The 51st Coastal Bend Jamboree in Corpus Christi, TX

Would y'all please welcome Clint H?

Thank you. Thank you, Terry.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

I'm really delighted to be here. I am very, very delighted to be here and I was touched by the flag ceremony and about the, the history of a a in this area. I had my last drink on August 14th, 1966. And so in these years that I have been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you can be sure

that it's become very, very important to me. It's become very, very

vitalizing to me that there is

an organization

like this, a movement like this, a fellowship like this,

in my view, is really a miracle. It could not have, could not have survived all that craziness and all of our craziness and all of our well-intentioned tapping our way to the curb over the years. And it did. I was in Pizza Archives over there and I was

reminded,

looking at that motorcycle, the

Bill and the founder and one of the founders and his wife Lois moved around New England in a motorcycle with a sidecar.

And that thing looks like a wreck in those photographs. God,

in the book some place when it talks about Bills drinking and his coming back and his ongoing promises to Lois, there is a wonderful phrase.

Getting drunk and then sobering up the phrases. He stilled her forebodings. Isn't that wonderful? Is there a guy in here that doesn't know what that means? He stilled her forebodings

and he musta 'cause he got her in the sidecar that damn motorcycle time after time. That's hard work. You know, This guy is a genius. Instilling forebodings. Gotta like a guy like that.

So we're very fortunate to be here. Howard, thank you for your talk tonight. Lovely, lovely talk. Howard and I have known each other over the years, and I'm just so glad you're here. I'm just so glad you're here. And we'll hear

my friend Bob tomorrow night. And along the way we'll hear Mickey and Burns. And I don't know who all is in here yet, but I'll be glad to hear Bob. I brought a good friend of mine, Oscar, in here from California today. And I've been talking about these people,

these extraordinary human beings from all over the country that Mary Ann and Eleanor have pulled together for a remarkable weekend for you

and Terry. Thank you. Terry picked us up at the airport.

He was worried that we wouldn't recognize. We're always worried that we won't recognize the person that we're supposed to take. A few years ago, some years ago now, I got AI called into my office for messages and the receptionist said, well, you sure lead an interesting life. I said, what do you mean by that? She said, Well, there's note here that says you're going to the guy that's going to pick you up in Indianapolis at the airport

is going to be.

He's going to. He has a wooden leg and he'll be carrying a big book.

And I.

Yeah,

and by God, he had a wooden leg and a big book.

It's great, isn't it?

And he was driving a Pinto by that time, for which I was very, very grateful.

There's a note here that says Joe is 111 today, 111, is that right? Is there Joe

wave something 111? Oh, Joe is ill today. Oh,

I'm sorry.

Never mind.

I don't think so. All right, No wonder you're not here. Joe I

Oscars looking at me like that.

We have a meeting that we go to in LA. It's the

West LA Men's Stag group of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's been in place about 12 years and there's maybe 80 guys there and it is. They're such a sweetness in that meeting. There's just every Thursday night I get to go sit with a bunch of guys and talk about the amazing transformative experiences that take place here, and I feel it here,

I feel it here. I feel welcome and comfortable here and loved.

So thank you for that. Thank you for that. Are there any if you're here in a a in your first 30 days of sobriety, would you just there's one right over there. Anybody else a few in the room couple around here. Thank you. Good.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's a weird place to go, isn't it?

I mean, did you ever?

Ever

in the sparkling city by the sea.

And here we are. Here we are,

and you may not know it yet, but you're free. This is the deal. We get here by invitation. The universe issues an invitation and we come in.

We don't all stay, but some come back. And those that stay, those that leave and come back and stay,

are just as welcome

as if they had stopped drinking on their very first meeting. I I had

gone to a A5 years before I got sober in Portland at a meeting occupied primarily by guys. It just seemed terribly old to me, and

I knew that whatever was wrong with them was not the same thing that was wrong with me. And I left that meeting knowing that I could cross one more thing off my list and my search for what was wrong and what would become of me. And five years later, a very interesting thing happened. I was living in Glendale, CA.

I had just gotten off of active duty from in the Marine Corps

and I had not yet started a reserve commitment. And I didn't know if I could because one of the big problems on my active duty tour was the fact that I was a bad drinker, bad drinker, and I hated that. I love the Marine Corps. I went into that with all the enthusiasm and commitment and sense of honor and pride and

duty that you can have. And when I was commissioned a second Lieutenant, it was a big day for me, a big day. And I had had drinking problems up until that time and they had sequestered all of us through this officer candidate program.

We came rolling out of there and assigned to different places all over the country in the world,

and I hadn't been allowed to drink during that time. They just sequestered us. And so I did just fine.

But it wasn't long before I knew that Marines drink, but not like me, not like me. And I got a letter of reprimand and another letter of reprimand. And commander saying things like Lieutenant Hodges consistently fails to live up to the low standards he has set for himself. And those those kind of,

it's hurtful really.

The commander at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station said as I stood in front of his desk.

A general officer. He said there's no room in the Marine, in the Marine Corps for an alcoholic Lieutenant.

And he finally dismissed me and I marched out of his office, knowing how wrong he was.

I mean, my brass was shine, my hair was cut, my shoes were shined, my uniform was clean and God,

he thought I was alcoholic.

And the irony of that day is I had to buy a fifth vodka. I had to drive out into those orange Groves north of the base

and lay on the front seat and drink that

hot, terrified that the next thing I'd see would be of military police Jeep coming out there to pick me up. Both marriages had already failed. I had three sons and they were kind of a hazy, distant part of my life. And I got out of active duty with an honorable discharge just by the skin of my teeth. Moved to Glendale,

lived in an apartment for, oh, maybe five weeks or so

and that's all he could stand to me there. I moved out of there and I, I moved

into a car.

You get used to it, but it's still, you know,

And then the car disappeared. I heard somebody one night at a meeting say that her car disappeared right as they were saving up for an oil change. And I thought,

that's my deal, that's it.

And, and I moved into a place that for years I described as a double garage.

Four of us lived in this place. Four of us had a little room in the double garage,

except 10 years ago, I guess, my wife and I were in Glendale. She said, I want to see the garage. I said I don't even know if it's there. She said let's see it, let's go by there. And we drove down there and she said it is that it? I said, yeah, right there. She said that's not a garage, that's a shed. Is what that is, a shed. I mean, it's just like,

Oh yeah, wow,

I had just like 11 bucks a week and

hopeless and terrified and I had a little radio. They still have them around here. These radios are specially built for Alcoholics because they just pop into playing music.

Pretty music, really,

but you can't turn them off.

Pull a plug out of the wall and it's just

a little scary.

Take them outside and put them in the dirt and they play.

You learn in a, a what's in what? There's a lot of explanatory material here that you don't even ask for. But I knew one night when I heard a gal in a meeting when I was just six months sober say that she had taken a hammer to a parking meter and was arrested while she was beating it to death. I I asked her later, I said, what were you? What was the deal with her? And she said it was broadcasting every rotten thing I had ever done.

I get that, man.

Yeah.

And my radio is kind of like that, a bit of a mystery, you know? And there was nothing. This threadbare little room with a steel cod and the wet mattress on it and the bad smell and the sticky linoleum floor

and that awful sense of desolation and terror

and the rat. There was a rat.

Over in the by the door, just you could see it the light coming under the door from outside

middle of the night and that rat was just looking at me

and I'm on the floor under the cotton. The rat is kind of got these eyes and I knew he would charge me and I just knew he would win. It was

makes a long night of it, doesn't it?

And the first light of day, you look again

and that rat, in some magical fashion, has turned into a pair of socks laying over there.

Tricky, tricky little son of it.

So for those that are new

and thank you for raising your hand and for those that didn't,

we want nothing but the very best for you.

And if you've had one of those radios, I'm your guy.

We'll talk. Have you been held hostage by a rat all night?

I wanted to say it more gently. Have you been held hostage by a pair of socks on?

Welcome home. You found us. This is it,

those people that just stopped coming to the bar. Here we are,

so

in the middle of that, after more than a few turns before the judge at Glendale Municipal Court, a guy by the name of Ken White who was harsh with us.

And a little cell time and waking up in the park and going back to that awful, smelly room that I lived in.

All of my dreams gone. All of my days of feeling like a worthy, contributing member of society, gone. All of my ideas that one day I would make it all up to those women who had born children of mine.

One day I would

do something very noble and they would see

after all who I am. Those days are gone. That flickering hope was number more. There was a guy I met years later whose mother was an author, and

I'll never forget an essay she wrote about her entry into Alcoholics Anonymous. She said after this long sterile diet of snake pits and manure piles on which no roses ever grew, we longed for hope.

And you gave me hope with your stories, with pointing out to me in the book

the things that are there. I wouldn't have picked up Bill's skill at stealing her forebodings except it was pointed out to me. There's a sentence in there that I just love. It says that our problems arise out of ourselves,

That awkward, goofy language. Except that the subtext is this. For me, no one has to change for me to get free. Isn't that good? No one has to change for me to get free. And I always wanted people to change, and if they would, I'd be OK. Not an interesting way to lead your life.

The guy in the next lane, if he'd shape up, I'd have a good day. And that

if my mom had done it better. I wanted dead people to change. I

If you want a really frustrating and unfulfilled life

that people that are dead 30 years shape up,

give all your power away by blaming those people.

They're not going to change.

And I wanted that. I wanted it desperately. And then I'm in the little room and I'm living there in one day. I'm walking down the street in a bail bondsman came by and honked his horn, and I walked over to his car. He and I had done some business together,

in better days, I might add.

You don't call a bail bondsman when you're in that kind of shape.

I'm going to take you someplace today, he said.

And I really didn't know he knew

that it was a problem. Oh sure, he bailed me out a lot, but

that can happen to anybody.

I didn't even, I'll tell you where I was that day. I didn't ask him. Where are we going? I didn't ask. It didn't matter. Isn't that interesting? It did not matter. Or is he going to take me? Jail, County Hospital, psych ward, It just simply didn't matter. I got in his car and he took me across Glendale and there we were in front of something up a long flight of stairs that had a sign. The Alano Club of Glendale,

whatever that means.

And we walked in there,

nothing. But they were just sitting around. They started a meeting around a couple of tables, put together a dozen people. No more.

And I stayed there for an hour after the meeting, but I don't know what I was looking for. But I didn't hear it or see it or feel it.

And I left and I came back that night and I came back and I came back.

And then about a week later, I ran into, I loved Howard's talk about uppers and Downers and all of that. I I came across a stash of amphetamines and cash in my little room and

that calls for a drink. As you know,

I got as far as

a little to Lawton. OK, yeah,

outside of Fort Sill.

Oh, that's a oh,

and finally made my way back to Los Angeles into my little room.

Looked a little better since I'd been in Lawton, if you wanted.

But that

morning I walked to the club. I knew where it was. Nobody was going to come along. I walked to the club and I walked up that flight of stairs and it was about 10 in the morning and

somebody was doing his job in a A because the door was open and the lights were on and the coffee was made and a guy dead now. Bill Kennedy

was there when I pushed open that door, and he was smiling. I've never forgotten that beautiful smile that he had. Oh, he'd seen me before at the meetings. He didn't really have any interaction with me,

but he smiled when he saw me.

I could not have felt worse

coming back, finally, to the one place I knew would now provide any help to me, but maybe a short, brief bit of shelter against the hot sun. Shelter against not having to go to the park that day.

And he smiled.

How you doing?

Oh, not so good. Come in. Come in,

he said. What happened? And I,

I said,

well, I got drunk

and let everybody down

like Glendale A, a was going to go South. Now that I have,

he asked me such a great question. It's not a, it's a wonderful question. He could have asked me a lot of things. He could have said a lot of things to me because I had, after all, been going to meetings for a couple of weeks before I took off.

And he just kept smiling and said, oh, are you alcoholic?

Not great. What a wonderful question that is.

And of course

I knew, but I didn't know.

Sort of like it depends on what you mean by alcoholic.

But

knew what the right answer was

and after a minute I said,

'cause I needed to be there. I said yeah, I've been an alcoholic about a month now.

A mild case. I just,

I just caught it, you know,

some kind of a toilet seat transaction. I don't know what the hell it was.

And he kept smiling.

He blew right? He said so

you're an alcoholic and you got drunk? I said yeah, yeah,

he said. That's it, that's us. That's who we are and what we do.

It was not a big relief to me.

But he and he didn't try to comfort me. He was cheerful. He never stopped smiling. He was glad to see me

and he did not really in any other way verbally try to cheer me up. He said

if you're an alcoholic, like I'm an alcoholic, you will drink no matter what.

Drink no matter what.

And for some reason, that day I got that. On the 14th of August, that hot summer day, I got it. I got it. I drink no matter what.

He offered me no hope. He offered me nothing but a definition by the detail of my life, the quiet dignity of the truth of the matter. I drink no matter what.

I know that.

Ah, I drink when I promise I'll pick up the kids. Someone else has to pick up my kids. I drink when I'll promise to come home right after work.

I I stop in for one beer and cash a check my paycheck.

Here's a bit of interesting economy. You cash the check and you're going to go home. God knows they need the money there at home. And I put most of the cash except 20 bucks. I I stash in one pocket and the rest of it in another pocket. The family money is in another pocket, but since I've cashed it in a bar, it's only civil to order a drink, which I pay for out of the family money because I'm not drinking.

I mean, if I were drinking, I'd just drink my with my money.

If you understand that and you raise your hand a few moments ago, get a sponsor tonight.

Don't delay.

And then the family money is gone. I don't know how that happens at 1:00 in the morning

and and there's such a low day. I just, I have to now drink on my money.

I drink no matter what. And I got it and I got it right up until today. That's what I do. That's what I do. And it was 14th of August, and that guy was kind to me, loving of me,

and kind of took a certain odd joy in the fact that I'm alcoholic

and you'll drink no matter what. Smiling laudity.

And I do.

The cat is out of the bag. I drink no matter what. There's no more talk of quitting.

None.

And it's the one thing I cannot do. And it was mentioned earlier today, it's the thing we cannot do,

can't quit. Isn't that the most confusing thing that you can ever imagine? Can't quit. Howard spoke of it beautifully

and I knew it was true for me that day

and I stayed there and went to the meeting that night.

Bill Kennedy died a couple of months ago, but he certainly had a huge impact on my life,

he said. Good people in AA will tell you don't drink no matter what. And you, he said, will drink no matter what.

And it was kind of like a little secret to me for a while in a a, you seem to be kind to me. You were very, very

welcoming to me,

but you didn't know that I drink no matter what, apparently, or you would not have been kind to me.

And I knew that I wasn't going to stick around there very long.

And so it's with a great sense of joy and gratitude

that I thank you for these 38 years of sobriety

because I drink no matter what.

That's what I do

and I haven't had a drink since that day.

And there were people that were kind to me all the way through. They've been remarkably kind to me.

And I was given a copy of the Big Book and I was determined to read it, determined to do something with it. I don't know quite what I was going to do with it. It seems significant and it seemed annoying. You know, it's a clumsy read by any standard, but

maybe there's something here.

Maybe for me. I kind of doubt it. You know, I, I, I really kind of doubt it.

We're not lazy people. And I think that the reason that we're slow to the steps, slow to the book is this terrible dread. Mine was this won't work for me.

It works for you, I get that it will not work for me. And what happens if I really try these steps

and they don't work for me? Where am I going to go then? Where am I going to go?

I just not leave everything the way it is in some kind of a queasy balance.

And I did that. I did that. And it's, it's kind of strange, you know, you read that

there's a, there's a interesting thing in there, Wilson says.

God's God comes to most men gradually, but his impact on me was sudden and profound,

and that didn't come from me. I thought, oh, how nice for you, Bill. Oh, isn't that cute?

You and that white light deal and all of that.

But that's not for me.

That's not for me. Saul becoming Paul on the road to Damascus. I, I picked it up. I had that early training in a in a relatively tough fundamentalist Protestant background in Billings, Mt,

nowhere near the buckle of the Bible Belt, as Howard was talking about today.

Strange goings on there in churches. From my point of view, I didn't believe much of it.

The people that carried the message to me never seemed like they were very happy about what they believed or about what they done with her heart. It it, it just my uncle went down to the front of that church one Sunday morning and got saved and it seemed like they were sending him off to China to be a missionary.

Oh, man. Stay away from the front of the church. You know what? I didn't have to know. Thank you.

Years later he came to Austin and was

had become a minister and was part of a big church there and a friend of a there.

I found that out after I got sober and he and I became pretty good friends. His name was Carl Eat and he's gone now,

I asked him when we got to talking to each other and laughing about our craziness. And as I grew up in all of the goofy stuff that happened in their home, I said, Why did you go to China?

He said, you know, I'll tell you. I I knew God wanted me to be a preacher and I hated preachers.

And I thought if I went to China to be a missionary for four years, he'd let me off the hook. Yeah,

wonderful guy.

Wonderful guy, I said. Did you like it? Anything about it? Oh, no, he said. I I have no gift for language

and we're supposed to learn this dialect and it was awkward at best. There's just nothing in it that I really. And in fact, he told me one night that the in the dialect, the word for Lord was confusingly similar to the word for pig. And it gave his sermons a little tilt that that, you know, he

hard to talk about

pigs when you're really getting in there.

Lovely guy, lovely guy.

And one day,

one day. So there was a lot of religion in our home, a lot of unwelcome preachings, a lot of beatings to reinforce

God's love.

You grew up some weird ideas, you know,

weird ideas. And they come, they, they followed me into Alcoholics Anonymous. I can tell you because I had

some strange notions about God that were in the nature of the baby elephant beliefs that Howard was talking about earlier today. These earlier commitments, cognitive commitments to a notion that helps you explain how life is

and kids that grow up in that kind of a terrorized home need to know as much as they can about how life is. And we grab these beliefs. And I had a bunch of them, bunch of them about God and about my mom and about families and about all kinds of things.

I got thrown when I was 4-5 years old, I guess, out of my little sister's nursery

by my mom,

and I knew before I hit the wall on the other side of the hall that she didn't love me. It just went into my midbrain and I knew she didn't love me and I knew you can't trust women.

I I didn't have to. No one had to tell me. It just went in there

and all I wanted was for my baby sister to move out so I could get the attention I had been getting before she was born,

get on the road. She was six weeks old, but I wanted her out of there, so I'd thump her on the head and that scared my mom and out the thing I went.

It's interesting, isn't it? We give meaning to these things that don't have inherent meaning. There are a lot of explanations for what happened that day. One, maybe you can't trust women, but look at all the others.

Your mother doesn't really love you.

That's another one.

Your mother is exhausted

and not showing good judgment. That's another one. You frightened your mother

with that kind of treatment of your infant sister. That's another one.

Your mother doesn't have great parenting skills. That's another.

You need a counselor. That's another,

but

we pick one.

It's no more true than all the others, but we pick it

and live with it and the belief becomes a life.

And so I had that and all the life becomes a series of experiences.

And when I was 16 years old,

it was vodka after a football game. My mom had died two months early. 2 years earlier I stood at her grave in Billings

hanging on to my belief what I knew so much to be true

and I I thought I didn't cry.

We had watched her die a terrible death. It had been brutal. My grandma, the day she died, woke us up that morning by yelling down into the basement where four of us now slept

and said, your mother died last night. Are you going to go to school or not?

And we went, OK,

OK. And four days later, I'm standing, or three days at the lower end part of the cemetery and buildings, and they're burying my mom. And I am standing there dry eyed and angry and furious and thinking, you don't love me. Well, I don't love you.

And that's all I could say about my mom.

And my dad was a bad drinker and he and he was there that day. But there wasn't really any family that that that dramatic violence that went on was just something to be dealt with. And no amount of religiosity would ever take it into any nicer place than that.

And so we have these beliefs. I remember my brother. I have a twin brother, which is kind of a confusing piece of business all its own.

Good looking guy, but you know.

He asked a question about sex. Boy, that turned everybody to concrete, I'll tell you that.

When you don't ask again, but you know it's bad,

you know no good can come of it.

It's danger. You come down, you distill it down to a simple enough idea. Sex is filthy and disgusting and ugly and you should save it for the one you really love.

Clear enough, Grandma. Thank you.

Terry showed up at the airport with Chuck, sees a new pair of glasses in case I should miss him.

It's hiding it coyly under his sweater and pulling it out like this.

I don't know what brought that to my mind, but it was just darling to get off the plane and

we'd been talking about that. Oscar said, do you know who's picking you up? I said I don't know, nothing but a name. We've talked on the phone. He said, well, how will you recognize him? I said I don't know, but we always hook up.

Chamberlain's a new pair of glasses.

That's great. It was plenty enough for me. I saw it from quite a distance away.

Interesting talking about Chuck, because the archives have a lot of Chuck. Chuck was one of these amazing people, amazing people. And Alcoholics Anonymous, that could kind of cut through it.

He could kind of cut through it. I asked him toward the end of his life if I couldn't drive him to some meetings,

and he said, why is the only chance I get to be alone?

I said, well, I don't know. I kind of. I didn't, you know,

I said

there's an awful lot of traffic up there in LA and I just, it's just getting worse and worse. And he looked at me and he said, son, I just drive the one car.

I drive every car I see.

Interesting, Danny.

So we're bumping along.

When I was five years sober, somebody told me to go to law school and I never ever would have ever, ever thought of that.

Last time I'd had any education, I was drinking badly and I got thrown out

and I didn't really want to risk all that again. I went to law school. I worked during the day,

went to meetings and at night, three nights a week. I went to law school and I studied. And when I was nine years sober, the state of California gave me a license to practice law, which is like,

oh man, courtroom feels a lot different from that side of the table.

And I love it. I really love it,

but for a while, and because there wasn't anything about this program that invited me to actually tap into real power, I was using that for power. Not a good substitute. Not a good substitute for me. The practice of law became kind of got distilled down to

exercise my character defects, call it advocacy and send out a bill.

Not pretty,

not pretty and the day came as a will for all of us

and hands for us that we have to come to terms with the fact we have no power. That is not easy stuff.

That is just not easy

to begin to take a look at that and I'm never going to get any power and what am I going to do?

I have the power substitute that I use and they came out in response to a very simple sounding question asked of me by somebody.

What five things? Will you not give up for a better relationship with God?

Oh, that's rude. Is that rude? You bet. I got five things. I have seven. I think it was on my list. Anger, control, sex, greed,

all of that

image. Oh big one image

man. Do I have an image?

When I was in the Marine Corps they taught us a camouflage tanks by putting branches on them so they'd look like trees. And my tanks always looked like tanks with branches on them. So it's like that's how you look holding an image and play,

but it really focuses you down on that question that I never, ever wanted to answer. Is God everything or nothing? Oh man, let it go.

I mean, if I told the truth, it would be, well, I I don't think he's nothing, but he didn't always cracked up to be

and I don't know quite what to do with him. And yet, and yet, and yet,

in me is a.

In me as a seeker,

in me is a yearning. In me is something that for a while was put out by alcohol and drugs.

That was amphetamines

and I'm sober and it's not going away. And it seems once in a while that an A a meeting when I brought to tears by a speaker or to great wonder by seeing somebody take a chip or a cake. Hooten, I know, cannot stay sober, and they're sober.

There's a knowing and it's not going to come again soon or ever,

but there is a moment of peace and I don't know what to do with that,

but it's just kind of intensifies the need. I have to look at that.

And the time had come in my life after some years of sobriety when I was there, when I'd gone through

terrible reversals in every area of my life,

and I didn't think I'd drink. I just was always involved in a A at one level or another

and sponsored guys and did all of that. But I had no spiritual life and I knew that the pretense was over. I knew it was all over and what am I going to do? Just limp my way the rest of the way?

Afraid.

Afraid that cold fear doesn't ever quite leave me.

And using this for power and that for power and never being in a satisfying relationship with a woman.

In fact, I called things relationships that didn't even come close.

Arrangements would have been a much better word.

Arrangements, a contract. You do this and I'll do that.

Not a relationship that has that wonderful, fundamental,

deeply committed covenant to it. No. No, not that.

An arrangement against the cold.

And this is gone. And I know they never work. And this one's gone on and on, on and on.

And now the things that I had been using for power, my partner had come to me and said I don't want to practice with you anymore. And this lady came and said no more. And the house is gone and the car is gone and my income is just

tanked.

And I was very frightened. My little brother, not an alcoholic, died pushing a cart in

Atlanta, GA.

He was hard to find, but I could find him in about six or seven days and I went back to and I would find him. I said come back to California.

He wasn't a drinker. He didn't care about alcohol, but he had a point to prove, and we do. I think it's not that unusual.

And the point is this, it's a like a statement to the universe, to the world. We think the world is watching

and so we push a cart

and smell really bad

and say in effect, to the world, do you see what my parents did to me?

Do you see what they did? If they had done it right, would I have to be pushing the cart?

And I see him on the streets in Los Angeles making their statement.

And my brother did that. And then he got beat up and he went into the VA and he came out and what little he had was gone. And he had a heart ailment. And we went back for his funeral.

My brother and I were both sober, my little sister not an alcoholic. And my brother, the youngest, was gone.

And when I came into this crisis in my sobriety, I thought of him and I thought of my future

and I thought of where it might go.

And it didn't seem so far fetched that I would be pushing a cart. Insane thinking. Yeah, of course. But it was my thinking. Was my thinking.

And so we're at a very interesting part of Step 2 where it says suggests in some odd way that I may be in insane.

I mean, they were really getting rude with me in those days,

and I didn't really think that was a particularly apartment description of me,

the guy said. I'll tell you what to do. Let's meet next week. Write down the 20 craziest things you ever did.

Well, I've got some stuff.

I'll give you the a few of them that just were kind of

that I can discuss here.

The first time I got a arrested for drunk was at the University of Oregon. I was in a beer bar and there was a very pretty girl there and

she almost looked at me. So I felt we had something

this could go someplace

and I'll turn around again. She and she was gone. But I found out she lived at the Trident House on campus. And at midnight that night, I'm calling up the fire escape ladder at the Trident House to discuss our future.

And I went to jail that night. So I put this back,