Step 1 at the Stateline Retreat in Primm, NV December 9th

Good evening. My name is Ronald White and I'm an alcoholic.

I want to start off by thanking the committee, asking, thanking Bob Darrell and whoever else thought it fitting for me to be able to come and share with you guys. It's always an honor and a privilege to speak at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Do you guys mind if I look at myself for a second here? OK, I look real tall on there and

my hair. Never mind. I'm silly like that,

but I just need to let you guys know that before I got up here to share

the people who were doing the readings, they told me that they were going to read a little passage out of the big book and they wanted to check with me on what it was because they wanted to make sure it wasn't anything that was going to impede on anything I was going to share about or anything like that. And I said, Oh no, I'm easy. You can just read anything and then you know it. It won't be a problem. They read the one thing out of the book.

It was, That's how God works

it. It was a great thing to read because it really talks about step one. And I need to also share with you guys that first of all, my sobriety day is July the 14th of 1986.

I will always be grateful to God for giving me this gift of life in this gift of sobriety because it is truly a gift that is grace that has me standing before you.

I have a Home group, 9604 S Figueroa, right in the heart of South Central Los Angeles. My sponsor is a guy named Jerome Scott

's. What else do I need to tell you? I just need to let you know what what my story is. Whenever I come and share at gatherings like this and I talk about either a topic or a step or something like that, it's real kind of difficult for me sometimes because I am a firm believer in the First of all, I'm a firm believer in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I've been going through this book with men and women sitting down reading this book line by line and paragraph by paragraph for the last 20-3 years. And I am dedicated to what this book talks about. Not because somebody else just told me it works, because it became true in my life and it is a real thing for me. It is not a theory, and

for me to talk about just one of the steps is always difficult. And Bob has this good thing that he tells us to weave our

experiences and with the steps so that it would become alive. And I always like to tell you my story anyway because I suspect that I don't, I don't like to assume everybody in here has heard my story. And somebody might be looking at me tonight. And I think I look kind of nice, you know. And once again, I'll describe it for the people on the tape. I have this beautiful Gray charcoal Gray suit on.

It's a silk tie that matches it impeccably. My shoes are matching one another. I don't have any tape on my glasses. I'm about 6 foot 4 WAVY blonde hair. Oh, OK,

all right, went a little too far there. You can see the illness in me, but somebody might be looking at me tonight thinking that I don't look like an Alcoholics. Surely What can this square looking guy, he looks like a a preacher or a teacher or you know, somebody who just, you know, strolled in, you know, from

the debating society, somebody they just pulled off the streets to give you a nice speech or a lecture on alcoholism and the pleasure principle. And you know, the endorphins and all this other kind of, you know, I almost used some bad language. But all that stuff, you know, that other people can tell us. But you guys told me that my greatest experience that I can bring to talking to another sick and suffering alcoholic is my experience. And they told me that they have something in the book that that outlines the way that I should share with you.

There's a chapter in the book, Chapter 7. That's the chapter entitled Working with Others. And somebody else will talk to you later on this weekend about that, my good friend time. It talks about the 12th step. And it says in there that I need to share with the new man or woman what I used to be like, what happened, what I'm like today. Because there is something that happens when one alcoholic shares with another that don't happen when nobody else tries to share with us. There is a connection that is made.

There is sort of an identification for one of a better word

that takes place that don't happen when nobody else tried to share with us. I remember my mother and you'll hear her in my story. My mother, who I love so dearly, would sit down with me when I would come down off one of those runs and she would wash me and she would feed me and we would sit down at this table and hold hands and she would pray over me. And then she would be saying, you know, well, Ronnie, Ronnie, what happened? You know, how could you do this again? This. And she didn't know that I wanted to be able to tell her

exactly why when I got off that bus from work and I was walking home and I meant to come home and my feet just seemed to carry themselves into the liquor store.

Try to explain that to a non alcoholic.

Try to explain that to somebody who's never felt the obsession to dream. Try to explain what happens after I take that first one when all I intended to do was just take one. When I went to the Red Onion to have a Margarita with the people after work and then the next thing I knew they were last call for alcohol. Try to explain the craving to a non alcoholic.

She didn't know and at the time I didn't understand what was wrong with me. It took me coming to a place like this

with some people sharing with me their experience, strength and hope for me to understand. So that's the way I'll do it. I will try to share with you

what I used to be like, what happened and what I'm like today. And in that I believe I'll talk about step one. In my experience.

On July the 14th of 1986, I found myself standing in the lobby of a place called the The Harbor Light Center, a place run by the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army Harbor Light Center was an all men's alcoholic recovery center located on what we call the Nickel 5th St. in the middle of Skid Row downtown Los Angeles. It has 150 beds for alcoholic men. And I stood in that lobby because I was being interviewed,

and I'm not talking about a job interview, y'all. I'm talking about one of those intake interviews they're giving you to see if they're going to give you one of those beds. I was being interviewed by this old black guy named George. They called him an advocate. He was a counselor at the intake advocate, and he had a list of questions. He was asking me to see if I qualified for one of those beds. You know those complex questions they ask you, Mr. White, how much do you drink?

What do you drink? And it? And if he's asking me these questions, I remember I was looking down

at my dirty run over tennis shoes, mumbling my answers. Now I'm looking at the tennis shoes because my chin felt like it were stapled to my chest

because I was so ashamed of being there. I couldn't even look this guy in the eye.

I'm mumbling my answers and my eyes traveled up from those tennis shoes up to these Gray corduroy pants I was wearing, and the pants weren't fitting me nicely like the suit is tonight. The pants were kind of hanging off of me. They were real dusty and dirty because I've been on a run for four or five days

and the pants were hanging off me. Somewhat like those youngsters. You know how the youngsters have a style of dress nowadays? I hate it, right? Showing the underwear and they on purpose, right, you know, and they

and it's just hanging off of and they call it what sagging. Well that wasn't a style back in 86

and I was not a youngster. I'm 30I was 31 years old at the time, but I'm an alcoholic. When I drink I don't eat. So imagine me about 40 or 50 lbs lighter than I am this evening. I'm a small guy anyway, drop 40 lbs off me. I look like a skeleton.

My eyes were popping out my head and my cheeks were sunken in, and I looked like one of those kids on those commercials for famine in Africa.

Just malnourished. In fact, I didn't even want you to see how skinny I had become, so I wore. I had this big black overcoat on that I wore everywhere that I went. Like, you wouldn't notice the coat, right? It's LA in July,

and I'm not talking about no nice top coat, y'all. I'm not talking about no Kashmir or no London fog or nothing really fancy or nice. I'm talking about one of those cheap, seedy looking chest that a molester covers, right? You know,

All right,

I had a baseball cap pulled tightly over my head because by now I have no personal hygiene. I've stopped combing my hair. I've stopped bathing. My hair was all matted on my head. And so I wore this baseball cap everywhere that I went. If you had seen pictures of me and Alcoholics Anonymous in the first two years of my sobriety, my hair grew lopsided, real long on the top and real short on the sides because I could not even grow hair

from those indentations from that baseball cap from the first two years that I was sober.

And if you had smelled me that morning,

I had a stench on me. You know the smell that the drunk has on them when it's coming out your pores and you haven't bathed for for weeks and you've got the same drawers on that you've been wearing. But I don't know how you know how it's all blacked and caked and you just

some of you guys know what I'm talking about. Don't be. In fact, don't let me discriminate. Some of you women know what I'm talking about too. So don't try to act like you. You know better than so

if you get a chance to shake my hand or hug me at the end of the meeting, I want you to take a whiff.

Have a fine little body oil on this tonight. I think something called ISI Miyaki,

right? Right.

You would have called it Pissy Miyake. If you smell me that morning, it was sad.

And you know something?

I never would have thought that I would have been in the Harbor Light Center at age 31 in the condition that I was in. I wasn't laughing about it like I am tonight. There was nothing funny about the way that I felt that morning.

It wasn't one of the goals in my life to become alcoholic, to be standing in the Harbor Light Center begging them for a bed. In fact, I thought quite the opposite. I thought I could never become a drunk because while growing up, I grew up in an alcoholic household. My fat, my father was a drunk. My father was a whiner

and I grew up with a resentment against him.

He would always wreak of his his favorite drink, something called Ripple. Maybe some of you guys remember Ripple,

old cheap wine from the 50s. He smelled of it all the time. He would get paid on Friday, never made it home until Sunday. He was broke when he came home and when he brought his his butt home, my mother would confront him and he would, she would ask him what happened. I have five brothers in my family or six boys and, and, and my mother would ask him, you couldn't bring home a dime. We've got all these boys we've got to feed.

And he would cuss her out

like she had done something wrong.

When he did this, he made my mother cry.

When he made my mother cry, I looked at him with hatred.

I hated him for being so weak. I hated him for being such a punk. I hated him for not loving us enough to bring home the money. I hated him for being alcoholic. And so I swore I made a bow as I was growing up to never become like him. That I would never drink. And you know something, for the 1st 18 years of my life I drank nothing. But you know something, even while not drinking, while growing up,

I still had the thinking,

the feeling, what I've come to associate as the ISM of alcoholism.

In the doctor's opinion, that portion of the book that they read, that that part from Doctor William Silkworth, who worked with the Co founders of Alcoholics Anonymous in our book, included a letter where he talked about working with thousands of Alcoholics and noticing that they had certain things in common. One of the things he said they had in common is that they seem to have what he called an allergic reaction to alcohol,

the physical abnormality. But that wasn't what really interested me when I first got sober, because

I told you I didn't drink nothing for the 1st 18 years of my life. But he wrote something else in the book. He said that these men and women, when not drinking, seem as feelings of being irritable, restless and discontent. That they seem to be not at ease with themselves

and I identify with that because even before I started drinking I've always felt dis ease.

I've never felt comfortable in my skin. I've never really felt like I was a part of.

I've not always felt like I was less than, even though I did oftentimes. A lot of times I felt better than, but I've never felt just.

I've always hated being so damn short.

Now that may not be a big deal to anybody else in the room other than the other little man.

And after the meetings, oftentimes tall women come up to me and they say that's the way that they felt when they were growing up because I felt different than those who, who I grew up with. You know, I, you can see from my height now I'm, I'm not going to grow anymore. You guys, this is it. You know, I've hit the growth spurt. I'm not growing no more. You know, I'm 5, four and a half. And that's, that's right,

1/2,

4 1/2

still grown. Talking about a half 3/4, right, You know,

But I've always had this thing about my height. Not only was I too short, though, I was also too small because it would have been nice if I was short and buffed, but I was always real skinny. I was always a frail looking kid. I was asthmatic when I was growing up. I was not really good as a physical specimen in my neighborhood where I grew up. I grew up in Watts, y'all and tough place to grow up. And the guys judged each other's self worth by how well they played sports,

by how athletically inclined they were. And I wasn't good at hitting a baseball or throwing a football or shooting hoops or doing nothing like that. You,

we would pick teams. And we always made the best two athletes have to be on opposite teams. And all the other boys would crowd around in a circle and wave their hands waiting to be picked, right? And I'd be saying pick me, pick me. And then I'll take Donald, I'll take Ralph, I'll take Jimmy, I'll take Bob, I'll take Tony, I'll take. And they got to the end and it was always me and some fat guy

and somebody was saying, all right, I'll take Ronnie.

And they don't know the way that made me feel

inside,

like I was less there,

like I was a burden.

I've always hated being so black. And I don't mean being black, but I'm so black. Even black people discriminated against me. It was like,

you know, I grew up in the 50s and the 60s and, you know, I understand now. And having grown up, I know this was my perception of things, but I always thought that the lighter your skin was, the more handsome you were, the prettier you were. And I thought everybody in my race thought the same thing. And I never wanted to be white. I just wanted to be high yellow,

you know, with good hair, right? You know,

I could go on and on, describing for you the things that made me irritable, restless and discontent while I grew up. Never being satisfied with my station in life, always wanting to be someone else or somewhere else. Suffering from the ISM of alcoholism even before I started drinking and I had to find something to help me escape

but I couldn't drink because I don't want to become my father. And I found something that helped me escape. And the thing that I found while growing up

were books.

I became addicted to reading. Libraries became my sanctuary because when I would read, I would escape,

and I was no longer on 108th and Central and in the middle of Watts in South Central Los Angeles. I was transported to distant lands. All of a sudden I was somewhere in Europe or in Paris. I was somebody who loved espionage. I love spy novels because I would always become the hero in those stories. And they were just the opposite of me. They weren't short and and they were tall, dark and handsome. Well, I was dark, but you know, all the other stuff, I didn't think I

had that. And, and, and they would be so exciting and so, so dangerous. And I wanted to be that because I was dull and my life was, it seemed like it had no meaning. And their lives were So what I wanted mine to be. And I would escape in these stories. But you know something? I understand that the disease I suffer from, which is physical, mental and spiritual in nature, it's progressive

and what that means for me. Is this anything I've ever used in my life

that's ever helped me escape from who I am? And the way that I felt after a while of using it, It doesn't seem to have the same effect. And I seem to require more and I need it bigger and I need it faster and I need it stronger. And after a few years of reading those novels, they didn't help give me get out of myself the same way. And I had to find something else. And I discovered comic books.

I

there was a line of comics, DC Comics,

you see, because the heroes were bigger and stronger and more grand and grandiose and the stories were shorter and quicker than those novels. And I I gravitated to the these DC comic heroes, Superman and Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Adam Hawkman, Aquaman, the Legion of Superheroes, the Justice League of America. There was a superhero I became

called Manel.

You guys may not remember him, but I do. I would go on my mother's closet and I would grab one of her towels out of closet and I would tie this towel around my neck and this towel became a Cape.

And I would run out on 108th and Central

and I would get a running start and I would jump and I would fly down 108th St. Now, I don't know if any of you guys know anything about Watts

in the 60s,

one of the most dangerous cities in the entire country. And imagine this little skinny kid with a towel around his neck running at full speed down the street. You would have imagined that I would have been afraid to do that, right? That I would have been frightened, That I would have been afraid of being ridiculed, of being beat up, of being scorned. But you know something? When I put on that towel, when I put on that Cape, I felt No Fear.

Because you see, it made me feel strong, it made me feel heroic, it made me feel powerful. And even back then, lack of power was my dilemma, step one. And I was willing to go to any lengths to feel the sense of power.

After a few years of wearing that Dang tile, Oh, I didn't get the same effect. And I started hearing that ridicule

and I needed to find something. And my family purchased the small little black and white television, and I fell in love.

They nicknamed me the Human TV Guide. When neighbors would come by, I would be clued to the television set and my brothers would play a game. Ralph would be standing by the door and I would hear it open. And the neighbor would come in and he would hunch him and he say, hey, man, watch this, Ronnie. Wednesday, 8:00. And without moving, I say 8:00. Channel 2 is Gunsmoke. Channel 4 is Mannix. Channel 5 is Donna Reed.

Channel 7 is Petticoat Junctions.

Now, I don't know if some of you guys in here remember the names of those shows because these are the shows that I grew up with.

I knew whatever was on any channel, anytime of the day, any day of the week.

Thank God they didn't have cable.

There was a television show that came on back when I was growing up that later became one of the guiding forces in my life. And maybe some of you guys remember the show. It was a show called Perry Mason.

Perry Mason was a criminal defense attorney played by an actor named Raymond Burr. Raymond Burr was one of the handsomest white boys I had ever seen on television. He was tall. He had broad shoulders. He had these beautiful black suits that he, I think they were black. It was black and white television. So the suits look black. They were nice dark suits. Jet black hair that was slick back. And I don't know if you remember Perry Mason's eyes. Perry had these dark,

piercing eyes

and he always had this client who was in trouble. And they got to the end of the episode and it was, it looked like his client was about to go down at the And Perry would try to have this last witness on the witness stand. And his Private Eye, Paul Drake would always come in the back of the courtroom with a slip of paper and he passes the Perry. Perry will read that note and he square his shoulders and then he'd approach the witness and the witness will start to get nervous and start to fidget around and sweat a little bit.

Perry wasn't having it. He wasn't gonna let him go and he would just close it and he said

yeah,

or somebody in the back of the courtroom would jump up. I did it.

It was amazing. I don't think a case ever went to the jury, right? You know it was like case dismiss

Alcoholics dream, right? You know,

some of you guys know, right? You know,

that's who I wanted to be when I grew up, because I wanted to be Perry Mason. Because, you see, Perry had power. He had the ultimate power to bend people's will to his simply by the force of his presence and his words. And I thought maybe I could do that.

So I grew up wanting to be Perry Mason. I wanted to be a lawyer. I was a straight A student as I came through school because my addiction to reading and all that fantasy made me ready made for school. I was the best reader in all my classes. I was a very articulate young man. I was good at writing essays because of all the that stuff that I would see on television and in those books. And, and I was an honor roll student all the way straight through school.

I got to high school and by the time I got in the 12th grade, I was following in a path behind my brother Ralph, who many of you guys know,

Ralph was always a high achiever in school and would be student body president or, you know, boys league secretary or whatever. And every step of the way, when I got into the next grade, I would assume that position that he had. And I need to let you know something because I don't share about this a whole lot, that inside, even while I had these accomplishments, I felt as if I didn't really deserve them, as if I hadn't really earned them,

as if they had been something that have been handed down to me. Never let anybody really know that.

But inside I still felt like it was something that I really didn't have for myself.

I was my student, my senior class president when I was in the 12th grade. I was a member of a world famous marching band called the Lachai Marching Saints. I played trombone and I marched in what we call the front rank, which is the frontline of the band. We marched in the Rose Parade and then I became a member of a a jazz band that went to the Hollywood Bowl in in Los Angeles and we won the sweepstakes for the best jazz band in the country.

I got accepted to go to college on a full scholarship in Los Angeles

school called Loyola Marymount University, a private Jesuit school for this little kid, this little black guy who went to a Baptist Church. And here I'm going to college on a full scholarship with these priests. And you would have thought it sounded like I had a series of accomplishments in my life I should have been proud of that. I should have really been able to embrace. But you know something? I am like most Alcoholics. For some reason, the things I have don't seem to have the value as the things that

you have. That the grass always seems greener on the other side, that my glasses never have full, it's always half empty. That while I'm achiever over here, I want to be an achiever over there. I never wanted to be a bookworm on the honor roll. I wanted to be one of those guys scoring touchdowns who had them writing about him in the sports pages, who could have their ego? Who had those cheerleaders cheering for them. Nobody ever came in science.

Yes, Ronald, that's the right answer.

There were no pom poms for me. There was no. And you know something I understand? See that The funny thing about our disease is it's oftentimes a looking back process because I can't see it when it's right in front of me. I can only see it when I turn around and I look back. I know there were people telling me I was all right. I know now that there were people who who patted me on the back and pray, but they didn't do it with enough enthusiasm

that even when they did it, I thought that they get it. Are they really serious? Do they really mean it? Because you see inside, I know me. See, that's a part and parcel of my disease,

the ISM, the I self and me part that always thinks that, that always questions anything that's ever come into my life That's good. Even when I strive to get something, when I achieve it, I like it for a minute and I get tired of it real fast.

And I am so full of fear,

fear of rejection, fear of inadequacy. I go to these dances that we had at school, noon dances we had at our high school, and they would have these red lights on to make it the room look so romantic and everything, right. And then I remember they would have the slow records they would put on at the end of the dance. And there was a group back in the day, an R&B group real popular called The Dells

and The Dells. And The Dells had a record out at the time called Stay in My Corner.

And it was long and it was slow.

And they would put that record on so that the guys and girls could get together and get close. And I remember I did that dance and they put Stay in My Corner on and all the guys were rushed across the room to grab a girl and they be staying in my corner. And I'd be staying in my corner.

Because you see, I fear rejection so much

that I won't even take a chance of going to ask you to dance. Because I know when you say no, not if you say no. I know when you say no, I'm going to have to take that walk of shame back across the room and everybody's going to be looking at me and pointing at me and laughing.

See, that's the way my thinking is,

and this is before I started drinking.

When I graduated from Locke High School in 1972, getting ready to go to Loyola Marymount University, my 12th grade class gave a beach party to celebrate our graduation. It was a night beach party. And I'm walking along the beach by myself under these flickering light states, set these trash cans on fire to light up the beach. And I'm walking along the beach by myself. The professor, that's what they called me. And I've got a can of soda and I'm just walking.

And I stopped because I saw a guy and a girl underneath a blanket.

And I looked in, the blanket was moving

and I listen

and I heard that girl say

ooh,

oh, I'm sorry, excuse me, I got it.

Whoo

I

a little hot there for a second there.

I wanted to get underneath a blanket,

but everybody knows the professor doesn't get underneath blankets and somebody was passing around something. I wish I remember what it was because it became my first drink. It was either some Tyrolia or some Spaniard high class stuff, right back when they used to make it in the jugs where you could chuggle up. Because you see, by now my thinking told me I could take a drink and I would never become my father.

There's something about the ego that's amazing. My head told me my father was a janitor.

I'm accepted to go to college on a full scholarship.

I'm going to be the next Perry Mason. I'm better than him. He was a high school dropout. I'm going to Loyola. I'm smarter than him,

my thinking told me. I could drink and I would never become him.

And so I drank

in many pages in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it describes that men and women drink essentially for the effects produced by alcohol. Now, it doesn't say Alcoholics drink essentially for the effect produced by alcohol. It says men and women. It means everybody. But there's something different about me as an alcoholic in the feeling that's produced in me when I drink. When I drink, I get taller.

When I drink, I get

bigger. When I drank, my skin gets lighter.

When I drink,

my voice gets a little bit more bass in it.

My hand goes in my pocket and I kind of get this lean.

Somebody in here know what I'm talking about?

Transformational

so much that the sensation is so elusive

that I will go even when it begins to injure me, when it is injurious to me, I will chase that feeling over and over and over again. We talking about step one, y'all? Because you see, when I started drinking in the beginning, when it was working, I wasn't getting injured. I was able to go to the parties all of a sudden and I didn't feel those fears of rejection any longer. I had that courage

to walk across the room and hold out my hand and ask that girl and if she said no, I just went to the next one. There was number walk of shame. I was going. I was aggressive.

I truly believe that alcohol saved me

in the beginning because you see on this kid on this college campus who was so scared when I got there because I was a fish out of water and I didn't know if I was going to be good. Because now I'm not just with people who are smart like me. There's smarter than me and they look different than me. And not only that, they're social. Just like they're not just the professor, they're the professor and they're popular.

And so all of a sudden I have to fit in, and alcohol help me do that.

But you see, I share with you something else about the nature of my illness. It is progressive in nature. And after a while, it wasn't just good enough for me to feel good on Saturday at the parties. I wanted to be good, feel good on Sunday too, and on Monday.

Now I want to feel good every day.

Daily drinking starts doing some things to you. Around my third year in college, my grades started slipping because when you drink every day and every night, you don't get to class every day. So now my grades aren't quite the same. I guess it goes from As to BS. But you see, there's also another component to that. My thinking starts to change because you see my character became real. I'll

my morals and my values started to change. I would have these lines that I would draw and all of a sudden I would cross those lines.

I used to be the straight A student who would never do anything wrong. Now I have to start cheating on my exams to keep up. Started writing the answers on the cuffs of my shirts going to the bathroom during the test so I could look up the answers. My spirit started becoming real ill. I started plagiarizing my term papers. Hell, I started buying these term papers from these services that used to sell the things that I never dreamed that I would do before. And now all of a sudden I'm doing these things because it is more important now for me to

drink and feel good than for me to do the right thing. And after all, I'm still passing anyway. See, my head also has this justifier in it. My thinking has this thing that told me nobody want to be just a bookworm anyway. I want to be a student of life.

Had all the catchphrases down. You see, the most dangerous part of my dishonesty is not what I tell you. It's what I tell myself. And I buy it. And I believe it.

The thinking, the obsession,

that subtle form of insanity that started to creep into my thoughts and into my actions.

And I would shrug it off. And I would say, after all, no, nobody wants to just be a square anyway. And I'm still passing my classes and I graduated from college on time. Now I need to just kind of like let you know that respecting the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't go into a whole bunch of detail about all the other things that as a direct result of my alcoholism, I started using because I'm a garbage can, because I need, I need it all.

And by the time I graduated from on time, somehow in 1976, I got accepted to go to law school

pursuing Perry Mason,

went to a law school located in San Francisco, CA, a place called Hastings College of the Law. I didn't know at the time that it was one of the most prestigious law schools in the country. What I was doing was a geographic. See, I don't tell people that a lot of times. You see, I got accepted to go to law school at Loyola Law School too, in Los Angeles. But by now I knew my disease has started growing so serious that I even in the back of my head knew that if I kept this up in in LA partying with my brothers and stuff, I'd never

through law school. So I ran away to law school in San Francisco and didn't even know see God right straight and crooked lines because I didn't know that I was being placed into a beautiful circumstance and situation at Hastings that later was going to influence all the other things I did in life. But I need to let you know this, that law school in San Francisco are places that are made for an alcoholic. You see it's a whole lot of drinking there.

And when you go to law school, they only have two tests a year, a midterm and a final.

And that was ready made for me. I would go to the class the first couple of weeks, learn what they were doing, and I would just check out y'all, I was a law clerk for an alcoholic and I thought that's the way you do it. And I would work during the day and we would get loaded at night and I would go take the midterm and pass it because I was a good crammer. And then the finals were coming. I would pass that. And I went to summer school after my first year, summer school after my second year, and I graduated from law school early.

In 2 1/2 years,

at the age of 23, just before my 24th birthday in December of 1978, they have a test you got to take to be a lawyer called the bar exam. And they were going to give one in February of 1979, right after I turned 24. And I stayed in San Francisco to study for the bar exam because I wanted to walk across the stage in the graduation with my fellow classmates when they finished their last semester in May.

And so I took the bar exam in February. And the results happen to be coming out on the day of graduation, the last Saturday in May of 1979. And I'm in my apartment getting dressed, putting on my cap and gown. My family had flown up from Los Angeles. We're all crowded in my little apartment. And there was this pounding at my door. And it was my best friend from law school, a guy I worked at this law firm with. And he came pounding on the door. And he says, Ronald, they just posted the borrow results. And guess what? You passed

and at age 24,

I became one of the youngest black attorneys ever licensed to practice law in the state of California.

And

obviously these are people who've never heard me share before because you'll, you'll know that's the last clapping you'll be doing for for a while about any accomplishments by me.

Because you see, I'm an alcoholic. It's probably the most dangerous thing that could have happened to me was doing just that. Because you see, I never thought that God had done that for me. I'm like most Alcoholics in the disease. I thought I'd done this, that my ego told me

You're a boy genius.

You're a boy wonder

you. You going to be the next Perry Mason, isn't it true, right. You're going to be a millionaire by the time that you're 30. I need to let you know that by the time I was 30, I was not a millionaire. Because, you see, my disease is progressive. I didn't even have a bank account when I was 30.

You would have thought that I would have at least bought a house on the hill, a condominium or a mansion. I was living back at home with my mother sleeping on her floor.

I didn't have a nice job for a law firm on Wilshire and Westwood in Los Angeles. The only job I had was carrying out the trash and watering the lawn for 21 year old dope dealer who lived across the street from my mother.

I could not even imagine the shame and degradation that my mother felt

at looking at this sign. She had been just so proud of justice five years before.

Alcohol is no respecter of intellect.

Alcohol doesn't care if you graduated from law school or if you dropped out from high school. Alcohol doesn't care if you're a man or if you're a woman. Alcohol does not care if you're black or if you're white. Doesn't care if you grew up on Wilshire and Westwood. Alcohol doesn't care if you're short or if you're tall. Alcohol is an equal opportunity ass kicker

if you suffer from the disease that I suffer from that is first of all physical in nature. The Big book of Alcoholics Anonymous has a lot of things written in it all the way through. The 12 steps are detailed all the way through Chapter 7, but it's interesting to note the probably the most, the most that is written in the book in talking about the steps is about step one.