The AA Jamboree in El Paso, TX

Good morning, everybody. My name is Sunny. I'm an alcoholic

and thank you for that glowing introduction. Now,

I didn't know I had a host till this morning.

For a fat boy, he ain't bad.

I want to thank the committee. And where is Beverly? Thank you, honey, for asking me to come over here.

It's the first time that anybody asked me to come speak somewhere that it wasn't a year or two or three ahead of time. You know,

last month I was in Oklahoma City and they called me three years ago

and I asked him what happened to a day at a time.

God, they said, Sonny, you know, you're so busy, it's hard to get a hold of even want to book you ahead. I said, I'll tell you what, man, if I'm still alive and I could still talk, I'll be more than glad to be there. And, you know, I had a good time there, met some good friends. It's been a real, real pleasure to be here this weekend.

And I want to tell you that if you haven't heard the message of Alcoholics Anonymous this weekend, I don't know what the hell you're listening,

because I did.

One of my favorite people opened this convention.

Such a sweetheart

and coming from where she came from,

I love to listen to her speak because she comes up here behind this podium and you don't know what to expect.

And when she opens her mouth, I turn around and I look at the people and they're

beautiful, lady, beautifully.

Sharon, thank you for this morning. Thank you very much. And Francine and Annie.

Annie and I go way back,

probably about 16 years, and that's what I love about going out on the circuit to speak is I get to see the people that I haven't seen for a long time.

Yeah. And I get to still share in their lives because I get updated on what's going on with them. Yeah, I love Alcoholics Anonymous,

and if you don't, you're in the wrong room.

Things can't be this bad at home,

I tell you.

Some friends of mine came up with me, they never been to anything like this before and I'm going to lock them in the lock box underneath the motorhome going home.

I just love being sober, I really do. And I may fool around and get emotional up here, but don't anybody say I'm a Sissy.

I probably am, but I don't like to hear.

I want to tell you that what you see up here this morning is not what I was when I got here.

When I came out of the penitentiary

on July the 7th, 1977,

I had hair down past my ass.

I had a beard that when I sat down, it laid in my lap

and I had just done 25 straight years

and two and a half of that was spent on death row.

And I want to tell you that I didn't like any of you.

The reason I didn't like you was because you intimidated me.

There was a lot of people thought I intimidated them, but you people scared the shit out of me.

I would set down in a meeting and throw my hair over the back of the chair because I kept sitting on it. And you women that's got long hair and know what I'm talking about, and I would throw my hair over there and the women in the meeting would come up behind me and sit in the chairs behind me and play with my ear. And it was all I could do to keep from racing around slapping the shit out of them. Yeah,

I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with no understanding at all.

I went to prison at 16

for three counts of first degree murder and two counts of mayhem,

all because of a pool game.

And I told you I spent 2 1/2 years. I spent my 17th, 18th and 19th birthday on death row.

18th birthday was spent in a death cell

waiting for the gas chamber.

I never had a clue what was wrong.

Not a clue.

Nobody ran up to me and said, Sonny, your problem is you're an alcoholic. Nobody said that. And I want to tell you too that

I may mention something about drugs, and if I do and it upsets you, tough shit.

Because, you see, it's your fault

if I talk about drugs up here. It's your fault because none of you came to me and told me Sunny just drank. Don't use drugs.

You didn't tell me that one day I'm going to be standing in El Paso, TX, talking to people about alcoholism. And you didn't tell me that. You know, you say you you just got to be a pure alcoholic. I don't know, a pure alcoholic. Yeah. Most of the Alcoholics that I know that complain about people who talk about drugs

are usually using them.

I've met a lot of people in this program that have Valium deficiencies

or they have psychiatrists on call,

you know, therapists and all that stuff.

I'm of the old school of Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to tell you that my birthday and my anniversary is July 1st, 1976. By the grace of God, in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, it hadn't been necessary for me to take a drink or a drug from that day to this,

and I don't know why.

I don't know why. I don't even have a desire to drink or to use.

I really don't

that. I know that there's an awful lot of people that are praying for me

because everybody, every time somebody does something wrong to me, I tell them you better pray for me.

And they say why? I say because if I get drunk, you're the first sucker I'm coming to see,

so I don't think I got anything to worry about.

Stay in sober.

You know,

I'm not going to get into the war story of the penitentiary that much.

Suffice to say that I spent all that time in there. I came out here and I sponsor Tommy said Sonny, we're going to Brentwood to a men's tag. I want you to go. And I said, no, I'm not going. So what do you mean? You told me you was going to do anything I told you to do. And I said, I'm not going to amend stack,

He said if you read the book and it talks about contempt prior to investigation, said yeah. He said, well, I said God damn man, I spent 25 years in a in a men's tag.

I didn't come out here to go to him,

He said well try this one. And I said,

OK, if you're if you're adamant about it, I'll go. And I went and we left there and got out in the car and was driving down the freeway home. And he said, what do you think?

Same way I felt saying before I got there, I don't like him. If I had a wife or a girlfriend that treated me the way them girls did them guys, I'd kill him

or run him off something,

you know? I want you to know that now. When I came out of the penitentiary, I was 40 years old

and I didn't know nothing about women.

Tell you anything you want to know about men, but I know nothing about women. But you couldn't convince me of that.

And I was sitting in a meeting one night

and I saw these women come in with guys and they got a kid and they look so happy. And Jesus, I thought, man, that's what I've got to do.

I got to get me a house in the suburbs, an old lady and a kid. The job

and I saw this girl walk through the door and she had a little boy and I said that's it. So I asked this guy to fix me up with her and God man, you got to be careful what you pray for.

I had all kinds of signs that told me that it was wrong,

but I went ahead anyway because I knew better.

You know, I had all my buddies, that old motorcycle tramps and stuff that came in to be my best man and ushers. And we went to this tuxedo shop to get tuxedos and the guy, there was two guys that ran that shop and both of them were gay. And we were having the time of our life in there

until the girl I was engaged to showed up. And that stopped all the fun.

We went to the rehearsal and her dad came out to the car and was telling me that he didn't like me. And I told him I don't like you either,

you know, but I'm not marrying you.

And

said something else. And I reached up and knocked him out,

left him laying on the lawn and went back in that church. And

Sharon asked me, said, where's my dad? I said he's out there on the lawn.

We went ahead and got married

and it was fun

except that

we had to sleep together

and it was OK for about 1520 minutes.

After that, though, she was one of those people that liked to hold you and hug you and lay next to you and all that shit, and

nobody had ever done that with me,

even in the penitentiary,

so.

So I'd have to get out of bed and go sleep on the couch. She couldn't understand what was going on.

And I knocked her out of bed two or three times.

And then one afternoon, about seven months into the marriage afternoon on Sunday afternoon, I was watching a football game on TV. And it was right at the last, you know, couple minutes of the game, right, the crucial part of the game. And she walked in and walked over to TV and turned it off.

I said are you drunk?

She said no.

I said, well, then you better turn that TV back on.

And she said, I've been to my sponsors and my sponsor told me to tell you.

So I remembered something that a good friend of mine, Jack Pros, had said. He said, Sonny, you don't hit people in the program anymore.

I said what about my wife?

He said no cuz she's one of God's kids too. He's

said what you do is you tell them you're going to the store.

I'm not going no goddamn store. He said go to the store and I say what for? He said get some bread and milk

and don't come back.

So I went outside and she said where are you going? I said I'm going to the store,

she said what force? I'm gonna get some bread and milk, she said. We got bread and milk. That's normal. Get some different kind

so and I've got my car and I drove off. I haven't been back since.

It was so easy

and then she sued me for divorce and took me to court and I don't like to go to court.

I don't have much luck there,

and so I'm real nervous when I'm in court.

I had a good attorney. They told me don't worry about nothing. We take care of things, honey. So all right, her attorney came over and squatted down next to me where I was sitting, and he said, you got to sign these papers and I ain't signing up.

He said, yeah, you got to sign these papers. I said, fool, I'm going to tell you, get them papers. Get away from me.

He said it one more time, and I reached out and broke his nose.

The judge told me that he appreciated the entertainment in his courtroom that morning, but that he didn't have any other alternative. But give me 30 days in the county jail and

he gave me 30 days to county jail. That's probably best 30 days I ever done is easy. I had all my AAA books in there. Friends came to visit me putting money on the books and I smoked in. They brought me cigarettes. I never had it so good. I thought I was on vacation,

Laughter. And then I came back out to Alcoholics Anonymous and I tried not to see her too much. And now I see her every once in a while and when I see her, she will come up to me and say, did you find the store?

Not yet,

Not yet.

The old timers in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous spoon fed me this program. They wouldn't let me work these steps for the first three years,

they told me. Don't even think about them, stepson, I said. Why not? They said you got to get sweetly reasonable before you can get teachable,

and that's what they did. They taught me the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

They taught me the traditions of Alcoholics enough,

All those things, the 12 concepts. They taught me all that stuff that I thought was just a bunch of hood.

I had trouble with God.

You don't come from where I just came from and not have a problem with God.

And I had an old timer walk up to me and since let's go have some coffee, we went to have coffee.

He reached into his notebook and he gave me a piece of paper, sheet of paper and a pencil. And he said here, if you had a choice of a God, what would he be?

Write it down.

So I wrote down what I thought God should be,

and he said after I got done, he looked at and he read and he said, well can you live with that? And I said, yeah. He said well then good, that's your guy.

I thought, wow, that was easy,

but Are you sure?

And he said, yeah, you pray that that God sunny and it'll work. Another time I was at a meeting and I was talking about my God,

and this little old lady was sitting there and after the meeting she came up to me and she said, Sunny, I want you to go out the car with me. I got a book for you that I want you to read. And I said, oh man, I'm tired of reading books.

And she gave me a book entitled Your God is Too Small.

And I read that book.

And then she recommended another book,

Sermon on the Mount.

I read that book,

and today when I stand up and hold hands with everybody,

I know what we're talking about.

I know what that prayer means.

It ain't just a bunch of words. I've learned some things.

Yesterday Al was real nice and he took me to Yeah.

I had to threaten him, but.

Annie had stood up here and said something about and she didn't have a Valentine for that day. And I remembered something that a lady named Ruth Mathis, God bless her, who is dead now, taught me.

She taught me that when women didn't feel good.

Are on special occasions. If they're friends of yours, take them a flower.

And she told me don't go to the cemetery and get him either.

And I told her, well, they're free there.

So we went and got some flowers

and I gave one to Annie, I gave one to cricket

and I don't know how many of you

watched cricket last night

with that road.

I had the opportunity to talk to her this morning

before she left.

We have a very special bond, her and I,

a very special bond,

and I have that with so many people.

And it's all because of you people in this program who have taught me everything I know. Everything that I am today is because of you.

Good, bad or indifferent, it's because of you.

The women in the program taught me so much and still do. Still do.

Somebody said something to me last night about boy, you really going to have to turn it on tomorrow, Sonny, because you're behind all these women.

I guess I was supposed to feel intimidated by the women.

All them women are my friends.

Everyone of them that spoke are my friend.

No intimidation. Sharon and I've known each other for 20 years.

We don't see each other all the time, but we see each other enough.

I don't feel intimidated by anybody.

Yeah,

I'm not scared of anything.

And they said, well, coming from where you come from, I said no, that has nothing to do with what I'm scared of or not scared of.

Don't you understand? I have a God in my life today.

I have faith

and I know how to get in the God damn wheelbarrow.

I know how to get in the wheelbarrow.

That's trust.

I learned that here from you people.

I learned it from you people.

I have people come up to me and tell me, Sunny, I just don't know what to do.

This is going wrong and that's going wrong. And I said maybe you ought to go back and work the first three steps,

but that ain't got nothing. Why don't you go back and work the first three staff?

What's that guy? I said go back and work the first three steps. Is that so hard?

Get a pencil and a pee for the paper and set your ass down and work the first three steps,

and then I get a phone call.

Are you all right? Yeah. Did it work? Yeah.

And the only reason I know that it works is because that's what they told me.

I did it by experience

and working his death. So many people today do the Hazelton book,

write their steps in the Hazleton book and all that stuff. I didn't have a sponsor that was that God damn lazy.

They all told me we have the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and for you people that are dumb, there's the 12:00 and 12:00 that explains it.

And I used to get so mad because I didn't think that I was that dumb.

And so I worked. All those things

continue to work.

I had a real hard time with eight and 9:00

and I went to my sponsor and my sponsor at that time was a guy in the name of Mike Ross, who who passed on with the 49 years of sobriety.

And I told him, I said, Mike, I've got a real

dilemma here.

And he said, what's that, Sonny?

I said, how do I make these amends

for these people that I killed?

And he said, good God, I never thought about it.

He said, I really don't have an answer right now, but give me time and I will find out how we can do this. Not how you can do it, but how we can do it. Because if you notice it says we in there.

I don't see an eye in there anywhere.

And so about three months later, he came back to me and he said here,

and he gave me an address. He said I want you to go there.

You spend a weekend there every month

until things change.

You will know when you're forgiven.

And so I went out to this place and it was a place for abused children.

And I thought, what in the hell is this?

And I walked up there to the steps and there was this little boy that was about seven years old sitting there. And he said, are you sunny? And I said, yeah, who are you? He said, don't make no difference. And he walked up and kicked me on my shins

and he ran off and I chased that little shit down and I caught him and I kicked him in his back.

And so every Friday that I went up there, there he went,

same thing

month after month.

And finally one time I went up there and I went in the office and I told a woman to run that place. I said this ain't working, She says. What do you mean it ain't working?

I said, man, that's all we do is kick the shit out each other.

She looked at me and she smiled and she said, Sonny, where is he sitting? Every Friday that you come up here, sit down on the front porch waiting on it? She said, why do you think he's sitting there?

He knows exactly when you're coming.

This is a kid who had been stuffed in a closet for six years.

We became good friends.

I was there for 8 1/2 years

and I'm still looking from this for this sign

that everything's all right. One day

the people who were going to adopt this kid came up and I had bought him a horse and he was out riding. I taught him how to ride the horse, and he was out riding that horse.

And he came in and as he got in towards the corral, he stood up in the saddle and I hollered at him, Watch out, you're going to fall. And they got up to me and he said, that's all right, you'll catch me. And I said, bullshit, I ain't.

So he just leaned over and fell,

and that's where I reached out and got him

and he threw his arms around me

and he told me that he loved me.

And at that moment, I knew that I was forgiven.

And now it was up to me.

It was up to me

and him and I stay in touch all the time. He's with the family. He's kind of grown now.

Good kid. Hell of a kid.

And he keeps telling me the next time he sees me, he's gonna kick the shit out of me.

It's quite a character, quite a character,

and I keep thanking him for being in my life

because through him I've learned so much.

When I was in the penitentiary

I paid cartoons of cigarettes to get an education

and which is real simple in there. I had a friend that worked in education and I graduated high school and they made me the valedictorian and I woke the shit out of this dude done that because I didn't know what a valedictorian was

and it didn't sound like anything I wanted to be.

And then I got involved in a race riot and they locked me down for two more years

in a place called for a up at.

And while I was in there, there was a guy in there who was a is in protective custody and he was in there. He was a professor at UC Berkeley,

and so I he got me a associate arts degree,

and that was cool. I threatened to break his legs if he didn't, and then I told him I'd kill him if he didn't get me a correspondence and take it for me. And so he did.

He got it all done in adolescent psychology.

You got back at me when I left there,

I only needed nine more units for ABA degree

and I said, man, I ain't going to school.

Mike Ross told me, said I want you to go get that BA degree.

And so I went to Northridge

over in California

and got it and graduated on the Dean's last

with a 4.0.

Applied at UCLA for a masters

through the master's course and they gave me a four year scholarship

and I transferred it to University of Arizona.

And

at nights for the first couple of years that I was in Arizona, nobody knew what I was doing.

And sometimes during the day I went and I finally graduated and got my masters in adolescent psychology.

And in the next couple of years, I'm going to apply for my doctorate

and I'd like to work with kids

because that's all I am,

they said. How come you didn't have a hard time, Sonny?

I knew all that shit.

I never had an opportunity to grow up. Started drinking and using when I was 8. By the time I was nine, I was locked up for the first time.

I got to think that I was kind of a normal kid somewhere down there

and a school teacher that turned me on

through drugs and alcohol,

and I think that's when my growth stopped.

At nine years old, I was in juvenile hall, been declared an incorrigible 4 boys run up through that dorm and raped me

because I was crying. Two lessons that stayed with me for my life, for the rest of my life up until Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was that. If you cried, it was a sign of weakness and people would take advantage of it. And that's what happened that night.

Second one was that as I got up the next morning to walk down through there to go to the bathroom to wash my face, I couldn't hardly see because the eyes were beat so bad they were almost closed

and I haven't looked over in a closet there was a utility closing in. There was a mop bucket and it had a ring or a metal ringer on it and there was 2 screws holding the handle to that ringer. And I went in and got that ringer and it might handle off that ringer. And I went up through that dorm and I found them four boys. Second lesson I learned the more violent that you were, the more people left you alone.

If you wasn't scared of dying,

they left you alone.

And so that was to stay with me for an awful long time. Awful long time.

And in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I've learned so much. So much

all my life I ate with a tablespoon

and I came out of the penitentiary and I went on a date with this girl. It was a double date and it was a blind date.

She wanted to hold my hand

and I kept telling her quit,

I'm here and I ain't going nowhere. You got nothing to worry about,

she said. I just want to hold your hand. I said no,

she wanted to sit next to me in the car.

Why?

There's plenty of room back here for four of us.

I

it took a long time.

There was a young girl I used to go to a meeting over in North Hollywood called Chandler. It was that at recovery saying,

and there was a little girl there and her name was Lisa. And she used to come in and she'd sit next to me and she'd reach up and rub my neck

and it would just, oh God, it drive me crazy and I don't get your God damn hand off me.

And she said I'm just, I said just get your hand off me.

And we'd up interrupt the meeting sometime,

but she would do it every single day.

And then one day she didn't do it

and I looked better and said, is something wrong with you?

I took time to work myself into a lot of things,

went to that on that date and we went to a restaurant to overlook the ocean and all that stuff. And I thought, well, this is nice. I looked down at the table and there was silverware and dishes and I thought, what the shit is this?

And then I got scared and when I got scared I got mad and I jumped up and went outside and I was kicking on the tire somebody's car.

And luckily not luckily,

God doing for me what I couldn't do for myself.

Some guy walked out behind me and he said are you Sonny? And I said yeah. And he said are you alright? And I said no. He said what's the matter?

And I said it don't make no difference. I didn't want to tell you.

And he said he talked to me, Sonny, tell me what's going on. And I told him that I'd only ate with a tablespoon almost all my life, and I didn't know nothing about all them dishes and all that silver.

He said if you promise to come on back in here, me and my wife will come over and we'll sit down and we'll show you what all that shit's about.

And they did. And I still ate my meal with a tablespoon.

It is so much easier

where I came from. They don't give you knives and forks.

You can get them, but they don't. They don't give them to you.

And

I want to tell you that because of those kinds of things that happened in my early sobriety, today I can go anywhere, any restaurant, and I can sit down and I know where everything belongs. And if it ain't right, I put it right.

And I'm not scared,

not scared. And I go a lot of nice places.

Bill took me that some guys ranch out here somewhere

and on the edge of Texas and I was looking to see if we're going to fall off.

But it was a nice place, good food, and I unwrapped my silverware,

looked around to see how many people had theirs right,

and there was only one at the table that had it right,

and I put mine right.

Nobody knew what I was doing. Nobody.

These are little things that I noticed today.

I get up and I shave and I look in the mirror. It's sunny and I tell Sonny, you know what? I love you.

I truly do. I just love the hell out of you.

People would think that's crazy or egotistical and shit.

That's the things that you people taught me to do.

I love Sunny.

I love Sonny.

I love what you've made of Sonny, what God has done in my life.

I don't give a shit what anybody else thinks. Your opinion of me don't mean squat. If I leave here today and and you decide that I didn't like that guy, that's your problem, ain't mine. I'm going home and I'm going to sleep. I did what I was, you know I was supposed to do. I came up here and I told you my story.

I didn't come up here to talk to all of you

because I know that they told me a long time ago, Norm Alfie told me. Sonny, you're not talking to everybody.

You're talking to the one individual that God put in that room to hear your story.

And you know, I know today that I have a story of hope

as without hope you can't come from where I came from to where I'm at today. You don't do that,

and the hope comes from you people in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. What alcoholic sharing with another?

How do we know we're not different if we don't hear something?

I went to Huntsville Prison

to speak.

Oh, it's a nasty joint.

Tough old boys down a bunch of Cowboys

and I got up there. We were in the mess hall and I looked down and right over here was one of the biggest, blackest suckers I had ever seen in my life

and he must have had a hundred. 500 lbs of chain on

his ankles was scaffold. His hands was gaffled

and there was 3 goon squad standing around him and I knew that he was somebody special.

He was so damn big. He took up two chicks,

one for each cheek. And as I got to talk, and I talk a lot different in there than I do out here,

Yeah.

But as I got to talk and I hadn't looked down at that guy and there's big tears rolling down his cheeks, and I thought, Oh my God,

oh Lord, I hope this guy don't go off

now. I've seen that happen.

And then the little boys in my head said,

oh, don't be a fool.

What was it like when you heard what he's hearing?

How did you feel

when you heard Hope

for the first time?

And I want to tell you that I understood exactly what he was going to.

And after the meeting was over with Sted and they're talking with some people and stuff, and the warden walked up to me and he said Sonny said this guy would like to talk to you, man.

And so I said sure, no problem. And he said, have you ever even hugged by a black man?

Well, that ain't the word to use, but that's kind of cleaning it up Sunday morning.

And I said yeah,

he said, can I give you a hug? And I said, yeah, but you keep your hands on my shoulders, boy.

And he laughed.

He left,

so did I,

and we became free.

And he said can I write to you? And I said, yeah, you can get my address from the warden.

And so he started corresponding with me and I started writing him back. He wanted to take his steps. And I said OK, and he'd write his step and he'd send it to me and I'd write him back. And the next time I came to Texas to speak, I'd go down and sing.

We did that

and then I was coming over to Amarillo, and when at Amarillo, after Amarillo, I was going to go down to the prison the same again, and he had just finished his fourth step and he wanted to do his fifth step.

Warden called me and told me that they'd had a riot down there and he'd been killed,

and he said we'd like to have it come down anyway, Sonny, if you would.

I said sure.

So they sent a helicopter for me and I went down there and I went in. I talked to the guys and after his over went up to Warden's office and I stand there talking to Ward

and I was smiling and the warden says what's funny,

said it ain't funny.

I said he died free,

said Sonny. He was doing,

I said. You don't understand

the man died free inside

and until you know the workings of Alcoholics Anonymous, even those of you that are sitting here this morning, you will never understand that until you've finished your four step

because that's where the freedom comes.

I got on the plane and I was going home. And I fly a lot and a lot of stewardesses know me and there's a lot of monitor that are in our program, and

they take real good care of me on the plane. And

one stewardess walked over and I was sitting there and the tears were just running down my cheek. And she said, I'm next to me. And she said, are you all right? I said yeah, I'm OK.

What are you crying about? Said a friend of mine just passed away

and I said, but you don't understand.

These aren't tears of pain, these are tears of joy.

And she just looked at me kind of funny and got up and walked up and that's all right. She don't have to understand

it's important that I do.

And the next time I was in Texas was up in

Sherman, TX, eyes up at the borderline convention, and this black lady came up to me and she said Sonny. And I said yeah,

She said, do you know so and so? And I said yeah,

down in Huntsville, she said. That was my son

and I'd like to take you to dinner.

And we went to dinner.

I was just over in Oklahoma City. She was up there.

She brought her other son to meet me and I had a long talk with him.

You know,

there are times that I think that circuit speakers get to the point where they just don't want to go out there again when the phone rings and they say, will you? And you think, oh God, not again, Not again, you know,

And then something like that happened and

and you know why you're doing what you're doing.

And so you drag your ass up out of chair off that couch and you go.

You don't that airplane one more time and you go.

And once you get there, you're damn glad to be there.

Yeah, because of all the people that you know and the new people that you don't know but you get to know.

You know,

in Tulsa, OK, last year I went up there to speak and I had a major heart attack.

Yeah, jumpstart me about 3 different times

and I told God one time they had me come around there and I was laying there and in the emergency room at the hospital and I said, oh God, you didn't bring me to Tulsa, OK for this year.