The CALA convention

Nice, Mike.

I need a stool or a longer...

Ralph's here.

Same seat as last Friday in Texas.

Ralph and I were in Texas last week.

I did the same talk on Friday night.

Hopefully it's a different talk

because I'm tired of my own talk.

First, I have one question.

Is this like the opening meeting

of an L.A. area convention of Cocaine Anonymous?

Or is this like a sleep fest in here?

Sleep fest.

Is there any energy?

Let's go.

Come on.

19 goddamn years.

You know?

Oh, who am I?

Who said that?

Jeff?

It sounded like Jeff.

I'm Ken Cross.

I'm an alcoholic.

For those of you coke addicts that wonder if I'm a drug addict,

I shot cocaine for 15 years.

I suffer from the disease of alcoholism.

That's why I identify as an alcoholic.

I also shot heroin.

A few other things, you know, beat it with a hammer, cold soak it, quailudes, barbiturates.

Something about syringes going from point A to point B was like, you know, the fastest possible way, so why not?

Who was it who asked me if I was nervous? Neil did.

Neil asked me if I was nervous. And you know what?

For the first time since I spoke at the World Service Convention in 1990, I'm anxious.

because it's taken 19 years from my home group to ask me to come speak at my home convention.

You know? I have friends here from London when I spoke in London.

I have friends here from Arizona from when I've spoken Arizona.

You know, one of the great opportunities, you know.

I've spoken Edmonton with Percy.

You know, I got here living in a Volkswagen rabbit with no money to my name,

not knowing where my next meal was coming from,

and I've had the opportunity to speak around the world.

because of a life that cocaine anonymous has given me.

Now, a lot of you guys know who I am, some of you guys don't know.

So just the brief thing is, is that rumor has it that I am the oldest surviving member of Group 1 of Cocaine Anonymous

who got sober in this, or whose first meeting was Cocaine Anonymous.

Now,

Richard in the back was at the first meeting of Cocaine Anonymous.

He's the only person in the room that's here from the first meeting of CA.

Now he didn't stay sober, but that's between him and God.

But, you know, the great thing is that Richard and I are still friends.

Happy Howard, my good friend who's not in a room tonight.

who's here, you know, I'm from January, class of January 1983.

Howard came into CA in January 83.

And, you know, how many people in here have less than a year?

Damn.

Well, congratulations and welcome to your first convention of Cocaine Anonymous.

Because you're in for one of the most special weekends that you've ever had in your life.

You know, one of the most fantastic experiences that you'll have in your life.

I remember my first convention of Cocaine Anonymous,

and I believe we had World before we had LACA, you know, and it was spectacular.

Up in Santa Barbara on the beach, people from Alaska are, yeah, that sign out in that other room,

for those of you that have seen the timeline of CA, it's all wrong.

Okay.

you know, forget it.

The dates and stuff are so screwed up on that.

The story in HFC is a little mixed up too, but, you know,

same line as last week.

A lot of you guys know from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous,

the story of Bob and Bill,

and all you people who claim to be steadfast members of Cocaine Anonymous

barely know the history of CA.

You know, a tree without roots dies.

Learn what your roots are.

And it's not about that I'm around from those days or Richards around from those days or any of the other people around from those days.

Find out what the process was.

Find out what the process was and understand what happened around here and how it came to be.

And I really need to back up for a second because I need to thank the...

Convention Committee for asking me to come out here and share, especially Sean, wherever Sean is, and Neil B.

For those of you that think Neil is, you know, some crazy old cantankerous fool.

Neil's one of the most loving, kind, gentlest people that you'll ever meet.

You know, you laugh, and I'm almost in tears because you really don't know Neil.

You know, Neil is...

Neil, in my 20 and a half years of being in CA and being involved in service,

Neil has done more service work at every level, including World Service,

than any other human being alive.

You know?

And the only reason I say it is because he's not in a room.

Oh, no, there he is. He's hiding in the back.

He's hiding in the back.

But Neil knows, you know, Neil knows that I care about him.

And we don't always get along.

And that's a great thing about Cocaine Anonymous.

Me and Happy Howard, in the old days, we used to fight like cats and dogs.

But one of the greatest things about Howard is, at the end of a GSR meeting with 150 people,

he'd come right up to you and be the first guy to give you a hug and tell you that he loved you.

Because he understood...

that being of service was about being of service and it wasn't about personalities, you know?

That it was about showing up, having a commitment, carrying the message, trying to grow,

and then trying to grow personally by being able to love through the stuff, you know?

All this stuff in the back is distracting.

It's so funny because I was walking around today

and I hear people talking about who's going to be the speaker

tonight and I'd be standing next to him.

They're like, yeah, this guy, Ken Cross is speaking tonight

and it's, you know, it's kind of cute.

After 20 years of seeing who knows you and who doesn't know you,

my friend Bobby and I over here

who just walked in with the triplets who are like my...

little nieces and nephews bobby and i used to shoot well we shot a lot of stuff about

33 years ago and he's the only guy that i got highwood in the program you know that that

that's still around and and that's a gift that bobby's sober i was actually taking a cake at a

meeting one night bobby knows me from when i worked for the almond brothers for people that know what

that is and uh and i had waist length there i looked like the sphinx you know and uh

And I'm taking my second cake, and I kind of look like I am now because we change.

And Bobby comes up to me after the meeting and goes,

are you Kenny from Atlanta?

Are you Kenny that used to go out with some groupies that I used to go out with?

And I said, yeah, and he goes, it's me, Bobby.

And here's a story that I haven't told in a long time, is that

Bobby and I were arrested on a heroin bust.

We were the first people arrested by the Atlanta Vice Squad when they formed the Vice Squad.

We were taken to jail.

We were put in separate cells.

We didn't see each other for 18 years until he came up to me at that meeting of CA that night.

And then, a couple of months later, we were at a midnight meeting in L.A.,

Or we were at the Friday night meeting in LA, and two other friends of mine were there that I used to get very high with, a man and a woman.

And they were both taking their 30-day chips, and they said to me, is there another meeting we can go to?

And I said, let's go to Promises at Bratman, you know, 1130.

Okay.

And we're all, the three of us are standing in the lobby, Bobby walks in, and it turns out,

because of my failed memory, that those two are the ones that bailed us both out of jail that night,

and he was the one that had introduced the two of them, and they hadn't seen him since the night they bailed us out of jail.

And we're all standing in a meeting of cocaine anonymous.

So if you don't think God works in my life, you know, and I said it last week, you know, I fly on the wings of angels, period.

You know? And my life is so blessed.

You know, I used to think that I was a lucky bastard because of how many times I laid down a motorcycle or put a car into a river on Kualudes or put a syringe in my arm and woke up the next morning asking what happened.

You know, just those little incidences. I always thought, man, I'm just so lucky, you know.

Yeah.

And then I got here and through the process of having spiritual experiences over and over and over again.

That I've learned that God is just another, you know, coincidence is just another way of spelling God, you know.

That my life has been filled with God since I was a little boy and I just didn't know it.

You know, I just didn't know it.

And I'm one of these people. I didn't plan on getting sober.

You know, I never woke up one day and said, let's see, it's January 14, 1983.

Maybe I'll go to a meeting tonight, you know?

I didn't wake up that day and say, maybe there's a rehab that I could check into

and work out this little drug problem that I have, you know?

I had just come from a geographic where I had left LA to move to Tucson for a few years,

got as insane as humanly possible, came back to LA, was living in a Volkswagen Rabbit.

Now I'm six foot six, so Volkswagen Rabbit isn't quite like a king-sized bed.

You know, I had a few bucks in my pocket.

My life was about in the morning.

I would get up.

I'd go to the 7-Eleven.

I'd buy a newspaper and the biggest muffin that I could get in a cup of coffee.

And I would eat it, and I would go to the park, and I would sit there,

and I would read every single word in the L.A. Times, because I had nothing better to do.

And then when I was done, it was like, okay, what do I do now?

You know?

And I was bouncing around L.A. for a couple of weeks.

Okay.

you know, trying to get a hold of friends, afraid to get a hold of other friends.

And, you know, and by sheer grace, I called up one friend who said, you know what, he'd meet me for dinner.

And they met me at Barneys in West Hollywood, or they, he met me at Barneys, and he said, another guy is coming.

And I said, well, who's this? And he goes, it's this guy, Charlie, and he's my sponsor.

And, you know, I was like, so what's a sponsor?

And he says, well, he'd been going to AA for a year and a half, and he had 90 days.

And, um...

And then this guy Charlie showed up, and, you know, they didn't 12-step me, but they sat there and they talked to me.

They listened to what I had to say.

Now, when you're 31 years old and you're living in a stolen car with a little bit of stolen money and you don't know what your next day is going to be like, it's not like I came in with a good attitude and bright opportunities, you know.

And they said, you know, if you're really serious about what you're doing and you think you might want to change,

why don't you come with us to a meeting of Cocaine Anonymous tomorrow night?

And CA at the time was five weeks old, you know?

And they took me to this meeting.

And when I woke up, I did not plan on getting sober.

I did not plan on stopping to take...

taking drugs or drinking. You know, I went to the meeting because I thought maybe there might be an opportunity there.

You know, it was about an opportunity and a meal. And, you know, and I showed up at this meeting and, you know,

it was the old motion picture health and welfare fund on LeBray and Hollywood and they sat me in the middle between a couple of people where I couldn't get out between Zachary H and this other guy.

And there was no escape.

And I got up, and a guy got up, and he was all dressed.

He was, you know, nice looking.

He was a clothing designer, and he talked about making a lot of money and losing a lot of money and making a lot of money.

And I'm sitting there counting Rolexes in Hollywood going, what am I doing here?

You know?

And I just was so uncomfortable.

I was crawling out of my skin.

It didn't matter that everybody else in the room was a drug addict, because when you knew, you know, that's not what you're thinking about.

You're thinking about how afraid you are, and how scared you are.

And...

You know, and they opened up the meeting of participation, and this guy stood up, you know,

and he talked about relapsing.

He talked about how he'd been in and out for a long time, you know,

and he'd been relapsed, and one more time he was crawling around on his hands and knees,

picking stucco out of the carpet, peeking out of the windows all night long, being totally insane.

You know, my ears lit up, because that's the way I got high.

Now, I don't know about you guys, but, you know, give me a cold bathtub with some tinfoil over the window

and some pinholes.

Yeah.

I could have a good time all night long in that bathtub, you know.

Little fix, check for them, you know.

And now I wasn't a smoker, so we didn't drop stuff on the floor.

But I was a scraper, you know, where it talks about scraping the edges of brown bottles or whatever that means.

But I tell you what, you get a big Ziploc bag and start scraping it.

You'd be surprised what ends up in the spoon.

Yeah.

It'll break you out into some serious sweats.

And Bobby knows.

He's sitting over there.

Oh, yeah.

Those days.

And I just thought out of flash.

We'll have to talk about something afterwards.

There's that blue liquid cocaine, if anybody's ever done it.

Remember that one?

Ooh.

Um...

But I heard this guy, you know? And then he said the one thing that changed my life forever.

And he said that the reason he was back in a meeting was because he knew this was where the hope was.

You know? This was where the hope was if he wanted to get his life back.

And I realized, you know, like I said, I was there looking for an opportunity,

but what it really came down to is I just wanted some hope. I was 31 years old,

I had finally started to believe that I'd grown up to become the piece of shit that my stepfather always told me I was going to be.

I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, hardly any friends.

My sister had said that she wouldn't even bother to spit on my grave.

You know, and I'm alone in the world in this Volkswagen rabbit.

And I heard that.

I heard that.

And then there was this man that was there in those days named Tom Kenny that some of you know and some of you don't know.

And hopefully anybody who's interested will be at the workshop tomorrow.

Plug for who's ever a workshop person for the history of CA.

Because without Tom Kenny's inspiration, there would not be a cocaine anonymous.

You know, between Tom Kenny and a few members of AA that put the first meetings together,

which is called the whatever meeting in L.A.,

CA came forth, but Tom came up to me and asked me if I had a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I said, no, because I'm a newcomer, and why would I have a big book?

And he said, here, I want you to take this, and I want you to go back tonight,

and I want you to read chapter three more about alcoholism.

And my friend who took me to the meeting said that as long as I was willing to go to meetings,

I could stay on his couch.

I slept on this guy's couch for five months.

And I went back to his place that night, and I read chapter three more about alcoholism.

I didn't start on page one.

I didn't start on the blank page.

I went to write to more about alcoholism.

And by the time I got done reading the first page, you know, it started to hit me.

That awakening started to hit me.

By the time I got to the bottom of the second page, you know, I started to understand that maybe I really wasn't this crazy fool that I thought I was.

That maybe I suffered from what it described...

in the book. Now I have to tell you that I come from an alcoholic family.

I watch my mother at 47 years old in Tucson in St. Mary's Hospital in a halo bed with screws in her forehead and blood dripping down.

And the last time she could communicate with me, she blinked her eyes.

Because she had rolled her car six times in a drunken stupor.

I never saw my mother a day in my life without a cocktail or a beer in her hand.

I never once in my life heard my mother tell me that she either loved me or loved my sister.

The last time I saw my stepfather, he was riding off with the Hells Angels in Tucson, Arizona after I just pulled a gun on him.

You know, I used to ride around with guns. I wasn't afraid of guns. I'm sure there's a few other people in here that weren't afraid of pistols.

My idea was in Tucson, for those of you that don't know, because it's a cowboy town, that it's legal to wear a firearm on the outside of your body as long as it has bullets in it.

Yeah.

Because they figure if you're wearing a gun, you better make sure you got bullets in it because somebody else wearing one, you might be dead, you know?

And I used to ride around Tucson with a 44 shoulder holster on my Harley Davidson.

You know, that was it.

And, you know, like I said, that's the last time I saw my stepfather riding off, you know.

And so I've seen the disease of alcoholism up close, up close in my family and up close, you know, in my life.

And I grew up in New York City.

I was in Greenwich Village in the summer of 67 and 68,

driving around a 59 Chevy flashing peace signs thinking we were cool,

crawling around on our hands and knees at the Fillmore,

being crazy little hippie kids, letting our hair grow and stuff,

thinking that we had it all down.

We were the next generation who really thought we knew something.

Yeah.

And then along came Class A narcotics and destroyed the whole thing.

Oh, I think there's still our hippies up in Portland, aren't there, Sherry? Where are you?

And by the way, Sherry and, you know, I tell you what, when I got here, I couldn't feel a thing.

When I got here, I had two emotions, two emotions that I thought.

You know, I thought I was, like, angry and I thought I knew how to love.

And at best I was confused because it was more like lust and fear, you know.

And today I have these emotions where I can look in a room and see somebody,

or I can think about Sherry's story about the airline stewardess last night,

and those little miracles that happen all around us every single day.

Not just me.

not just you, but every one of us has these little miracles happening, you know?

And it takes years sometimes to get the blinders off to really see the miracle, you know,

that's around us on a daily basis.

And both of them gave such beautiful talks last night for anybody that missed it, you know.

And there goes that train of thought.

Um...

Okay, so I'd seen the disease of alcoholism, and when I got sober, it was the juicers against the dopers, you know, and I was obviously a doper.

And so I didn't want to be involved with alcohol. I didn't want to be around alcoholism. I, you know, none of that.

When I got here, I thought, easy does it, meant don't tailgate. You know, it was...

I had no knowledge of 12-step programs, I had no knowledge of halfway houses, I had no knowledge of rehabs.

In 1977, after a really good hard run, I was actually living in a house with no power, no water, but plenty of money for coke, shooting coke.

And, you know, I was on the second story locked in the bedroom,

and those damn guys with the rifles were in the backyard again, you know?

So I decided, you know, I couldn't do anything.

I didn't have any weapons, so I better call a police.

So I call the police.

They showed up.

They said, we don't see anybody.

Now, you've got to realize.

Vision for you.

Yeah.

I had hair down to here, a tank top.

I'd been shooting coke for hours and hours and hours,

living in a house with no running water,

and I opened the door to the police, you know?

Now, the worst part was, is that after they left,

I went into the back of the room, and I saw a tear in the screen,

and I thought they had scaled the walls and were cutting open the screens with knives, you know?

So I locked down the bedroom and stared at the doorknob and watched a turn.

And after I couldn't stand that any longer, I called the police back.

And their brilliant reasoning was better than my brilliant reasoning,

and they took me to Fulton County jail for the night.

And I came down the hard way that evening.

But after I got out of jail, I had this brilliant idea.

Maybe I should go dry out.

But this was 1977, and, you know, there weren't a lot of rehabs, there weren't a lot of care units.

And I thought, well, there's always the Georgia State Mental Health Hospital.

And then in a gleaming moment of clarity, I thought, well, what if they don't let me out, you know?

Because I was psychotic, you know.

I was psychotic.

You know, I have to tell you, and I haven't told these stories in a while,

and Richard was reminding me, and Ralph was reminding me,

and I'm not going to tell the spot on the wall story,

but that's a whole other thing.

You like the spot story, don't you?

I'll tell that maybe.

Oh, so now I completely lost my train of thought again.

I'll explain this reasoning for losing my train of thought in a little while if I remember.

Okay.

There is a point to the whole thing about checking into the...

We're wanting to check into a hospital, but...

Hmm?

18 people said one...

Same different things.

Yeah, but there's something after that.

Do you remember, Ralph?

You heard the talk last week.

But anyway...

Yeah, I know they wouldn't let me out.

Would you let me out if you'd have seen me like that?

But...

But anyway, so we'll move on.

We'll move on off of that.

I'll tell the spot story.

The spot story is, oh, psychotic.

Let's get back to the real sickness, the insanity.

In my early days, you know, I was a black tar heroin shooter, if any of you guys remember that.

And so when I first got my first cocaine, it came in a little tinfoil bindle, and it was a quarter of a gram for $10, you know.

And I was like, eh, you know, and they said, oh, man, you're going to love it.

You're going to do this. You're going to have an orgasm. It's going to rock your world.

And I'm like...

I'll try it.

Let me tell you, overcoming a black tar addiction with a little shot of cocaine.

No way.

You know?

No way.

But then a few months later, my roommate and I at the time, we ended up with, you know,

a Ziploc kind of full of this stuff.

So we decided, let's go for it, you know?

And we realized that a half a gram at a time was the way real men did it, you know?

So we're doing it, and all of a sudden,

this maniac starts running around the house and turning off the lights and turning off the music.

And I'm, like, thinking, what's going on here, you know?

And he's like, come here, come here!

And he calls me over to the front window.

And he goes, look, look at that car over there.

I'm like, yeah.

And he goes, there's a guy behind a fender.

You can't see him, but he's behind a fender.

And like, I'm matching him shot for shot,

and I'm not seeing anybody, you know?

And then he goes, and in the back of the house,

and I'm watching him, and I'm like, you know, he's like,

shh.

And he goes, come here.

I go to the back of the house.

He goes, look, look at the bush.

There's a guy behind the bush.

And I'm like, dude, you're nuts.

There's nobody out there.

And we went out of it for the whole night, and it was insane.

And, you know, but the next day, he calls me out in the backyard and goes, look, the bush is broke.

I told you.

There was a guy behind the bush.

Yeah.

I'm like, I don't know where this comes from, but you're out of your mind.

Now, fast forward about six or seven years to 1977, where all of a sudden, you know, I'm well into the window run stuff, but I go from guys with rifles into spacemen.

Yeah.

They were about seven foot tall with hooded capes and red eyes.

And, I mean, here's the window, and I'm here, and they are there, and we're like this.

First one to blink loses, you know?

You see, that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was there were nights where the big guys didn't show up, and the little guy showed up.

And the problem with the little guys was, they scampered.

So they'd scamper from chimney to chimney or from tree to tree, and you'd be like this, you know?

And then I'd get, like, really ballsy, and I'd go out and try to catch me one.

Because I figure, I'm bigger than they are. I can get one.

So that was why I didn't want to check myself into the Georgia Middle State Hospital.

See, there actually was a point to it all.

Now, I'll tell the spot on the wall story only because, is that for me?

Just tell them I'm busy.

And I said this last week, you know, we didn't have cell phones or answering machines when I got sober.

There's this thing called vibrate.

Especially if you're an attorney, a single mom, or a bail sponsor.

Your phone should be on vibrate, and anybody else should have it off or in the room.

Period.

End the story.

You go to a movie.

You sit in a movie for two hours.

You don't smoke a cigarette.

You don't answer a phone.

You're in the one thing that's going to save your life,

and you allow yourself to get distracted by something that's not even that important.

What is that about?

Thank you.

But that's only me, and what do I know?

I don't have any opinions, do I, Leon?

But, you know, that's one of the great things.

If you stick around here a long time, you can say any GD thing you want from the podium.

Because there's not one person in here, I don't think, that's got more time than I do in CA.

So I can have some Havos tonight, you know, or any other night, actually.

You know?

See, and a funny thing was, is we were talking about service work earlier, and I'll get back to the story,

the spot on the wall.

You know, I'm from Group 1. I was on the first board of C.A. L.A.

You know, I was the chairman of L.A. area for almost five years.

You know, I've worked on probably six L.A. Convention committees, three World Service Convention

Committees. I was around with Neil at the forming of the First World Service Board.

I was around for the opening of both...

World Service and LACA offices.

And that's what gives me the right to talk about some of this stuff.

I've been a World Service delegate.

I've put in a lot, lot of work

into making sure this fellowship did something along with saving my life

because I wanted to see it save other people's lives.

And you know how I knew it was saving other people's lives for the first time,

where it really hit me?

And this is why that board in the other room is wrong.

Because when we did the First World Service Convention in Santa Barbara,

and we did the state countdown at the end, the table next to me was from Alaska.

And the table next to me was getting sober and cocaine anonymous in Alaska.

Yeah.

Now, when me and Johnny and Reggie and Kenny Lambino,

and those are the guys who are in the room that wrote the format

that CA uses with the words, all mind-altering substances,

and we change the words of the steps,

and there were no other circuit speakers that are out on the tour

making that comment that we're at that meeting,

not to mention any names, but some people are laughing because they know.

There are no founders. If you hear somebody from a podium saying they're a founder, go up and ask them about it.

But here we go, off on that tangent.

So anyway, when we were sitting around doing this stuff...

you know I had 90 days, Johnny had nine months, Reggie had about 60 days, Kenny had about 60 days.

We had no idea that people in Alaska were gonna get sober and cocaine anonymous.

That was the gift. The gift was that we were agents of God in the right place at the right time doing God's work,

And we were stupid enough to show up and keep doing it, and miracles happened around us for us and other people, and continue to do so every day.

You know, and that's what it is about getting service work.

There's absolutely no reason why every single person in this room does not have a commitment in cocaine anonymous.

None, you know?

Now, Neil's sitting back there going, well, you don't have a commitment in cocaine anonymous.

I did 12 years hard, hard service work in CA, and...

I'm about to maybe do some other.

And Neil told me tonight, he goes, I think I'm done.

You know, and we reached that point.

But you know what? I still make coffee at another meeting.

I'm a greeting at another meeting.

I help clean up at another meeting.

I still have panels at the VA.

You know, I'm involved this day because it saves my life.

Back to the spot on the wall.

1977 was a pitiful.

It was pitiful.

It was also pivotal.

It was also pivotal.

Year for me and my disease, because that's where I cross the invisible line that we talk about.

You know, I'd been shooting cocaine since 1970 and having a pretty good time of it other than, you know, a few psychotic episodes.

And I was back in Atlanta visiting a friend, and he was my first friend that made it.

to the real world of drug dealing.

You know, the 9-11 Porsche, the big house, you know, like he made it.

And I ran into him at this club, and he said, you want to party?

And I said, sure.

And we went back out to his big house out in the country, and he came out,

and he dropped this big wax ball on a table,

and he hit it with a knife, and it opened up, and it was cheesewrap,

and it was Peruvian flake, you know, wrapped in red cheese wax.

Okay.

and then he brought out a box of 27 gauge syringes, about 100, and said,

do as much as you want, you're our guest from LA.

And I was like, no problem.

So I take the butter knife and throw it into the spoon, you know,

and I do the little deal, and I do the little deal again,

and I turn around back to the table, and I'm sitting there, and he goes,

well, how was that? And I go,

Well, it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

You know, only that special Los Angeles rock and roll arrogance that I had.

Now, mind you, my favorite expression at the time was the very best, is barely good enough.

And so he goes, go ahead, do more.

Do as much as you want.

You know, so I take the butter knife and...

throw it back in and do the deal and turn myself around and I'm sitting there

and I go with my hand like this into the glass and all of a sudden my hands going like this

and it's hitting the side of the glass and I go,

you better put this down.

And then my feet start going like this

and then my hips start, my shoulders start

and the worst part was is that my head and my eyeballs were going in opposite directions

And this really loud noise went through my head, you know?

And it was like, and I looked over to my friend and I said,

is this really happening or, you know, is this a hallucination?

And he goes, nope, that's really happening.

Yeah.

So, you know, the sweat starts pouring off of me, and they pick me up, and they put me in another room in a rocking chair in front of an air conditioner, like a foot away from my ear.