The Aberdeen Wednesday Night Group's Quarterly Meeting in Aberdeen South Dakota

Everybody. My name is Larry Thomas, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Larry. And, I wanna thank Matt and you guys for asking me to come out here to South Dakota. I, I come out here every 26 years, it seems like.

Been all around it, but it's good to be right in it. And, I, I'm really glad to be in this group. I, I'm glad to be out of my room, And, Matt made sure of that. I, he called me up, this morning. And, I kinda had a late arrival last night.

I got held up by a storm in Minneapolis, and the plane was delayed. So I didn't get in till about 1:30. And he called me up in the in the morning in about 10. And he says, you want me to show you Aberdeen? I said, no.

I I can look out my window and see most of it probably, but he says it all looks alike. I said, no. It's alright. Why don't you just stay and relax and enjoy your day? And I'll just stay here and, you know, I'll just kick back.

Well, he wouldn't have any part of that. You know what I mean? He no. No. Why don't you come out?

So I didn't want to get into a big haggling thing with him, so I said, alright. Come get me in about an hour. And he took me down, and we went downtown to the Pig Fest. And, I mean, you can just walk by people and get splattered with shit you're going to eat. You know, I mean, it's just or stuff you're gonna eat.

I, but everybody looked like they were hungry. And and then he said, later on today, we'll go have some Sloppy Joes. And I'm saying, God, do you guys ever take a break? I mean, you know, it's just, you know, I'm used to eating peanuts on a plane. You know what I mean?

Or something. But, it's been, I I love the town and and the bands and everything like that. I, I had a heck of a ride over to the airport. And I'm running late to the airport, and this thing plops open. And I'm down on the freeway, so I speed it up a little, you know, and slammed it shut, and it plopped open.

So I speed it up again, turn the radio off because I wanna get into it. You know? There's something I'm doing wrong and start slamming it, speeding up, slamming it, you know, bringing it up slow, locking it. It keeps plopping open. You know, now the idea of leaving the darn thing alone never enters my mind.

You know what I mean? We're gonna work on that thing all the way to the airport. You know? And as I stand here tonight in Aberdeen, I've got a car parked over in the airport with the glove box wide open. But I've got a long ride home, and I know next time it's gonna be different.

You know what I mean? I'm gonna work on that thing all the way. I don't know about surrender. I don't know how how stop and things. You know?

We, he introduced me to one of the guys that that owns a fitness center over here. Where is he at? He's over there. And, my wife just, she came up to me, Rosie, she came up to me last Wednesday, and she says, I wanna get a job. She went on a job.

She goes, I wanna get a membership at the Bally's Fitness Center. And I said, do you? Do you really? You know? And my head started going, alright.

Here we go. You know? I said, what do you want to do that for? She goes, well, I want to start exercising. And I said, well, you can exercise, you know, walk the dog or something like that.

You know what I mean? And and my head starts working on what she's gonna do down there. You know? She's gonna go down to this membership club, and she's gonna get on one of these spandex outfits. You know?

I know what's going on down there. She's gonna get on a treadmill, and all these guys are gonna be behind in her. You know. And my head's just working on this, you know. And, so I thought, well, you know, I better go down to this Bally's and check it out to make sure what kind of joint she's joining up to, you know.

And and I went down there and sure enough, I walk in there and all these little girls are on their bikes and all these guys are behind them watching them, you know, in their spandex. And I got me a membership that day. I, I can't let the poor thing go in there alone. You know? I've got a busy head.

I've got a busy head. And, my sponsor tells me that I'm living proof that a man can stay sober for a little over 26 years and not a mark to a darn thing. You know what I mean? So I don't know where you think you're going if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous, but the highest that I've ever gotten here was sober basic human being, active member of my own home group. That's as high as I need to get here.

Now I sponsor some guys who have gotten higher than that and they're useless, you know. I mean, you you never, you know, you never can find them, you know. But I'm glad to be in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Somebody was apologizing for the for for Aberdeen. They were telling me, I said, oh, I'm sorry.

You know, it's just a little town. I said, man, don't apologize for Aberdeen. I'm not here for the town. I'm here for the meeting, man. You know?

And, and the meeting's great. Good meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous are hard to find, you know. I, I come from great people. My mom and dad are good people. I was born in Detroit and I came out to California when I was about 3 years old, 3 and a half years old.

Brought up in a little foster home for a while. And my mom and dad got together again. And, my mom's a little Scandinavian lady, you know. I don't know if they have any of those out here. But she's a little square head.

And, and, and my mom loved diet pills. My mom was always running around the house around midnight, you know, sorting out nuts and bolts all night or raking the neighbor's yard around 3 o'clock in the morning, you know, just just a busy lady, you know. And, and no matter what time you woke up, she was up doing stuff, you know. And, her favorite thing was to eat that speed and make Afghans. And everything in the house had an Afghan on it.

You know? Chairs had Afghans, couches had Afghans. My dad's golf clubs had little pools, you know, she knit, you know. If you had any animals, they had fresh vest on, you know, and everything was tight and pink like her. You know what I mean?

And, just a busy lady. And our house was small. We didn't have a lot of money, you know. And, and, you can hear her in the next room. Just just going to town all night, man, you know.

And the diet was working. She was down to a stick, you know? And you grow up and, when you have a little paranoid mom like that, they have these mom tales, these mom rules, you know? And she had a bunch of little rules like, you know, don't play in the gutter. You'll get polio.

Like, you're gonna run right out there. You know what I mean? And, and burnt food is good for your gums was one of hers, you know, because she's always burning stuff, you know. She got about 5 things going, you know. And, don't you make that face, you know, that burnt food is good for your gums, you know.

And and she don't have a tooth in her head. She's grinded them all away, you know. And, but she meant well. My mom was a discourager. You know what I mean?

I would always say, Hey, how about doing this? I wanna get a tree for it. I wanna go to Little League. No, no, no. You'll hurt yourself.

No, no, no. No. No. You you No. No.

You'll hurt yourself. And she was always discouraging me. And it made me feel like I couldn't cut it. You know what I mean? How come, you know, why why did she ever say, yeah, go ahead?

You know what I mean? And, and her favorite hobby, she she had a lot of them going at the same time, but one of her favorite hobbies is she would eat that speed and make these big jigsaw puzzles, these 30,000,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, you know, of the Mojave Desert, you know. Okay. It's gonna be a beige night. We don't want any, you know, colors, you know.

And, her favorite thing, her favorite hobby was, getting her prescription filled. I love that hobby myself. You know? And she would run down to Savon's Drugstore, get her a carton of Raleigh cigarettes because they had coupons on the back, and she saved these coupons to buy more yarn. It was a hideous cycle she was caught up in, you know, and, and she would come home and put this peroxide on her hair that smelled like sewer gas.

And, she had one mumu her entire life. That thing was wearing thin. And she would put this puzzle to eat that speed and put this puzzle together. And she had, you know, a big pair of toenail clippers because if she got a piece that didn't fit, well, she'd snip that son of a gun down until it did, you know. She had a she had a job to do, you know.

And, I tell you, my mom was a what I knew my mom loved me. Make no mistake about that. My mom was a hardworking lady. She she she did a lot of things, you know, but she was a hard and she she made no mistake about that she loved me. And I never wanna forget what I would do with that love and affection because that was gonna be a pattern of mine up until and after I come to Alcoholics Anonymous.

And that is, I would play her like a fiddle. There would never be a time too inconvenient for me not to put the touch on that lady for a dollar or 2. I never wanna forget that. I never wanna forget what it's like to be in my early twenties and coming out of an institution. And my mom hadn't seen me for a couple months.

And it's an April morning and it's cold and it's raining. And I'm standing in this parking lot of a dry cleaner she works in. And I'm about from here to that wall. And it's raining, and I've got my street mud on, and it's early in the morning, and I'm staring at her in that morning rain. And the only thought that I have is she better have a buck for me to walk through that rain and ask that lady who startled to death for a dollar.

For her to go through her wallet and for a picture of me that falls out when I'm 8 years old on a Little League team, the only decent picture she has, and she's fishing through this little wallet she got at Woolworths. She gives me $1 and then $2, and I turned to walk away. And as I'm heading out the door, she said, Larry, she says, what would it cost to get my son back for me to run off to Wilmington where I'm gonna die? Now, you take that same man and you bring him to Alcoholics Anonymous with his so called desperation and willing to go to any lengthness, and you stick him in a room where his life depends on his actions, and you put a secretary of a meeting that same distance as me and my mom. And I've often wondered, how come I can't walk that same distance when my life depends on it sober and ask that secretary for a job in a meeting?

But I can use my mom time and time and time again with no second thought about it. And it dawned on me early in my sobriety that if my alcoholism doesn't kill me, my selfishness and my self centeredness will. And the longer I stay sober, the deeper those roots go. And that's why it's so necessary for a guy with 26 years to still attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. See, I never wanna get it into my sick head that just because you've got some time, you've got it made here.

See, if you're new, I'll let you in on a little secret. I'll never get so sober that I can't get drunk again, but I can get so drunk that I can't make it back. And I never wanna forget what it's like to stand at your doorways to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and look in on a meeting and wonder, will I ever be a part of that thing? Will I ever be a part of anything? Because that's where I stood most of my life, is always watching life from the window.

Always wondering as I'm growing up, will I ever be a part of anything that I see? Will I always be some type of outcast with some this invisible barrier that makes me feel different? What is that about me? And so I never wanna feel like I've got it made here. I'm hoping I'm hoping that I'll always be divinely thirsty for the actions here in Alcoholics Anonymous.

You know? I hope I never get it in my little head that I've done enough here. And that it's okay for me just to kick back and show up once a month for certain things or once a year for birthdays or stuff like that. I wanna be in the middle of you. Something happens when you're in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Make no mistake about that. Because something happens when you're on the outside of Alcoholics Anonymous too. And make no mistake about that. When you're in the middle of something like this, you can't miss it. It blinds you.

Now, my dad was a was a my dad was a happy drunk. My dad was a happy singer the blues, Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin drunk. He loved to drink and sneak into his own darn house. It was an amazing thing, you know. And he's always sneaking through my bedroom window.

And I can tell because he's got these big refinery boots. And when he's coming in, he's always stepping on my chest as he's climbing through there, you know. And I grabbed that boot one night and I said, Gee dad, why don't you have mom make you a set of keys? You know. My God, she's up anyway, you know.

I mean, I hear the Hoover going now, you know. And God, you know. And my dad, man, I tell you, I I I admired my dad so much, but there was there was this thing with him and my mom that I couldn't get, it made me, I couldn't trust either one of them. You know, I didn't trust my mom, I couldn't trust her for being with a guy like that. And I and I didn't like him that much for the way that he treated my mom.

And I wasn't really sold on on a lot of stuff. And it brought up some type of confusion here. You know what I mean? And so I got into this thing where I'd play 1 against the other, you know. But my dad was one of these hardworking guys.

He used to tell me, you know, you don't know how good you got it. Back when I was your age, we really had it tough. And he did. My dad had a heck of a life, man. He, you know, his father died when he was a young man, choked on his tongue and chewed it half to death and, you know, died.

And his mother hung herself in a Detroit jail when he was 13. She was a drunken whore. And he he had, he had his kid brother to bring up. And he had a dream. And that dream was to, go into the United States Navy and come out and marry my mom.

Get her out of that convent. She was in a convent. And his dream was to marry her and bring her to California after World War II. Everybody was going to California and living the dream. They were childhood sweethearts, and they had a dream, you know?

And for a long, long time, I used to think that my drinking robbed me of my childhood. A bunch of nonsense I've ever heard. You know what my drinking did? It robbed them of their parenthood. At the ripe old age of 11 years old, I started drinking a bottle of 4 Rose Whiskey.

And they no longer would have a dream come true. They wanted to have a little family and bring up some kids and live the good life. He wanted to see his kid in Little League and his kid grow up to be some type of decent human being. My mom just wanted the best thing for a little boy. I had 2 sisters.

I was in the middle. I had no idea that my sisters admired me. I had no idea. I was so full of self, and there was no reason for me to drink. I look around that house, you know, and there was nothing going on in that house that could validate how crazy I felt when I was sober and how full of fear I was and how I was always struggling to feel good about myself.

I've always felt like I was always had the shame and I've always felt like some type of thing that didn't belong in a family that decent. And I didn't know what to pin it on, you know. All I knew is I felt terrible because I didn't feel like I deserved the good life I had, and we didn't have a bunch of dough. And you know what I've learned? That my folks used to blame themselves for the way that I was drinking.

I can't tell you how many nights I would come in and I could hear in that little house, I could hear my mom and dad talking and you would hear stuff like, Bob, where did we go wrong? What could we do? Where did we go wrong with him? They blame themselves for year after year about what was going on with me. And never once did I go around that little hallway and knock on that door and tell them they got it all wrong.

No. I let them ride that pony. I let them ride that pony. At 11 years old, I'm playing Little League, and I'm doing everything that all the other kids are doing in school, getting the f's and playing hooky and all that stuff. But these guys that I'm growing up with, they seem to be content with going on.

They seem to be able to grasp and develop and slowly grow up and adjust to life. It seems like the older that I was getting, the the more my body was growing, but my mind stayed 10 years old. By the time I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was a 30 year old man with a 10 year old head. You know? And I started becoming afraid.

The older that I got, the more afraid that I got, the more restless I got, the more irritable I got. I seem to need more attention than most people. I seem to need a little more excitement. It seems to me that everybody seems to get along better. I seem to watch you guys, and you guys talk better with one another than you do with me.

And everybody seems to get along, and I always feel different. I don't know what it is about me. All I know that well, I'm 11 years old. I've had a bottle of 4 rose whiskey. And for the first time in my life, it shut off all that nonsense.

It quieted that head. And for the first time in my life, I found peace of mind, something that I would never find when I'm not drinking. And I'll never forget that place that I found when I was drinking, because it would be a window that I would revisit as I'm growing up. Now, I didn't head out to Skid Row that next day. You know, I got the address.

You know what I mean? But I'll never forget the effects produced by alcohol because I would never find that effect when I'm sober. No matter what I did, where I was, what type of lifestyle I was living, I can never find a happy, joyous, and sober free lifestyle because I've got this head that won't meet let me enjoy a minute of peace of mind. I've got this head that hammers me. I got this thing that called alcoholism that strikes the alcoholic when he's sober, who works on that alcoholic day in and day out when he's sober.

Now, I used to think that, my God, if you're an alcoholic, you know, you know, people would tell me, Gee, Larry, why don't you just stop drinking and everything would be all right? Well, I'm an alcoholic. I stopped drinking and everything is not alright. And the longer I stay sober, the worse I feel. And coming to AA and watching you do wonderful things does not make me feel like a champ.

It just makes me feel so different that I feel like maybe I don't belong here either. And so I've got this constant head that just never lets me fit into anything. And the only way to shut it off is a bottle of 4 rose whiskey. And like I said, I didn't head out to Skid Row, but all I did is that sobriety drove me to drink time and time and time again. I'll never I'll never be able to get over that.

And by the time I got into high school, I was, dating this little, Mexican girl over in Gardena. And, and over in California, I I I love cars. And and we love lowered cars. We used to lower our cars down to the ground. And we used to get our hair up real big, like a Bakersfield tumbleweed, man, you know.

And and we'd listen to the Four Tops and The Temptations and Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson and, God, I loved it. And we'd lower our cars real down and get our head big hair real big, and we'd bounce around listening to the 4 tops, you know. And, I had this little Mexican girlfriend named Lupi, and and she had these brothers. And I started hanging around these lowriders, you know, and we'd bounce around all night and drinking that gin. And hell, I was in my plumbing truck the other day, and I heard the 4 tops, and I just start sinking in my damn truck, man.

I loved it. We'd get our hair up real big. I'd had these white t shirts and black khaki pants that came up to here. Some of the gals were telling me that men who are well endowed had big feet. I had a pair of 15 inch shoes, you know, and I was running around with big hair and big feet, driving around wondering what the hell you're looking at, you know, bouncing around with my girlfriend, them loopy.

And she had her hair up real big and she had these big eyelashes, you know. And and we'd bounce around and drink that cheap Thunderbird wine, wonder what everybody's looking at, you know. And we'd have these frowns on our faces because we were bad. And, because our butts hurt from bouncing around all night, man. And I loved it, man.

We'd drive around all night, you know, and, drove into what they call a jack in the box, to drive in, you know, where you order your hamburgers, you know. And I'm driving around with this guy named Rudy, and I'm drinking that 151, you know, and I'm lit. I've been drinking that stuff all night. We pull into the jack in the box, and he says, Larry, he says, pull up to the puppet and order. Well, I can't see the puppet, you know.

I can hear the darn thing, you know. And I start aiming for the menu and I hear this big crash, you know, and this puppet's head's hanging over, you know. I ran into the puppet, you know, and the cops swooped in on me, you know, and they threw me on the hood of the car. They shattered my hair all over the parking lot, you know. I don't drive till I'm 30.

Well, big deal. Let Rudy drive, man. He ain't doing nothing anyway. And there's nothing like riding shotgun, man. You ride shotgun and you let Rudy drive all night and you you drink that cheap Thunderbird wine and you make the most magnificent discovery an alky can make.

It's one of the most beautiful things an alky will ever see when he's drinking and that's himself in a mirror. Oh, man. You discover just how good looking you are. You go, my God, are you good looking, man. And you look at yourself in that mirror and, you know, and you look at your hair and you got cigarette butt stuck in your hair, you know, and you got a bunch of vomit on your t shirt, you know, and and you feel like dancing when you look like that.

I don't know about you, you know, and, and I loved it, man. I bounced around with these guys, and we'd drive into all these bars and, you know, and pick up on all these girls and, you know, and you always find that one, and she looks just like you, really. She's got flies in her hair, you know, and her eyelashes are all over her face, you know, and you know that's the one, you know. You know, and you bring her home, you know, and then you wake up the next morning and you put her in her walker and you wheel her home, you know. I mean, you know.

You know, but I loved it, man. I loved, I loved the bars. I loved that whole thing because I tell you, man, when I'm drinking, I am not me. I am not that thing when I'm sober. I am somebody else and I am loving it, man.

And I tell you, I drunk and I had a good time for a long, long time. And the only way I can describe it is that every time I drink, it opened after the second or third shot of whiskey. It opened the most beautiful picture, man. The most beautiful place that an alky can step into, man, is after that second or third drink. He is in wonderland.

He is in a place that nobody else will ever understand unless they're in Aberdeen tonight, you know, in this room, you know. It is a place that we can't find anywhere else. I don't care how much money, how much love, how much anything. We find a place when we're drinking that is unmistakably the safest place on earth, man. It is heaven on earth that had algae.

And that phenomenon of craving just keeps that window open. Just keeps that window open. And I tell you, it was the most beautiful thing that I've ever found and alcohol worked for a long, long time. But the problem with me is that the longer I drank, the smaller that window got. And the smaller that window got, and the smaller that window got.

And by the time I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, there was no window. There was just an obsession that maybe somehow, someday, I can get that thing to pop open again because I would want it to open up so bad right now. And the more I depended on it to open up, the more I relied on it, and it just wouldn't open up again. And maybe if I get the right combination of things, I can get that thing to open up. But all I know is that I'm not drinking, and I need something to happen.

And maybe this time, it'll be different. An alcoholic anonymous, we learned about the insanity of that first drink. And the insanity of the first drink, this alcohol insanity isn't that you're running around the house going and you're crazy. The alcoholic insanity that this identification process is so important is a type of alcoholic insanity that I have. And if you're new, maybe you can identify with this, is that I am the type of alcoholic that the memory of my last drunk is never enough to keep me sober.

I am the type of alcoholic that every time I am sober, I have the ability to look over my past 20 years of drinking, 10 years of drinking, 5 years of drinking. No matter how long it is, I have the ability to look over my past years of drinking, and I can see the damage that I've done. I can see the people that I've hurt. I can see the damage that I've done to myself. I can see physical things starting to happen to me.

I can see consequences and insanity and and prison terms. I can see all that. And I am that type of alcoholic that every time I'm sober, I have the ability to think that as I'm looking over that, I come up with a profound conclusion that this time, it's going to be different. This time, it ain't going to get me. I overlook anything called common sense for that flickering hope that maybe this time it'll work.

And it baffles the onlookers because you have one normie spend one night with us, and that son of a gun will swear off forever. But not that alky. Because there comes a time in everybody's life that has been sober a while in here, there comes a time when you buy the deal. When you buy the idea, man, I better stop drinking. You actually come to that conclusion, whether you're sitting in your hotel or your car or your living room or the penitentiary, you come up that I gotta stop.

And you actually say, man, I'm gonna give it a shot. And you buy the deal and you still can't. You still can't stop. You even pray to something that you don't go, God, help me. And you still can't.

You even grab your little girl and your little son, and I'll never do this, Bobby. I'll never do this. And you still can't. And what do you do when you're like that? You're powerless.

I had no idea. I thought it was something that a certain set of circumstances is gonna help me do. I had no idea that I was afflicted with this hideous spiritual malady that the longer I stay sober, the worse I get and that there isn't an answer. There isn't an answer. And I would come to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and I would see guys up at this podiums with ties like this and tell me stuff like 30 days ago, I was on the streets of Los Angeles.

Now I'm the president of the Bank of America. Thank you. You know? My God, I came in with that guy. You know what I mean?

Where do you go, man? And so, I'm bouncing around with these guys. And I tell you, I I I found happiness with those lowriders. I I I thought we were gonna bounce around forever, man. You know?

I I loved it. And, in fact, I ran into a kid like that not too long ago. I was up at one of our malls in Los Angeles. And I'm up at the Glendale Mall, and this kid goes walking by me. He's about 19 years old.

He's shaved. He got a bald head. He's got his mom's earrings on. He's got this big hole in his ear in case you wanna hook them and bring them over. He can.

You know? He's got a ball bearing in his nose right there. He's got a safety pin in his eye. He's got a ball bearing in his tongue. He's got a chain to his wallet.

I walked by him and he goes, what are you looking at? I said, I don't have a damn clue what I'm looking at. You know, I wanted to squirt them with some WD 40 just to keep them going. You know what I mean? And we started talking and we started laughing and we talked for about a half hour, and and now I sponsor the guy.

Lives down in Chula Vista, you know, in San Diego, man. And, you know, he he was new. He used to call me up. He said, spons, what do you want me to do? And I said, well, Ronnie, I said, why don't you unlock yourself?

You know? He said, well, I go to these meetings and I feel so different. I said, really? I said, maybe you're the only one wrapped up in a chain link fence, Ronnie. How about that?

You know? Well, I tell you, he's, he's been sober ever since. It's been about 7 years and he's over in Utah. And he's still sober and got a little wife and kids and doing good. Active member over there.

You know? And I thought we were gonna bounce around forever. You know? And around 1969, there's a war started and everybody's going different places, you know. And so, I thought, well, maybe I'd go back to Detroit from Los Angeles and find my roots.

Head out to Detroit. And so me and my buddy head out to Detroit, and we wound up in Phoenix, Arizona. And, now I'm in Phoenix. I'm over downtown Phoenix at the Apache Hotel. You know, it's about 5 floors, you know, and, over there off Central and Roosevelt.

And it's a nice hotel. Everybody's got a TV. It's in the lobby. Everybody's got a bathroom and it's down the hall. It's about $35 a month.

And I don't got the dough to pay for that, you know. So I I run down to the Volt or Manpower place where these high-tech guys like me go to, and they give me a job with this plumber. And I never plumbed before in my life. You know? You know?

And the guy says, well, he says, show up tomorrow. You know? And, and so I show up, you know, and he sticks me underneath the house. I'm underneath the house, man. You know?

He says, I want you to start hanging up this copper and, you spend all day and here's how you hang it. And he took off. He says, I'll come back at the end of the day and I'll pick you up. Just stay under here and hang that copper. So I stayed under there, you know, and he gave me a transistor radio.

And and I had a pint of bourbon, you know, some Kesselers under there. And, and there's this strange cat over there looking at me, you know. So I figured, man, I'm on top of the world. I got made under here, man. Nobody knows I'm under here.

I got a pint. I got a transistor. I got a pet. You know, I say, this is great, man. Every now and then, I'll bang on the pipe to let the guy know I'm hard at work, you know, and this this is great.

Nobody knows I'm under here. I love this. So I I said, Let's have a drink, man. So I started drinking that hot bourbon, you know, and 9 hours later, they're dragging me out from underneath the house. And apparently, I got drunk and I busted up through the bedroom door of the floor, you know, and I robbed the lady of all of her jewelry and I took it underneath the house.

And they're pulling me out, and this cat comes walking out with a bunch of necklaces on, you know. So I get canned from that job, you know. And so I don't know where you go when you're not working, but I always go to the I I went down to the Wagon Wheel Bar, you know, where these other guys aren't working, hang out and telling you what to do. You know what I mean? And so all of us hard workers are down there, you know, and talking about all the 1,000,000 of dollars we have and borrowing cigarettes from one another.

You know? And well, I know a guy. I met this guy named Ernie. Ernie was from Tennessee. And, I know what we're gonna do.

Not too far from here is a horse track, Larry. He says, we're gonna get you down to £95. You're gonna be a jockey. So I figured, alright. You know, maybe I'll start going to a fitness center now or something like that.

And he had a bag of of speed, and I don't do that. I've just been doing heroin and minding my own business, drinking and stuff. You know? Well, I and he was sure it was gonna work. He says, you know, what I want you to do is I want you to take this stuff.

And, in about 2 months, we'll weigh you in, and we'll go down to the horse track and get our colors. And he was sure it was gonna work, you know, and he took off, you know. And he came back 2 weeks later, and I'm stuck in that same little room, and I haven't moved an inch. You know, I just, I don't wanna be a jockey or anything. I'm going faster than any I'm just buzzing around there.

My cheeks are getting sucked in. The only thing I can do is I've been chasing this fly around the room, you know, and my and I see these black and white flashes coming through my window, and I'm looking at them every 10 seconds, you know, and it it's the damn sun going up and down is what it is, you know, and you couldn't have possibly taken it. Well, I did not need some more. I didn't even put a saddle on me and ride me around this house. You know?

I mean, I'm tweaking anything that's white and on the floor, I'm gonna fire up. It could be a toenail and it's going up, baby. That was the worst 12 days of my life, man. Well, I can that idea. So I did what I always do.

I had to go down to the idea hangout and that's a wagon wheel bar. Went down there, found Ernie, you know, you know, well, let's see what we're gonna do here, you know, and I know another plumber. I said, you jack it. And so, you know, I start here I am. I'm next day, I'm digging a ditch for a plumber.

It's a 120 out. You know? And I'm digging a ditch for this plumber, and I dig a ditch for about, oh, a half hour. And it dawned on me that this guy that I'm working for is younger than me. Well, I ain't working for a kid.

You know? And I got my pride, so I did what any honorable man would do. I faked a knee injury. And they and he took me down to the county hospital. And, they gave me a prescription for some Percodan.

And, and then I went back to my my favorite hangout, the Wagon Wheel Bar. And we met these guys from Tucson, Arizona who knew some doctors in Tucson, and we wrote prescriptions and sold them. So we started writing prescriptions for Seconal, Nembutal, and Tulinol. You name it all. We wrote it all.

You You know what I mean? Damn near took it all too, you know? And after about after about 9 months, they caught up with me. And when you're on Whiskey and Barbichwitz, there's no freeway chase. Like, they got, there he goes down the 17 freeway.

You know, none of that's happening. It's just a matter of the sheriff coming into the Busy B Hotel going, there he is under there. You know? And, so they arrested me and, convicted me for a little while and put me in the Southern Arizona jail for a while. And after about several months, they gave me a $45 voucher to come back to California.

And I go over there and register with the city hall in 1974. And they gave me a a little room in downtown Torrance at the Greyhound Hotel. Beautiful hotel. Everybody's got a TV and it's in the lobby. Everybody's got a bathroom and it's down the hall.

It costs about $30 a month and I ain't got the money to do that, you know. And and I would just look out my little window and drink and dream and die. And know one of these days, it ain't gonna be like this. One of these days, if I if I just had some type of normal living, everything would be alright. You know, that seemed to be my obsession growing up, not to be a a mechanic or a carpenter.

I was obsessed with this idea that one of these days I'm gonna think and feel and be normal because there's a part of me that's not. And I don't know what it is. All I know is that when I'm drinking, it all goes away, and I'm as normal as I ever wanted to be. You know? And so I'm over there at the Greyhound, you know, and my probation officer puts me on, Antabuse.

And take this, you know, and look for some work. You know? And 2 months, I'm, I'm on Antabuse and I'm not drinking and not doing nothing. And, I'm on my way to to a refinery to work as a laborer. And I stop off at a Little League dugout at 10 o'clock in the morning and go absolutely out of my mind.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, the paramedics came and I'm in between hysterical and maniacal. I'm absolutely sober And my paranoia is so bad that I'm hallucinating. And I'm in a place that I've never been before in my life. And I know there's no coming back. And, the paramedics took me to the Harbor General Hospital in Carson, California.

They looked at my jacket. They seemed that maybe some of my drug overdoses are possible suicide attempts. They see by the looks of my jacket that maybe I need to go to a state hospital and be observed for about 30 to 60 days. And so they sent me to a state hospital out there in California. And a year later, they let me out.

And they gave me my, my antipsychotics and my antidepressants and these little green pills called liquid chalk. And they told me that I would never be able to operate in society unless I took these prescriptions. And I would take these drugs and they would work on these certain mental disorders. But, you know, there's one thing that they never took away. There was one thing that they couldn't medicate away and that is every time I'm out on the streets, I have this idea that maybe this time it'll be different.