The Club Med Playa Blanco conference in Playa Blanco Mexico

My name's Earl and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Earl. Hi, everybody. I wanna thank, Stephen Guy for the honor of, and the privilege of speaking here. It's a delight.

And, I wanna thank Sue for your talk. I hated that you got me emotional right before I got up here. I was sitting over there thinking about the Lakers. Trying to think about think about the Lakers. Think about the Lakers.

I don't even I don't even care about the Lakers. That was wonderful. Thank you. And it's really nice to see some of the people that I only see here. It's great to run into the faces.

Jim's over there. Ava's over there. You know? It's, everywhere. My friend Carl came down.

Kathy's sitting over there or Ramin's sitting over there. You know? All the kids. I mean, it's a it's a blast to come down here and hang out. There's Joe.

Hanging out with people that I don't get to see any place else and you get to see the, you know, A Year Goes By, you know, Rob and Darren are over there. You know, it's it's to see the, they showed up with, with Chase this time. And if you haven't met Chase, you got to. You meet her and she owns you. She's a year old.

It's their baby. Their new baby. And, just watching the changes and the things that happen in people's lives and how they come back here staying sober, staying clean and sober, doing the thing. You know what I mean? And coming down and celebrating it, you know, celebrating it here.

Watching and knowing that every time I come down here, the first thing that's gonna happen of any particular substance is gonna be that, Paul is gonna get up and do the attitude adjustment. You know? And I tune right in and I've heard it a 100 times and I hope I hear it a 1000 more, man, because it's I just love it every time. I mean, he gave a, you know, a great talk. Stand up, Paul.

Stand up, Paul. Seriously, Paul's on my heroes. I didn't come in here. I didn't have any heroes when I got here. I didn't have any heroes.

I didn't have any, you know when you have a hero, a hero exemplifies something that you want in your life. You know what I mean? It's it's, you know, it's a manifestation of your hopes, your dreams, your goals, your aspirations as a human being. Something you wanna strive to be. I didn't have any of that when I got here.

None of that. You know, now I've got people like Paul in my life that I can look to and think. You know, that's an example that I wanna follow. So oh, they have a note here for me. Okay.

I started drinking when I was 12 years old. I wanna get sober so fast. I I started drinking when I was 12 years old and the reason I started drinking is somebody said, would you like a drink? And I said, well, yeah. Actually, they asked me if I wanna smoke a joint.

They said, you wanna smoke a joint? I said, yeah. And I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. You know, I didn't know what it meant. I just, I had been launched out into the universe on my own.

I was 12 years old. I've been shipped off to boarding school. What it felt like was that my family had just thrown me away and they knew me better than anybody and I didn't know why they were doing that. I didn't know what was so wrong with me. They would wanna get rid of me.

And I was alone in the world and I had I had I had no idea how to do anything. I had no tools for living. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, who I was supposed to be, how I was supposed to act. Because apparently, the way I'd been doing that wasn't right. And, I had gotten into a fight with the biggest guy in the high school.

I was the littlest and the youngest, and I found the biggest guy found me, and, we we I wouldn't really call it a fight. I, he called me a punk and slapped me in the back of the head and then I hit him and then he said, you have a lot of guts, kid. And then he beat the crap out of me. And, so I I had wandered back to my room and word across it spread across this boarding school that you gotta watch out for this little high terror kid. He's a maniac.

He attacked tiny. It was this guy's nickname. So I mean, it's just the hole's getting deeper for me. You know what I mean? There's no none of this has anything to do with who I am.

I'm a frightened little boy. That's all I am. But now I get this reputation as this wild person. Right? So the cool guys come around and they, you know, Matt and Steve.

Matt says, you wanna smoke a joint? And I say, well, yeah. And off we go. We pick up Steve and Steve's got the Tupperware container full of cheap red wine. Yeah.

Oh, mad dog. Over and out behind the dorm and he takes a hit and I just do what he does with the joint. Two total strangers, Steven Mac. Stan, you know? Launched out into the world.

No tools for living. And I hand it to Steven. Here comes the wine. And I pull on the wine. And this is going around, and I don't get it.

I don't know why we're doing this. And I mean, it happened. The thing that makes me bodily different from my fellows occurred for the first time in my life. And I got this warm feeling down all over me and I I knew, man. I was comfortable standing where I was standing doing what I was doing with the people I was doing it with for the first time in my life.

Everything was okay. Everything was in sync. This is good. This is very very very good. And I don't know.

I mean, all of the things about, you know, you're gonna smoke a joint and commit murder. You're gonna smoke a joint and be shooting heroin by 4 PM. You know what I mean? All of those things just went away. They went away.

This is a good thing. They lied to me because apparently there's a shortage of these things and they're saving it for themselves. You know? They don't want me to get mine and I got I'm on this now. Right?

And I I mean, I didn't know. Is it the pie? Is it the wine? You know? Is it the fact that I'm standing here with my 2 very best friends, Matt and Steve?

I was bonding, you know. I loved them. And, I didn't know and I didn't care. I knew I'm doing this as often as I possibly can. There's no downside to this.

It's just this wonderful feeling of ease and contentment that I had never known. I was restless and irritable and discontented long before that. And, I did. And I I drank and I used on a daily basis no matter what for the next 16 years at the expense of absolutely everything in my life. Everything.

13 was pills, any kind of pills. And they said, you know, a guy came to me to Barney. He said, would you like a couple of these? And I said, well, yeah. I would.

And he gave them to me and 20 minutes later I was laying on the floor and I was very very happy there. And all I wanted to know was what do you call those? That's all I wanted to know. And I remember what the I remembered for a long time what you call those. It was just 2 and all, you know, second all placidilla, you know.

I got strung out like a wild man and all that. Then came, you know, 14 with psychedelics. Girl said, would you like to drop some acid? And I said, well, yeah. Having no idea what that meant either.

And she, she took out a lipstick tube and she spun the tube the lipstick out, and on the end of the tube was this little tiny pill. It's a very tiny pill. I'm used to the horse caps. You know what I mean? And so I just took it and I popped it in my mouth and swallowed it and she said, did you take that whole thing?

And I said, well, yeah. It was a very tiny pill. And she said that was 3 hits of white lining which meant nothing to me. Apparently meant a lot to you. You know what I'm talking about.

Laid over there went, oh, no. You don't do that. Next 2 days were very interesting. You know, little glimpses of reality occasionally. Found myself kinda came out of like a blackout and I was with this girl, Debbie.

Debbie was 15a half. It's a bad girl. Debbie was 15a half and an older woman. She was I was 14. She was 15a half.

And she was, I had such respect for her, man. It was a whole new world for me. And, we ended up in this market, in a in a market shopping. We had a little cart and there were a few items in it. I don't know where they came from.

And we were walking down the thing and I looked over to her and I said, do we have children? And she said, yes. And I said, then we're gonna need these diapers right now. And kinda phased back out and I don't remember a lot. But I'll tell you what, early in my sobriety, going into a supermarket was a real took a real commitment on my part.

You know what I mean? It was like I'd stand in the parking lot with my little list. It's like I'm going in. They spook me still. The lights in them, the rose with everything perfect.

You know? I can never go in at Gelson's, which is like a real high end supermarket. Know, and you go and you take a can off the shelf, and a little guy runs in and puts another one right back. So it's all smooth. Everything is just really perfect in there.

We've all seen the abandoned shopping cart in the market. I understand that guy. You know, it's just too many decisions. I'll come back and do this another time, man. So you forget it.

I know. I know. So anyway, you know, 15 was, she started shooting drugs. Speak simply because I was at a party and this woman said, would you like me to stick this in your body? And I said, well, yeah.

That would. And she did and I just did one of those headers. You know what I mean? Just that it was a good shot. And all I remember thinking on the way down was, oh, yeah.

Yeah. That's gonna work. Yeah. We're gonna write that one down because that's we need to keep that. So I mean and I'm talking about drugs and I identify as an alcoholic and I apologize to any pure alcoholics.

I I don't do this to offend you. I'm just telling you my story and I must tell you that the reason I say that is because there was only one thing that was on the table every single day for me. I was a child of the sixties. The drugs were our way of differentiating and breaking away from our parents. Our parents were the alcoholics and we were not going to drink ourselves to death.

We were going to kill ourselves in a whole new way. This was clearly our goal, but the facts remain the same. When I look back at my life as a result of inventory work, I see that I was not a specialist. My drug of choice was what do you got? Because if I can get enough of what you got in my body, it's it's all anti Earl medication.

It'll kill the fear and I can be in the world. Doesn't matter what it is. I mean, I prefer to go down. Heroin, opiates, barbiturates, alcohol. This is the way for me.

Heart and lungs working. Nothing else going on. That's the place I like. I like that. But if I go to connect and none of these things are available, but we have cocaine, let's go.

Right? We're not going down? Fine then we'll go up. I don't hesitate because it's not a particular direction. It's about getting out of right here, right now.

Because right here and right now is my life. Right here and right now is my absolute terror filled state of being. Here is my self centered fearful place and that's I mean, the only thing that was on the table every day. I mean, it was heroin one day. It was cocaine the next, it was quaaludes the next, it was this, it was that.

It didn't matter. Whatever was available, there was enough of it, we'll do that. Only thing on the table every day was a bottle of booze. Alcohol was on the table every single day and the reason for that, for me, is very simple. Drugs are unreliable and alcohol is very, very reliable.

Right? There's no quality control going on out there on the street. There is no stamp of approval on your balloon. You know what I mean? It's just not there.

Right? It's not there. Right? You don't know what you've got till you get it in your body. You get yourself a 5th of Jack Daniels or or a quart of gin, you know what you got.

You know what you got, you can rely on it. So it's always there. So then when you screw up with the drugs, the booze will get the job done. So much cocaine, you can't get your mouth open anymore. You know?

And you just got to the party. You know, you just got there. You know, you way overshot the mark again, You know? So you grab the gin and you suck a little gin down through your teeth. You know?

It'll loosen you up. You can get right on with the party. Boos is reliable. Not enough heroin to get you to that cool, quiet, dark place. Don't worry about it.

Jack Daniels will get you the rest of the way. He'll get you there. He'll get you there. Ass are a little too spooky. Don't worry about it.

Jack will ease you back into the comfort zone and just start sucking on that bottle, man. You'll be alright. And in the end, for me, it was booze. That's what it was for me because I knew what I needed a reliable substance because I was dying. And I needed it.

And alcohol provided that for me. I used 3, 4 grams of cocaine a day to keep me on my feet so that I could keep drinking. And when I got sick, I couldn't drink anymore. I ate about 150 milligrams of Allium just to just to keep me from seizing up, just to get me smoothed out enough to where I go back to drinking. It was never ever, ever, ever for me about getting sober.

Ever. It's not on the list. Things to do. Eventually, we're gonna have to get sober. No.

I'm not. No. I'm not. Okay. How bad it gets.

So 15 was needles. 16 was mental institutions. I dropped out of high school. Went to my first night house. 3 months of observation, a year of rehabilitation.

And all I did was sit around and, you know, take 3 cups of pills a day, get my shot for acting out. My treatment plan was find a new way to act out every day so that you can get the shot. That was all I was interested in. I didn't care. So that was and you're just shuffling around in the hospital for weeks on end.

And finally, they decided to escape and they had those lit up exit signs, you know, with green ones. And that said it for me. That summed up the whole thing for me. The exit. That's all I wanna do.

So I was sitting in lunch one day with Kilday. Kilday was the woman I had lunch with in the nuthouse everyday because Kilday was insane and very entertaining. All All you had to do was walk just sit down with her and say, Kilday, how you doing? And man. Kilday would spin.

Every day was like dinner on a show. You just eat your little meal with your plastic spoon and you watch kill day just flip. So I used Kilday as my diversion and I got Kildash, spun Kilday off in that direction. I was gonna escape. I was heading for the door.

I was in my scene like ready ready ready. Go. Yeah. And I'm hauling ass. That's all I got and I realize you gotta learn.

I didn't know at the time but this is known as the Thorazine shuffle and that's what the little 3 cups of pills a day is about and if you don't get out before they get the thorsing, then you're leaving when they say. It's just that simple. You know? And you're go you're hauling ass, you know, sliding across the floor and you hear from the nurses station, Lou, when you got him in it, you wanna grab her? He's making a break for the door.

And Lou's in there eating a sandwich going yeah yeah yeah. I'll get him in a minute. And I'm very upset. So the second time I got thrown in the mental institution, I escaped the first day. I just in the intake process and I said, you know, it was rough out there.

I'm really really glad you caught me. It's really bad. I don't know what I'm doing. I really need your help. Hey.

Look at that. Boom. Out the door I go, shooting out the back, running across the field, looking at a 12 foot ivy covered chain link fence. I'm 7 16, 17 years old at the time. Intern right on my tail.

I'm thinking now at this point, I mean, I'm a high school dropout. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm at any moment, hopefully, an escaped mental patient. That's me.

That's my resume. This is what I have to say for myself. And I'm thinking if I make that fence, I don't have a problem. I don't have any problems because I'll be loaded in 20 minutes I hit that fence. And you see, the thing is is that I know who I am.

I know who I am. And I drink and use no matter what. Given a good reason, I do not stop. That's what differentiates me from the problem drinker. You give a problem drinker a good reason to stop, they actually do.

Problem drinker gets another drunk driving charge, goes before the judge and the judge says, you know what? I'm sick of you. I see you one more time, you're doing a year. You're doing a year. We're not gonna talk about just year.

We'll discuss it at the end of that year. That's it. Problem drinker goes, oh, yeah. I don't wanna go to jail for a year. Actually stops drinking and driving.

Me? I just start wondering what it's gonna be like in jail. I'm going. I know I'm going. That's thank you for the information, your honor.

I'll pencil in the ear here because it's I'm going to jail because I'm not gonna I I can't break it down like that. That doesn't work for me. I wake up. I have feelings. I get loaded.

That's what I do. I use it any feeling known to man. I got sober. I didn't know. You get depressed.

It lifts. You get happy. It'll go away eventually. You get sad. You'll get over it.

I didn't know. I got happy. I drank. I never made it to the end of feeling. You get happy.

You drink. I'm happy. Let's drink. I'm a little depressed. What are you gonna do?

I'm gonna go have a couple of drinks. That's what the brain says. I love that that my brain said that. My brain I love that. A couple of drinks.

How many times in your life have you said a couple of drinks? I've never had a couple of drinks in my life. I've never had that. Never had 2 drinks. The only reason you have a couple of drinks is because you're waiting for him to bring you another couple of drinks.

That's it's just we're waiting to get the thing, get get the engine up to speed, get things moving so you can do what you do. So anyway, I made it out of the night house. I spent 3 years out on the street. I do what you do. They load it every day on the street.

That's what I did. I met this woman at a party. We talked for 20 minutes, so we were in love. It went well. I decided I couldn't just be some maniac teenage drug addict running around the streets of Los Angeles, and have this a relationship, so I decided I needed to do something with my life.

So I went on an interview for a, a business college in Northern California and got accepted based on the interview. Now I didn't even have a high school diploma. Details. Went back to my father said, give me, a check for your tuition and I'll leave town. He said, terrific.

Wrote the check, handed it to me. We piled all our belongings and £8 of hash in the back of this truck and drove to Northern California to higher learning. We got a little apartment. She got a straight job. I was going to school during the day.

I was working on my GED at the local high school. I gave him a check for years' tuition, said transcripts are in the mail. They said no problem and became a drug dealer. And I what else was I gonna become? It was the only thing I knew anything about.

And I had no morals. I had no ethics. I had no sense of family. I had no sense of community. I didn't I didn't know about any of that stuff.

I just knew that I was in the world and I needed to take care of myself and I was an angry, frightened young man and this is what I needed to do. Became a drug dealer. I was studying marketing, production, distribution in school and I'm applying this to my business and business is booming, you know. I've got royalty from out of the country buying from me. I mean, it's like crazy, man.

Business is going great. I think I have a good line. I got rid of the woman. Had to get rid of her. She was saying things like, I'm too high.

That's wrong. So we had to send her back to LA and I got to use the way I get to I get to use. And, when I was 20, I got diagnosed to have malignant cancer. So they flew me back to LA, did major surgery on my back, putting me in the nuclear medicine program, and, told me I was gonna die. Told my family, you know, I was gonna die and blah blah blah.

And I just remember thinking, you don't even know who you're talking to. You know? It's not like I got any plans. You know? It's not like, there's something out there that I really want that I'm not gonna get if I die young.

I mean, I remember being 19 years old and dating this girl. And I walked into her house and I was walking back to the house up to her room and she was sitting in her room talking to her mother and the door was open and I could hear the conversation. And her mother said to her, I don't want you getting too involved with Earl. He's not gonna be with us much longer. I was 19 years old and I remember thinking, good advice.

That's good advice. I mean, I wasn't handling things well. Anyway, I they put me in the nuclear medicine thing. I hated that, so I just quit. And I beat the cancer thing.

I beat it. I, went back up to school. I was in school. Now I'm a junior in college. I got an early acceptance to go to USC Law School.

I'm editor in chief of my college newspaper. I mean, I'm looking good out here. I'm dying inside already and I'm 20, 21 years old at this point. My mother calls me and says, well, go anywhere you wanna go as a family. We we gotta put this family back together.

It's I'm the mother. My job, you, your father, your sister and I, we're getting together. We're going wherever you want for your birthday. We're gonna sort this thing out. I said, fine.

I flew back to LA and on my birthday, we took off the flight to Guadalajara. And on the way down, the plane crashed and my mother, my father, my little sister were all killed, and I was not. And I woke up on this mountain in Mexico. I was in, just outside of Los Mochis, Mexico. I guess that's not too far from here, is it?

5 hours away by car? Yeah. That's weird. And I woke up on this mountain and my skull was fractured. My back was broken in 3 places.

Leg wiped out. Arm wiped out. Paralyzed in the waist down. Couldn't move, awake. And my mother was laying right over there and my little sister was laying right over there and my father was laying right over there and I watched them all bleed to death right in front of me.

There was nothing I could do. And I had a chat with god and I said, you know what? I have no interest in a God that would, take somebody like my little sister, Kimberly. It was 15 months younger than me. She was my little sister.

She was mine. I raised her. My when she wanted to know about boys, she came to me. When she wanted to know where to go to school or what to do with school, she came to me. When she had a problem with her friends, she came to me.

I loved being her big brother and she loved me being her big brother. And I think that the reason to this day that I like women is I take no credit for that in my life at all. It has nothing to do with who I am as a human being. I didn't get anything right the whole way. But I had a my mother was a fantastic woman and my little sister was a fantastic girl And they loved me unconditionally, and I knew it.

I knew it. I could feel it. And I could never feel that from anyone. And, they love me no matter what how insanity was going on in my life. It's just they just, you know, my brother's crazy but I love him.

And when God took her, instead of me, on the one hand, I had no interest in a God that would do something like that and I renounced God. And I walked around for years with a thing they call survivor's guilt. I had no right to be on the planet and I knew it. And I lived accordingly. I have no right to be here anyway so what I do is pretty much irrelevant.

You know, it doesn't matter what I do. And, and some guys came up and they scavenged the plane wreck. And they took the money out of my wallet and they scavenged what they could get and they went back down the mountain and they left me up there to die. So I had no more use for you either. I was out of the game.

No god. No trust or love or respect for my fellow man. I'm out of the game. I have no more need in my life to go to law school or do this little thing over here, do that little thing over here to just kinda get you to be somewhat appeased with who I am and how I'm living my life so that you'll just leave me alone, let me drink and use the way I want to. I had no more need for that anymore.

My life is about drugs, alcohol, violence, get the money to get the above, get the sex, do whatever use. Just use. Use you, use your money, use your drugs, use your alcohol and if you didn't wanna discuss any of that with me then get the hell out of my face, get out of my way cause I'm moving on to the next person. I was very clear on purpose. I was a rageful, angry, terribly frightened, damaged, wounded little animal.

And some guys came and they finally came up. Some more guys came up. They took me down from the plane crash. They took me down to, medical station. They tagged my toe and sat down, smoked cigarettes and waited for me to die.

And I didn't. And then they finally, took me to the hospital, and there's a place called Hospital Fatima in Los Mochas. It hadn't it wasn't even a finished hospital yet, but that's where they took me. And they worked on me and they, the federal police showed up because of another little matter. I had me having been in Mexico before doing things we're not supposed to.

And they came and they interrogated me through an interpreter for 3 and a half days. They wanted to know what I was doing in Mexico. Wouldn't give me anything for pain. Every time I wouldn't give them the right answers, they'd sit me up in the bed and they hadn't fixed me yet. So I'd just pass out and then when I'd come to they'd start talking to me again.

So it was an interesting three and a half days. That kinda changed me, I think, that experience. And finally, I called up a buddy of mine that I was in business with up in Northern California who called his family in Mexico City, and his brother flew their company plane in, as close to Los Mochas as I could get. Drove in. We paid off a few people.

They plastered me from the neck down, threw me in a car, drove me, put me on a plane, flew me back up to LA, and I got an ambulance and ended up in St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, where I stayed for a long time. They told me I may or may not walk. I'd have a withered left hand, and I'd be blind in my left eye. And that I was very lucky to be alive.

And I remember thinking, oh, really? Lucky? Kinda hard to look at it that way. And I went and I used like a beast in the hospital. I mean, I was getting maximum doses of Demerol every 3 hours around the clock, and I had a great story, and I was working it to get what I needed.

And I just kept going and going and going and going and going. Got out of the hospital. 3 hours and 20 minutes later, I needed to connect because I was sweating like a dog, angry, and completely alone in the world as far as I could tell. I couldn't make a connection with another human being. And I went on my last run and it lasted for 4 and a half years and it was insane.

By the time I got sober, I was, I did not I drew a sober breath 3 times during that 4 and a half years and they were 72 hours each and it was because I was strapped to a table. They wouldn't let me up. And that was it. I could not drink or use. They wouldn't let me and that was when I was sober.

And every time I got off that table, having been through that 72 hours, I swore I'd never drink again as long as I lived. I knew I was an alcoholic. I knew I was a drug addict but I didn't know what that meant. I knew the word. I knew that I was strong.

I knew that I couldn't live without it but I did not know what I was up against. And I would swear I'd never drink again as long as I live when I got off that table because I couldn't take that kid one more time. Not the way I was hammering. And I'd be drunk that night. I'd be drunk that night.

I have no idea why. Wake up in Oakland. You know? I don't even know anybody in Oakland. I'd wake up there, or I'd wake up on Speedway in Venice, which is not a good place to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning standing talking to 4 police officers and you don't know what we're discussing.

Just like bing. Speedway. Venice PD, they're not happy. You just keep your hands where you they can see them and go like this. Yeah.

Not and eventually they're gonna tell you why you're here. I mean, what are you gonna do? You're gonna say, excuse me officers. I just got here. It's this little trick I do.

I'm here. I'm not here. I'm here. I'm not here. And it's never a good conversation ever.

And, it just went on and on and on and on and on. And by the time I got sober, I was 28 years old. I had, over 600 stitches in me. I've been stabbed twice. I've broken 74 bones.

I had no place to live. My family was dead. I had no friends. I had pictures in my head that that I knew I could there was no way I could be sober insane with those pictures in my head. And I had burned my life to the ground.

I had had 2 doctors independent of one another tell me if you don't stop drinking this year, you're gonna die. You have organs that are shutting down. And it would this year, you're gonna die. It was like a fall when they were telling me this. I was running out of time.

I came out of one last blackout, £215, psychotic, all of those things true in my life. And both my hands broken. And I don't know what was different about that day from any other. It was just a drunk drinking himself to death. That's all I was doing.

And being kept by a woman in an apartment on the boardwalk in Venice, both of her parents had convulsed to death from alcoholism, so I was perfect for her because that's what I was doing right in front of her. And I threw up my hands and I said, help. I can't live. I can't die. I you know, there's nothing left.

Nothing left. Just take me. Just take me. And they took me by ambulance. They pumped my stomach one more time, then they took me to another place and they kept me for 5 more days.

They said, get him out of here. He's dying. They took me to another hospital and they kept me for another 12 days of detox, 30 days of rehab on a free bed. And I came out of there knowing the drink was to die and if I didn't wanna die, I better go to Alcoholics Anonymous. That was it.

I didn't know why I was mad at my father. I didn't know I had survivor's guilt. I didn't have any understanding of the child within. I knew that I was an alcoholic and if I didn't wanna die, I better go to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's it.

And and and with the beautiful ways I came here destroyed. I came to you destroyed. I had nowhere else to go, nobody to talk to, no good ideas, no stone left unturned. Nothing else to try. It was over.

I was completely, emotionally, and spiritually annihilated. And physically, I wasn't doing so good. And I came in and I went to a meeting on a Friday night in the basement of a church, an 8:30 meeting, and I sat in the back with my arms folded with my best tough guy look on my face. Don't come near me, man. Mad dogging everybody.

You know, you look at me and it's like, yeah. Back off. And the fact of the matter was stay away from me. Not because you might get hurt, but because I might get hurt. I'm terrified.

I'm the one if I tell you the things I've done, you're not gonna let me stay here. No sane people would. If you knew what I was capable of, you would ask me to leave. You would tell me to leave. So I sat in the back knowing I could never tell tell you who I was, but knowing I had no place else left to go.

So I shouldn't talk to you. I should just be here. When you ask me if I was an alcoholic, I'd say yes. And apparently, that's all I needed to say to stay here. So that was my deal.

And I sat in the back and the people the guys with Time knew me. They saw me and they said, there's coffee over there bro. Get yourself a cup of coffee. Have a seat. Glad you're here.

And they left me alone. They come up on me because they would've been me before. I was a frightened little animal sitting back there. But every means he's got the newcomer who doesn't see the signals you're throwing. They just say new guy, you know.

So here come a guy with 9 months. His name was Vegas. Vegas m. And Vegas came up and said, hi. I'm an alcoholic.

And I said, so what? Me too, man. It ain't exactly the highlight of my life. I don't know what you're so thrilled about. Get away from me.

And he looked at me and he said, keep coming back. You know, when a couple other guys were watching them and they went, hey. That was good. You see that? They told them to keep coming back.

Man, it's good. Way to go, Vegas. Right? And I'm sitting there thinking out, great. You know, there's like a code in here.

You know, everybody seems to understand this keep coming back thing and I don't. So one more time, I'm the loser in the room. If you're new if you're new and people come up to you and they say things like, keep coming back. Just wait one day at a time. My personal favorite, you know, just turn it over.

Alright? If they say that stuff to you, have more courage than I did and step up to the plate and say, excuse me. I don't understand the deep spiritual significance of it. Turn it over. Would you mind expanding on that for me a little bit?

If they're honest, about 70% of them from my neck of the woods would say, you know what? I don't know what it means to you. Yeah. I came in. They said it to me.

You're coming in. I'm saying it to you. I don't know. There's a guy over there that reads the big book. Let's ask him.

Maybe he knows. Just my opinion. So I sat in the back, and this old timer got up. 65 year old guy, skid rope, bum, wino, ex boxer. None of those things.

I noticed it immediately because I'm very good at this, noticing the differences. Because if I could find a difference between you and me, I don't have to listen to you. And I don't wanna listen to anybody because cause you're always saying the same thing to me. You have to stop this. That's what you say to me.

In one way or another, that's what you say. You need to stop this. And I don't wanna hear that, so I'll find the difference. I can discount you completely. You're a woman.

Yeah. What do you know about me? You come up with something else. You you're black, Hispanic, gay, five years older, 5 years younger. You come up with something else.

Not better or worse. We're just it's just a different thing you're doing so you don't know about me. By the time I got to AA, if, basically, you're not Earl, you don't know about me. Difference between everybody. I didn't listen to anybody.

And here I'm sitting in the back of this meeting with the same head spinning. See, all I've addressed is the is is the allergy of the body. I'm not drinking. I still got the obsession of the mind. I'm sitting back there with the greater aspect of my disease in full effect.

Sitting in the back of that meeting, not knowing that that's why we have meetings. The only reason we have meetings is so that there's a place for a newcomer to come and hear a message of, of recovery, experience strength and hope. Right? That's why we have the meetings. And hopefully, there's somebody there that's been through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, had a spiritual awakening as the result of doing that that can give that individual what they need to help them address the obsession of the mind.

The greater aspect of their disease which is in full effect when we get here. And I sat back and this guy got And I sat back and this guy got up and he did 2 things that changed my life. He shared openly and honestly about his feelings as a man, and I never heard anybody do that before, ever. Not like that. Not with that kind of grace and that kind of dignity.

I'd never seen that. It was just very effortless and easy for him to talk about his feelings. And I got to sit back with my arms folded with this look of, you know, disgust thinking, wow. You know? I can't let anybody find out that I'm very impressed by that.

And then it was like he looked right at me and he said, you know what? If you don't I don't care whether you like what I got to say or not. You don't like it? Go to another meeting. Now, I love that.

I love that. Because it made it clear to me, he's not selling me something. He's sharing it with me. And if I want it, I can have it. It's for free.

If I don't want it, go to another meeting. You're gonna hear somebody else. Maybe they got what you can identify with. Something you can latch on to. Something that gives you some hope and you can do your thing in here.