's hard to fit find out whether he's better or not. He just been immobile. But I got out I got out and I was out in no time at all.

I gotten I got a hold of my mother's car again. I wrecked it again. I got drunk again. I went to jail. I went back to to the state hospital.

They put me on a locked ward with where they were giving out shock treatments. I made I made some friends. These guys were they were getting shock treatments. And these were my first really good buddies. And but the more shock treatments that they got, the less they were able to interact with me.

So I felt like we probably need to get him out of here. So on visitors day, I stole the car and loaded these 2 guys up, and we went 40 miles away to my hometown and got 2 more guys who should have been in that hospital. And we headed for Mexico, which was 270 miles. I don't know how many kilometers that is, but 270 miles away. So we headed off down there, and it was it was very exciting time for me because this is my first gang.

I'm, you know, I'm I'm the leader, and, you know, we're I'm very energized over this whole thing. So we head out, and we would stop in little mom and pop stores and go in and create a diversion to get supplies. And when you're escaped mental patients, that's not a problem at all. So we we would get supplies, get something to drink, and hit the road. But the further we got from that hospital, it became apparent that that these guys were in that hospital for a reason.

It became increasingly difficult for me to gather my gang up and get them back in the car. You know? Hell, they just wander off everywhere and, you know, you stop for supplies and, you know, you just it was really difficult. I was getting stressed out. So but we finally we got across the border.

When we got across the border, we got into what is known as boystown. This is where men become men or boys become men. Maybe not. But, anyway, we were over drinking, and, that's when I realized I've just completely run out of a plan. This is as far as my plan goes.

About that time, I heard a noise, and one of the guys with me had just killed a parrot that belonged to a lady that worked down there. And, so they there was a big commotion, and they they called the federalis. So we thought we probably we're going back to America. So we we tried to beat it back to the the border, but the federalis caught us, and we so we went to jail in Mexico. And, man, that's a bad place.

You know? I I didn't speak the language. It's almost like being here. I couldn't I couldn't even ask for, you know, water. All I wanted to know was how to call my mother.

My mother was on her was gonna wind up in Al Anon, but it was 20 years yet, and I could drive her like a new car. So, anyway, my mom did find me, and she came down and she got me out of the out of the, jail, but she didn't get those other guys out because she thought I was, they were a bad influence on me. And, I had to ride back across the international border on the hood of the car because I had lice, and she didn't want me in the car. They got me all cleaned up and getting new new clothes, and we we headed for, my home, which is, like I said, 270 miles away. And she had brought one of her little church friends to to, you know, support her in this.

So what they did is they they practiced what was her was her first version of inversion therapy, which is she turned that she put it on Mexican music, the kind with, you know, the mariachi music and turned it as loud as it could go and played that all the way back to Midland, Texas, read out of the bible to me, and, you know, basically tried to shame me all the way back, and it really worked. I I hate that music still. But I got I got through that. My dad said, well, you know, I don't know what to do. Well, you know, maybe maybe we should let him join the navy.

And I joined the navy. I joined the navy the day I turned 17. They put me in the seabees. I grew big and strong. I my drinking, I I got to work and just I think, like, I could drink anybody under the table.

And, I mean, I was having a ball. I love being in the navy except for getting up early for no particular reason. And, you know, and people ordering you around. And, you know, I didn't other than that, I liked it a lot. I liked having a uniform and belonging to a group.

But that's about as good as I got. I wound up over in Guam. And you guys out here, you know all about these places. Guam is not a big place, and it's very hard to leave Guam. That's probably for me.

I didn't even know anyone knew I was over here. Anyway, Guam is a very small place, and, I got to I got to drinking, and, and I would, you know, I would leave the vase, and they would pick me up and I knew all the shore patrol. They'd pick me up in a gagne, bring me back, and I would miss I would miss roll call and, you know, it just was it was getting bad. And I and I started drinking at the club Macambo. And one night, I met some British sailors, and they said that they had liquor rations on their ship.

And I thought, that can't be possible. So I went to find out. And, when I came to, we I was in a lot of trouble. They left, you know, and that's a that's a problem for you when, you know, when you're American sailor aboard a British ship and it's not, you know, it's gone. It's, in in our book, it says the alcoholic's problems pile up on and become astonishingly difficult to solve.

Well, that's true. So but they they worked it all out and got me back, you know. And, yeah, I went as low as you could go in the navy. And I got I got back oversee I got back overseas back to to, the camp Pendleton area, I was in the Seabee's. And, I just started, I started leaving and blacking out, blowing up, getting just losing my cool, you know, and life just went downhill.

And finally, they they decided to, arrange for me to have a general discharge under honorable condition. So I was I was out of the navy. I got out of the navy, and it was one of the, you know, I was very, animated and happy that day and making fun of all the guys as they boarded the ship to leave for war. But inside, I felt ashamed, and I was sad, and I thought, you know, it's a felt ashamed, and I was sad, and I thought, you know, this is one more time something that really meant something to me I can't have and I can't do. And these relationships with these guys, however dysfunctional, they were my friends, and they were off and and here I was standing alone feeling sorry for myself.

I made my way up and down the California coast. I hit I learned about skid rolling, about selling blood. I learned about stealing and hustling people, speed. I love speed. I like to stay awake for everything.

You know? Drink whiskey, take speed, hide outside your house, see who's watching you. Great life. God, I hated to give that up. You know?

Who's gonna watch us now? So, anyway, I I I made it up and down all over, California, and I just got in so much trouble with people and just I I wound up heading out back to Texas. I got back in Texas, and, in Texas, I was in o in Midland Odessa area, and I met some guys who were they were just like the coolest guys in the world. I mean, everybody liked them. They only came out at night and had a nice car, and they carried guns, and they had money, and everybody was afraid of them and they drank good whiskey and and I wanted to be just like them.

And, they they were stealing, mercury out of oil field gauges and selling it, on the black market. And they needed some help, and I applied for the job. And, pretty soon, you know, I'm one of the guys. You know? I've I'm carrying a gun, and I've, you know, I've got people that I think respect me, but they're just afraid because, you know, we're nuts.

And, wasn't long till you I don't know if y'all know about the Texas Rangers, but I do. And, wasn't long till they showed up, and I wound up getting a 5 year sentence, and it was probated. It was probated, and I was told that if I would hold down a job and and report to my parole officer and stay out of those bars and not drink and don't hang out with those kind of people that this would I could I could live this down and it would be expunged from my record. And I would be, you know, it would be a tough lesson, but I could move on with my life. And I and I really really wanted to do that.

I was grateful for the opportunity. I never wanted to drink again. I didn't wanna be around those kind of people. I knew that I knew they were right. I wanted my family to be proud of me.

I didn't like it that that somehow my my dad's a very hardworking old World War 2 veteran, and he's got him he's got him a business. And I got 2 brothers that are just good kids trying to go to school, and my mom who's just at her wits end trying to figure out how to fix this one boy that, it just means everything to her. It means everything to her. She nearly lost her mind trying to help me. And, and, you know, and here I am, I'm showing up in the newspaper.

You know? And I mean, they're I mean, they're embarrassed. They don't know what to do, and I'm ashamed of myself. So I do wanna do the right thing. I got a job that lasted 3 weeks.

3 weeks, I just couldn't take anymore. I I I just don't have a couple of drinks, take the edge off. I come to in Dallas. I meet some guys who are doing the same thing. I wind up getting 13 5 year sentences and send it off to the Texas Department of Corrections.

That's Huntsville. And I learned about, agriculture and violence. I learned about making your own, we call it chop. Make your own whiskey. I learned about gangs, and I learned I learned my way around in the world.

And when I got out, you know, I I knew I would be back. And I was right. I was back. I got out and, you know, I was thinking, what, you know, what in the world is going on? I've gotta do something.

My mother my mother didn't have any skills to teach me. She was just in a survival mode from the moment that she was born practically. And my dad was just a hardworking guy who didn't know how to interact. So my mom only ever the only thing she ever told me that I really recall was that she said, somewhat you need is a wife and a job and a kid and a car and a bank account and a home. You'll be okay.

So I look for a woman that had kids and a bank account and a job and a car. I married her, and my mother was wrong. I was not okay. So, anyway, I married this girl. I've I've met her, and I met her that week.

I married her later that week, and it was like the worst 2 weeks of my life that married. It was very it was real stressful, and her mother was just a real bad drunk and it was just terribly uncomfortable. So I left. I went back to my bar. I had I'd now had a base of operation, this day's restaurant in Odessa, Texas.

And I'm sitting in my restaurant, knocking back some cold beer, and don't ask me where I get the money to do this. I don't know how a drunk manages to stay drunk, but I managed. So I'm sitting in here one night, and I see this girl, and she's kinda sobbing gently over in the corner. She's really good looking. And I go over to see if she's okay.

And we get to talking, and it turns out that, her problem is is that she's pregnant. And this was back in the sixties, and there was a social stigma attached to being an unwed mother. And she couldn't go home to her family pregnant, and it was a very sad story. And I got to thinking that I don't even have a home to go to, and I started crying. So, between us, we hatched a plan that we should get married.

And, so 3 day you had to wait 3 days, and and, with 3 days later, we're married. And, I called my mom and said, mom, I'm married. And she said, well, I know that. I said, well, you couldn't. I just did it.

Now she said, oh, you have a wife. And I thought, oh, that's a problem. I hadn't even can see. There's always details. I never I don't think about details.

I'm not I'm a big picture sort of a guy. You know? Quick fix. So I thought, well, I'm already married. I might as well do my, might as well do my little, honeymoon.

So about a 5th whiskey and we got on the Greyhound bus and headed to our our new home, which was, in a place called McAllister, Oklahoma. And we we drove up there and I entertained the passengers. And by the time we got there, I was pretty well lit. We got off the got off the bus and my new father-in-law was sitting there to pick us up, and he had this big limousine. It was chauffeur driven, and he was well dressed and obviously very influential.

And I thought, well, I finally done something right. And and we went to his house, and I passed out. I his house was like this mansion with, I don't even know how many, 12 or 13 bedrooms. I mean, this guy had had it going on. He had servants everywhere.

They all wore white. I woke up, and I walked out on the veranda, and I looked right across the street from where he lived, and I saw his place of business. I had married the warden of McAllister State Prison's daughter. And I thought, what are the chances of this? And Eric says, is this was that odd or was that god?

That was this I I thought, well, I'm very I'm very stressed out with this. You know, so I've got to go. So about this time, my life takes a turn for the worse. I needed a design for living. You know?

All of that crisis management was all I'd ever had. So anyway, I wound up, I wound up back in the in my bar in in West Texas, And I was sitting in my bar in West Texas just doing what I do, which was hustling pool and hustling drinks and, you know, just trying to keep the edge off. And my mother shows up and she says, come on. We're going to court. And I said, what far?

She said, well, you're getting a divorce and an annulment today because you're a bigamist. You're in a lot of trouble. And so she took me to court, and we go in here, and the the judge didn't get to say anything. I didn't get to say anything. The lawyer didn't say anything.

My mother did all the talking. You know, those Al Anon's. I mean, she she had she explained everything that was going on, what needed to happen. She said there's no point in prosecuting this child. Anybody who would do stuff like this, they're already tormented enough.

Locking them up will not help. And she said, we're gonna we've got a place down in, in Brady, Texas. We'll move him down there. We'll get him a good job. They got me a good job in Brady, Texas.

My good job was in a mohair plant. This is where they take mohair from goats and weave it into a rope. And my job was to stand by a loom, and there was a 55 gallon drum that was there, and that that loom would just weave that rope in there. And it'd take about 20 minutes to fill it up. My job is to stand there with the scissors and cut it.

Move that. Put another one there and wait. Listen. I have way too active a mind for this because my little invisible friends are talking to me while I'm waiting on that rope to fill up, and they're saying things like, we're thirsty. What are you doing here?

Have you lost your mind? There are party there's a party tonight, and so I'm headed back to, Odessa, Texas. So married again. Don't like to be without a wife. You know how that is.

You feel like half a person. And, I I married again. I married a girl I just was crazy about. I mean, it was that that puppy love. You know?

This is the one I mean, we just we were instantly sick together. You know? And it got it really got bad. And she had to leave me because I became so violent, with the combination of of, speed and whiskey and my thinking and my way of life and all those emotions, and I'm just getting worse for the minute, and I'm dangerous to be around, and she had to leave me. And when she left me, while she was gone, she was involved in a car wreck, and she was killed.

And that became one more thing that I, you know, that it I heaped on myself and one more reason why I should drink and why my life is worse and why everybody else has something going on and everybody else has an advantage. And poor me, poor me, poor Danny. He doesn't have it. He never had a chance. Didn't have a didn't have an education.

I didn't have, I mean, I had gone to up to the 10th grade, and, and I hadn't even done well in that. I've already been in mental institutions twice. I've been married several 3 times at this point. And, you know, when all this happened, I went on a running drunk. Went on a running drunk with a friend of mine, and, we got in a lot of trouble.

And, basically, the thing that that really got me was, we broke into a bar, to burglarize it and and, you know, take all their money and their booze. And but, apparently, we decided to stay and party, because I, I came to and, you know, I was passed out on the pool table, and there was a detective with his flashlight in my face, and he said, oh, hell. It's just Danny. And, and and I felt so ashamed. You know?

I was like, god, man. I mean, I don't like to get caught like this. You know? But I, I wound up getting 10 years in prison, and I went back to prison. And on the way down, I had my first conscious, really sane thought.

And that is it, you know what? If you don't do something different, you're gonna spend your life in prison or somebody's gonna kill you on the street. And so when I got down there this time, I thought, okay. I'm gonna get some help. And I I quit smoking.

I started I I got a GED, which is a high school equivalent. I started taking college classes. I was gonna major in English. I studied, I studied the dictionary. I read encyclopedias.

I read philosophy. I took up yoga. Philosophy. I took up yoga. I took up everything that everything I could do.

I got into creating visualization. I was gonna visualize how my life was gonna be when I got out. And I'm in the old I'm gonna get out. I'm gonna have my own house, my own car, and I'll grow my own marijuana so I don't have to interact with people, and I won't hang out with those bad people. And, I'll have a job, and I I I learned a little more about the this my family trade.

They let me be an electrician in prison this time, and I became I became so, changed that, the warden the warden agreed to, to let me go. And I I got out in 3 years. And, I got out in 3 years, and everything that I wanted to have happen happened. I had my own house. I had my own car.

I had my first bank account. You know? I've got stereo, and I only drink beer and only on the weekends. I have some long weekends. I worked for my dad.

My dad owned the, electrical company, and I'd worked for him. And it it you know, from his perspective, it was so much better than what it had been. Because I'm not, you know, I'm not on the front page. But all of that, you know, began to fall apart. And, you know, I had everything I wanted except I didn't have a wife.

So I went looking for a wife. And the only place I know to look for 1 is in a bar, and I found her. The about the 3rd night I was out. She was dancing on top of a table. I thought, that's my wife.

And it took a while, but we we got married. We had a big wedding. It was really she she lied. She wore white. And it but it was a it was a big wedding, and our the, you know, the preacher was an AA guy.

You know? I mean, he was he was really enjoying this, you know, with because we, I showed up to get married. My brother and I stopped for double shots all the way in. By the time we got there, when they pronounced this man and wife, I tried to put the ring on the wrong finger. They threw rice.

I thought they were attacking us. I wound up with a black eye. My wife had a split lip, and, we we took off on our honeymoon. So, you know, it's just just one thing. This is the girl that brought me to AA, by the way.

And, she became my drinking buddy. We got hepatitis. We had we know we just had a horrible way. Everything just went downhill, and I got sick. And I got to where I black out.

I didn't know what was going on. I can't hold a job anymore. I'm back to hanging out with the people I always hung out with. And I'd sit there and I would think, you know, I'd come to and I'd think, what happened? Happened?

Why am I back here again? You know, how come how come I don't have it together? I mean, I had I came this close, and now I'm, like, this close to prison again. And I that's when I wound up, running into you. You know?