The Paramount speaker group in Paramount, CA

Good evening. My name is Paul and I'm a full blown alcoholic

and

I'm glad to be here. I'm always Alcoholics are always. They always say that they're glad to be anyplace.

I'm glad to be here to this meeting particularly. I had no idea that there were this many drunks in Paramount.

You must breed them here or something like that

anyhow. And all the newcomers and all the chips and all that. And I'm always and I, I, I like being

at a meeting where the room is too small for the number of Alcoholics, where no matter it's a big room or little room, if it's too small, then the Alcoholics all get jammed together. And when you jam elfies together, they generate a great deal of energy. And that energy is love. And it can it just feel the love in this and the enthusiasm in this room

and I I feel bad to see some people have to stand.

But then

a little boy says, what the hell? You've got to stand, you know?

Yeah, let's, let's do the best you can. I guess I,

I,

they, they, I,

I just, I just like, I'm like Jim. I really love AAI, just love a A and in fact, I love this way of life so much that I am happy to be an alcoholic. I like being an alcoholic yourself.

I can't always I can't say that I always felt that way about it, but now that I'm sober, it being sober helps a little bit and making you like it.

And I, I I like this way of life. I like and I and I wouldn't have this way of life if I weren't enough high or if I had it, I wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be able to actually do the things that are in fact that that I've never seen that any place in the club before that says in memory of the winners. When I came in, they kept saying stick with the winners, stick with the winner, said you don't hear it much anymore. But

I,

I was at a meeting in Carlsbad a week or so ago, and the fellow had been out and well, anyway, I'll tell you, we'll tell you his story. But he was saying that earlier that day he was watching daytime TV, some Oprah show or something like that. And he said that somebody asked this other person what's a winner, and the person didn't have an answer.

And they turned it over to this psychiatrist.

And the psychiatrist said that a winner, no, he what's, what's, what's the difference between a winner and a loser was the question.

And the answer he gave was that a loser is a person who won't do the things that winners do.

And I thought that's a A in a A is, as Jim touched on so much, being a winner means doing the things that winners do. And when I say stick with the winners, that's what they mean. Stay around winners and do the things they do and just follow suit and do things that you think are real dumb and unnecessary and stupid. I mean, like this the stupid business of having them embarrassed the hell out of yourself and stand up as a newcomer. Yeah. And tell the whole world you're an alcoholic

if you call this the whole world. But it's a stupid, dumb, silly, childish thing to do. But it keeps us sober. It keeps us sober. And even when you go out and drink again, you come back, you start over as a newcomer and stand up whether you think it's a good idea or not. Then I did a lot of dumb things. I wrote in a four step just to prove it wouldn't work.

And the truth of the truth of the matter is the 4th step doesn't care why I did it. It just care said you get it done and a lot of this program can work just just to do it to prove that you're going to go along with I had. Speaking of the steps, I was talking to a newcomer

yesterday. He came to the house and we talked for about an hour and a half. And he mostly at that time, I let him tell me his story. And he had been around a A since 1984. And he'd been in and out of a A and in and out, in and out, in and out and in and out. And he was a professional man, an attorney, so it wasn't too stupid or anything.

And he'd been to lots and lots of meetings. And yet he, I asked him questions like, why,

why do you think you haven't been able to make the program? And he gave me a whole lot of goofy reasons and I can't a typical alcoholic. And, and I said, well, describe to me the alcohol, the a, a program. How do you see the, a, a program? I, I asked him all kinds of questions I could think of to get him to tell me what was missing in his recovery program. And it never occurred to him that he had never done the steps,

that the steps played some part in a, A, you know,

and I thought, you stupid idiot,

I, I treat, I, I, I'm very gentle with newcomers.

I, I also pointed out to him that I only sponsor winners and that now if he drank, it was different than from before. It wasn't just a question of him getting drunk. It was a question of him blowing my reputation. By God,

I have AI have a vested interest in his sobriety. He's going to say

anyhow, I

I guess I I should talk about drinking. I used to drink, but I wasn't one of those dumb Alcoholics. But I did occasionally get in trouble when I drank. I would get sick, really get sick when I drank. But I checked that out and that was because I drank on an empty stomach.

You should never drink on an empty stomach if you end up sick. If you drink on an empty stomach and then I I had times when I got sick and I hadn't drunk on an empty stomach

and I found out that that's because I mixed my drinks.

You should. You should never drink mix your drinks.

And then I had it happen that I got sick and I hadn't drunk on an empty stomach and I hadn't mixed my drinks,

but that was due to the fact that gotten some bad boost.

There's a lot of bad booths out there. And, and from what I see from the a, a research workers who keep checking it for us, they're not making it any better today than they ever did. And, and so I'm going to stay in here. And I used to drink before I went to a church dinner dances. I don't like dinner, church dinner dances. I was lived, grew up in a drugstore in a small town. And in a small town, you have to go to all the church functions and you have to go to church dinner dances. And I don't like church dinner dance because

people there you have to talk to a lot of people there. You have to talk to them. You have to talk chit chatting. I don't like to talk chit chat. I don't like, I don't like chit chat And and you and you also, you can't not dance at a church dinner dance. You can't, because every church dinner dance has at least one hyperactive woman

yourself

sitting there minding my own business and very and just minding my own business. And they'll come running up to you and say, come on, Paul, let's dance.

And I very politely would say, no, thank you, I can't dance. And they always say, Oh, yes, you can and drag you out on the floor and prove to the whole world that you can't dance. You know,

I didn't know I was doing it at the time. But in, in retrospect, I can see that what I did is I, I got to where I would have a few drinks before I went to the church dinner dances. You, you can't drink. You have to, have to have to drink at a church Internet, because if you don't, they'll know you have a problem. But they count your drinks.

Be very careful if you're drinking. So I've had my drinks where I went to church, dinner, dance and have one drink while I was there. And it would relax me physically and mentally. And if it relaxed me mentally and I could chit chat, I could chit chat, I could chit chat. That was good, really good chit chatter. I could, I could give chit chat lessons as a matter of fact,

and it relaxed me physically and I could dance. I could really dance really good. I could get into the dancing lessons. I was and it worked real fine. But over time and been looking back on it only in retrospect, and this was many, many years before it became an alpha, I'm looking back on it. Those two got out of sync

and I wouldn't have even begun to have relaxed mentally yet and I would get too relaxed physically. It would like maybe affect my speech and my I was sure my speech and so I would talk slowly

and deliberately so nobody would notice

or I would trip.

I have a trip when there was nothing to trip.

Ultimately, I would find myself lying there looking very serene.

And my mind would say, get up, you fool. People will think you're drunk.

And my body would say, what do you mean, get up? We're paralyzed from the ears down. Yeah. And I would lie there and think, how? How isn't that strange? I, I have never heard of anybody who would get paralyzed from the ears down on what little you had to drink.

I mean, I wonder what you must be very sensitive to this stuff. You must be allergic to it or something. I'll have to find somebody to ask about that. I was thinking like maybe a allergy professor because I was in the pharmacy school, then in medical school later I was thinking I'd ask a medical allergy professor, but I never found anybody to ask. You can't ask just anybody a question like that because

you have to be careful because they're liable to say, well, I don't know why that does that to you, but if it did that to me, I got. I wouldn't drink it, you know?

Yeah, I didn't want to know what to do about it. This one. No, I did that to me and

it was an interesting problem to us, but have the problem because it took my mind off my full bladder.

Well, that wasn't funny at all.

I I don't recall ever, ever having being paralyzed from the ears down. They didn't also have a full bladder,

a bladder that absolutely refused to remain full. But and the bad part about that's one thing. That's one thing that a A has not helped me with

my I've always had a low bladder capacity, and it's no better today than it was then. There's no better for a A coffee than it was for beer.

But but I'm not. I'm not complaining though, because even though my bladder and even though my capacity is not improved, my aim is improved tremendously

and I like that.

And and Max likes that too. And,

and anyhow, I kept on drinking, kept on getting in trouble and ended up having some convulsions. And I was, by that time I was a physician. I was a diagnostician as a specialist in diagnosis and doing consultations and that. And when people had doctors, had patients and it was wrong with them and send it to me. And I would do an elaborate work up in the consultation with them and figure out what was wrong with them, make the diagnosis, tell them what was wrong with Dubai. And I see that I was losing weight. I had convulsions,

headaches, a sense of impending insanity. I thought it was going crazy. I thought, my God, I need a good medical workup. I need a good diagnostician. Well, I happen to be the best diagnostician I knew at the time,

and I sat down, had a consultation with me, and I saw that I've been losing weight. I had these terrible headaches. I had this sense of impending insanity. I thought it was going crazy. The world was going topsy turvy and suddenly it was obvious to me

I had a brain tumor.

I dine. You'd all be sorry, my God. And as a matter of fact, I ended up in the Mayo Clinic and they didn't. They couldn't figure out why I had to convulsions. And until my wife snuck over there and told the neurosurgeon who was looking for my brain tumor that I was taking a few pills at night. And later on, years later, I got a copy of the letter that he sent back to the doctor, the neurologist that sent me there.

And it said that

that I had a condition that was all too common in the medical profession at this time, and one for which they had no ready answer. They didn't even know how to treat alcoholism, chemical dependency at that time. That was back in 1966. Since then, they've opened the recovery unit, but now they've posted because insurance doesn't pay for it anymore. But anyway

that that neurologist, I was going to the best neurologist in Orange County. He was treating me with the Latinos phenomenal for epilepsy.

He didn't know he he didn't he you're saying who because of phenomenal. That's nothing. I mean I I didn't even count that,

but I remember when they decided to put Percodan on a trip to get prescription, I thought what are they putting that on a trip to get prescription for? I take that all the time doesn't bother me anything.

And we're not supposed to talk about drugs. This is a, a meeting, but, and now that you mention it,

my problem was I wasn't, I, if I had a reason for drinking was 'cause I couldn't sleep at night, I had trouble sleeping, I couldn't get to sleep. And I, I, I found out way back in pharmacy school that I could take a couple beers before I went to bed to sleep real fast and wake up smart. And, and that's what I did. That's how I worked my way through pharmacy school, graduated with honors. Later on medical school graduated with honors. But what happened was that any drug I ever used and including alcohol, it did the job that I wanted. It was taken it for,

but it took over a period of time. It took more and more to do it and the good effect lasted for a shorter and shorter period of time. So they had to take more of it more often. And then the next thing was it had side effects that made me take something else. And so it was, it was really progressive. I mean, that is living through chemistry. It was very progressive for me. And finally, the ultimate of that was in order to get to sleep. I used to

inject Pentathon, amethol and imitol, phenobarbital, anything at all

it in order to get to sleep at night. I would keep the stuff in my bag and my bag in the car, in the car, in the garage and the garage. Thank God the garage was attached to the house.

I would go to work all day, take pills all day and night. I would drink myself to get ready to sleep. Then I decided it was time to finally go to sleep. I'd go out in the garage, mix up the amatol, put it in the string stick and it was in my vein. Try to figure out how much sedative I've ever had. How much amphetamine have I had? I'm a second squirrel. Didn't take it out. Take it. I throw it in the back, throw in the back of the car, slam the car door, run down the hall and jump in bed so I could fall asleep.

It was very tricky,

the least little bit least little bit too much and squirted in. I just Zing right under the car and

the worse than that would be just at least a little bit not enough and I squirted in take it out take her out throw in the back throw in the back car slam the car door run down the hall and jump in bed and nothing would happen.

Half measure has got me nowhere and it was very frustrating of it. It was very practical anyway, because,

you know, you take the needle out of the vein, you're supposed to put a Band-Aid in the sterile dressing on it. No, I don't have time for that nonsense. And so I would hold my arm up like this, hoping gravity would take care of and all this stuff. One hand. I run down the hall of the bedroom and I run into my wife and I joined to try to look casual. You know,

it's, it's hard. It's hard to be casual when you're in a hurry.

One time the dog got in my way and almost killed the dog.

I was in a hurry

and anyhow ended up in that ward there and in the Mayo Clinic. I signed out that dump, came back home and told the neurologist about psychiatrist. He had me see a psychiatrist there and went to see a psychiatrist talk to me for 10 minutes. No, I talked to Max for 10 minutes. My wife and he talked to me for 45 minutes. He locked me up in the

local network. The hospital is on the staff up and

they wanted me to make leather belts.

I didn't. I didn't understand their philosophy and I didn't understand the instructions. But I remember one day sitting there commiserating with myself of how a nice guy like me ended up in a place like that.

And he walked up behind me and he wanted to know what I'd be willing to talk to a man from Alcoholics Anonymous. And I thought to myself, my God,

don't I have enough problems of my own without trying to help some drunk from a A.

But I could tell the look in his face and he thought it was a good idea. And I don't know if you know that or not, but happiness on a nut word is having a happy psychiatrist and I was willing to go to any lengths to make him happy.

I said yes and no time at all this clown comes scalping into the room yelling at the top of his voice. My name is Frank and I'm an alcoholic.

My God, and why don't you lower your voice? These people all think I'm a nut. Why don't we leave it at that? And told an interminable story. Went on and on and on and on. I have no idea how what he said, but I know it ended finally by him saying, well I'm going to meeting. That's my story. I'm going to meet tonight. Would you like to go along?

And I said, hell no, I won't like it, but I'll go because I knew he'd go back to school with that dumb psychiatrist. And we went off the meeting. And I don't know what meeting we were at. I don't know how many meetings we went to before I meet a guy with that, but I know that that meeting had a lot of profound effect

on the psychiatrist.

It was now suddenly suspiciously, very interested in a a What's this about a book? What's this about steps? What's this about meetings? How many, How many, How often they have meetings? What other kind of meetings do they have? How soon are you going again? I thought, my God.

I've got me an alcoholic psychiatrist. He's ashamed to go, so he's sending me, and

so I don't know how many brownie points I'm getting per meeting, but I'm going to go as many means I can so I get out of this dump. We went to meeting every day, except Frank wasn't sure. You going to take me on Friday? Thought he might have a date with his girlfriend. I thought, well, that's a hell of a way to run an organization and I reported him to the psychiatrist.

You got somebody else to take me on Friday night and I finally got enough brownie points. I got discharged from hospital. I had no intention to come back. Why would I? Wasn't an alcoholic.

The problem I ran into was that my wife liked the meetings. I

she's not even an alcoholic and I'd say let's go to a movie and she said no, no, let's go to an, a, a meeting. They're more fun and, and

in fact, when she wouldn't actually act right, then I would tell her I wasn't going to go to a A anymore. Well, we lived in Anaheim, went to the meetings in Laguna Beach, so we wouldn't know where, we wouldn't run into anybody we knew. And she couldn't drive the freeway, but she did it anyway. She got in the car and we drive to Laguna Beach. Somehow she get down there all by herself and here would be Saturday night

and I'd be at home all by myself drinking while my non alcoholic spouse is off laughing it up at an A a meeting.

I thought it was very rude and

I, I had to go back to the meetings with her to find out what they were laughing about.

And I, I went to meetings to trying to figure it out for seven months, and

I went to one meeting too many, and I found myself laughing with them. And I haven't had a drink since. And it seems to me that's the way a, a is that we laugh at ourselves. I I thought we was ridiculous, the way they laughed, the things they ought to be ashamed of and prided things they ought to be laughing about. But we laugh at ourselves.

It's like an old Chinese proverb.

I guess all Chinese proverbs are old

anyway. The proverb that says, Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves. They shall never cease to be entertained.

And I think we have the the best kind of humor here and I think it's going to keep us going a long time. And anyhow, I became an alcoholic

and so I could quit drinking, I guess 'cause I never had a slip. I've never had a slip. People go in and out and in out. That sounds real painful and distressing to me. I, I found it much easier to just drink between meetings.

But

finally I and the thing I had trouble with too, is I couldn't identify with you people here coming. I was ashamed of you and ashamed to be here. And I didn't, I didn't watch the people out there to know I was here.

I didn't want you to know I was here. And I was ashamed of the whole thing. I mean, I, I have. I am

perhaps the best intentioned person you will ever meet. I am very proud of my intentions

and and I came here and God, you had these little chicken shit and and goals in life. And I think so not, not worth talking about at all. I mean, I remember the day I saw a big, healthy, Husky young guy stand up with an A, a podium. And he says if if I don't drink today, I'm a success today.

And I said, Oh my God,

big damn deal, Call your mommy and tell her you haven't had a beer today, You know, of course I was still drinking at the time,

you know, but I carried that a long time. That how how what nothing group of people you were in that sense. And, and one day, one day

I got the realization that if this is the bottom of the social barrel and staying sober one day at a time is a nothing sort of goal

and I can't meet that goal.

You got the idea,

if I can't make it at the bottom, I ain't never going to make it nowhere up higher. And, and, and with that realization, I, I came, I had watched a lot of people that come and go and I used to ask the winners, you know, what do you do to stay sober? And I asked the guys that were coming in and going out and you know, what do you do to stay sober? Because I, I, I got the idea I wanted to do what the winners do and not do what the

people that aren't winners are doing. And I, I, I got the idea that if I want to,

I may not be a winner, but I want to be a successful member of AAI. Decided if this is such a, a low grade organization and really doesn't mean anything, I'm really going to be a success here. I'm going to be a successful member of AI. Don't remember saying that to anybody else but myself, but but that's been my goal up to and including today.

I, I wanted, I want to be a successful member of a, A and

in fact, even today when I have a decision to make as to whether should do this or do that used to be, I think, well, if I do this, you'll do that, but maybe you won't. So maybe I ought to do this, but maybe you're can't trust you

and all those manipulations today. I don't do any. I don't have to do any of that. I just ask myself, what would an, A, A winner do?

What would God want me to do or what's the loving thing to do? All of which are essentially the same. They are the same question. And if I do a thing, I, I'm thoroughly convinced that if I do a thing for the right motive and the results up to God, everything will turn out exactly the way it's supposed to, may not turn out the way I want it. That's how I find out God's will. I just do what's in front of me, do the loving thing, leave the results up to God how it turns out. That's God's will and that

easy for me. It's so much simpler than it anything I had done before. And in fact, this whole program is so much simpler. I never cease to be amazed at how easy it is for me to not drink today and not take any drugs, which was impossible before. The thing that was impossible is now easy now because I'm living in the answer instead of living in the problem. And

I find a simple way to go. And I, I, I thoroughly enjoy that. And I, I, I, it all comes from the steps. I, I love the steps. It's a way of life and the the first step of the powerlessness. So often when I'm struggling with something

that bothers me and I have a problem, I come to realization, well, I'm powerless over that. I think, oh, well, if I'm powerless over it, then I really don't have a problem. There's nothing I can do about it. And I can I wallow in my powerlessness and enjoy it. And

well, it's the same way you laugh at that, but it's the same way with the defects of character in the 6th and 7th step. I will take a a defective character such as a difficulty sleeping or fear or depression or things like that,

And I'll take one at a time and I'll say God, the seven step prayer says my creator, I'm not willing. You should have all of Maine, good and bad. And I say, God, I want you to take this defect and I say my fear and I'd like you to remove it completely. But I know you have that loophole about whether it's helpful to you or to to my fellows. Now I know you have that loophole, but take the defect sleep on it tonight and in the in the morning, you give me the amount of it

me to have and I will accept it as a gift from you. And and The thing is that it's like a father Terry says, didn't he just talk here? Not recently, just I don't know if he said it then, but he says other times become friendly with your defect, become friendly with your defect. A big in fact, the poet said one of the poets says they call defects demons. And he said hug your demon,

hug your demon otherwise it'll bite you in the ass.

That's the way ports talking.

But I've become friendly with my defect and and don't like it. The worst thing I can do with a defect is fight it or work on it. They love the the the challenge. I mean, that really energizes them for me to, to, to work on the thing and that I

speaking, I think I mentioned depression. That's the depression is my, one of my favorite moods. I, I love to feel depressed. And depression has a lot of redeeming social value because it takes all those problems, takes all those problems and narrows them down to just one problem. Me, me. And it's all me. The whole world comes down to just me and

I have trouble distinguishing sometimes often between depression and self pity. But

I what I find one of the things that a non program thing that helps me with my depression is exercise. Now this has nothing to do with the program so newcomers don't pay attention to this,

but I I find exercise really works for my depression. So in fact, this is my bragging story. I'll tell it quickly so we can get out here, but I

my story is that I am the only 80 year old I know who has worn out his treadmill before it wore him out.

Some years back. I bought a treadmill and I don't usually buy service contracts, but I thought with a treadmill out by service contracts, I got a service contract. Well, I wore out the tread and they replaced it. I wore out the main bearing and they replaced that. I wore out something else and they replaced that. Then the company that made the treadmill went out of business, but that didn't put my service contract out of business. So I reminded them of that and they said, OK, you go back to Montgomery Ward and you pick out the best treadmill you can find and we'll pick it up and deliver it for you and set it up.

So I now I'm in the process of trying to wear out my second treadmill and when I spend 40 minutes every morning, seven days a week on my treadmill and I don't want to do that, but I do it because I feel good. It's like the standing up. There's a newcomer in the 1st 30 days. It's like a lot of the stupid things we do here. You may not want to do it, but we do it anyway because the benefit it is greater than the discomfort of doing it. And it's the sort of thing it feels good to have done it.

It feels great to have done a fifth step and it feels great to have made the amends. You really moved to a new level on your

recovery program. When that happens, I the thing that

I was saying the other day about how if I made a graph of my life, my great life was on a downhill course

from the beginning up until July 31st, 1967. It was on a downhill course that wasn't straight down, straight line down. It was up and down. Just enough UPS to keep me confused. But I ended up in the nutward of hospitals on the staff of and that wasn't bad enough. I had to go to a A and I went to a A for seven months and on July 31st, 1967,

I finally accepted the fact that I of all people,

strange as it might seem, even though I had no choice in the matter, didn't make a decision to do it, had nothing to do with it really. But I really am a very mild alcoholic.

And since then I've been, my alcoholism has been getting progressively worse. It's a progressive disease whether you drink it or not. The nice part of it is recovery is progressive too. And my life's been getting better and better and better. It's never, it's not a straight line up either. It's up and down, up and down. There's all kinds of things that I can do to get it to go back up. Once it's dropped down, there's nothing else. I can just sit still and wait. That's one of the Bible quote says, the Bible says and it came to pass. The Bible doesn't say and it came to stay.

My life is better today than it's ever been,

and as far as I can tell, there's nothing. The only thing that determines how high that's limits, how high that can go, is how long I can stay around doing the things I'm doing is keeping it going up. But I can't get all this program has to offer. I know that 'cause I don't. Nobody can get all this program has to offer. But I want all I can get. I want all I can get. One other thought.

It fascinates me, the shape of that V, the point of the V What was the thing?

That the thing that changed the course of my life from getting progressively worse to getting progressively better was the act of acceptance

and my life. Everything in my life, if I resist it, it keeps getting worse until I accept it. Once I accept it, then it starts getting better. It just happens over and over again. Not just with my alcoholism, but the thing that impresses me is, as smart as I am, why didn't it take me so long to wake up to the fact that I needed to accept that obvious reality that I was an alcoholic?

And the answer I come up with is that I was confusing acceptance with approval. I had denied that if I accept the fact I'm an alcoholic, that would indicate to the whole world that I approved of me being an alcoholic. And I didn't. And I realized that acceptance has nothing to do with approval. In fact, approval is an impediment to acceptance. And it's like asking the question, why? Why?

And it's it's an impediment to to acceptance. And now today, I approve of the fact that I'm an alcoholic.

Approval came after acceptance, not before it. And that he got It's hot. And I think you've been a wonderful audience. I really thank you for putting up with me in the heat. Thank you very much. Happy, happy tonight.