The 22nd Annual Family South Bay Roundup in Torrance, CA

Thank you. Good evening, everybody. My name is Harvey Jason and I am a very grateful alcoholic.

Thank God for my sobriety today and the chance to live in a decent way. I thank God for the gift of life. Thank God for the gift of this life. And I thank God for bringing me to you and for giving you all to me and showing me what the promise of a beautiful life can be.

I want to especially thank the amazing Dave Barge, wherever he may be. He's everywhere. So I don't know where he is at this particular moment, but I want to thank him for everything. He is an absolutely amazing and unbelievable man and and a perfect example of Alcoholics Anonymous at its best. Thank you for the great honour of inviting me here to share with you, Dave.

Thank you. Thank you.

I also want to thank my host for his warmth and generosity. Al, it's it's a pleasure and I thank you. I'm sorry you never got to show me around LA, which I really wanted, but he refused.

But thank you. Thank you anyway. I want to thank Chris and in fact the entire committee for their hospitality and their generosity and all the gifts. I love swag. I love T-shirts, you know, I love coffee mugs. I love it all. And thank you very much, Chris. I tell you what I am. I am so grateful. It used to be I was only appreciative and grateful

for the big things. You know, if it was big, if it was a major importance to me,

it made me happy. I realize now in retrospect, it wasn't happiness I experienced so much as self gratification. That's what it was. Today I find more and more it's the small things. It's the little things that give me such such happiness, such joy. These clothes have never seen vomit.

That's. Yeah. They say there are no big deals. I mean, this is a big deal. I know. I know exactly where I parked my car. I could find it at a moments notice. I know where I spent the night. I remember everything. I was able several times in the last few days to navigate myself without help down the hall,

and through my acute mathematical powers I was able to ascertain as the numbers went up

where my room would be.

I am so appreciative of these things because it wasn't always like that. It really wasn't, you know, I don't know

when the world stopped revolving around me, but I believe honestly, it happened when I was brought by God into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the first directives or suggestions that I was given when I came in was that the guy said to me, he said, listen, Harvey

is forget about yourself. Absolutely forget about yourself. Put yourself on the back burner. You're so self obsessed. All you think about is yourself. Forget it, think about other people. And it seemed following that it seemed that just the bat of an eye when the next person said to me, listen, I want you to come to this meeting, get on the podium and for 45 minutes talk about yourself.

And I thought, I really don't know this when I got into here. It all seems so ironic and so and actually

it's puts me in mind of a story which I'm going to share with you, which I particularly like about a guy who who goes to Dodger Stadium and he walks in the stadium and it's packed. There are 45,000 people all taking their seats. And the guy looks around, he finds his seat, he starts to sit down and suddenly he hears a booming voice, Larry, Larry, Larry. And he looks around and it's impossible to see start to sit down again. Again he hears Larry. Larry

gets up again and he looks and he looks the cells that bleaches. Nothing sits down again, Larry, this goes on 3456 times and he's getting very, very annoyed and very, very frustrated. Finally sitting down the 9th time, here's Larry like he gets up, he stretches his arms to the heavens. He says, for God's sake, my name is not Larry.

This is,

this is an autobiographical story. This is the story of my life.

You know, I, I say that, that I am a grateful alcoholic and my gratitude is quite literally boundless. But the very first time I heard somebody get up to a podium who was a woman and say I'm a grateful alcoholic, I thought the woman was hideously deranged.

I couldn't understand why anybody would be grateful to be an alcoholic. Now it's quite the opposite.

If I were not an alcoholic, I would be deprived of the most rewarding life, the most rewarding spiritual life it's possible to imagine. I have been given a life through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous that I could never have even conceived in my wildest fantasies, dreams, hopes or expectations.

And so much of that is due, of course, to the 12 steps of working the steps as well as I can

and sponsoring people and being sponsored. But so much of it is due to the warmth and the embrace of all of you. I didn't know people like you existed. I really didn't. And this weekend, this is my very first time at a roundup. It's my very first time here. And just the exuberance, you know, the, the wonderful embrace of everybody everywhere you go, from the the bathrooms to the halls to the banquet halls, Arms are out, hugs are waiting, you know, smiles are there. And I am such

creature of habit that it dawned on me, there's an inherent danger here. There's a built in problem. I am so reflexive that I thought, well, supposing I take it all to heart and then the next time I'm in LA at home and have to go to a public men's room and put out my arms

and smile at the guy at the next urinal,

I'm in relatively big trouble. So I have to, I have to watch that.

But I do learn from each and every one of you. I have been given such love. There are people here that I haven't known for all that long, and yet I would be hard put to imagine life without, you know, people like like Andy Alcoholic and people like Rocky and people like Dave Barge and people like Jerry Summers. The courage and the bravery of these men, they exemplify the very, very best of humankind.

I will tell you now in a general way what I used to be like

and what happened to what I am like now and what

I intend to be like hopefully for the rest of my days on planet Earth and beyond.

I didn't, I didn't come to to alcohol until quite late in my life actually, but I'll start at the beginning. I was, it's a fitting by the way, that I'm here on the 4th of July, the 4th of July. Independence Day strikes a chord with me, which is why it really does. I was terribly moved the opening night at the color guard of the Marines. And whenever, in truth, whenever I hear the Star Spangled Banner,

America is beautiful, I get I get goosebumps. And Michael sang it so beautifully the other day. You see, I'm from England and in England on the 4th of July, they taught us that we won the war. So it's a little bit difficult.

Well, this is ironic too. Never. I see a glass at a meeting of Alcoholics. And I would say myself, you know, brings to mind an optimist is someone who sees the glass as half full, and the pessimist is someone who sees the glass is half empty and the alcoholic sees the glass as completely redundant.

I, I was born in London, England during the Second World War.

Seems like prehistoric times at this point. You know, somebody actually said to me, I had the fortune, good fortune, shared a meeting a couple of months ago and I said that and afterwards somebody said the Second World War. Wow. Was that after the Civil War?

Another, another illustrious example, another illustrious graduate of our superb educational system? It's amazing, isn't it? Isn't it

so? I was born during the war and I

actually our house in London was destroyed by AV2 rocket. And for those of you who may not know, this V2 rocket business was designed by a German scientist called Wernher von Braun. And Wernher von Braun wrote a book about his experiences, biography, autobiography and it was called I Aim at the Stars. And I have always thought that it needed a subtitle and I had always thought it should be called I Aim at the Stars. But sometimes I hit London

anyway. Our our house got bombed. Which is not why I became an alcoholic. I, I was, I was, I was an infant. I survived. I think

I was born to a wonderful parents and grew up in an observant Jewish Home, very enlightened home. I'm an only child, terribly close with my parents, a mother who adored me

and whom I adored, and I know that most of us hear all of us. I dare say no, that alcoholism knows no bounds, knows no social parameters, economic lines, knows no nationality, no religions, no races, both sexes. And so it is not imperative to have had an abused or deprived or difficult or tragic childhood. And my childhood was so beautiful in in every way that it was totally idyllic,

really idyllic. And everything good that I learned, my mother tried to impart to me. I was a difficult student, I suppose, because I didn't absorb everything, or I should say I absorbed it, but I didn't put things into practice. But my mother instilled in me a love of the arts and a love of poetry. And what strikes me in retrospect these days, and my mother, bless her, has been gone now for 28 years, is that so many of the expressions with which I grew up that I learned from her

are platitudes that we know here. She said one day at a time, she loved the serenity prayer. To thine own self be true was a favorite of hers. And most of us today don't realise that that particular line from Shakespeare is followed by another line and it runs to thine own self, be true. Thou canst not then be false to any man. And I subscribe to that. I was for most of my life such a liar

and such a cheat and such a fraud,

such a true pretentious

piece of rubbish.

And I was forced not only to myself, but to other people. And I not only lied with abandoned and with relish 'cause I love lying. It just made, yeah, I, I was really good at lying, you know, and I, I just loved it.

But I believe my own lies, you know, that's, that's another danger to all of that, to being the kind of person that I was.

I grew up and when I was in 2-3 years old, all the children in England, in London I should say, had to be moved out of the city to the country because of the bombing, the heavy, the heavy bombing raids.

And, and so I was moved to boarding school. And in fact it was a, it was a boarding school that heretofore had been an all girls school. And I was save your laughter, please. I was in the first shipment of boys to go there. There were only four or five of us. I think there were five boys, little boys. I was like 3 years old and I have

the three memories that are so vivid and this the 1st, I'll go back because the first of these memories and I think through my four step, they all bear relevance on what has happened to me today. The first of these memories occurred

at my very earliest recollection and I was about 18 months old and I was in the bathroom of our house in London. And my mother had just given me a bath. And there was a rocking chair in the bathroom and she had me wrapped in a big warm, fluffy towel and I was on her lap

and her arms were around me

and I felt so protected and so loved

and so cherished and so safe. And today I can feel her arms around me. I can feel the humidity and the warmth in that bathroom. It is a very, very vivid memory. And to me it is a treasured 1. The second one of these three memories occurred when I was about, I think it was my 4th birthday and my parents gave me a party and all the kids came, you know, and they were all little boys

is all well behaved little bastards really. But they all came, you know, and they all shook hands and little girls, the little curtsies, you know, this was another age, ladies and gentlemen and, and it gave me presents and I thought I was the star of the show, you know, I really felt very, very important. And the third of these memories occurred at this boarding school. And since I was one of these five little boys and I was no more than five years old, younger really.

And they're all bunk beds, dormitories style, you know, and all the girls, and during the night,

all the girls would Take Me Out of my bed and they'd pass me from girl to girl and they'd cuddle me and touch me. And this is a fantasy I've been chasing for years.

It's in truth,

but but but these three memories, you see mean to me that there was a sense that I was entitled to be loved. I had a sense of entitlement and love was crucial to me. So when I grew older and got into my teens and realized that I wasn't handsome and I wasn't tall and I wasn't athletic, in spite of the fact I had a good deal of hair at that point,

didn't mean anything. But I wasn't all of these things. And I needed that love. I wanted that love. I would thrive on that love. So I had to devise for myself. And again, all of this is a retrospective analysis, of course, but I had to do something, be someone to get you all to love me. I didn't care about being admired. I didn't care about being respected. I wanted adoration.

And So what that compelled me to do was to be a different person with each of you.

So I hadn't successfully. I had no true identity of my own. I'd be with somebody and I knew what instinctively what I was supposed to be with them. And I'd do that. I'd be serious with one person. I'd be funny with another person. And after a while, after many, many years of this, it occurred to me one day I didn't know who I was. I was a comedian, which is the nice way of saying that I was an abject fraud

and that's not a nice place to be

at age 19. My mother had encouraged my independence and I left home at 17 and I got to knew I was in New York at age 19. Now at this point and I was pursuing a career which had already been defined for he predicated on the fact that I needed to be adored by lots and lots of strangers. It doesn't make a lot of sense. That is the way I am. That is the way I was. So I'm in New York.

I'm living with a woman who's a few years older than I am. And this to me, is how alcoholism works. I had not yet

begun my misadventures with booze. Didn't happen actually really late. I mean, I didn't start drinking alcoholically until I was in my 20s. But I was an alcoholic, and I suffered from advanced alcoholism.

And when I was in New York, it occurred to me in a moment of terrific clarity, this was at the time when Fidel Castro in Cuba was leaving Oriente Province and he was going to take over the country. And I knew with assurance, absolute certainty, that he needed my help.

This is not a joke. This is not a fantasy. I was convinced that Fidel Castro needed me.

He needed Harvey Jason to make this political adventure work. Now

I decided, and I said to my girlfriend, we've got to get down. We'll hitchhike. We have no money. We'll get down to Key West and we will take a banana boat and we will get to Cuba and then we will go up into the hills of Oriente Province where they'll be waiting for me and I will get on my horse. I didn't know how to ride or anything. I will get on my horse and Fidel Castro, his brother Rael, Che Guevara and Harvey Jason,

we'll ride down through the streets of Havana and people will throw garlands of flowers and we'll take over the country. Now, in truth, I know nothing about Cuban history. I don't speak Spanish. I don't really like Cuban food,

but I was absolutely convinced that this was crucial for me to do crucial. And we hitchhiked down, down to Florida. And by the time we got to, we got down there to Key West, all the banana boats, all the boats had closed. We were not allowed to get there. So we're stuck in Key West, FL, No food, no money. I did the only sensible thing. I helped my girlfriend look for a job

and

I got her a job and, and then we, we, we stayed there for a while and, and I wasn't comfortable and I thought my, my political career was in shambles. There was nothing about me in the papers. It was a catastrophe as far as I was concerned. And ultimately, we hitchhiked back to New York.

Shortly thereafter I I got married. Another misadventure, but,

and I've since stopped believing, I don't believe any longer in love at first sight. To me, you know what? I think love at first sight is simply a side effect of serious drinking.

Anyway, I, I got married to this lady and she really had she, it was a terrible thing for her to have married me. She was very beautiful and she was also English and she was very sexy and she was very socially well connected, very wealthy. And as far as I was concerned at that time, she didn't have a brain in her head. It's a matter of fact, she was an extremely brilliant woman. It was me that didn't have a brain in my head the last time.

It was a quick marriage, it was a couple of years, and that was it. As a matter of fact, the last image she had of me, the very last time she ever laid eyes on me, was when I was in a drunken collapse between the cases, the luggage place at JFK in New York. And in fact, I can still see her looking down at me

with a look of intense disgust.

And that was a look with which I have become intimately familiar over the years. But I, I remember that. I'll tell you something else. When I, she was a terrifying woman, because before I met her, when I first met her, I thought she was really tough, you know, really proper, very proper English word, you know, it wasn't until we got to know each other and so forth, I realized she was very sensitive and she was very innocent. And that was just a protection. She was insecure. Well, when I

was going to make amends,

this was the one that I really was terrified to do. And I did not know where she was. She had been involved as a ballet teacher in one of the big ballet companies in Europe. And I didn't know where she was. And I tried to locate her and couldn't do so. Excuse me. My younger son, who is much more proficient at the computer than I am, got on the computer. And through a couple of lengthy processes, he was able to track her down, which was not really what I wanted because I was, you know, I was really scared.

And so I, I got by myself. I collected what few thoughts remained in my head and I dialed the number and my heart was pounding and there was no answer. So I was off the hook. So I waited a bit. And then I I dialed again sometime later and the phone was picked up and there was this voice,

stern and ice cold, but exactly the same as I remembered, but older.

And she picked up the phone and I hear hello.

And it took me a second and I said,

Helen,

She said, yes, who is this? And I said, well, actually, I said, Helen, it's nice to hear your voice, and who is this? I said, I had some funny thing. It's been a very long time. I said this is really a voice from the past.

You don't really sort of have any idea who this is.

It's been years, you know? And then she got angry. She said, look, who is this? Tell me who it is. I'm putting the phone down. I said, well, actually it's Harvey.

And there was a very long pause

and she said 3 words. How utterly bizarre.

So I said, listen, I said, I'll tell you why I'm calling you. I said, I'm at the point of my life where I'm, I'm really trying to clean up some dreadful behaviour of mine. And you know, I said I, I just, I wonder what I can do. I said, I gave you such a dreadful time, such a horrific time. I, I was just so awful. I was a wretched, dreadful husband. And I really, she said, no, no, you weren't. I said no, no, I was, I was dreadful, faithless husband. And there was another long pause. And she said,

What do you mean, faithless?

But you know what? She had such generosity of spirits that she saved me because of the honesty of me. What? I can't hurt her? And she said, no, no, they said, never mind, never mind. She said we were both very young and passionate and so forth. And I thought, what a wonderful, what a wonderful response. What a truly generous reaction to somebody who wants to make amends.

I have since, by the way, remarried and have been married for a very long time. Not long enough. Last November the 29th, it was 35 years.

And my darling Pamela, my love with all my heart, has given me two gorgeous sons, now adults 30 and 34, and she stayed with me all of this time. And she's a devoted member of Al Anon, which I love.

You can only imagine what I've put up with all these years.

In fact, I went to my very first Al Anon meeting today and and got a great deal out of it. Really a great deal out of it. I went to the Alanon luncheon and I'm most appreciative. I think that Al Anon is a lifesaving program. It's an absolutely another miraculous way of life and I know for sure that

that my life would be totally different if my wife hadn't gone to Al Anon with my sons. In fact, I knew nothing about Al Anon and my wife many years ago took my two sons to Al Anon. I didn't know what it was and I was out there. And then one day I found out what it was and I came home and I said to her, you know what? I said, oh, you are really gullible. I said, I'll tell you something. I have just found out

where you've been going with the boys and what Al Anon is. You don't even know this, I said. Alan On

is a program for people who have an alcoholic in their family.

We don't have any Alcoholics,

but I sincerely believe this. Well, I say I did. I didn't really. I have to tell the truth or otherwise my wife or hop up. And yeah, he's lying. He's lying. But I, I, I, I love her. I love what Alanon has done selfishly, what Alanon has done for me and the growth that I have seen in my sons and in certainly in, in Pamela. It's, it's wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful. We have a marriage which is

blissful, Blissful.

And it's all predicated on the fact that both of us practice the steps, that both of us practice this way of life, this gloriously fulfilling way of life with each other and in all of our affairs. So here's what happened. I

I drank once in a while and I had no real reason to drink at that point because everything seemed to be going my way.

I had an opportunity to come out to California to do some work, to do a job. And I should preface this by saying that in spite of these outward manifestations of bravado and self-confidence that I managed to to show through the years inside me, I was riddled with fear. I have always had that terrible, terrible combination

for me of insecurity, feelings of inferiority, and grandiosity.

So the worse I feel about myself, the more bravado will I exhibit,

the most fearful I am about making any decisions,

the more outwardly confident I appear to be.

In fact, I realize that because I was, for so many, many, many years, so riddled with feelings of inferiority

and so penetrated so very deeply with fear that I perceived everything differently. I was totally irrational. Now, if I perceive things differently, if a waiter brings me coffee and it's not quite hot enough, I wonder why he hates me so. It's all about me. It's all about me and what I perceive. And I have come to realize

that because I perceive things which are not real,

my responses are going to be predicated on these false beliefs. And because my responses are going to be so irrational, the results of my actions will be awful, Will be awful. But what do I expect? I'm a living lie. I'm walking around living a lie. So I get called out to California to come and do a job

and I'm invited to a dinner party, very important dinner party, which I thought was a dinner party. I was too naive to realise that these things are really invariably they are business affairs. So I go out there and there's a lot of important people at this dinner party. And my host, I love telling jokes. I know thousands of jokes, I love telling jokes. And my host knew this. And I suppose in a way I was invited there also as sort of the the free entertainment. So

sitting there and I'm totally intimidated. I feel this high. I'm, I'm frightened. I want to crawl under the table and I want to run home back to my hotel

and he's looking at me

and I am struck. Literally mute. Mute. I couldn't. I was so fearful I could not make a sound and I tried and nothing, nothing would come out of my mouth.

I was frightened. I wanted to run out of that door and I wanted to destroy myself.

Before I had come to California, some friends of my parents owned a company called Bola Wine, and the guy said to me, when you get out to California, he said, just give me your address, whether the hotel, I'll send you a couple of cases of wine. I said thank you. I went back to my hotel and the wine was there and I thought, my God, I'm just nothing. I'm just so I felt awful. Awful doesn't say it, but I'm sure that you people with your sensitivity know exactly how I felt and what I mean. I went back and I opened up a bottle of wine

and I guzzled that bottle of wine down.

And when I had that first bottle of wine, I thought, you know what? Really and truly, it was only one evening. You know, it wasn't that bad.

And then I opened a second bottle of wine and I guzzled that bottle down faster than the first bottle. And then I thought to myself, you know what? These people were lucky that I went there in the first place.

But you see, then I had my elixir. Then I knew exactly what to do because for me at that point, at that time, that was the truth. That really was the truth. So I thought, OK, well this is quite cool. Now, this was not a conscious decision on my part,

but I knew instinctively and, and what followed was instinctively when I was in a position of difficulty, OK, it wasn't wine, it was vodka. Out came the vodka bottle. Out came the bottles, out came the gallons and the half gallons and so forth. And, and I had my my life's medicine

and I didn't drink every day. In fact, maybe every other day, but I didn't drink every day. I'm not a common drunk, you understand.

I'm worse.

But what I did was I drank for three decades, 30 years, and I drank that booze

until the booze drank me. And while I have heard a couple of magnificent speakers here over the last couple of days, Karen and Ralph,

who have had some really, really tragic occurrences,

my losses were not their losses. And while I didn't lose material things, I still had my house, I still had my wife and my children, still had my work.

But I lost the one thing

which is so very, very crucial and so very, very precious and so very, very vulnerable and easy to lose.

I lost all self respect

and I lost my soul.

I lost my soul,

and so my perception of my world was a dark one.

It was dark and it was pessimistic

and it was morose,

and while on the outside work was fine, there were times when it wasn't quite so fine. So I drank more during those times.

But I have a study in the back of my house and I would go home

and I would lock myself in the study where I'd hidden all my booze

and I would drink myself into oblivion.

And then I'd managed to come out for dinner. When the boys were growing up, Pamela and the boys would sit at the table

and they never knew who was going to come out of that room.

And to this day

I can see

the look of total disappointment in Pamela's eyes,

and I can look back and with great vivid recollection.

I can see the look of bewilderment in the eyes of my sons, and the look of fear. And I was never at any time physically abusive.

But it's the mouth. It's the mouth. My mother used to say words are like birds. They fly away and you can't take back

what you said today. I would give anything to take back some of the things that my sons have heard me say. I can't do that, of course. So what I can do is what you've taught me to do, to live a living amends, to be the best person I can.

I have done things that to me are absolutely disgusting and reprehensible beyond words. I am. I remain an observant Jew and my Judaism is precious to me. And for me, the essence of Judaism is the same. It's the essence of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's the same 4 words. Do the right thing, do the right thing. And at one point

I was in synagogue

and I was leading the service in Hebrew

and I was reeking of alcohol.

And I stood there when this awareness hit me

with a solid thought that here I am in the House of God

and I'm drunk.

And I left

and I felt so wretched. I felt lower than dirt. I felt so appalling until the next morning. And it didn't stop me. And I kept going and going and going. And, you know,

when one lives with someone else and one drinks,

what I would do, I would, I would have a Bible in the study. And I've always been a book collector. And I have lots of floor to ceiling bookcases and all the books raised to hide my, my bottles, you know, behind the books. And I would come in on a daily basis and Pamela will have pulled out books all over the place looking for bottles, you know,

and, and So what I would do. And I didn't know how to get rid of the empties. You know, it was just,

I would gift wrap them, no

as so many bottles. I would buy gift wrapped paper and brown butcher's paper. I'd throw gifts of empty bottles of vodka on neighbor's lawns, you know, And

there were so, so many, many, many times when I had big packages, you know, and I'd go to the post office and, and, and I would take these big packages. And every time I would try to open the thing and push the packages in. It seemed at each opportunity people were watching me like I was a terrorist sending bombs into the thing, you know? But I used to go to three different liquor shops because God forbid I'd go to the same one and people would think I might have had some sort of a drinking problem.

So I went to one. I always carried a shoulder bag

and in the shoulder bag I would come home with two bottles of Heineken. I don't like beer really, but I have two bottles of Heineken. But in the bag would be like, you know, a quarter vodka, 1/5 of vodka. So I went one of the places was a Thai place, a Thai family owned it. And as one walked in behind the counter were all the liquor bottles and to the right were the freezers with the beer and so forth. And I would go in, I would take get my 2 bottles of Heinekens out of there because I'd say to Pamela, this is, this is all I'm having.

I take the 2 bottles of beer. I put them on the counter. And then the the woman, the Thai woman would come and she'd say that's it. I say, no, wait a minute, what did she want?

And I did this all the time. And then I'd say, what is that? Is that the clear one? That's that one, the big one there. And then I would take that bottle. I put it in my shoulder bag. Then I come home with two bottles of beer and I'd say to Pamela, this is it. And no joke, I promise you there's 2 bottles of beer.

And then I would go into the study and I'd finish like, you know, half a quart before dinner. And then I'd have the beer. So the smell of the beer would stay on my breath. And then I'd come out. Invariably Pamela would say to me, look at you, 2 beers. I mean, you can hardly stand. And I would say in all innocence, you know what, I have no tolerance.

That's just the way it is. I can't, I can't take it anymore, you know. And then I would go to these other two places, the Sambi Market and 1/3 doors down, and they were run by Iranian and Iranian family. And I'd go to one like on a Monday, go to the Thai place on Tuesday, go to the other Iranian place on Wednesday. Well, I did the Iranian thing one day. And then two days later I went back to the other Iranian place. And it seemed to me it was the same Iranian guy from the place two days before.

It took me the longest time to realize it was a family business.

It was the same people in both,

but

but what what ultimately happened was in in the bathroom of the study at home, which used to be a maid's room in bath. I'd no longer needed the bathtub. So I had a, a cabinet maker come over and get beautiful piece of, of work. And he put oak over and he enclosed the tub in this great oak case. One day I'm in the bathroom and I'm thinking to myself, you know, if I could pry up the top of this bathtub,

I would have a perfect place for the empties.

So I waited until Pamela and the boys were out of the house. And then I got out my toolbox. And it took me virtually an hour and a half, as I recall. And I finally got this, this huge oak slab up and I had a virgin bathtub, you know, and I thought, this is absolutely fantastic. I mean, I, I felt I deserved the Pulitzer Prize. I really did

well from then on. Pamela was mystified.

You know, she, the books would all be in disarray. And I'd come in and she'd come into the study and always the same thing.

What is this? And let's say what? What? And she couldn't figure it out. Well, one day I was coming home and I put the key in the front door. Excuse me, to open the lock. And the door opened by itself. And standing there was Pamela and my father, both of them looking very serious.

And I, both of our sons have medical problems.

And I thought something had happened to one of the boys. I said what's the matter? And they both didn't say it, just said come on. And I go, I had no idea I'd go through the house. As we get to the back,

I thought, Oh no,

oh this couldn't possibly be.

And sure enough, we go into the study and into the bathroom.

The top of this tub is up. And in this bathtub are dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of bottles, quartz and gallons and half gallons of miniatures and pints and fifths and a half almost to the top, bottles and bottles and bottles. And my father very quietly said, what's this?

I mean, what does one say? So I said, you know,

why would the neighbors come over and do something like this to me?

I mean, really

a shocking, shocking thing.

But you know what?

Nothing stopped me and

and I kept drinking and drinking and the world looked really glum to me and I cannot tell you why I drank other than I was so despondent. I was so miserable. I felt useless. And the more I drank, the more useless I in fact was. I just was morbidly, morbidly depressed. I never wanted to get out of bed. I would wake up in the morning. You know that feeling. A lot of you know that feeling.

My mouth pacing of the carpet and my head throbbing, my hands shaking. The shakes, the shakes, the shakes.

And I wanted to pull and did pull the sheets over my head and just stay in bed because everything was bleak.

And it never dawned on me that I'm the one who had made it so bleak. And although I believed in God,

I bargained with God. I chose to use God when God would benefit or could benefit me. I never really, really spiritually connected with God. It was, I'll do this for you if you give me this or I'll be really, I mean, I'll do this. Sometimes I didn't even verbalize it and sometimes I did. I had a Bible in the study and sometimes I would go in there and I'd put my hand on that Bible and I'd say, dear God, I swear I will not drink today.

And I didn't drink that day. And the next day I'd go into the study, I'd walk to the Bible, and I'd say, you know what?

I'm not gonna drink today. I don't have to do this. And I didn't. And of course I would drink. And I drank and I drank. And it seemed like it was just a living hell. And the occupation which I had enabled me to be fortunate enough to really go all over the world and I could see places and have adventures,

a seat that I could never see or go to before. But no matter where it was, you know, whether it was Australia, whether it was Thailand,

wherever it was, the first thing that dawned on me was nothing to do with the place, but oh wow, now I can go and I can drink without Pamela looking over my shoulder. When I wasn't drinking, I was obsessed with drinking, obsessed with it. And I had an opportunity

to work with, well, not even arguably to work with the most famous film director in the world. I'm not saying this to in any way to brag

and it was a great opportunity for me

and although I was excited about it,

it was secondary to the fact that I could go there and I could drink. I didn't want him to see me drinking,

but the booze affected my work performance unquestionably. And the director happened to be what I now know is called an enabler. And so he would say, you know, it's so good that you can feel so comfortable. And you know,