The Saturday Nite Live Group in Santa Maria, CA

Oh my God. Where did you guys come from? My name is Rachel. I'm alcoholic. And I want to thank Merle for asking me to. Where do you go? There he is. I thought you. I don't know where I am

for asking me to come up here and talk. I want to thank

I was supposed to be here twice and I couldn't make it. A couple of times. I have this thing with cars and I remember one, one night I was driving to Glendale from Bakersfield and I got up the hill and the car started rolling backwards. And second time I was headed over here and the car just said I ain't going.

So I got a little ways but not far enough. So I'm really glad to be able to come here and

finally, that way you won't ask me again.

I'm so surprised when people ask me back a second time. I said didn't you get enough?

My sobriety date is December 1st, 1978 and I don't know about you but that's a long time honey. Between drinks, I love alcohol. I don't know what you like, but I love alcohol. I especially like alcohol when I'm shooting a little speed with it, but that's a whole other story

because you can drink for 10 days in a row, you know what I mean?

I mean baby.

You quit. You, you like you. He's identifying too much. He knows. The only problem is you lose your teeth. I mean, it's just my God, you lose your teeth. That's what's so bad.

So there

I tried a little heroin ones but it made my feet stink.

She knows. She knows I was having trouble. I'd get into a tricks car. Oh, you know what that is?

I I'd get into a tricks car and that that finally this one guy said to me, honey, I'll give you $20 if you get out. And

I didn't understand. I didn't know what happened until after I read my inventory to my sponsor. And she said, how did you feel about that? I said, shoot, I was just happy, you know, I didn't have to do nothing. And she said

you didn't know the reason he asked you to get out of his car is because you stunk. And I started crying. I thought horrible, that poor girl.

I was abused.

So now that we got the specifics down pat,

now, you know, you know, I'm just a sweet St. walking wine drinking

pro. And you know, I liked it that way. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I didn't think there was anything that was wrong with me. I've been drinking all of my life. You know, you're going to hear an Alcoholics Anonymous that it's not your parents fault that you're alcoholic. And I'm I'm here to I'm here to tell you that's a lie in my case because I am alcoholic and it's my family's fault. It is their fault. I am Indian, English, Irish and Mexican.

I'm supposed to drink,

and that's not my fault. That is not my fault. I needed a drink long before I can remember. And I can remember my first drink that I fought for. I was three years old. I fought my dad for my for that glass of vodka that he had in his hand. I wanted and I knew what it was. I needed it and that was it. Period.

So I'm alcoholic from the gate and I don't know what it means to take just to have one drink. I don't know about you, but me, if you, if I'm going to go, just have one drink or two. I ain't going

unless I can go there loaded. And if I go there loaded and they, they won't let me in. That's just the way that it is with me. So I, I don't, I don't take just one drink and I don't go to places where I can take just one drink. That doesn't work for me. I love alcohol. Alcohol does something for me that I don't think it does to a lot of people in the world. I take a drink. I don't even have to take a drink. Do you know how special alcohol is?

Did you remind them that I was talking and they needed to turn off the God damn phones?

There ain't much left up here. Don't mess with me.

Where am I?

Where was I

You know, alcohol was so special for me that I didn't even have to drink it. I

and if you're alcoholic of my type, neither did you. I remember knowing that from my house to the store, knowing that I needed a drink right now and all I had to do was get to the store. I already felt better, didn't you?

Oh, I know what I need.

Sounds good to me.

Don't I still get them? I still get them. I think about

Gallo White Port and it just gives me the quivers. Honey, I just love that stuff.

I didn't have to take a drink and I knew that I was going to have that thing that happens when you take that first drink. It's wonderful. I would hold my bottle. I wouldn't just walk with it in a sack. I would hold it right here.

Ain't that good?

I don't know how long sober you are,

but I know with 29 years I can still feel that sense of ease and comfort. It comes from having had a few drinks

and I had no idea back then what it was going to do to me or what it was going to do to those around me or how I was going to destroy everything and everybody in my life. I had no idea.

Like I said, I come from somebody stole my water. There it is.

Was that you, Mr. Lara?

Damn Mexicans. You can't trust them,

he said. My name is Chico Lara. Is it Chico?

And I said, I'm Rachel Lara, you might be my brother.

I was born in Bakersfield. I was born to a, you know how they said alcoholism, you know, runs in my family, at gallops, in mine. I had alcohol everywhere. My father was a falling down, puking drunk. And he did that every chance he could. He'd walk. He'd walk through the door, fall down and puke all over our green carpet. It didn't look pretty. My mother divorced him when I was 5 because she just couldn't stand cleaning up his mess. My grandmother was alcoholic,

her family was alcoholic,

but my we had a Southern Baptist. My great uncle was a Southern Baptist revival tent minister in Texas baby and he took a drink one night because his son had been kicked out of the Pentecostal, had been kicked out of the Southern Baptist church. He went to the Pentecostal church

and because they took him in as a Deacon and he took a drink and went and set fire to the Pentecostal church

and moved his tent to another town.

So I have alcoholism all over the place. I have a cousin that stabbed a man something like 80 times because he wanted his Social Security check. And he, he's, you know, he was doing a little crystal meth with his, with his booze. And I guess once he started, he couldn't stop. So he, you know, he killed him. He went to San Quentin. He was there for many, many years. My uncle, my mother's brother,

asked my aunt for

some money and she said no, I will buy you food, I will wash your clothes, I will clean your house. I will do anything that you need, but I will not give you money. And he called a family gathering at his house.

And as they pulled into the driveway and we're getting out and getting ready to get in the car, I get into the house, he walked out of the back door and put a gun in his mouth and blew his brains out. Because you can't treat me that way. You can't tell me that I can't drink.

For me to be standing here tonight with you 29 plus years sober

is an absolute miracle,

but no more than you sitting here with me. I know where we are.

When I was about 5 years old, my mom divorced my dad and bought a house across the street from my grandmother's house and left. My mother was 21 years old and had three children. She had me when she was 16, and by the time she was 21, she'd had about as much fun as she could stand with these kids, and she split. She came home occasionally, and I do mean occasionally.

I'm not exaggerating that she would be gone for three or four weeks at a time. It was about a year ago that we were talking. I told her I knew somebody in Caliente and she said, oh, I used to go there and spend a couple of weeks when I wanted to get away from the kids.

Kids.

And I thought, oh how nice

she told me I was a liar. That never happened, but she told came straight out of her mouth.

She didn't mean to. She was 21 years old.

She was set free.

She wanted, for the first time in her life, go partying. She did,

but as a result of that, the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about somewhere in the past, I made a decision based on self that would later put me in a position to be hurt in step eight in the 12 and 12. It says that somewhere an incident quite forgotten

put a violent twist to my emotions and colored my perception for the worse. And that's what happened at me. At five years old, I began to making I began making decisions based on that violent, twisted mind that I had. I knew that I was no good. I spent my whole life believing that I was no good, that I was never going to be any good. I was never going to be anything without my mother. I couldn't stand. I would walk, I had two sisters. I would walk into the school bus and then I would walk 2 miles because I

want to stand there with those kids because I couldn't stand them looking at me. I knew there was something terribly wrong with me. I knew I was different. I was separate. I was apart from and I was afraid and I didn't know what that was. I didn't know what that was. All I knew is I couldn't have you looking at me.

And then I discovered the miracle,

and the miracle was across the street at my grandmother's house. I would go find my grandmother in the front yard. And you know how grandma's are they. My grandmother had a yard, a big long lot, and the house sat in the middle. And then all around it was so many flowers and roses and trees and fruit trees and vines of all kinds. You couldn't in the summer, you couldn't tell that there was a house there. It was so dense, like a jungle in there. And my grandmother would be in there carving circles around the roses,

and I would go hunter down when I felt

that irritability and that restlessness and that discontent and that fear. When I got afraid, I would run across the street to her house because I knew there was an answer for my problem there. And I would find my grandmother. And I tell grandma, you doing all right? You don't look so good. And she'd get nervous with that one, honey, you can bet on that. She'd grab my hand and we'd run off into her front room and she'd stop in the front room. And Grandma, you know how Grandma's have that little basket,

the Wicker basket with the brocade top and the little Wicker handle on it. And she would pick up that basket and grab my hand and we'd run off into the kitchen and she'd set the basket in the middle of the table. And I'd sit down on one side and she'd be sitting here on this side. And, and she'd open up that basket and she'd pull out little white boxes, little white boxes that she got from current General Hospital with tranquilizing and sedating medications. And she would open up those boxes and she'd line up her pills and she'd open

put some more there. And she'd grab a Mason jar where she drank her water and she'd scoop those pills in one hand, Pop. And she'd take that drink out of that water. And she'd do what you and I did with that first drink. Grandma would go

and then she looked at me and kind of smile.

Takes that real quick.

Then she'd lean back and she'd bring it reach into her refrigerator and she, I don't know how she did it, but she did it without looking. She's going there

and she'd get this bottle of Seagram 7 and she hold it right here.

Kind of stroke that neck a little bit.

I want you to meet my husband,

baby. I got to tell you from that point on it was heaven.

Now you got to know I was raised wrong so it don't get no better than this. I hate to tell you

but I heard something in that first motion that she did that I will always recognize and I know you will too as what they call the music of the spheres. You know what that sound is? The sound of paper breaking on a bottle.

Oh man, she would unscrew that cap. You could smell it coming out of the bottle. I'm like this.

I'm just waiting, 'cause I know, I know what's next.

And grandma would look at me and smile. And she had gone into the other room to come out with two cups and two saucers, one for her and one for me. And she set him in front of us. She put some in her cup and then she looked at me and she said

you want some?

Uh-huh.

Put a little Seagram 7 in the bottom of my cup and she top it off with black coffee and she say you drink your damn coffee black baby. It's a mean world and you've got to be tough. I say. OK, grandma,

can you taste it?

Baby baby,

that is such a good deal. Then she top it off with another one

and then all of a sudden it turned out to be a little bit like an AA meeting.

Grandma was the main speaker

and she started to tell me what it was like, what happened, and what we're trying to be like today.

Grandma was great. I loved her. What it was like, you know what I mean? Grandma was born and raised in Texas, and Grandma was a carnival girl. She was, you know, she had just enough Mexican to be embarrassed, you know what I mean? You know how Mexicans are, They're so embarrassed about being Mexican. I don't know, really. I'm Indian, you know.

Now I know you guys don't suffer from that here,

but I certainly did. And

grandma would. Then grandma would then tell me about what it was like for her as a kid. She'd tell me she was in the carnival and instead of and she had this long hair and beautiful skin and she was a Hawaiian back then. She was a Hawaiian. And she in this carnival, she do the hula three times a day and she was buried alive for seven days. You know, my grandma was a can can dancer in the gold rush in Alaska. You know, my grandma would start to do the hula. And I don't know about you, but after a couple of drinks, I'm smart. Don't you get

when you drink? I got the answers, baby. You asked me and

grandma started to show me how to do the hula. Then I'd show her how it should be done. She started do the can, can I show her how it should be done? And then we'd have another drink and grandma would say,

do you hear music?

I get a little bit nervous, you know what I mean? You know those pills my grandma took,

They were because she saw snakes and spiders crawling out of the walls? Do you know what that is? That's classic symptoms of DTS

and my grandmother's house. The walls had holes in them.

Uh-huh. Grandma that my my grandpa called him fly holes because every time my grandma saw snakes in spiders, she go flying through the walls to get them.

So grandpa got tired. He says I'm tired of fixing this mess. You, you leave those fly holes there, you know, you're going to chase them things. You're going to chase them with an open door. I'm not going to fix it again, you know.

So grandma, she said, do you do you hear music? I thought, oh God, the parties over the snakes are coming and I'm leaving because I have this. I have this thing about snakes. It isn't funny, you know. So I said, no, Grandma, I don't. She said, well shit, why don't we have any on? And I thought

escaped again, and grandma fixes another drink and we'd head off to the front room and grandma would put on her music. You know that music? You know that music, baby, it's the best. Oh good, she has vibrated.

My husband just got out of the joint. I don't know what he's doing.

I don't know if he set fire to the house yet or not.

My kind of man,

how's your love life smoking?

They don't get no better than this, does it?

Grandma put on her music. We did in there. We'd have another drink, we'd get in there and and Grandma put on Brown eyed Handsome Man. We'd start off with Chuck Berry, Baby Doll, Sweet Little 16,

and we start dancing and carrying on. It was fabulous. It was the thing that took me away from that experience of irritable, restless discontent. I was no longer afraid. I felt as if I was loved and cared for. I was wanted

but but every now and then something would happen.

There's there,

grandma. Take that drink.

You know that drink, baby?

That drink is why we're here. Grandma, take that drink.

And then grandma would put on that other music. You know, that music.

My grandma would put on this album for the occasion. She would put on an album called

Arthur Lyman's Taboo, and I can see the cover of it to this day. She would put on that album and you know, she had that cut. You know the cut on the album. Some of you don't know what albums are, but

you know it's a part where you pick up the needle, you scratch the first part, and then you pick up the needle,

scratch the last part and you put it back to the scratch first part.

Grandma put on Red Sails in the sunset

and my grandmother would start to weep.

And I'm a kid.

I'm 678 years old and my grandmother would tell me,

the love of my life would tell me, will you play this for me when I die?

And I don't know what to do.

I'm just a kid. And my grandmother would start sobbing and she would rock back and forth and I would hold her and I'd rock back and forth with her. And way back then,

I started telling her those things that I had to tell people until I died.

What I told her that day was, Grandma, please don't leave me.

All change. I'll be good, I promise, Grandma, just please don't leave me. And we brought back and forth because neither one of us knew what was wrong. We didn't know. We didn't know that there was a program called Alcoholics Anonymous. We didn't know.

We didn't know that there was a power greater than ourselves. We didn't know. We didn't know that there were 12 steps. They didn't know that was the recovery that was possible for us. We just didn't know. We just rocked back and forth and I cried and I begged her to please not leave me. And that's what I did for the rest of my life until I die.

If you're alcoholic of my type,

you know what I did to get here today?

No human power

could have relieved me

from the bondage itself that I suffered from

until I was 27.

No human power,

no thing could stop me. Anything that stood between me and a drink had to go

because I needed it like I needed my next breath.

By the time I was 15 years old, I was

walk in the streets of Long Beach and

starting to turn. Tricks

didn't matter.

By the time I was 17 1/2 years old, I had moved away from my family.

I was making two to 500 bucks a night.

I was drinking anything that I wanted to. But something started to happen to me at 17 1/2, at 17 1/2 years old, I took a drink and something happened to me. I started to cry. I started to cry like my grandmother did, but I didn't know that that's what it was. I started to cry and I couldn't function and I didn't know what was wrong with me. So I took another one and it made it worse. It did not get better and it made it worse again.

And I love alcohol.

It's been the answer to all of my problems.

And that night

I started cleaning my house because I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't go out in public. I was ashamed of the fact that I was crying because we don't cry. We don't cry.

That night when I finished cleaning my house,

I went into my bathroom and the sink was clean, you know, clean, white, shiny. You could see the porcelain. You could see. I could see myself in that porcelain. And I looked up and I looked into the mirror. There was clear and clean and bright. And I looked into my eyes and what I saw that night made me feel so bad

and so absolutely powerless and 17 1/2 years old that I opened up my medicine cabinet and I took out my straight razor and I slashed this wrist. I took 25 sleeping pills. And I went up five flights of stairs to the top of the building that I lived on. And I jumped. And I jumped because I didn't have any other way out.

But as God would have it, and only God would have it,

as I jumped, two men came from nowhere. They were police officers. And they grabbed me by my arms as I jumped. And I bounced against that brownstone building with my back, and they dragged me back up the side of that building. And that night, I began to beg. I begged those men to please let me go because of what I'd seen in that mirror that night

at 17 1/2 years old. I got to tell you what I saw that night was that I wasn't raised to be a whore.

I knew what I had become, and I was not raised to be that. I knew that I was an embarrassment to my family, I was ashamed to my community, and all I wanted was out. And for the next 10 years, all I wanted was out

because there was no way that I could live having seen what I had seen in that mirror that night. And God knows I did everything else I could to make that true, that I would die. I took overdoses. I found men to kill me. I found people to leave me to die. I jumped out of cars. I did all of that. And all I ever could do was wind up

in mental institutions,

in jails and in hospitals. I remember one time coming out of a blackout and I'm being raped on the 10th floor in LA General Hospital and I'm in four point restraints. And baby, what do you do with that is you just have another drink.

You just have another drink.

And I had no idea what was wrong with me. I had no idea that I suffered from the disease of alcoholism, that one drink was too many and 1000 wasn't enough. I didn't know that. All I knew was that when I took a drink, something good happened to me. That all of that crap, none of that was sufficient with sufficient force, would stop me from having another drink. It wasn't strong enough.

I love out.

It gave me that sense of ease and comfort.

What do you do?

Nobody could tell me

that I was going to go to the bitter end or find spiritual help. I didn't know that.

All I knew that I'd be better off dead.

By the time all of that stuff was going on, most people in my life wished I was dead

because there was no way.

No way. At one point, it was easier for my mother to hate me than it was to love me. I destroyed her ability to love me. And that 29 years later, is still in effect.

It was easier for my sisters to denounce me and hate me because of the shame and embarrassment that I brought to them. Didn't matter and it still comes up 29 years later.

I have a brother

that

put a gun in his mouth

and my mother caught him

and he said I won't talk to anybody but rates them.

And I took him to a psychiatrist that I knew in the program and I said would you please talk to him? Let me know what I can do.

You know what he said at that place?

He said

when I was just a kid, they were so worried about her,

I didn't matter.

My brother's birthday is December 17th somewhere. A few days later, I got drunk. I got drunk and I destroyed all of his birthday presents

and he cried about that.

And I was

17 years sober and he cried about that. He still hung on to that. And that brother is so profoundly affected by my alcoholism that he drinks and he drinks like I did,

and he can't get help because he has me.

He says if I ever got that bad,

then I'll seek help. But I'm doing all right now. And, you know, he gets drunk and he carries a sidearm and he patrols the perimeter of his house with a loaded gun in his hand.

And he's not bad, but because of my example, he's not that bad.

What are you doing?

When I was about

25 years old, I had met a man and we had spent three years together.

He loved the ground that I walked on.

You know what I did to that? I destroyed it.

Standing. We lived in an upstairs apartment.

I was standing at the top of the stairs. He was down on the ground floor and he looked at me and he said you were a pig when I met you. You'll be a pig when you die.

And I just stood there and looked at him because no truer statement could ever have been said about me

in those last two years of my drinking.

It's a fog.

I was in a moped accident. I broke my back in two places. I'm used to be 5/9 and 1/2. I'm now 5-6.

In those two years, I

was at my mom's house and I took 125 sleeping pills and a bottle of vodka in front of her. I told her it's your fault that I'm this way. If you'd have just loved me, I'd have been all right.

When I came to,

my mom said to me

she'd been sitting in her chair for three days. She had stopped working. My mother sat in this chair for three days and prayed. She prayed that I would die. When I came to, she said to me as soon as she knew I was conscious enough to hear it, she said to me, you know I'm good with a hanger. I had nine kids. I should have had nine kids, but instead there was only three.

I wish you'd have been the first one to go.

You're killing me and you're destroying my family.

Everything I wanted

is destroyed by you. If you're going to die, God damn you die. That's what my Mama told me,

she said. I want you out of my life and I don't want you ever to come back. So my Mama told me

and I left her house as quick as I could. And when I left that that house, who was within a week that I was found in a motel room, I'd been stabbed 17 times.

And it's all because I needed a drink.

Those last two years were hideous, and all I wanted was just the relief of one more drink and it wasn't happening no more. On the Monday after Thanksgiving of 1978, I kind of came too. And I came to, and I didn't know where I'd been or what I'd done or how it had happened, but I came to and I needed a drink. And I went across the street to the store that I used to work in and I saw

that they were closed and I freaked and I walked for two hours. It was 4:00 in the morning. I walked for two hours trying to find a drink because I needed a drink and I couldn't find one night or done anything for a drink

to drink better done anything.

I remember when I got that bottle of booze,

I was so grateful for that bottle of Hunter proof vodka. It was about a fifth and I had a six pack of Colt 45 and I had a nickel bag or meth mini bennies because I knew I was going to need them because I was going to have to do some parading around town to get me some more money.

And

baby, I took, I took a drink from that, from that 100 proof vodka. And

I took a drink and something happened that I didn't understand. Now, I'd seen The Exorcist, so I knew what it was,

but I took a drink of that vodka and it hit my stomach, shot straight up, boom, And it but it went out in a straight line. So I thought it must have, you know, and I'm thinking, Oh my God, Oh my God. All I can remember is The Exorcist and I'm thinking, Oh no, I've had it, you know what I mean? And I took another drink and that kept happening and kept happening. The straight line of vodka going 15 feet across the room. It was bouncing on my bathroom walls

and I'm thinking, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK.

And I thought, OK, I'm going to take these bennies and I'm going to add these mini bennies and I'm going to take I'm going to take a beer. Now, if you're alcoholic like me, you better not be doing this. I'm telling you, because it ain't pretty. Now, you know, vodka's nice and clean. It goes in a straight line. And I've drank that Colt 45 with those with those mini bennies and and it didn't go in a straight line. It went whoosh.

It went everywhere it went. Foam hit my kitchen wall.

It was on everything and I'm thinking Oh my God. And I thought,

well, I can't drink beer. So I left about four fingers in the bottom of that bottle. When I was finally convinced, you know what I was convinced of that day? What I was convinced of that Monday after Thanksgiving in 1978, What I was convinced of, and I don't know how I know it, but I know it's still true today, that I will never be able to drink alcohol again.

But what do you do with that kind of information? Where do you go? What do you do? I called an old therapist to mine.

I think I've lost my mind.

Will you come take me somewhere?

And maybe she ran. She was waiting for that call. She'd been waiting for four years. Boom, she was right there. She showed up, Cheryl, and she brought another woman, Willie Mae. And her and Willie May walked into my apartment. Do I need to tell you what it looked like?

The only thing that was the most on you, because it was trashed. It was trashed top to bottom. And I had the soles of my feet. I walked barefoot all the time. And I was somehow or another, I was incapacitated. And my I had picked off the edge of one of my soul. I remember doing it. I picked off the edge of a soul of one of my feet from the back, from the heel, and I peeled it and I peeled it real slow

and I peeled it and I peeled it both feet.

And I set him on the coffee table

and they were there. The edges were like razor blades and they were hard. So there it is. There it is. They look around, they see my feet.

All right, get in the car. We're taking you somewhere. And they get me in the car and they put me in the back seat and they said, Rachel, we're going to take you to Norwalk State mental institution. And you know,

I was relieved that day. I was relieved,

finally. It was perfectly all right for me that day to spend the rest of my life in a nut house. It just didn't matter. The thing that I had that stood between me and you and me and God was gone. I had nothing left.

No thing, nothing. I was gutted from the inside out

and it was a relief. It was perfect that day.

When I got to Norwalk, they booked me in. They put me in a room with a black lady of all things. They put me in with a hooker. Can you imagine?

Thing was really sick. She was in a psychotic break. In fact, it was me, her and her pimp. And her pimp was killing her. And I'm watching her

and I'm thinking, oh, my God, they're going to they're going to send me out of here. I knew I wasn't as sick as she was. And they were going to send me back to the hell that I'd come from. I was absolutely petrified. The next day they said, Rachel, we're going to move you to another place. And I said, all right, I didn't care. I figured this is going to be my bed, my bunk for life. I was all right. I didn't care

and they put me. They put me in a room. I was probably about this size, about this size. It had beds all lined up on the side. There were two women down towards the end. It was a Mexican lady and this other woman that had a wig hat on. I don't know what it was anyway. And then me

and I got in my bed and I laid down and you know that shake? I'm coming down off of a

two months supply of diet pills a week,

a three month supply, no three month supply of diet pills a week, a two-month supply of sleeping pills a week, 2 quarts, 100 proof vodka a day, anywhere from a six factor case of cold 45 and all the Gallo whiteboard I can drink. That's what I'm doing. Try to maintain some semblance of mind.

I'm sick as a dog. And then

the rest of them come in and there's guys. It's us, three women in a room this size, and the rest of them are men. Now, there was a man that must have been 6 foot 16. I don't know. He was humongous.

He had a neck like my waist today, baby. He was humongous. And I looked at him in a panic. I could hardly breathe. And I leaned over to the woman next to me, and I said,

aren't you afraid in here? And she says, ah, honey, I wouldn't worry about it. He couldn't get it up if he had a rope tied to it.

Just fine.

I'm telling you, don't get no better than this babe.

I was there for a few days trying to wash my feet. I couldn't get the dirt off of my feet.

How that is just dirty. Couldn't get the dirt off my feet. And on Friday, December 1st, around 9:00, this man named Jim Duncan, I'm take that back.

Tim Duncan, he's dead. That's not him.

Jack Delmont.

Damn,

he's up there laughing.

Jack Delmont came up to me and he says, Rachel, there's a meeting upstairs I want you to go to. I said, oh, really? What kind? He says the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous said no thank you, I'm not alcoholic.

That's why I told him I'm not alcoholic.

He says, you have a Rachel, you don't understand. It's a very special meeting. You've got a very special speaker there coming. I said, I don't care. I'm not alcoholic. Why would you want me to go to an, a, a meeting? I'm not alcoholic. And I argued with him back and forth and then he says, but you don't understand much of we got a we got the father of a very famous movie stars coming to talk today. It's so special that you're here. You've got to come here. And all I thought at that moment, I didn't say much was, do I have loser tattooed on my forehead or something?

I mean, I know I'm in a nut house, but. But if I wasn't such a loser, they'd have brought the movie star, right? But I'm a loser. They brought his dad. And I thought you dummies and and I said no, thank you. And then he said the magic words. All right, Rachel, either you go or you go. What's it going to be? OK,

now I got to tell you, I got up. That's up that flood, two flights of stairs up to that. It was a round thing up to the second floor where this thing was.

And there was 100 million people in there. I don't know where they came from. They didn't look like nuts, but they might have been. They were well dressed and smelled good. And I found myself a padded chair to sit on. And you know, I got to tell you I was a vision for you that morning.

I

I sat down, looking at my dirty feet.

I had those green sanitized pajamas. You know what they smell like

sitting on a chair that somebody urinated on?

I have an upper denture because of my adventures before sobriety. The only problem with that denture was that it was a it had three pieces, a left, a right, and a middle.

What's worse than that is it had four front teeth missing out of it.

I didn't dare say hello because I didn't want to go crawling around looking for one of my pieces of my teeth. You know what I mean? I don't know how that happened, but it happened. You know,

My hair was a little bit longer than it is right now. I had it held up in a bun so tight I looked Japanese. Held together with a broken pencil,

Yeah.

You just keep coming back.

He's catching the tail end of it,

baby. This old man gets up behind a podium like this and he goes,

What a fine bunch of monkeys we got here,

baby. I had a knot in my throat and baseballs for Jaws. I thought

there must not have been a thing called patient rights, because they couldn't insult us like that, could they? He just called us monkeys. Excuse me?