The 48th Annual Big Deep South Convention in New Orleans, LA

Thank you, darling. All right, so now I'd like to introduce House Speaker. First off, I wanted to say that this year's speaker lineup so far has been incredible and I

and I got no doubt that it's only going to continue.

I've heard Earl numerous times online is the first opportunity that I've had to meet him in person. It truly has been

and Honor Courtney had sent me a text the other day wanting to know how excited I was to be picking up one of my heroes from the airport to bring them to this event. And I never really thought of it that way until I have to listen to Johnny last night talk about, you know, heroes within our fellowship and and, and he certainly fits that description. And so do a lot of you people in this room. For me, you guys are my hero. So

there always been a very instrumental part in my sobriety. Without further introduction,

here's my friend Earl.

Hi everybody, My name is Earl. I'm an alcoholic.

Hi,

is that a video camera? Jim?

Sorry, my name is Bob. I'm an alcoholic.

I'm from Shreveport.

My, my name is Earl. I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody. I, I want to thank the committee for asking me to come share here. It's always an honor and a privilege to do something like this. I want to thank the speakers that have already spoken. Thank you so much

for carrying the message to me and

special shout out to my Al Anon sister Annoy. See, I remember your name.

I, I went to the Allen on talk this afternoon and man, get that tape.

Get that tape, man.

What should we talk about?

That drinking thing maybe? All right, so I didn't start drinking till I was 12. I

I waited as long as I possibly could. I, I had been restless, irritable and discontented for quite some time prior to that.

I grew up in, let's just call it an unfriendly environment, all right, where I would wake up in the morning a little kid and I was hungry and I'm not, I'd stick my door out, you know, my head out the door, you know, and I and I, there are two ways to get to the kitchen, to the cereal, right. You could go to the, the left and go that way, or you go to the right and go that way. And I would go out and I just try to feel it, you know, like, where is he? Where's my old man? Is he over there? Is he over there? You know, and then I'd make my move, you know, for the cereal.

Sometimes it was a good move, sometimes it wasn't. But you know, you could do what you got to do and

not a friendly environment. I was walking on egg shells by the time I was four years old,

when I was 12. I was an odd child. I started tripping before I started drinking. What I what I would do is if you took your eye, you leave it up in these canyons. And if you took your eyes off me, I would just jet out into the backyard and I'd hop over the back fence and I'd go down into the deer runs, you know, and I'd pull off the deer run and just sit in the bushes and sit real still.

And I'd wait around and at dusk, you know, just before dusk and at dusk, you know, the deer come down through the deer trails and I just sit there and I'd watch them all walk by, right, Just still as I could be till I hear him yelling my name, yell my name. And I'd come up, you know, and hop back over the fence and get a woman and, you know, have dinner and, you know, business as usual, right? And then I got

got ahold of some salt lick and I got some salt lick. And then so the jeered come by and I just stick my hand out with the salt in it. And the deer would lick the salt in my hand and I would just catch in a big buzz off of that, right? So, I mean, it was, I was, you know, we knew by then it was already obvious what was going to happen, right?

And then they ran a bunch of tests on me. They said, you know, this is a very strange child, right? So we there wouldn't have been a bunch of tests on me. And it turned out I had a very high IQ. I don't have it anymore, so I'm not bragging.

That's that's been gone for quite some time.

So one day my father walked into there was this this boarding school that was nine through 12th grade and they decided they were going to do what they call their great experiment. And it was going to be these five year men. They were going to look for these 8th graders to come to be the first five year men in this school from that was originated in Bell Buckle, TN All right, the Webb School for Boys right. And they had went out on the West Coast and

so they sent out these exams all over the place, five and a half hour exam. And I took it and there were 16 kids that passed it and I was one of them. And how I found out I was going to boarding schools. My father walked in my room and said get in the car.

I went outside and there were two cars. The engines were running, You know what I mean? A bunch of relatives in the cars. And I thought, what the heck? I got in the car and he had the car. And we drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and drove. We got to this place by this mountain. We pulled up. He got out of the car, I got out of the car. Nobody else got out of the car.

He walked over to and put a suitcase down next to me, stuck out his hand. He said there's something a man out of you got back in the car and everybody took off. And I remember standing there, I mean, I was like 5 feet tall, 104 lbs, you know, manhood was right around the corner,

you know, And the feeling was I just been thrown away by the people who knew me best in the world. And I didn't know what I'd done to get tossed out like that. The fact was I was being given an opportunity for a wonderful education. He'll mean good stead to this very day. All right. But I'm not, I'm not a fax guy,

you know,

You know, if it feels bad, it is bad. That's you know what I mean. And that felt real bad. So I called home for like 3 or four days every night, you know, crying, telling my mother, you got, look, just come get me, bring me home.

We won't need it. No need to discuss it. You know what I mean? We'll just act like it didn't happen. We'll just, you know, we'll call that kind of like a parental Mulligan, right? You know, and we'll just move on from there, right? And in the background, you hear my father going, hang up, man, I've got to go click, right? And in that first week, I was walking around trying not to make eye contact with anybody, and I met Tiny. Actually, Tiny found me. I didn't find him. Tiny. Every high school's got a guy named Tony's like 64240 plays guard on the football team.

And Tony came up to me and he said how you doing, punk? And he slapped me in the back of the head and sent me and my books flying. And I had this like out of body experience, you know, where

you're watching yourself do something, you know, while your head, you're saying, you know, this is a very bad idea, probably shouldn't be doing this.

And I walked up to Tiny and I hit him as hard as I possibly could, which had no effect on Tiny whatsoever.

And he looked down at me and said, you got a lot of guts, kid. And then he beat the crap out of me, right?

And as I'm taking the beating, I'm thinking, you know, this is going pretty good

because I was terrified of timing, right? But he had just said, you got a lot of guts. My violence had masked my fear, right. So I mean, I, I mean, he beat me. I mean, I'm one of those guys that, you know, you knocked me down. I just get back up, you know, you knock me down, I get back up, you know, guys are standing right, going just, you know, stay down, stay down. Couldn't do it. So I took my, my woman and I'm, I'm on my way back to my, my dorm room waiting for the bleeding to stop. And I got knots on my head, man. I mean,

step and I'm thinking, man, my life sucks. I mean, just a few days ago everything was fine, you know, and now it's like, you know, family's throwing me away, Giant people are beating me, you know, I'm just not thrilled at all. There's 249 teenagers in this school and 112 year old. I don't belong here. I don't fit in. I'm the youngest and smallest. It's like Lord of the Flies in this place, man. I got to get out of here, right? And and word spread across this campus like wildfire. Watch out for this little Hightower kid. He's a maniac. He attacked

right

now. So now I got this reputation that has absolutely nothing to do with who I really am. I mean, I'm just a frightened child, right? But I get this and I'm a maniac, right? So the cool guy started coming around and Matt stuck his head in my in my dorm room and he stuck his head and he went, hey, man, you want to smoke a joint? And I said yes I do.

And I had no idea what he was talking about.

I didn't know what that meant.

I didn't care. All I heard was, do you want to come with us? They could have said, look, we're going to kill the Spanish teacher, Do you want to come? I would have said, I'm in, let's go. They got me in Latin. I'll go kill this man Cedar. And we stopped and we picked up Steve and Steve had a Tupperware container full of cheap red wine. And I'm talking cheap, no grapes involved, red wine, you know what I mean? The fortified stuff, right? And he had right. So we had a Tupper working tip, 213 year olds and a 12 year old babies, right? We went behind the dorm. We're standing by,

I can see like it was yesterday, man. And he let the joint take a hit and handed to me. I took a hit and it burned my lungs. I was like, oh,

there any that wine thing right to a pull on that wine and that vapor thing happened. You know what I mean? Where it just goes and hits the bottom of your stomach and there's that vapor action comes back up and I was just like, oh right, give me that joint thing back again here.

Nope, still don't like that. Give me that wine back. You know what I mean?

And then I mean, it happened. That thing that makes me bodily and mentally different from my fellows occurred, and suddenly I was comfortable standing around, standing, doing what I was doing with the people I was doing it with. And I never felt like that before in my life,

right? And I don't know, is it the pot? Is it the wine? Is it the fact that I'm standing here with my two very close personal friends, Matt and Steve?

I don't care, you know, like all the problems went away. I'm not afraid of Tiny anymore. I don't care where he is. You know, parents don't want me. I don't want them turn my back on my family and pretty much never went back, right? And I have my new buds and I woke up the next morning and what I got to remember is, is that in the beginning it worked perfectly for me. It worked perfectly. It did exactly what I wanted it to do. It was anti oral medication,

you know, it just took me out of the equation, right? And I was comfortable in my own skin, you know, my own heartbeat, just breathing my own breath, you know, I was just right in there. I was okay, you know, and I woke up that next morning and this you don't have to go

I

unless you don't like this. I mean, you can go if you don't, you know,

If I'm pissing you off, you can go, but you know,

but you don't have. That's just a baby.

You, you know, one of his alcoholic knows where their baby is. So I mean, you know,

this is fantastic. Both you

that's that's a double winner.

I love it That's like a baby seat in a a right like carriage thing. Alright, you speak of anytime you want Yeah, we're all right. So anyway,

I what the hell was I talking about?

Right, right. So that humble beginnings, you know, little pile of wine, no big deal. And I talk about drugs in my story, my child in the 60s. But you got to understand the only thing that was on the table at all times for me was alcohol,

because drugs are completely unreliable. There is no quality control going on out there. You don't know what you got till you get it in your body. You get yourself a fit to Jack Daniels, you get yourself a good quarter gin. You know what you got right? You're going to be all right no matter what the drugs do or don't do. You got your booze right here. You're going to be you're going to be OK, right? You do so much cocaine, you can't get your mouth open anymore,

you know?

You know, you suck a little Jack Daniels, see your teeth and loosen you right up. And you can go on with the party. You're all right. Jack is there for you, right? Ask it a little too spooky. Don't worry about it. You know, you drink enough gin. It'll get you right back in the comfort zone. You'll be all right.

Booze is reliable. Judge is not reliable. Didn't stop me from taking a, you know, aircraft carrier full of them, but you know, so anyway, the pot and wine is the beginnings. 13 was pills. The only reason I took a pill is the guy said would you like a couple of pills? And I just took them and swallowed them and said what were those? Which is the alcoholic way. The normal person says what are they gets an answer. They make a decision and then maybe they take them, maybe they don't. I just take them and then inquire

what's about to happen,

you know,

which way are we going? You know, am I heading for the floor or are we driving to Seattle? Which is it?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't really care right?

14 with psychedelics. Only reason I did any psychedelics was because I was not a 10 hour pass a girl named Debbie and Debbie was a very bad girl and I will love her till the day I die.

Tremendous respect for Debbie. And Debbie said would you like to drop some acid? And I said yes I would. And she took out a lipstick tube and she took the top off and spun it up and there was a little pill on the end of it which I thought was extremely clever and I took it. I popped it in my mouth, swallowed it, and Debbie said, did you take that whole thing?

And I said, well, yes I did. It was very tiny.

She still has three hits of white lightning over here. I love always leather, always. There's a few people just go, oh,

that's not good. No, it was not next. Next two or three days were very interesting and about 600 hits later I got classified legally insane by the military. But that's a whole other story. We don't have time for 15. I started shooting dope. The only reason I shot dope was I was on a boat in Marina Del Rey, CA with a girl named Cammy. Lovely girl,

Cammy said that would you like me to stick this in your body? And I said I'm, I'm certain of it. Yeah.

And and she did. And it was one of those shots where you just go

and on the way down, all I remember thinking was, if I'm not dead, I'm doing that again. Because that was

that was instant. What problems? I don't remember being worried about anything ever in my life.

So as a humble, you know what I mean? It was just the progression was, you know, on its way, man, it was marching along at a pretty fast clip. By the time I was 16, I decided I'd had enough of enough a higher education, so I dropped out of high school. My father came back in my life said you've gone nuts. Threw me my first mental institution for three months of observation and a year of rehabilitation. I thought that was a little excessive. So, you know, I I talked my way out of that joint, went back on the street doing what? We just stay loaded, right?

They threw the net over me again, dragged me back in the nut house and I had learned you got to get out before they get the Thorazine in you. Because if,

if you wait till, if you get the Thursday and you, you're leaving when they say, you know,

you got two speeds slow and stopped. That's it, right.

So I was in the intake interview and you know, I knew I got, I got a bolt, man, I got it. So I was like, Hey, look at that, You know what I mean? I was out the door, man, the bells are going off and the whistles and I'm out in the backyard running as fast as I can. There's a guy on my tail, man. And I hit that back fence. I was over that back fencing gone. So next three years doing what we do to just to stay out there doing our thing, right? And I was out there doing my thing, progressing, progressing, progressing, right. By the time I'm 19, I get accepted to business college

story, but I end up in Northern California in business college and I've become a drug dealer, right? Made perfect sense to me, right? Do what you know,

and I mean, I had no morals, I had no ethics. I had no sense of family, I had no sense of community. I was just loose, you know, I was just out there doing what I could do, right? And I'm studying marketing, production, distribution. I'm applying it to my business. You know, businesses boom. And I think college is amazing, right? And they had a health fair. So I go to this health fair and you know, they're doing checkups on people and they let me, they go

run a few more tests on you. And I was like, all right,

you know, felt kind of special, right? They ran a mom and said, well, you have malignant cancer. I was like, great. Of course I do. So I flew back to LA. They had prepared me for major surgery. They did major surgery. They did on my upper back, took about a pound on my upper back and told me that I needed to get my fares in order because it was late stage. And

that was the first time it really struck me what my life had come to because

here I was 1920 years old. I'm being told to get my affairs in order. And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, I make a couple of phone calls, you know, we're pretty much good to go here. And I got, I got nothing going on. I have, you know, I haven't done anything. I got nothing to show for my life at all. I'm not heading anywhere. I'm not moving towards something. I haven't accomplished anything. I'm just loose, man. I'm just on the loose

and so I, you know, I do the cancer thing. They put me in in

nuclear medicine. They called it back then chemotherapy now.

And I did that for a little bit and I didn't like I wasn't getting a good buzz off of that stuff, right? So I left and went home and got loaded the way I get loaded. And I'm a long term cancer survivor and couple. About a year later, I'm 21 years old. My mother calls me and she says we haven't been anywhere as a family in almost 10 years. You know, your 22nd birthday is coming up. We'll go anywhere you want to go, but we're going as a family. We're putting this family back together. And I remember thinking, well, you know, and she starts crying. And I'm thinking, you know, that's not fair.

You know what I mean? A son has no defense against a weeping mother, right? So I said, fine, fine. So I flew back to LA, and on my 22nd birthday, we took off the flight of Guadalajara. And on the way there, the plane crashed. And my mother, my father, my little sister all died in the crash, and I didn't.

And I remember waking up in the wreckage and my mother was laying over there. My little sister Kimberly was right over there. And my father was over there. And I had broken my skull, my back in three places, my arm, my leg. I had a lot of internal injuries. I was paralyzed in the waist down. The only thing I could move was my right arm. And I couldn't get it to any of them to help them. So I laid there and I watched them all bleed to death and

I had it was like a quiet moment, man. It wasn't like this big, you know, shaking your fist at God, you know, rage and scream and yell and thing. It was just this quiet. It was just you could hear a pin drop up there, man. And I just, it was like flipping a switch, man. I just flipped the switch, you know, I just said, you know what,

I have no interest in a God that would take a kind, gentle, poetic creature like my little sister Kimberly, and they meet a lion cheating, even doping like me on this. I got no, you know, alcoholic like me on this planet. I got no use for God of this type and I renounce God. Then some guys came up and they scavenged a plane. Rick took what they could find a value and left me there to die. So I had no more love for you either. I was out of the game, man. And then some other guys came up and they threw me in the back of a truck with my mother and they took us down to an aid station and I was the only one left alive and.

Dies eventually it took us to a hospital and I got my ID out and they found out my name and that brought the federales right?

A little issue with the Mexican government they were they were not happy to see me back in their country. So they interrogated me through an interpreter for 3 1/2 days wanting to know what I was doing back in Mexico

and was unpleasant to say the least. And I finally got a hold of a phone and I called the guy in Northern California and they flew in a plane and they plastered me from the neck down

and threw me on a plane and got me out of Mexico and ended up in a hospital in Southern California. And I was getting maximum shots of Demerol every three hours around the clock because I had a good story to sell, you know? And that's what a good, you know, alcoholic, drug addict does. You know what I mean? You sell your story, right? And those nurses were eating it up like a spoon. Man, that poor boy,

all that he has been through, you know, load him up. Just load him up, right. So by the time I got out of there, I was wearing a had a back custom back brace I'd had made and my leg was still in the cast and I had a cane and this brace on and I had hair down, you know, hair. And I was just crazy, man. I'd lost a lot of weight while I was in the hospital. I was strung out like a lunatic. And I can't matter there knowing I had three hours to connect, you know, before I started kicking like a dog. And I went on my last run and it lasted for six years.

And during that six years, I got sober three or four times. But now I didn't get sober. I detoxed three or four times. There's a difference, right? You know getting silver is not the same as running out. You know,

there is a significant difference between the two.

And

I used to go this bootleg sanitarium in Hollywood, CA, this bootleg detox, right? You had to know the guy who knew the guy where it was, right? And you'd go in and there's like a nurse, you know, and you give her 150 bucks cash and you'd give her, you know, your wallet and your car keys and your gun and your Valium, you know, whatever all you had,

Anya, you know, you just slide it all across the counter and they take you in and strap you to a Gurney, shoot you fully anti convulsants and let you ride. And after about 72 hours, they unstrapped you and you'd sit up. And on 72 hours, my kick's just getting going, you know what I mean? I'm still climbing, you know what I mean? I haven't beaked yet. You know, the pain is still coming, right? And they'd sit me up and I remember like the third or fourth time I was in, their nurse said now Earl, Earl,

I've had a buck for every time I'd heard it said like that. Earl, Earl, Earl.

So you know that for you to drink use is it's it's complete lunacy, don't you? You know you're an alcoholic, don't you? Yes, ma'am. I mean no hesitation. I knew what I was yes, yes, that's that's very true. She goes, you know, for you to drink uses madness. It's just madness. I go. How come

I got no comeback for that either? You're out. You're right, she goes. So now, armed with this information, you're going to be a good boy. You're not going to use no matter what, are you? No,

not an idiot.

And I'd go back, you know, I'd get on and off the Gurney and on the, you know, still some just shaking like a leaf, you know, I mean, go back up and they'd give me all my stuff back, you know, stick it on my pockets. I'd be walking out to my car and I'd be shaking and I'd be thinking, I don't think I should drive like this. You know. If I'm not mistaken, Valium is medically indicated here. So I took what I consider to be a moderate dose of Valium, about 40 milligrams,

right? Smooth me right out.

And, you know, four days later I came to in Oakland, and I don't know anybody in Oakland. And I just boom, you know, that was my thing. Four day blackouts. I'd be sitting doing something. I'd blink and it would be four days later and I'd be talking to a completely different set of people if I was lucky. All right,

I don't know why why that is, but anyway, you know,

I just kept moving closer to death and I'm not a suicidal person. I've never been suicidal. That's never been my thing. I don't know why I just it's it's just not been my thing to kill myself. I will say this, however, my drinking got to the place where

death was an acceptable consequence of the way I was behaving.

You know, if it killed me, it killed me. You know, I didn't care. So my grasp of life was

I was hanging on by a thread, you know, and it went like that for six years. And I mean, I got all the war stories and the madness and the insanity, you know, that, that people like us get along the way. I mean, it just was horrible. You know, there were no relationships of any consequence or substance. I was completely alone in the world. I was the violence was insane. You know, I came out of my last blackout. It was the day before my 28th birthday and I was

I had I was 215 lbs. I had hair down to almost to my waist. I was yellow, my heart was swollen,

the sack around my heart.

They were deciding whether or not to charge me with the attempted murder of David Lubov. Police were outside. I'd broken 74 bones. Both my hands were broken. At the time, I had over 650 stitches in me. I've been stabbed twice, shot at. The violence in my life have been completely nuts. And I'm the most mellow, peaceful guy you'll ever meet sober. But you know, it's that old Doctor Jekyll, Mr. Hyde story, you know, And family was dead. No, had no family, had no place to live, no friends. I mean, I was just

flatline. My life was just a wasteland

and I had what they call in here a moment of clarity. And I got to tell you, all that stuff I just told you had no effect on me whatsoever. I didn't care about any of that stuff. That wasn't going to stop me. Now. I had gotten to the point in my drinking and using where drugs were so secondary to me and a child of the 60s. I mean, we were focused on the drugs. Our parents were the Alcoholics. We weren't going to kill ourselves like them. We were going to find a whole new way to kill ourselves

trying to carve out this new identity. But that had gone by the way said, Man, my thing was drinking

at that's what I was. You know, I was knocking it down at a ridiculous rate on a daily basis. And I keep my memory. I was just so brutally hungover and messed up. And I'm sitting there and I had this moment of clarity. And it's none of that outside stuff. What it was for me was I, I hit a spiritual bottom and it was that I wasn't connected to another human being on the face of the earth. And that was the direct result of my alcoholism. And if I didn't want to die like that, I was going to have to find consciousness beyond that

I currently possessed. My best thinking was killing me, you know? And I raised up two busted hands, and I said help. And there was somebody there that knew about all this, right? And knew that I had to reach out before it was going to be worth anything. And I said help. And they grabbed me, and they threw me. There was a police car and an ambulance there. And they grabbed me and threw me in the back of the ambulance. And I was gone before the cops knew what had happened, right? And they took me to UCLA emergency and they pumped my stomach

and they said, get him out of here, he's gonna die. And they took me to All of you Medical Center. And they kept me there for, I don't know, 3-4, five days. I'm not really sure. But I do remember, you know, they, they, they checked me in. I, they put me in this room and I had a roommate and it was this guy. And he was, he was long and lean. He was about 64. And he was leaning, he was on his bunk and he was facing the wall. He was leaned up against the wall. And he had long black greasy hair. I mean, this guy was nasty man. And he had, he had those nail beds, you know,

fingernails that were the, you know, the liver checked out a year ago and nobody told him, you know what I mean? I mean, this guy was in bad shape and he was an old junkie is what he was. I mean, that's like fun in a Unicorn, you know what I mean? An old one of those.

And he rolls over and he sits up on the bunk and he looks at me and I'm just sitting there shaking and I'm so sick, man. And he looks at me and he goes, dude, you look bad.

I was thinking, Oh my God,

he thinks I look bad. Great.

And I just kept getting sicker and then ambulance showed up and they threw me in that ambience. They took me down to place called Long Beach General Hospital and they took me this room and it was the detox was like guys right off the street, right? And it was 42 cots in one room, Army cots, 21 cots on each side of the room with sheets drawn between the cots and how you kicked was called riding the cot. There were no meds, nobody showing up at night going. You know, you're a little anxious tonight. Or can I get your little little something help you sleep? You know, like, no,

it was just hang on, buddy. You know, we know odds on you were about dead even right now. You know what I mean? You just hung on and I made the commitment I'm gonna live or die in this cot. And I stayed there for 47 days.

And at the end of 47 days, I got up by that cot and Ray W, God bless him, said to me, Earl, your alcoholic of the hopeless variety. And I said, yes, Sir. And he said, if you don't want to die, you better go to Alcoholics Anonymous. It's the only place a guy like you has a shot. And I remember after everything that I had been through, after the mayhem of my life, not one good thing had happened in several years. Just hopelessness, right?

When he said, you know, you go to a A or die, I remember looking at him and thinking,

really,

it's come to this, Has it?

I got to go to the A&A, huh?

Oh, man,

OK, I don't think it's going to go well.

I was pretty sure that A and a thing wasn't going to, wasn't going to work, you know, not for a guy like me, you know, because I'm different,

you see. So I ended up in the basement of a church on a Friday night. It's out of my mind right now. The physical phenomenon of craving had been dealt with for the most part, but the obsession of the mind, the greater aspect of my disease, my alcoholism was in full effect, man. And I was as crazy as you can be without somebody throwing a net over you. And I walked in the back of that room and I sat down the back row, you know, my eyes darting around in my head, Mad Dog and everybody,

you know, don't come up on me.

Uh-huh. Check where the doors and windows are. Scan the room, see it, you know, read, you know, you live like I lived. You know how to read a room. You find out who's got the juice in here. Where's the power? You know, vibe it out. Find out who the guys are that are running this deal. Slide up on them, burglarize that conversation. Find out what they got. Get back in your chair. I'm not joining. I'm I'm on a tactical mission. I'm here to gather in Intel. All right. And then I'm out. I looked up and they had those scrolls up and I said the traditions and said for the for the group, I'm not a group,

don't need those

steps. I read them and I got, OK, I got that. What else you got, right. I thought I understood it. That's that's all you need, right, to understand them, right. I sat in the back of the room and they got some people got up and they read and talked about things, you know, But, you know, my brain was bouncing around on my skull. I couldn't track any of that, right. And then this guy got up and he shared his experience, strength and hope. Now, I didn't know that's what he was sharing, but he told a story. He told a story about how he used to drink. And I thought I drank. Yeah,

I drink like that. And then he talked about that something had happened that had changed it up for him. And I thought, yeah, me too. And then he talked about what his life was like today. And I thought, well, you lost me there

because because I got none of that, you know, But I left and without being able to verbalize that, you know, or put my finger on it, but the feeling something changed inside me. There was like a pilot light that went on. And what it was was that that guy gave me hope. I came there hopeless. And that first guy, that first guy that shared,

gave me hope that possibly a guy like me didn't have to die drunk.

And I thought, I'm gonna come back and hear that man speak again because I knew so little about this. I thought that's the meeting where that guy talked,

that that was where he talked. If you wanted to hear him talk, you went that meeting on Friday night, right? So next Friday, I went there to hear that guy talk. And I sat and I waited on the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah that they do in the beginning. You know what I mean? I'm not paying any attention to it all. How it works. Yeah, right. Good. Good luck with that. Right. And, you know, and then, you know, all this stuff and then they sit in our speaker. Tonight's Betty and I went time out.

Where's Bob?

The guy next to me goes, you're new, aren't you? It's like, what's your point, pal? And he said, no, no, take it easy. We have a different speaker every week. I'm like, what? And he goes, yeah, we got all different kinds of meetings. We got men's tags, women's tags, speaker meetings, discussion meetings. And I felt my head was going to blow off my shoulders, right? Without I was, you know, I like get, get car, go meeting, hear Bob, go home. That's it.

That's what I could do. I was not a well man. And now he's telling me

that's not what's going to happen. And all the while this is going on, the 75 year old woman, Betty's making her way to the podium. She's moving, man. She's she's gone for the podium, right? And she's got the little spring dress on, little hair helmet, you know what I mean? She's got she's she didn't know when she gets at the point. And I'm like, Oh my God, right. How am I getting this out of my life back?

This can't be happening to me seriously. And she gets something, says my name is Betty, I'm an alcoholic. Hi Betty.

And Betty starts talking and all of a sudden Betty explains that in her day, if you were a reasonably good looking woman and had $0.50, you could walk into a bar and drink for two weeks and explain how you go about doing that.

By the time Betty sat down, I looked at the guy next to me and I said Betty is a bad ass.

I would roll with Betty

now I'll at that meeting, man, I'm like completely sprung now I go I'm identifying with a 75 year old woman. What the hell is going on? I don't understand what's happening right and I just thought, well, I got I got a fan out in this deal. You know what I mean? I guess they're obviously, you know, I don't know where the hell Bob is. So, you know, I'll just,

so next thing you know, I'm in a meeting a day and I got this going on, that going on. They said, you know what I mean? You need commitments. I'm like, great, you know, commitments. That sounds fantastic, right? So they said you got to get a sponsor. And I said, what's a sponsor? And they said, well, a sponsor, somebody who's got what you want. And I said, well, I would like to drink,

so maybe that's not a good idea just yet to be throwing the ball back in my court. And I've come to believe that you should get a sponsor who's got what he wants, you know, because that's a good definition of happiness. A happy man is a man who's got what he wants, right? And that's what I found. I was at a meeting one day and this guy came into the meeting. And I mean,

he didn't just come into a meeting. He just flew into a meeting.

He flew in. I mean, you know, he my first sponsor, the late, great Donald Madden, who saved my life, was a very flamboyant gay man. And when he came into the, he was the kind of guy that he walked in the room and everybody turned and went, who's the big gay guy? I mean, he didn't have to say anything, make a move, nothing, man. He was just a very, very gay man.

And he flew up to the podium and he said, my name is Donald Madden and I'm an alcoholic. And everybody went, hi, Donald. You could tell him like, God, everybody here loves this guy, right?

And he broke it down, man. I mean, this guy got up there and he had a passion for recovery and a passion for his for life. And he didn't care what anybody thought, man. This guy was bold and, and there was there was a courage and A and A and a right here, right now about him. That was just amazing. And I remember he sat down, I said, that's him. I almost asked that guy to sponsor me and these dudes, I was sitting with her like,