The 46th Annual MAAD Dog Daze convention in Palm Springs, CA

Bill Alcohol

changed my whole pitch.

It's a cheap shot, the fathers and the kids

and the one this morning with the school and the getting back and regaining your life and all that crap.

My sponsors giving me direction

never stops.

I like to thank Keith and Sally for thinking of me and inviting me down here. This is really an honor to be here.

This is a hotbed of a, a soldierdom, and,

you know, to be able to come here and share with you is really, truly an honor. And there's some people here that mean an awful lot to me. Keith and Sally are one of them. I hope someday if I'm able to stay sober, that I can get as much pleasure out of a A after all

these years that that they do. I think it's really, it's fun. It's something to shoot for, you know, Alex being here, Alex has been very special to me over the years. My mother's here and and her best friend

so I got to be sure I don't say fuck.

Well, that's over.

Things I, I have opinions

and, and I'd like to apologize for that up front, you know, do you hear a lot of people around Alcoholics Anonymous will say that the longer they're sober, the less they know. And that just hasn't happened to me yet.

As a matter of fact, I really wonder about those people, you know,

like, aren't they paying attention?

I mean, you can learn some stuff just coming to meetings. You don't even have to get involved. You mean just through osmosis you'll get something?

You know, it's like I've been wide awake this last 15 years. It's been really interesting.

You know, I, I know a hell of a lot more about living sober than I did 15 years ago. I'm going to burden you with some of that tonight, some of my opinions.

The other thing is, is I have absolutely no problem whatsoever speaking for you.

You know, some people say, Bill, you should just talk in the first person. You know, I can't seem to do that. I know really what's good for you. And, and I figure on top of that, that you're just like me, that if it's good for me, it probably is good for you. You know, I, I would hope, I think one of the things that you hear people share a lot about when they come to A and they finally settle in is they find their group. They find people that are just like them.

And I truly believe you're just like me. As a matter of fact, I've learned a lot about myself through your eyes,

so I don't have a problem speaking for you because I think what's good for me is good for you. So I'd like to apologize for that as well.

I have a father. I had a father. He died last year. He was 45 years sober when he passed away,

which is hard to imagine, you know, not drinking for that length of time. So I grew up in Alcoholics Anonymous, literally I, I grew up in AAI, was six years sober when he got sober

and I was six years old when he got sober. And I think I was sober.

I think so,

You know, I think I would pretty sure I do remember. The only thing I really remember about his drinking was one time in particular, I remember him sitting at the kitchen table with a big rectangular bottle of some kind of liquor and he let me smell it and I go, God, anybody that would drink, that's got to be nuts, you know, I mean, and but he was a bar drinker. He was away from home mostly. I don't, I don't remember any alcoholic insanity in the House of drunkenness or anything like that. But it's six years old,

he got struck sober and I got raised at AAI. Mean what you did 45 years ago? There weren't many meetings around, so you went around and started meetings

and tried to connect the dots. You know of different little groups of a a around and they took me with them.

My mother helped found the Al Anon central office in LA and she got very active. They used to speak together and Al Anon, which was pretty controversial some years ago when people didn't like that, you know, people had opinions, believe it or not, back then in a A and they were a little rigid. And so, but I, I grew up in the kitchens of A A meetings and bringing out the coffee and the Donuts. And I'd come home from school and there'd be some guy laying on the back porch. Sometimes he was drunk, sometimes he was sober.

One guy was laying on the back porch and he was all drunk and hungover, and I got him and brought him in the house and cleaned his ass up before my dad got home. You know, you can't look like that, you know. And I mean, I grew up in a house where the big books were in the house and they were open,

you know? I mean, a lot of people grew up in houses with big books and they were coasters, you know, and

I mean, this was before the the hospitals had figured out how to make money out of us. So when you went on a 12 step call, you brought them home

and, and I can remember being in the living room and having to leave the other room. And my dad would go in a 12 step call and bring some guy back and they'd sit and pound on the book and point their finger at him and tell him the same lame ass stuff we tell him today. You know, I mean, not, not much has changed really. I mean, there's, there's a lot of psycho Babble that's come into Alcoholics Anonymous. Some of it's good, you know, but the message is the same. The, the same. The message is the same

if you study a little bit about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous and about the Oxford Group and stuff. My sponsor does a really good, interesting, good seminar about

that connection between the Oxford Group and AAA and where where the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous came from. And what those people believed in was what they called one-on-one evangelism, one-on-one. They didn't recover them in tents, in crowds. It was one-on-one. You gave your testimony. They had house parties and they shared and, and if there was somebody that had a drinking problem, they hooked them up with somebody else that had a drinking problem. They sobered up a lot of people. They sobered up Evie Rolling Hazard and Clancy gave a little history of a, a That's where these people got sober.

When they got to, when they formed Alcoholics Anonymous, they used Oxford Group literature. And in the meetings, they tried a lot of stuff that didn't work. You know, they, you had to give yourself over to Jesus before you could go to the a, a meeting. You didn't get too many people in the a, a meeting. You know, I mean, some of it worked and some of it didn't. But that's what they did one-on-one. And that message is still as pure and true and clean as it was then. It's the same thing. It's one alcoholic talking to another. That's what it is. There's only one program,

Anonymous. There isn't a different program for every person in a a, But we'd sure like there to be, wouldn't we? I mean, there should be a special little program just for Bill, you know, And I've tried that a few times, you know, but there's only one

that's an opinion.

So I grew up in AAI. Don't recommend it.

Well, I mean, you know, a A, Is it real?

It's where you go to get help, you know? And when you're living a house with two people with clear eyes that know exactly what's going on in your head, it's painful.

You know,

my parents were two of the most boring people I've ever met in my life.

Nothing ever happened.

So when it was my turn, I did it with a vengeance. You know, I've talked to a lot of kids that grew up in a A and you can be around the program. I've been to all the, you know, now I know why we were always going to goddamn Bakersfield. It was a Southern California convention. You know, I had to get sober to find out why are we going to Bakersfield all the time? There's no good reason to go to Bakersfield, you know,

and I've been to the roundups and the barbecues and I knew you weren't just a bunch of old people hanging on to each other with an overcoats under bridges, not drinking. You know, I mean, I, because I've been to all the parties and, and, and the barbecues and the wedding

funerals and all that stuff, you know, and when it was my turn today, kids growing up around that, you don't really know the program. You just know that you're around a, a, but you're not reading the book and you don't have a sponsor, you know, I mean, you're not trying to work out your problems. You know, you don't have any problems. You're just a kid. Kids are supposed to have problems. It just doesn't look good when you're 40 to be having the same damn problems. You know,

there's a gap there of about 20 years in some.

I can remember waiting around for when I was going to drink,

you know, and the first night I got drunk and I crawled down the hallway of my house and I threw up on my record player.

Well, it had a lid on it.

And I, I crawled down the hall and that's when the records were big.

I crawled down the hall and I'm sitting in the bathroom and I had a trash can between my legs because it was coming out both ends. And the bathroom door opened up and there was my mother and father, my mother standing there with us, aghast expression on her face, and my dad standing behind her, laughing hysterically.

Oh my God, we've got our own little in-house alcoholic.

And it went from there. By the time I was 17 years old, I was a bad drunk. In high school,

I went to my 20 year reunion right after I got sober, soon after I got sober and I would stand around talking with some guys and I was in a car club at the time in high school and I talked to this one guy and I said, God, remember, every weekend we had a party, we were just drunk every week and remember, you go. So I wasn't drinking. I go, what do you mean you were with me every weekend? He goes, Bill, you were drinking.

Isn't it interesting how we don't notice a lot of stuff going on around this, you know,

relationship that the depth of my shallowness knows no bounds?

We just don't connect, you know, We just don't. And but I'm a child of the 60s, you know, I graduated from high school in 1965,

and it was a great time. You know, you'll hear people say, you know, I wouldn't trade my worst day sober for my best day. I wouldn't trade 66 and 67 for anything

Party. It was really cool and we were cute, you know? We were cute. Every Jackade Senses wanted to be the 60s, you know,

And we were cool and we had long hair and holy Levis and Paisley and stuff, you know? The road from Los Angeles to San Francisco is the road to Nirvana. Golden Gate Park was the center of the universe. It was summertime all the time, you know, They weren't eating hitchhikers yet, so it was safe to travel.

The young ladies were discovering their sexuality and we were helping them as best we could,

trying to rise to the occasion.

It was really a party. It was, you know, they weren't cutting the LSD with speed. And, you know, the junkies hadn't taken over the world yet, you know. I mean, there was a couple of years, there was a window of a couple of years there where, you know, and then it went S, you know,

I wish I remembered the 60s more.

I mean, you tell stories long enough, they become true, you know, you tell them long enough. I mean, there's a couple of things that I, I, I really hope are true. I hope they happen, you know, 'cause they're really good stories. But, but honestly, some of it, I'm not really sure. You know, I'm not, you know,

one of the speakers this weekend was talking about, you know, I don't remember my childhood, you know, I mean, I really and there's parts of it, you know, that are very Gray. I don't remember a lot of what what went on really. And

but, you know, my whole story is I don't have much of A story. I mean, thank God there's some people in a a that actually did some stuff, you know, so we have stories to listen to because most of us like nothing really happened, you know, nothing happened. I mean, I was loaded.

It's hard to do shit when you're face down, you know, It's like, I mean, you're like in the vicinity where it happened, you know? I mean, it's, but you're not really a participant, you know,

in the area. I was in San Francisco, I'm sure of that, you know,

But I was a surfer and a biker and a tough guy, and I rarely went to the beach.

My motorcycle rarely ran

and I was afraid to fight,

but I looked really good. I looked really good. I had a Chrome Nazi helmet for a hat and wore a primary chain for a belt and black greasy Levis. Big black boots with chains around them. I've got tattoos all over me. I had a clip on earring because I didn't want to hurt myself.

That's true.

It's true.

So I look good, but like most of you, I was full of shit.

I mean, you come into Alcoholics Anonymous, you know you have to take on someone else's personality till you get one of your own, don't you think? Really? I mean, really, most of us are pretty chameleonic out there, you know? You just, you know, I heard Bobby early. I don't think that's really a word chameleonic, is it?

Kind of fits though. Heard Bobby Earl talk about, you know, doing the you know, when you're out there

drinking and doing your thing, you walk into a room and you look around the room and you kind of hang back and you listen to how people are talking and what they're doing. You rehearse it in your head a little bit and then you jump out there and you talk like they're talking and you know that kind of thing. And when you come into a a that doesn't change, you know, I mean, you have no self esteem, no self respect and no self-confidence. You know, you just you pretend you fake it. You have no other choice because there's no depth to any of us really. And that's what was going on out there. I mean, at the time I didn't think that. I figured I was real, you know, I mean,

I thought that's what a man was, was an outlaw biker. I'd remember being at Bass Lake on the 4th of July in 1965 in the Hells Angels wrote in that valley. And I went, yes, Sir. I want to be just like that. I want to be a gangster, a gunslinger, you know, That's what I want to be. That's what a man is. That's what I want to be. And and I went for that for a long time. You know, it's just, I'm not like that at all. I'm a wimp,

what can I say? You know, And who knew,

you don't know to, you know, I didn't know that and I figured I was real, you know.

So remember the party, remember the party. Remember the whole idea was to have a party. That was the whole idea. The whole idea was to have a few beers, you know, I mean, we feel less than not part of an aliens from other planets. And you have a few beers and you feel good and you jump out there. Maybe you get laid, you know, you never know, you know, but at least it got you out of the house. You know, it gets you out of the house and you're out among people and doing stuff. And I ended up naked in my living room watching religious television. Take a note,

Party.

What the hell is that? What happened to the party?

But you know, good Alcoholics stay out there for an extra three to five years. You know, you wouldn't want to leave just before the miracle.

They might all line up again, you know, looking for some action. And they want you, you know, But you got to make damn sure you're miserable.

Make damn sure you wouldn't want to come in early.

I have hepatitis C

and I'm taking the medication for that. I never thought I'd ever stick a needle in myself again, but I have to shoot myself with interferon three days a week

and take capsules and pills and they make me very emotional. I'm a very emotional girl right now

and

I want to give you fair warning because I, I spoke at another meeting a few weeks ago and I screamed at him for 45 minutes. I heard the tape of that and go, who the hell was that? You know,

So if anybody out there has it and they'd like to talk about that, I'm available. It's tough, you know, it's tough and there's a lot of it in a a no one gets away free at that extra three to five years, you get hurt. Alcoholism, active alcoholism, drinking alcoholism is not funny. The reason you and I laugh is because it's not like that anymore

and we identify with what it was like. But when you're out there peeing on yourself and walking in the doors and making a fool of yourself in public, it's not funny.

Tonight maybe we'll talk a little bit about the demon and about the exorcism of said demon.

Because I've seen the demon,

if you've ever been on a 12 step call, get up real close to them so you can smell them and you look them in the eye. You tell me if you can't see the demon, it's alive. It's real. And I've seen it in sobriety. I've seen it in people's eyes at the Illinois club. I've seen it in people that have been sober a long time. There's a lot of untreated alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a lot of people in a A that are on the fringe that have been sober a long time.

There's lots of people get soap and get drunk at 8:00. 10/15/20 years sober and everybody's shocked. My dad used to say some guys 10 years sober and he drinks and everybody goes. Isn't that shocking? My dad says it's shocking. He stayed sober for 10 years. You know,

so the demons real,

we've all had the demon in our lives. We felt it. We felt the powerlessness. We felt being swept away. You know, some of us crossed the line. I never crossed the line. I stepped immediately over the line. But some people that drank for a while and they tell the story of when they stepped over the line and they got swept away and it took over their life. Alcoholism took over my life from the time I was about 15 years old. In hindsight, I can look back and see that well, when you have the demon.

The eye can't see itself.

I didn't know I had a demon. I thought, like my sponsor says, I was just a party kind of guy, you know? But I had the demon. In sobriety is when I've seen the demon. I've seen it in other people. I've sat across the table from some guy who's trying to get sober, and you have those discussions and you can see the denial. You've got to be able to rationalize and justify that kind of life. It's a hard job.

It's a hard job to be sitting in an alley with your paper bag thinking this is OK.

It's really not that bad, you know? And that's a tough job. And in sobriety, it happens a lot, too. People rationalize and justify the way they live. You'll hear people. You'll hear people and Alcoholics Anonymous that have been around for a while, and they've done some work and they go, well, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to go take care of myself now.

And I thought, well, just hand them the gun, get it over with now, you know, shoot yourself in the head. You know, I took care of myself my entire life.

Finally an Alcoholics Anonymous. I get relief from me.

It's not about me, it's about you. It's not about me. I get to finally be done with that. If you ever catch yourself alone in a room thinking about your problems, get the hell out of the room.

Go help somebody else think about theirs.

By the time I was 22 years old, I was in the Oregon State Mental Institution.

I needed to rest.

Anybody else here been in a mental institution?

Hi,

only those of us that have been in the loony bin know that it's not that bad.

Has some sparkling conversations.

Great place to look for a bride.

Used to sneak out of the mental institution, sneak down the street to the liquor store, get a couple of bottles of wine, go down the basement, drink and come back up in the mental institution and party a little

Thorazine. It's great stuff.

So I was married and I had two kids. I lost a house and a wife and a couple of kids and several jobs and some cars and the 22 years old that was essentially living in my car. Kind of, it's not immediately obvious when you live in your car, you're just kind of going from place to place.

Every once in a while you fall asleep in the front seat, you know, and but I drank for another 15 years. I didn't get sober till I was 37.

You know, when I was 22, I was sticking needles in my arm every day and

it was a mess. I was a mess. I was scared to death. I was scared to death and I was in that mental institution a couple times. I went to my first shrink, I think when I was 13, my mother took me to a shrink. I hated my father. One of the requirements of being an alcoholic is that you hate your parents.

It's not immediately, you don't know why exactly, but they're, they're available, you know, and I really hated my dad and she took me to a shrink and

I spent probably a couple years seeing him, maybe some length of time. I've been in Group therapy for 2 1/2 years at one time, been in a mental institution a couple of times, been in recovery place. I've been gestalted and Roth and Primal screamed. And I know more about myself than it's safe to know, actually,

You know, it's a relatively limited subject, so you have to kind of make some shit up to make it interesting. But the psychotherapeutic community has always been very interested in how I felt and what I thought about how I felt.

And it is my favorite subject. You know, I do psychotherapy extremely well, you know, As a matter of fact, I enjoy it, you know, And if I'm sponsoring you, you can suck me into your weirdness. I find it quite attractive. You know, I'll try and analyze. Yeah. I don't really think it's my job, but I'll give it a shot, you know, and

gone down that road a few times and my sponsors told me, Bill, you have absolutely nothing to offer that man. Let him go.

I know I can fix them. I know I'm going to save him. I have a little halfway house over my office in El Segundo. It's kind of an apartment and we've had some interesting people stay there. I had one guy that was staying up there drinking. My sponsor said I don't think they're supposed to drink when they're up there, are they, Bill? Well, I'm sure he'll quit sooner or later.

I'm almost got Vamos, got him fixed and I'm sure I can fix him, you know?

So when it was my turn to get sober

at 37, I, I went into a recovery place. What my last drunk wasn't my worst one. It was just another one. It wasn't anything special. I was remarried and I had a couple more kids and was that ear splitting, shattering silence in the house where you just move around from room to room and you're not really connected. You know, you know, it's like Alcoholics. Alcoholics know the truth of I was completely alone

and I lived in a house with a wife and children

and I had no emotional connection to another living human being, including my own children. There's no connection. Only an alcoholic knows the truth of that. We just don't connect. There's not room for you in me. I'm consumed with myself absolutely consumed. And an alcoholic, alcoholic at the end of his drinking is completely and entirely consumed. There's no space for you,

you know? I try. I look like I'm grown up. I've been around, you know,

I mean, I, I know who the president is and stuff. You know, I can have a basically a fairly intelligent conversation with you, but I'm not connected with the world at all. I'm in my own little world. And when it was time for me to get sober, when it was over and I could hear death creeping up behind me because I weighed well over 300 lbs and I, I had gotten thrown out of a second story bar and shattered my angle. Have you ever been right and in the hospital?

That's a common thing for Alcoholics.

Well, yeah, he tried to kill me, but I was right, you know, And I got into a political discussion and always stay on the ground floor of bars. Key thing. And so I walked with a pronounced limp. The muscles in my upper body had atrophied. And I had a pinched nerve in my right shoulder. My right arm was curled up against my side. And it was hard for me to reach out, to even shake your hand. And I really think my liver stuck out on one side. And now I know why. And I could feel death coming up. I I just. I just knew it was impending. I had that feeling

and and I called the one person I figured would come and get me. I called my mother. Want no one loves you like your mother, you know. And she came and got me and checked me into a place in Costa Mesa called Starting Point. I spent 35 days in there. While I was in there, they made me wear a sign around my neck, but I had to make the sign. It was a piece of cardboard and some string and I had to wear it around my neck. And in the morning they made me pour coffee for everybody because they said I had some kind of an arrogant ego problem or something. I don't know what it was,

but it was OK because it drew attention to myself, you know, and but what it said on the sign was I am not a counselor.

That's the truth. I wish I'd have kept the sign.

Well, I used to help people do their 4th and 5th steps and

I said we'll put some of that shit in there. Makes them think you're telling the truth. They like to hear about that.

I can sit around and talk to you about myself forever, you know, and if we run out of topic, we'll just make something up, you know, it's okay. But it was a straight ahead place. It was 3035 days and and it and I was away from a drink or a drug for 35 days. And that was the first time since I was probably 15 years old that that was true. That's a frightening place. Having no anesthetic,

no tranquilizer, doing the world with naked blood. I don't do that well,

matter of fact, the times that I try and clean up my act, what I would do is I would just drink on the weekends.

It's important if you're going to be normal that you only drink on the weekends because normal people have jobs

and when I drink, I don't show up no matter what.

Well, and normal people go to work on Monday, which is pretty stunning, and then they follow that up with Tuesday,

slide right into Wednesday. Some of them show up on Saturday for extra money or something. You know, it's amazing.

And so if you're going to be normal, you can't drink during the week because you don't show up. You drink on the weekends like normal people do. And what you do during the week is you smoke pot 'cause it's like green and it's from God. It's not really drugs, you know, it's maintenance. It's what you do in between getting loaded, you know, 'cause there has to be some cushion between you and I. I can't do you just straight on I, I can't do it. You know, I need some kind of cushion. So you come into Alcoholics Anonymous, You or I, either one,

and all of a sudden I'm in the character defect center of the God damn universe

and I'm going to do you.

Half the time you don't even know I'm in the room.

You're guaranteed to piss me off. The fellowship of a A is something to be survived.

It won't keep me sober. We love to mindlessly chant principles before personalities. Does anybody know what that means?

You'll hit on my wife. You'll borrow money from me and you won't pay it back. You won't show up to my birthday party,

you know? I'll give you a job and you'll do a shitty job and somehow it'll be my fault.

You know,

you're guaranteed to piss me off. One night I'm leaving the Illinois club, I'm heading for my car. You pissed me off again and I'm heading across this at night and I thought,

where are you going?

Because, you know, there's no referrals from Alcoholics Anonymous. This is the last house on the street.

This is it. When the insurance money runs out, when they're done gestalting and rolling us,

they send us to the world's aftercare program, a linoleum, floors and metal folding chairs for the rest of our natural lives.

God forbid.

So I better figure out a way to survive you. I got to figure out, I, I better come up with some principles, whatever that is,

to survive you

because there's nowhere else for me to go. You know, I'm this is it. There's nowhere else to go. I've done it all. I've done like many of us have. I've done it all and I hope this works for me.

So after a couple of weeks of bumming around in a A and thinking I can't do it,

first meeting I walked into was the Gong Show at the Hermosa Beach Illinois Club.

And I'm standing in the back of the room and you people are walking up, taking your little chips and then like to thank God and my sponsor for my sobriety,

you know, and then you did the coup de

grace. Happy birthday to you. I stood in the back of the room. I said, I can't do this. I can't. You see, a A is not hip.

Matter of fact, it's beyond lame.

It's just

here I am

in my old man's club,

and I know he's up at the house just going

because that's what they do, you know,

children of Alcoholics.

So I'm stuck. I can't do it. I remember driving home from the Illinois club that night thinking, you know, I really don't think I can do it. I'm hippier than this. And so a couple of weeks go by and I knew I had to get one of these sponsor things.

So

I see this guy floating around and we speculate on why I asked him, still can't figure it out. And I walked up to him and I said, will you be my sponsor? And he says I'll meet you at the Hermosa Beach Alana Club Monday night. Be there at 8:00, the meeting starts at 8:30. Be there at 8:00 and we'll discuss it. I think, well, there's going to be a test.

And so I show up at the Illinois club and he takes me around the corner of the Illinois club and he asked me a couple of questions.

First question he asked me is, he said, are you willing to go to any length for a victory over alcohol?

And if there's anybody in here that's fairly new that hasn't been asked that question, I suggest to you that if someone asked you that, you just say yes

because it's a trick question and you don't have any idea what they really mean by it. And if you say no, you have to listen to him for another 10 minutes. It can be painful.

So I said yeah, you bet. You and me, buddy. Off into the sunset. Sobriety. Uh-huh. I'm ready. I'm ready. Any length.

Then the second question he asked me was more of a statement than a question. He said, I noticed that when you identify yourself, you call yourself an alcoholic and an addict. I said, well, yeah, I'm from the 60s, man. You know, I did a lot of dope. So what? They taught me to do that in the hospital. So what he says, well, I might suggest to you, if you're calling yourself an addict because you think it's a little hipper, slicker and cooler,

you might want to drop it.

And be like everybody else for the first time in your life.

This is Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I can remember standing there, it was in the dark, and he's a short little guy, You know,

he's about that tall. He's 10 years younger than me. He's got a full head of hair. All of which pisses me off.

I remember looking down and I could feel the anger like I felt for my father. I used to have those anger seizures, you know. I could feel the bile come up from my stomach into my neck and burn it burn in your throat and the veins in my neck throb. You know? What was going on in my head was who the fuck do you think you are?

What came out of my mouth was

OK.

It's like, you know, when you're fat, bald and 40 and you're in your old man's club,

there's no debate,

you know? It's like, what are you gonna argue about? You know, where are you gonna go? And how did he know?

How did he know? I mean, the last thing I wanted to be was just a drunk like the old man. I mean, at least being a dope fiend is like contemporary. It's rock'n'roll and shit. You know, He's like, this is being alcohol. He took the last little bit of hip I had. I mean, there's nothing left.

You're an A fucking a man, you know? You gotta have something.

You don't leave me with anything. You want me to be a sheep just like you, you know,

my friend Paul says that you know it's going to be a sheep. Get in the center of the flock. The wolves pick them off on the outside. You know,

the first time I heard that, it went, Oh, yeah, you know,

and driving home that night, I thought, this is going to be hard.

How did he know?

How did he know? Because what he said for me was true. I'm trying to hang on to some kind of individuality I want, and the very first thing he said to me was something shitty.

He didn't interview me and kind of get a feel for my case

so that he could adjust himself a little bit to approach me in a fashion that would make this transition into sobriety a little smoother for me, You know,

Where the hell is that? Where's my Minnesota multi phasic thousand question thing to find out what kind of career path I should go on or something?

Jesus.

So I said be at my house at Thursday at 5:00, read the doctor's opinion, make notes in the margin about what you agree with and what you don't agree with, and we'll discuss it.

So I did my homework. I showed up at his house. He didn't trust me that I'd read it, so he had me read it to him out loud.

This stranger not charging me any money. I don't even think I knew his last name. He never asked me mine. And we read it. And in the doctor's opinion, it describes four or five different kinds of Alcoholics. And he stopped me, says, which one are you? And we discussed it a little bit, and I said, well, I think I'm this one here. He says, we'll circle it, put a star next to it. You're in the book.

My favorite subject

and he explained to me, he said you should identify with this book, you should find yourself in here. And you say you have. So you've passed the 1st test, you're in the book. This book isn't written to you, it's about you and you should find yourself and you've identified, you know, there you go. Well, later on in that chapter says the only thing that's going to say the poor guy like that, like me, is a complete psychic change. And he explained to me that as as my sponsor, that that was his job

to help bring about to guide me through this path that would bring about this psychic change that would make me comfortable in this, in sobriety so that I could survive you and move on and live a full rich life, that that was his job. He says now we can sit around and discuss what you think your problems are if you want to. And I'd be happy to do that so that you will not share about them in the meetings.

If the meetings are not about how your day went, it's about recovery from alcoholism, so.

So I didn't know that there was an easier, softer way. I didn't know that there were people that said if you ask them to be your sponsor, they'd say, well, yeah, sure, give me a call. You know, I thought everybody was going to class just like me. You know, I didn't know that I'd fallen in with the right wing death squad facts in the Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I mean, these people do not believe that this is a program of suggestions.

They believe that there's some stuff you've got to do around here if you want to stay around here. Stuff like that. I didn't know,

but there was a whole therapy section you could go to. You know, I didn't know that. I just followed blindly. I had. Where else was I going to go?

So each week I showed up at this man's house and he worked the steps with me and he took me into Alcoholics Anonymous. He took me to the meetings that he went to earlier. We were talking about I was his driver for years,

he said. The reason I was sent to Alcoholics Anonymous is that that you guys needed better transportation. And I had a car.

I drove him around. You know, he called me one night. He, he did a, a with me. He didn't just talk to me about it. I believe that this man literally, literally saved my life. Literally.

Not just figuratively, not just a way of speaking. He saved my life. Did he sober me up? No. He helped me stay sober through his example, through the way he lives. He took me into his house because he has nothing to hide.

I heard later somebody said I take him home, do I have something to hide? I started taking him home. I thought, shit, maybe I'm hiding something, you know? But he did it with it. One night he called me up. He said God is drunk in Wilmington and he needs us

now. I've taken a lot of LSD

and no one ever said anything as bizarre as that.

And when he says that kind of stuff, he giggles. There's like a giggle in it, you know? And he came and got me. We went to Wilmington. We picked up God and took him to the Illinois Club. You know,