The 13th annual Inland Empire Roundup in Riverside, CA

Fantasy from Los Angeles.

My name is Clancy Emma Flynn. I'm an alcoholic.

You always feel a little odd when they

newcomer with five days sober looks healthier than the guy with 46 years

the Christ. They get a black eye or something.

But I'm glad to be here tonight. I, I want to just say something. I didn't want to say it, but God has asked me to say it. And Bill Wilson

in the mid, mid 1960s up the San Fernando Valley, there's no guy named Bill Davidson. And he was kind of a crazy old guy and he had strong opinions. What it was that everyone in a should be anonymous not from the public but from each other, you know

and when they would read the traditions he would whisper along with him. He'd say principles before personalities. You hear that then say shut up Bill not going to shut up. And this would after a while than three or four young guys I knew bucks I sponsored one of them began mocking Bill and they would say principles before I pressed down. Is that right Bill? He's shut up, not going to shut up. I just went on for a little while and then guy from the Sylvan Seed Roast group came over one night and spoke and heard this and thought of some new spiritual

facet of a A and took it back to this. And they began saying principles before personalities. They never do. Why you said it? And for about 20 years in the mid San Fernando Valley, there's four groups, or so we used to call them. The chancers would say principal before personalities. Why do you say that? I don't know if that's what we do here.

And that was all right. Good kind of a joke. New people behind the post. You don't know what you're missing. I had a great looking tie on but

I'm about I'm about 6 foot forward. I got blonde curly hair.

But anyway, some other court got out of the bottle. Then pretty soon you heard in Burbank somebody saying principal for personalities. What are you saying that I don't know?

And little by little other several places you hear a lot of places and the irony of it all, what started part of their format is to say specifically, please do not chant.

But if you're new tonight, I want to tell you that you're seeing a phenomenon because now they do it at the end of chapter five. He did it after that Chapter 5, probably would do it after the promises too, if they knew what they were.

But I have no objection to your chanting. If you want to chat, that's what it has nothing to do with. Aid is done nowhere else in the world. But if you like to do that. But I'm just talking to the new people, the people who are standing up recently. If you've been here a long time, six months or so, you're probably so set in your ways there's no way to get to you.

But

you're your first few weeks. You don't have to chant. Has nothing to do with a a means nothing. All you're doing is mocking Bill Davidson in the in the San Fernando Valley, and he's been dead since 1971.

All right, that's the end of that.

Yeah, it worked.

But I know you've had a good day today. I've got a good report on it. I wanted to get out here and I had to work a little later than I thought it did and and then the traffic coming on LA was really bad this afternoon for some reason. I want to especially get out and hear Sherry Ann talk on the steps and I know she's up to two now and I guess she got to winged it after that,

but she's a

but I will. I'm going to get a set of these tapes from our taper and I do a lot of traveling on the freeway now. Listen to them one by one as I travel along and if I find any errors, I'll call up the speaker and tell them.

But we do have a lot of new people here deaf for some reason. They're thinking about the new people that empathize with them a little bit because that was new off and on for a long time. And the, it's kind of hard as they say, you know, you're home now, you're not so different. And it's very hard to accept that because you look around, you are different, you look different, you feel different. There's all kinds of people, your sizes, shapes and colors and religions and everybody got a different drinking story to 1° or another. And there's really, you wonder, what the hell do I have in common with these people?

Could you talk to somebody? They, they haven't done what you've done and you haven't done what they've done. And what do we have in common?

And that's at all was a puzzlement to me. I, I had a great deal of difficulty to identifying an A and I came to a A as a young man came to as a young man. And I didn't feel like it applied to me. If the first three steps of AE always turned me off, I thought they turned me off completely because my problem isn't really alcohol and I can't return to God and some drug return my life over to God. That doesn't work. Some of the other steps look pretty good, but those three are rotten and I

after I sober this time

for a while. I must have heard chapter 3 read 50 times over the years.

I'm not sending anymore child support. No,

I thought, she's coming this way.

You never can tell when you get out around Riverside what's going to happen next.

I do want to say something that reminds me of something that you

I'm I've been coming out to Riverside for 40 years.

Reference what he was a young sharp guy. I'm getting a little old and feeble down weak. And I was telling somebody before the meeting, you know, I now go into Hollywood singles bars and grew up to pretty young girls and say

hi there. Do I come here often?

Some years ago when I guess when I turned 70 that my start, my doctor started giving me iron tablets, which I guess is for your blood. I don't know what it's for but something. And I'm going to take these iron tablets for a lot of years and then few months ago. I don't want to give the wrong and don't want to tell you why this happened, but something stimulated me. I tried a Viagra

and I didn't know that if you're taking iron tablets, you're not supposed to take Viagra.

And now every six hours I face north.

I'm sorry

all all of that started because that girl got up with a baby. Don't do that again. Anyway,

Prime Minister Chapter 3 read several to many times over the years and I read it a few times. I read the book never just some more of the stuff in the book kind of dull and we're all sober while and I get the young man that I just give the book to. I told him something that will sound strange I suppose, but I told him this isn't going to make sense for a while. Just have confidence it will sooner or later get smarter every year.

But first, it's dumb

and it was dumb to me at first, but that chapter three really in a real sense

tells you if you're new, some things that you have in common with us, not a superficial level, but at a real deeper level. One of the things they talk about.

Let me say one more thing. Let me qualify one more thing. There seems to be types of Alcoholics. Nobody ever knows what they are. I mean, never been described much. But there seems to be a type of alcoholic who by any measurement is an alcoholic. And something happens severely stringent to threaten his security and he or hers and maybe lose a job or lose a family or death in the family or something. And they quit and they never drink again. And we all know if cases like that, we hear of those cases,

there's another group of people who have become physically addicted to alcohol as well as psychologically addicted.

And these are the people for whom treatment centers were originally created to medically withdraw these people because it really is a alcoholic addiction is a lethal, fatal thing, can be medically withdrawn. And each step of the way they point out the nature of their problem and they quit and they never drink again. There's a hospital up in in Seattle specializes these kind of people called the Chick Shadel Hospital. And they talk about in 30 days they can cure your alcoholism. And they do. They got a long list of people they've helped.

Then there's another type of alcoholic who seems to be an alcoholic by any measurement, and they are. Something stringent happens to threaten their security. They lose a family or a job or somebody death or something, and they quit.

But they always eventually drink again. And these same people come out of treatment centers with tears of sincerity rolling down their cheeks and they mean it. And they say I quit no more. And they always eventually drink again. And these are the people who always been just a baffleman to everyone who tried to help them. Their records of 5000 years of this type of alcoholic of people at one time they thought they were possessed by devils. They put them to death and they flogged them and sent them away and all sorts of things.

And the other type of people who fills rooms like this now, we don't get flogged so much. We don't get killed so much anymore. But we've all, most of us have had the experience of seeing in the face of someone who loves us, that terrible look of disappointment again.

Oh, how could you? You were doing so well and you were really, and the kids were doing better and we, you got your job back and now look at you, you drunk again. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? And when that happens, and you, if you're like me, you get that feeling, you just, I feel as bad as they do and I can't explain anything. So I just say shut up and leave me alone because I don't know what to say. It's a terrible thing. And they think I don't care. And I don't know how to explain to them that I care so much. I can't stand it,

but this type of alcoholic,

these are the people who gather in these rooms. As I say, when Bill Wilson wrote this book, Alcoholics Anonymous, he didn't know great deal about the kinds of Alcoholics, but he talks about Alcoholics of our type. Alcoholics of our Alcoholics of our type are people who don't stay sober no matter what you do. And that's what's so baffling about it. And in Chapter 3, it talks a little bit about what these Alcoholics are like.

All of us seems to Alcoholics of our type seem to somewhere along the line have voluntarily or involuntarily accepted the obsession that somehow someday I will control and enjoy my drinking. And it says the persistence of this illusion is astonishing, Many of us pursued in the gates of insanity and death. And it talks about none of us wish to admit we're different. And we,

although deep in our hearts we know we're more different than anybody,

and we have occasional brief recoveries. We've all had those

getting better now, followed always by still worse relapse. We've all had those that they wouldn't. We wouldn't be here. And we keep drinking and fighting it. And you get to that. What a delicious little crisp praise till you reach a stage of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Remember when I first read that, I thought that's how drunk you get. But that isn't what that is at all.

That's how you feel after you get sober again, after having been drunk again. And they want some answers for me, for my behavior. And I haven't gotten the answers for him.

And then he talked that funny little paragraph in there that what people like us do change from one kind of booze to another. And there they say Scotch to bread. It could be for anything, change from one to another or another one drinking beer only. God, most of us have tried that. I've tried that again and again, never drinking at home. All was drinking at home. So I'm not in trouble out in that street, drinking wine, only reading inspirational literature,

taking a physical exercise, taking trips, doing something different.

And people around us are just baffled by this. What the hell are you doing all that for?

But that stuff is killing you. And they don't understand it. And I'll tell you, I don't. And we don't understand it either. And it's very frightening and backable thing. Now this, these are some of the things that make us similar, that we all go through that sort of thing. Different patterns, different stories, but the patterns are there. Continuing to drink, efforts apparent. We shouldn't drink and can't drink. And why would anybody do that? And there's nobody, nobody ever seem to have much of an answer.

And that's why the

that's little clan scene.

No, the checks in the mail, honey.

But that's why people like us living straight and we all have different backgrounds and different histories. And I, I had my first drink, never thought much. I mean, I thought it was a big significant thing. Some people can't remember the first treatment. When I was a kid, I grew up in a very strict place up in northern Wisconsin, Norwegian Lutheran town. And you've never not heard much about the Norwegian Lutheran's around here because they don't. Let me tell you about the Norwegian Lutherans.

Few years ago I was talking to Convention Oslo,

and afterwards the convention took me up north of there to where my grandfather and his brothers had come from in the 1880s, and a big migration came from Norway to America in the 1880s to get out of that damn climate. Then they came here and they all settled in North Dakota and Wisconsin and Minnesota

and spent the rest of their life saying Jesus is cold here, too.

That's the guy in the head I face every morning when I get up

the flag of this in a I didn't know it was a strict church. It was just but all we knew and we were the majority. And I hear people and they say things like I've been searching for God for 30 years. I never searched for God 10 seconds. I've known where he was since I was two years old. He slowly circles the Our Saviors Lutheran Church in Eau Claire, WI

and he gives it to sinners

and he gives it to Catholics

and that was alright with me till I became one and married the other.

We don't have a purgatory in the Norwich with the Church. It's just you are screwed.

But I look back my life, you know, I I have a very structured life that should have told me something I didn't. I didn't know any better. But I shoved head in school a year and a half and I could read fast and I was I was smaller than my classmates, but I was as smart as they were and I was played ball with them do other things. And and I was catechized and confirmed and was doing quite well. And when I was 12 years old, my parents got divorced. Now, that doesn't sound like much that happens all the time, but Can you believe this to be in a situation where you're 12 years old

and never have heard of a divorce? Because nobody ever got divorced. Nobody in our church don't mean our family. Nobody. I never heard about getting divorced. If there were, they never told me about it. And all I knew is that all of a sudden everything went to hell and I had something about me. The bad part of me took over right then. Without any knowledge or experience. I immediately, without any training, begin playing my mother against my father to avoid structure and to avoid discipline.

When my mother gave me hell, I'd run to my dad. My dad gave me hell, I'd run to my mother and they both gave me hell. I'd run to my grandma. And I have smarter them again and again and again and again. I outwitted them. She's I really fooled him,

but that was 15 I was flunking out of school. I felt bad all the time. I just simply have any friends much anymore. I just eared a bullet cross and, and I'd be fooled everybody. And I I did realize until many years later, looking back, that that's what lack of structure does to people like me.

And Rose 15, I was about ready to do something to go to the reformatory or something. And what saved my life the Second World War started and I went to a few movies and watched John Wayne kill Japs and that was good and kill Germans. And I thought that's what I can do. I, I don't like this town anyway like these people anymore. I'll go to the Pacific and become a Marine and kill Japs. So I told my mother I want to go to Superior, WI to visit my little aunt and she gave me a little bus fare and my little suitcase and I hitchhike to San Francisco.

Had no idea where the hell I was going about this big of the face full of pimples and

guy gave me a ride to Minneapolis. I said, how do you say I'm just kisses down this road somewhere

I never hit right? Car stops where you go again? San Francisco. Good. So am I. Hop in? Is the Navy going back to a ship I don't want the hell he ever stopped. He must have been a St. for days. He listened to me blubber and talk and Babble and he brought all my meals at night. There were no motels. There'd be trailer courts and I never thought a thing about it. I never hit track. I thought that's the way it was. You tell him where you want to go and they take you there. You know,

I told him I wanted to be in the Marines and kill Japs, and he said you're a little small kid, you don't look, your pimples kind of give you away, he said. But they're really crying for merchant Marine sailors.

All the good guys have brought in the Navy. And I'll drop you off the Coast Guard office and tell them you're 16. Don't tell them you're 15 and see what happens throughout this Coast Guard office. It does get a thrill. I could smell the ocean for the first time. And here's these all big buildings and I want to be in the merchant meeting. Guys, there's an application. Kid, fill it out. I filled it out. They put down 16. He said you're only 16. Kids need your parents permission.

So I took it around the block, got my parents permission.

OK, right.

And that day that you should be Siemens papers. I mean, they were just dying for anybody warm that they could get in.

And the guy took me in the National Maritime Union down in Montgomery Street to sign a waiver for my dues, whatever the hell that meant. And then he took a couple guys over the Embarcadero and they put us on this big ship. And that afternoon, we're on our way to the South Pacific.

It was really fun for about an hour.

There's this Treasure Island that's for the World's Fair was,

that's Alcatraz, that's the Golden Gate Bridge,

but that's the end of it. Nothing after that

and they put me in a room. They call it a cabin, but it wasn't a cabin. If you live in Wisconsin, you know the cabins got logs in it. This was a room with three of the worst type of people than any small frightened Norwegian Lutheran, dumb pimply faced little puke can be with. And these people are called men.

What the hell you supposed to be?

I I didn't realize why they were so down. I mean, I really down. I was the 4th man of their four man watch and they they realized I was going to do any of it. They're going to do all of theirs, But I I could see there's a tension. I told him a little joke that I was used to over good in study hall. Didn't go over there at all. Just get your bunk and shut up.

Remember, I still remember a few of that fear that ship mover. I never had that feeling. There was ship moving around and, and these guys start talking

and I couldn't believe my ears. I mean, I'd been a kind of a bad Lutheran because some days I didn't remember the saboteur and keep it holy and somebody they didn't honor my mother and father and, and some days I said a bad word. But these guys were sinners. I mean, sinners, I mean, big time. They'd been in San Francisco running around with women for days, and I just never heard anything like that.

I don't want to give the wrong impression. Even at the age of 15 in Eau Claire, WI. I'd have sex, but I'd been apprehensive and I'd been afraid and I'd been alone. And these guys,

these guys were doing it with people.

Yeah.

And I suddenly realize, of course, they've all got black hair. Those are the Catholics I've heard about,

but eventually I found a role on that ship. I became the ship fool after a few days. Hey kid, Goddess room. Tell me, need left-handed wrench.

Hey kid, what would the bridge tell the Catherine? Needs some elbow grease

and these guys would sit around every day and drink whiskey after their end of their watch. They shouldn't have drink. Should have been allowed. Who's going to stop music tough?

Any any other era that have been pirates? I mean, just, you know, they could.

And I watch these guys drink their Husky to the best of my knowledge, I've never been in the same room with the bottle of whiskey. And I was shocked. And one day one of these guys turned me says, how about you, junior? Do you think you're man enough? Federal snort. And I drew the line there because I, I may be a dumb little kid, but I'm not like that. And I,

I've just decided just demolish him. I was going to say, all right, you, I guess you don't know that I'm a Norwegian Lutheran. We don't drink alcohol. And if we did, we wouldn't drink that stuff. I promised my mother and grandmother I'd never drink. And I feel sorry for you because you're such a bad person. You probably a Catholic, but I'm a Lutheran and I won't drink it. Don't ever offer that to me again.

I was just going to tell him that, he says why do you think you're mad enough? And I heard this voice say God damn right.

A little weak under pressure too.

So I'd my first trigger, the first bottle of whiskey was ever closer. It burned my mouth and my throat. My stomach and my throat and my mouth and his shirt. Finally,

I and they

to this day, I don't know a worse feeling humiliate than public humiliation, public embarrassment where you just make made to look like a total fool and you can't do anything about it. I just. I'm like, you hit these guys. You know?

I thought later there's one thing I might have done. I'm glad I didn't think of it to have thrown me overboard, but it would have been cute, you know? All right, Lean over you. Yeah, Take that. Just give one of the. All right,

but all the way across the Central Pacific, who nobody is looking, I would sneak into one of these guys, see bags every day and take a drink of whiskey that I hated it. And I throw it up and I have to wipe it up. But I won so desperately for those guys to think I was a man. And nothing would have made him think I was a man. But I didn't know that. And we were just coming in at Pearl Harbor

and God, they were still digging up the ships. And night before my 16th birthday, I was down there taking a drink of that stuff. Nobody's around. And it burned my mouth and my throat, my stomach, and stayed down, never stayed down before. I just. And I couldn't breathe. Oh God.

And all of a sudden something strange happened. I found myself feeling significantly better.

Now that that's why they drink that crap, you know,

I never thought much about it. In your teens, you learned things. You know, it's a other people today. I've heard of people who have insights along the way. I heard the guy say a few years ago when I held that first drink down, I knew I'd gone into a new garden of experience with many flowers and fruits to be savored over the coming years, until the fruits turned sour in my mouth and I put them down and came to this wonderful program.

And I thought, I wish I hadn't known that. A liver alert. If you can breathe and you don't puke, it makes you feel better. That's what I learned

and I didn't become a terrible alcoholic. Next day they took me to Honolulu and got me 3 or 4 bottles of beer and I got drunk and they thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. I didn't be craving for alcohol on that ship. I learned how to smoke. You know, nobody. My family smoked, but they all smoked. So I smoked and puked and smoked and puked and

finally didn't puke it. I smoked 2 1/2 or three packs a day, every day for the next 40 some years. In fact, I want to tell you something.

I should get off the subject, but it's such a sad thing these days. You go through California outside of every door. There's also a little crowd of poor bastards here.

Raining autumn

and I'm an old I had to give up smoking because it took mid operation methotrexate issue but I still don't smoke at heart. It just hurts me but worse than that strangers think they have the right to come up and denounce smokers. You know why do you smoke? Gosh, you're the secondhand smoke is helping us is hurting us too. By George came You just want to smash them.

And I, they were doing that just before I still had my throat surgery and took me a long time to think of an answer to it. By the time I thought of the answer, I couldn't smoke anymore, so I haven't had a chance to use it. But if you're a smoker tonight I'm going to give you the greatest gift you've ever had.

There's another AA meeting in the world where you'd get this information, but when some puke comes up, you says why do you smoke? Here's what you say.

Why do I smoke?

I have a feeling that one of these days they'll find a market for phlegm and I'll be rich.

Hey,

I'll guarantee you that person will never ask you again.

But I went out

came back one another ship to the pollution islands. We're trying to get pollution is back from the Japanese some you don't know that the Japanese had part of the Lucians in World War Two. And then I go in the Navy and I was old enough and at the end of the wars and the Naval hospital up San Francisco being sewed together and they passed around some tests and I wasn't good on tests. And

so they gave me high school diploma. I went back after the word what the University of Wisconsin and went to school. Want some trophies for the university?

Met this girl with lovely black eyes and black hair just flashing mysteriously and she won my heart and she dropped the big wood on me. She said I'm a Catholic,

I can't take you home, what can I do with you? But she won my heart. We got married. My grandmother went to a depression for about two years. She got over it

and I would have the world. I became a sports writer, which to this day is my favorite job ever had, writing covering sports. But then my wife began manifesting the terrible behavior patterns of Catholics that I knew nothing of, and no one had ever told me. If you're a Lutheran, you better listen to this. No matter how pretty Catholic girls are, if they

if they are good Catholics, you are about to have a big family, Bucky. My wife began turning out children at terrible speed and I

I became a national distributor, small Catholics.

Remember saying to my wife, Kent Kent, we use birth control. She no,

and I'll tell you something funny. If she said yes, I didn't what I'd have done. It's hard for young people to realize this today, but in those days nobody talked about that sort of thing kind of bad. Kids would have to say things like

I got a rubber

and even they would be ashamed to go in and buy them. They'd have to hire someone depraved to go in and buy them

and even they would be ashamed. They would say things like

give me a package of cigarettes and some rubbers.

Now look how much progress we've made the last 55 years or so.

Rite Aid drugs over my house. Kids come in and say, hey, I want a package of condoms

and some cigarettes.

It's a weird, weird

they are.

So I had to get better jobs with all these kids. I got advertising and public relations that worked around in big corporations in various places in all these years. I drank and caroused and had a wonderful time. And we all blamed it on being a veteran.

And

the only problem I ever had is I have a tendency sometimes to drink too much. Or as I prefer to believe is my psychiatrist told me later, I have many times been thoughtlessly over served

and when I drink too much, I act bizarrely sometimes. And so when I was still a young man, somebody said to me, you know, you could get wild, why don't you into this new thing called a They got in town because even some of the town drunks are cutting down going there. So I went there and I went to this room and eight fat old guys sitting around a table or so and they literally said, what are you doing here? And I didn't realize that

there was nobody within 20 years of me in that state who is an AI was 22.

I didn't know. I said well I they suggest I come here.

You think you're an alcoholic?

No, I really don't think so. I'm trying to be honest, he said. What the hell do you think's wrong with you?

I think I'm too sensitive.

Wrong answer. I never said that again for a long time,

like being back in that ship again. You know, I hung around there for a while. Let's do what the meetings. They eventually thought of just a dumb kid so they didn't hold it against me. That's so dumb. And I learned what an alcoholic was. If you're new tonight, the guys who are new, you want what alcohol is, the people whose problem is alcohol and there been a bad time with alcohol and they get sober, come to eat and admit their problem is alcohol and they return to God and live pretty well after that. And

that never, I never felt an identification for that at all

because my problem isn't alcohol, my problem is something different. It was when I was then and it is was all there were thereafter. My problem is that I seem to have emotional problems that I don't seem to get a grasp on. For example, I'm much of my life I felt there's something missing in me and I don't know what it is, but I know at a distance I can get along with people well. When I get close, they don't seem to like me so well. They seem to recognize that there's something missing in me, but nobody ever tells

what it is. The people I I want to impress, I feel awkward and clumsy around. The people that don't care about. I get along well, I want to get along with them. I feel sometimes I feel superior to people and sometimes I feel inferior to people, but I never feel equal to people. I just always have emotion, always something going on. And I, I spent thousands of dollars in psychoanalysis try to get to the root of this. And I

it helped me a lot to begin believing I was a victim, but it wasn't my fault. That kept me going for a while.

I read books. I did a lot of things. But I'll tell you the other thing has ever helped me in that emotion. He's when he gets bad enough, I have a couple drinks. That's why I drink. I don't drink because I'm a drinker. I drink. I'm a feeler

and drinking fills in those holes in me boy,

and I didn't realize this so after I sober while again this time.

But what it did for me on that ship in Pearl Harbor is the same thing it did for me the last drink I took. Alcohol is the only thing I know

that makes me feel the way men look

and that's I don't know anything better that does that.

And if you're Newton, I don't tell you something sad doesn't sound sad. You'll understand it someday. But alcohol is the best friend I ever had. I never had a better friend than alcohol. Friends come and go, jobs come and go, lovers come and go, cities come and go. But when a few drinks is filled in those holes in you, there's nothing like it for every hour and it does it whenever you want it to. And my only problem is I I get into trouble sometimes. And so, as the book said, I again

try to find ways to get the feeling without the reaction, without the eventual troublesome. And I didn't stay in a long. So I realized, you know, the 1st place, my problem is an alcohol. It isn't I'm drunk, but it is the real problem. And I can't return to God because I unfortunately over the years got someone worse than I was when I was a kid and I broke a lot of commandments. In fact, by the time I came to a this time I broken all 10. And that's

you can say, well, you're grown up, but you have to listen to Lutheran stuff. But I'll tell you,

everybody have raised a strict church notes the same thing Hitler said. You give me their minds till they're 12 and little bit of them will have those beliefs as long as they live. And I can say, ah, there's no God, Don't give me that crap. But you wake up at the night sometimes, you know you're going to go to hell, you're going to go to hell and you don't want to think about that. So I but I went to work in a different city and for a big firm called Tracy Laro.

How the hell was anyway? We've made big railroad engines, I'll tell you that.

And I got some trouble drinking in that town and I had an idea. I thought I'll go to the AA was not very well known. I went to the human resources people. I said, you know, I have a little drinking problem, but they have this new thing in town called AA and I'm going to try that. Could you give me a couple weeks to work? I said, oh sure, that's a good, I'm doing much about it. And so I did that again and again in various companies and nothing else. That gives you a couple weeks to look for a new job

and you can go home and say to your wife, well, I've

I've gone back to a a wonderful, I think it'll work this time, honey, I know it will. What do they want you to do?

They want me to taper off

and there wasn't any Allen on them to screw it up for everybody.

Ever since the birth of Al Anon, there's never been a moment's rest for anybody, anywhere.

No, you don't taper off at all. They want you to stop entirely. We have the same steps you do. I know how it's supposed to be. I release you, you son of a bitch.

I went up and down and up and down, up and down. And what time I went down and didn't come back up, I couldn't believe it. I always could bounce up in a new city and I didn't. And within on Monday, I was a big executive at Tracy Lock Advertising in Dallas, writing on the LCL Mirage for the board company. On Friday, I was fired. My wife and children had left. They warned her and got She got out. They took back my car. I was

out of my house, stood in the street corner in Dallas with my bags.

How could this happen to me? And I knew I had to get out of Texas because I was kind of hot with a state hospital air. And so a guy gave me a car to drive to Los Angeles and I drove it and got as far as El Paso the first night and had a wonderful time in Juarez. I, I used to be on the faculty of the College in, in El Paso and I, I spent a lot of wonderful nights in Juarez. Some of you won't understand this, but

yo soy El maestro de Los locos in Chihuahua Y mastequila illa moniza,

you need that Spanish. And the Juarez jail actually is where you need it.

I'm an American. I'm an American. Some of Guy Gray shoot. Could I just say, hey, hey, Gringo Silencio.

We had a good time that night. The next night, drove as far as Phoenix, lost, got drunk and lost the car. Everything I owned was in it, my ID, my clothes. I got beef that in the street corner of the guy turned out to be a cop and he threw me in jail overnight in the middle of the night. So six 130 up in that drunk tank in the end of August is so sick. And I went over and threw up in the toilet trying to be a guy's bunk actually, But I thought of the toilet,

there was nobody in it. Maybe feel better than I laid down next to his bunk and it's cool tiled. I thought, oh boy. And this guy came back. Must have been a trust yourself, wherever he'd been. He found his big bunk full of vomit and hears a drunk man. You dirty grass

and kick my front teeth out.

And that was one morning. I was really glad I'd been in psychoanalysis because I was almost instantly able to identify his problem.

I remember thinking, this son of a bitch is overreacting. Yeah,

but I won't say anything

and I come out there the next morning, hit the streets to finish where I didn't know so hotter than hell when you look that bad. I've been in out of a for a lot of years by this time. I play my little games for the I'd stay in there till the heat was off, but I know how as acted. So I found the a club there, looked at the phone books over the arid club not very far away, and I walked over there and hustled some old lady for $20. I told her I needed for a 12 step hustle one of the program

and I rushed downtown, got a Greyhound bus ticket, came to Los Angeles and had a guy at KFWB who had given his start many years before that. He was a big star now. I called offices, Jesus Tim, I attended. I said I had a terrible car accident and I lost out in bad shape. Let me have some money, he said sure told me how to take the bus to KFWB and Hollywood Blvd. He gave me 100 and some dollars, which then was a lot of money and I had a great time for a few days.

Then I tapped out again. I called him up, said, Gee,

I need a little more. My check hasn't come yet, He says. I called Dallas you, you've got a check coming. You're a bum. You're a bum. You're a bum in Dallas, you're a bum now. Don't bother me. I said, Jesus, Ted, don't, don't do this to me. I need something. He's OK, but don't. I don't want you coming in the station again. I want you. At that time, the station was on Hollywood Blvd. So you come in back of the station and the alley at 9:00.

And I'll come out there and see, but don't, don't commit decision.

So another 9:00, raining and sick and cold. The guy came out the wireship and he threw a $5.00 bill, said you stay away from here, you drunken bastard. And it fluttered down to a puddle of water. And I crawled out and got it and thought, I guess I outsmarted him.