The Paramount Speaker Group in Paramount CA

Well, hi everybody, I'm Bud McDonald. I'm an alcoholic. When I say I'm an alcoholic, I'm saying I'm a person who cannot control and enjoy my liquor drinking. And it's as simple as that. That's what alcoholism is, the inability to control. Enjoy your liquor drinking.

I came into Alcoholics Anonymous out of jail, read the book while I was in jail. Why? I don't know. The judge made the comment when I went to jail that time that this man seems to have quite an alcoholic problem. And I thought he was crazy,

you know, and our colleagues are bumbling on in the gutter on Skid Row. And I wasn't one of those. And I had never been arrested for playing drunk. I got busted twice for drunk driving, had the money in my pocket to bail out. And they used to hold you that magic five hours and then turn you lose if you had the bail money. And hell, I'd be as drunk when I left as I was when they busted me, you know? But I was arrested many times for many different crimes and felonies

of various sorts and did time for them. My,

I've had a very interesting life

and I look back at my life and it was interesting when I was a child, I was in the movies, I was in the our gang comedies and I was buddy, the little freckle faced kid with Jackie Cooper and all those guys. And we were spoiled rotten people. Just, you know, you'd have thought we were president of the United States or something. They really, really everybody just kissed our butt. I, I sneeze and I get my paper, the name in the local paper, that child star. I'll you know

it. This is what the

that did for me and and my mother and father.

It was big money in those days. It's nothing now. But in those days my dad would have been tickled to get a job for a buck a day. And I'm earning 10 bucks a day in the movies. You know, that's 50 bucks a week. And I was on the radio and made good money for that time. My folks were able to pay the their house off. My dad bought a little restroom with bootlegging out the back door. And when Prohibition was repealed, he

bought a got a liquor license,

started a bar, and he and my mother became their own best customers, you know, And my dad was the kind of a drunk I always wanted to be. My dad was a real jovial nice guy when he was when he was drinking cold sobri asked him for a dime to go to the show and he tell you didn't have it. We had a couple of drinks. He'd say, yeah, he'd give you a quarter. You know, this is the kind of drunk he was. My mother was just the opposite.

Sober, My mother was the sweetest, kindest person in the world,

but you give her a couple of drinks and she could start a fight in an empty room. I mean, she was a violent drunk. Used to scare the shit out of my brothers and I, you know, and this I used to, I, I remember, God, I remember one time down San Diego or in, in Tijuana, they went down there because it was prohibition days up here and they had the cantina's down there. And my two brothers and I, they had no 1921 Dodge. It was about as tall as a goddamn Street car with them great big old square boxes.

We went down and we kids under the threat of death, I think had to stay in the car while they went into the canteen and got drunk

and coming home. My mother was beating on my father and cursing him in all kinds of stuff, you know, And my brothers and I were in the backseat just frightened. This little kids could be because of this action going on up there. And I used to think it, well, I don't ever want to be that way. And yet I wound up that way because I found booze and booze had become my best friend was about 12 or 13 years old. My parents had been divorced or separated by that time and divorced

my two brothers and I ran away from the movies and everything else and took us up to Oregon. She had an aunt and uncle up there she thought would take us in and we got up there and they pointed to the Berry fields and says go and send no more, you know. And we went out and became fruit traps, picking berries. Here she is with three little kids, 3 little boys and my kid brother was too small to do any good. And so my older brother and I got my mom picking berries. Kept us alive at that time. And people would say, you know, my mother,

somebody would say that he used to be in the movies. Well, why ain't in the Movies Now? And I used to, you know, why ain't that? What? What's wrong with me? There must have been something wrong with me, for I'm no longer being spoiled. I'm no longer the center of attraction. What's wrong with me? And this is the way I felt and I was afraid. I was afraid to fight. I was afraid to do anything, you know, And we,

my older brother, we came back to California and my mother recovered the house. My dad took off and, and luckily it was paid for so we didn't get evicted. All she we had to do was what the taxes out on it, which were minimal in those days.

And my two brothers and I, we hung around with each other a little bit. My older brother and I didn't never did get along. He wanted to be the boss. He was the father figure because he had been no longer there and he wasn't quite two years older than me and I was the same size of him could kick his ass anytime I wanted to, you know, and then but he wanted to be the boss and we never did get along. My kid brother and I got along real well,

but I hung around with my older brother and his crowd 'cause I wanted to be with the older guys. And we had a guy in our neighborhood named Forrest Dawson, an old forest. I think he started shaving when he was seven and by the time, by the time he was 13, he looked like it was 35 and he could buy boots, you know, he could go to the had a little winery down on Florence Ave. over there that he could on. He used to take your own jug and for $0.39 they give you 2 quarts of wine, you know, and in this half gallon jug

and we get half muscatel, half to okay and we call it toothpaste. Well, I guess I'll brush my teeth. And that was the thing to do is be able to lift that thing up and put your finger in here and do it like that, you know. And so among my brother's friends was a guy named Harold Butler. This guy used to pick on me all the time, used to pinch me and punch me and I was scared to death of him. He was bigger and older and stronger than I was, and I was his favorite object to to harass.

And one day I've had four or five slugs of this toothpaste that were doing this wine that we call toothbrush, my teeth, you know, I had four or five slugs of this stuff. And Butler showed up and I was always afraid of him, but he did something that upset me and I smacked him in the mouth and he come after me like he was going to kill me and he could hit me and it didn't hurt. For the first time I wasn't afraid of him and I kicked his ass

and I had found what I needed. That removed the fear I had of that guy,

what booze did for me and I like the effect I got from and never did care for the taste of it. I puked up about half of everything I ever drank. And because I never did like the taste, but I loved the effect that I got from it. And I drink booze and I would be smart. Good looking ladies, man, you know, go to the dances and I'd be cold sober night. Shit. I couldn't dance this in the jitterbug days.

Couple of drinks and I thought it was Fred Astaire, man, you know, and this is what booze did for me.

But it also got me into trouble. It got me kicked out of Bella High School. I had a couple of guys. We, it was just a big joke, you know, we locked the gardening teacher in the tool shed and set fire to it.

So they sent us to Reese High School. Never let me come back to Belle. The other two guys, they let him come back to Bell, but they had enough of me at Bell High School. And

so then I took off one summer and I had another guy and we went to Washington,

Oregon and Washington were hoboing all over the West and we wind up up broke and tapped out way up in Okanogan County, Washington. And I stole the car and this buddy of mine didn't know how to drive, but I let him drive anyway and we got caught.

But in the meantime, we had robbed a service station. We stopped, we were about out of gas and we stopped and got some service gas from one of the old things. Used to have to pump the gas like that, you know, And my buddy's out there shooting the shit with this guy pouring gas in the car. And I went in there to steal some candy bars or something, 'cause we were hungry. And I went behind the counter and he had a gun back here. And so we held him up, locked him in the toilet and we took off. When we get caught,

they take us down to Chelan or the Chelan County Jail up at Don at Wenatchee,

and they send up to Okanagan for somebody to come down and get us. And the deputy sheriff, great big dude and the sheriff's son came down, one to drive the car we'd stolen back and the other to drive the police car. So this deputy is in the police car. I'm in the car we stole. They got us handcuffed and, and with a belt and a loop on it and the belts buckle in the back. You can't get loose from it. And I'm sitting there and this gun is right underneath me and I know it

and I'm scared to tell them about it. You know,

my buddy cops to this deputy sheriff and many honches aren't pulled over. He can pull me out of that car. And I have never, I've been beat up pretty good a couple of times, but never like I was that time. I don't know how many my ribs he broke, but I was just in terrible, terrible shape when he got through with me. And I go up and at Okanagan County jail, never did see a doctor about it. Eventually I began to heal up, I guess, and and my ribs are still all crooked here from where I had been worked over

and

I got a great love for policemen at that time, you know,

and and so I, that was my first time of doing a time. I went to reform school for that and stay there about ready to get out of reform school. I I'm complete what they call completely started with a whole bunch of demerits and you work your way out for good behavior. You do this and that and the other thing. I have been captain of the company I was in and you get like 30 extra merits a month for that,

you know, and everything. And then I was complete and I was ready. If somebody would come up with the money to get me back to California, I could get out of there. But nobody in my family had that much money at that time for a bus ticket to Los Angeles. And I decide, I and another guy decide we'll take off

and we but I'm in charge of the sleeping quarters of all the guys in a company and I'm the night watch when I get to sleep during the day and I'm supposed to be watching them. And this guy and I, we snuck out down at the back of the place when we're about a 10 foot fence. And on the way down I jump backwards and I broke my ankle and I didn't know it, but I run about 5 miles through the woods with that broken ankle limping and hurting like hell. But I'm free, I'm loose. And we get out to the highway and start hitchhiking and the first car along,

sheriff of that county, and we're standing out there in the state issue, you know,

big neon sign, the clothes we were wearing right from the joint, you know,

So anyway, they took me back and then they busted our ass. They're real good. And when I say busted your edge, take all your clothes off. You got your shoes and socks on and you bend over and they bust your ass with these big belts that they use to run the machinery and the laundry, you know, and some of those guys, man, they could take a fly off your ass with that thing if they wanted to. They could cut you. They could. And so they made a hamburger out of our butts. And about three or four days later, my leg is by this time swollen applied. And they finally took me to a doctor and put a cast on the God damn thing.

And I eventually got out of that reform school and got back to California. And I minded my own business. I pulled some chicken shit stuff and everything else. But this was in the 30s and the war broke out and I went to Marine Corps.

And luckily for me, I got an honorable discharge out of the Marine Corps. But I was in trouble. He took me out of the brink to give me a goddamn Purple Heart, you know, You know. And I told him I just give me the aspirin. I already got the Purple Heart. I don't need the son of a bitch. But but anyway, I come out of the Marine Corps in 1943 and I could have gotten a job. Said it was work time. All the defense plants were hiring

but I figured a hard ass guy like me, big time veteran and all that. I got a gun and went into business for myself

and one of my crime partners got caught and he told him I was with him in Bingle. We both got busted, went to the joint, got out, went back six weeks later. Just, you know, should they? I still same cellmate, so same room, everything, you know, on same job. They likely they knew I was coming back. You know, they saved it for me

and I got busted in the joint again for

her for bootlegging.

We're making Pruno in the goddamn powerhouse in hip boots. Now. If you think something's good to drink, you try some of that Pruno made in rubber hip boots.

Christ.

And anyway, they shipped me over to Folsom and I come out in 47 and I didn't quit committing crimes and shit like that. Although I

did

didn't get caught in anything that I did, you know, I was real lucky and, and I, I went to work, I drove truck and I got some good driving jobs and I run the Alcana Hwy. the winter of 4748 and made a lot of money there. And one of one of the greatest drunks I'd ever been on in my life. And I went down and bought a brand new Buick, paid cash for the son of a bitch, still had about 5 grand and I headed for

LA via 395 Reno,

Nevada. All that between the whore houses and the gambling joints. When I got to LA, I had to refinance that car.

I had been married when I got out of the Marine Corps and my wife and I got divorced. We had a little girl

and things were just all screwed. I was always in trouble. I always felt different. Didn't know why. But I like booze. Booze made me feel all right and I could be a nice guy and make friends and stuff like that and borrow from them and then lose them real quick, like, you know, And I clipped and clouded everybody I knew, it seemed like. And in 1952, I got busted on another beef for Rob, the Southern California Gas company. In those days, he used to go in and pay their money in cash, you know, and they,

they weren't allowed to checking accounts or anything like that. It was like a bank. And so anyway, I hit this place and got about $6300 and another great drunk and a crime partner of mine squealed on me. And it's, it's kind of weird. I was never caught in the Commission of a, of a felony. Always somebody else had men with, you know, and, but I had done the deed. And when this guy copped out on me and turned state's evidence, I wanted to kill him. And I think if I could have gotten a hold of him right then I would. But he didn't

favor anybody ever. Did me you know because I went to jail got an attorney this time instead of a PD

and they give me 6 months in jail

and I had to make restitution of the money that I'd stolen. Now, man, that is punishment because come out of jail, you're broke, unemployable, unacceptable among your people and you owe all of this money. And I would that 6300 to the Southern California Gas Company in a bunch of other money and probably 10 grand altogether that I

owed. And I wouldn't have been too bad if I'd owed it to, you know,

five or six or seven people could have made a deal to pay it off. I don't think about 10,000 people a dollar each. And they all wanted it right now and couldn't understand why I couldn't pay it. But I had read the book, the judge made the comment that this man seems to have quite an alcoholic problem. And where he got that was from people that I

asked to write letters for me and asking for leniency and all this kind of shit, you know, and they're apparently their idea was the budget. Pretty good guy, except when he drinks and he drinks too much. And so the judge made that comment. This man seemed to have quite an alcoholic problem. And that's the first time I'd ever had that connected with me. So while I'm doing this six months and sometime in the last week or two that I'm in in jail on that six month deal,

I read the book Alcoholics Anonymous and I didn't purposely read it. I just had seen it in the bookcase and I read everything else that was in the bookcase except Alcoholics Anonymous. They had four or five

copies of the book in those bookcases and I, nobody else was in the barracks and I'm in there for stealing. I got stature, you know, in jail there's a very definite social strata. And at the top of that social strata, I was in jail with three wheel car Davis, the guy that swindled millions of dollars out of from people with this three wheel car scheme. And everybody would say, hey, that's three wheel car Davis. He stole over 1,000,000 bucks. Doesn't occur to him that the assholes in jail, you know,

such a, you know, such a good guy, you know, and, and Lloyd Samsung, the yacht bandit in jail with Lloyd. And everybody looked at him and eat, steal a yacht in San Diego and sail it to Seattle and change all the numbers and everything else on it. By the time he got there, he'd sell it and then he'd steal another boat in Sea Island, bring it to Portland, do the same thing coming back, you know, and he was just trading in boats back and forth, stealing them all over the place. Hey, Sharp. But he's in jail

and this is the mentality. And I was a thief, and I had stolen enough money that I had status

in jail. In those days especially, even the junkie, even the hype would throw up his pinkies and say, thank God, I haven't sunk that low about the alcoholic. And yet I'm reading this book. And this book describes me and the feelings that I had described, the kind of a person I was.

And it, it really bugged me. I couldn't understand it.

I came out of jail that day. I was unemployable. I had burnt the bridge behind me on every job I'd ever had, never held a job a year in my life, but every job I'd ever had, I had burnt the bridge. I couldn't go back and say hey, could I have my job back?

They tell me you left my truck behind a whore house or a God damn bar someplace or something, you know? And nobody wanted anything to do with me. I was didn't know what to do about work. I, my brothers wanted nothing to do with me. My older brother that tried to boss me around when we were kids.

I'd clipped and clouded him in every direction. I took his credit card and went to Florida and back on the God damn thing. I stole his golf clubs and sold those. He couldn't prove it but I did. When my mom wasn't home one time, I hawked all her furniture to a finance company for 600 bucks, and he had to pay it off to keep me from going back to the joint and my mom losing her furniture.

And he tore the sheet there. And it was eight years before we ever spoke, four years before and four years after I came into Alcoholics Anonymous.

My kid brother, I'd helped him. He and I'm going to Marine Corps together and we were tight and they helped him a little bit when he went to college and I had some bucks at that time and, and helped him when he was going to college. And I never let him forget it. Boy, if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be where you are. He was an airline's captain, Louvre Eastern Airlines for 38 years.

And

he finally gave up on me. I'd call him for bail money. Remember one time he brought a plane out here for, I don't know, maybe Eastern, who he's flying for or something. He took a plane for another company back to New York. But anyway, he goes to my mom's place and wears Bud and she's, I don't know, he's probably hanging around with those bars down there gauging Atlantic. And so he comes down and he walked into the Rec's bar and he has Swede, the bartenders, you know, Bud McDonald, and he's who's looking for him.

And he says I'm his brother. He's, well, you must be the one from Florida because I know the one from up north.

And he said, yeah, well, he says he passed out in the back booth back here. And I was, he got me up and Manny had money and the party started, you know,

sometime later I needed bail money again. And I sent him a telegram, collect, send me bail money, care of the Rex Bar. And he sent the money. But the message with the telegram was, what booth are you sleeping in now? You know, he remembered that, but he finally turned me down. Every friend that I'd had, I clipped or clouded, lied to, lied about, done something that I was ashamed of to them. And I couldn't think of anybody

that I could turn to today. I got out of the jail, I sat down at the phone and I thought I better call somebody and let him know. And I couldn't think of anybody want to hear from me.

And I thought I'll call Alcoholics Anonymous, open the phone book. And it fell open to Alcoholics Anonymous in the Southeast, Ludlow 22439. I don't think it. I think it was just Ludlow 2439 at that time. I don't believe they even had the five digits Might have this in 1953,

but it I call that number. And the guy answered and I told him we just got out of jail. And he said if you had a drink yet. And I thought that's got to be the dumbest thing anybody ever asked me. I'm calling Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said no. He said, well, you better get your ass over here. And I thought, well, it's important. They need me over there right now.

And so my wife and I borrowed a car of my in laws and we went over to Huntington Park and I walk into the room and I I don't quite know what to expect. And at the hole in the ground, the stranger walks in there. Man, there's something going to have his hand out and meet you right away and and say hi. I'm so and so are you

here for yourself or your loved one or whatever? Can we help you?

And these guys greeted me and introduced me around and my wife was pregnant with my youngest daughter at that time and didn't quite know what to expect. I'd never been to an, A, a meeting

and I listen to the guy that kind of sound like, can you top this? You know, one guy said, well, I did this and that. Another guy did it in speech. You know, he did more than the next guy did more than that. And you know that I found out an Alcoholics Anonymous the farther down you'd go into the higher up you were, you know, and but they told me they had a meeting there that night and invited me to come back.

And I came back at night to the meeting. And the guy that was leading the meeting died on the 20th of last month. Jim, Farewell, one of the finest men I ever knew in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I thought he was hired to be there. He he couldn't be a drunk because he talked too nice and too politely. And he explained the program. He made more sense in the book did.

And I thought he was hired to be there to teach us, you know, how to get along.

And but there were a couple of guys that did impress me. One was a guy at the city, been sober 38 days that day. I thought that's possible. I'd put myself on the wagon a few times. I never considered myself as having a drinking problem. People were my problems. And but sometimes when the fire got too hot, I'd have to lay off for a while and I would put myself on the wagon for 30 days. Never made the 30 days. I made it 21 days. But I had to give myself time off for good behavior,

you know? And my sponsor, Duke Carson, talked that night, and I'd seen people walk up to him and shake his hand and the gals had give him a kiss on the cheek. Guys didn't hug each other in those days. That would be a damn good way to get knocked on your ass, you know. But

old Duke talked about sitting on the edge of the bed at 3/4 5:00 in the morning, wondering what in the hell is the matter with you? Why do you do it?

And I had done that so many times and never heard anybody talk about that before, never knew that anyone ever did that. I thought I was the only one in the world. And he looked good. I knew people liked him because I'd seen him walk up and shake his hand. I knew he had money because in those days they didn't have that copper streak down the middle of it really clanked and clanged, and he had that money in his pocket. I hear those quarters and a half dollars jingling

well dressed and well liked, and I was none of those things. But I wanted what he had. I wanted to be well liked, I want to be well dressed and I wanted to have money.

And I decided, I think at that time that whatever he'd done, I was going to try and do. And he became my sponsor eventually. And I and he showed me a way of life. That's been the greatest thing that ever happened to me. He he was a father figure. I, I know a lot of people in a that get sponsors and their sponsors make all their decisions for them and everything else. Duke never did that with me. I'd ask Duke, I'd say, Duke, I got a problem. This is this, I can do this, this or this. What should I do?

And he'd say, well, but if you, your brother, weren't your shoes, what would you want him to do?

You know, rather than tell me, give me some kind of a phony answer, he'd tell me how to find the answer myself.

You told me. But if you never do anything that you can't sit down at the dinner table and tell your wife and kids about, you will never do anything wrong. That's some of the greatest advice I ever got in my life. I can gauge anything by that. If I just don't do what I couldn't talk to you about openly or talk to my family, and you guys are my family nowadays, You know, that's my wife's name. Up on the wall there's Marcy Mick,

who she was a

black belt al Anon, you know, but she was something else. But she was my support and I learned to be a better husband to her through Duke and the people in Alcoholics Anonymous. I eventually got a job two years and five days after I came on this program, I got a vacation relief part time job driving truck for an outfit that I'd worked for before on the condition that if you drink,

don't come around. Just call us. We'll send your check. We don't want you around if you're drinking.

And I stayed on that job for 30 years, wound up general manager of the company. Couldn't tell you how it happened other than I didn't drink one day at a time.

My

I had three children by the time I came in shortly after I got in. My youngest daughter's 45 years old. Now my son is going to be 48 this month. My oldest daughter is 56 years old. And they're all three just really, really great kids and love their daddy. They love the old man like nobody's business. My oldest daughter is an attorney and got a very lucrative practice in Reno, NV. My son is director of research and technology for Time Warner.

My youngest daughter works for a

marketing research firm. She's a talented musician. She got a right of one of the rock'n'roll magazines when she played with a woman's rock'n'roll band that she's one of the hottest rock sax players in the country and is what this newspaper said about my youngest daughter. And these kids love me and I know they love me. And this is what is happened since I came to you people and found out with these 12 steps

mean to me and how I can use and apply these 12 steps to my life.

It's been such a wonderful deal to find all you people and think of the things of many of you know Howard Christian, big Howard, they call him Kaiser meeting. Howard and I were playing golf yesterday and we're sitting on a bench waiting for the guys to get off the green so we can tee off.

And I'm just sitting there and it it yesterday was a better day than today. It wasn't quite as overcast. And the sun came out yesterday. A matter of fact, I got a little sunburn on my forehead from being out there playing golf. And Howard and I are sitting there together and I says he's 32 years over his heart. Did you ever imagine 32 years ago that we'd be sitting here? Both of us got over 100 bucks in our pocket. We got money in the bank. We own our houses, we own our cars.

We got nobody hound this for money. We're getting along with our families.

Did you ever imagine 32 years ago that life could be like that? He says. Shit, no, I was suicidal 32 years ago. But these are the things that have happened because I haven't taken a drink.

And I got on that job and I applied myself. I got hurt while I was working for that company. And instead of going on workman's comp, they said go out and find us some business, you know, And I did. And I wound up as general manager of the company. I had to go back to school to learn how to do some of the things that I did in that business. And I learned how to be a better employee than I ever was.

I learned so many things about living that are come second nature to me now

that I automatically would think the wrong thing if somebody asked me or anything that I have learned how through you people teaching me and your actions and reactions

that I've learned and Alcoholics Anonymous been the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I think of the people that I know in Alcoholics Anonymous are my dear, dear friends, You know, Naomi and I got I don't know how long it's been. We've been friends for a long time, you know, and Bob White, 29 years. I've known the man. He's

just a real good 19 years for Dorothy. I've known her Don, my sweetheart there, Norma. I like the young gals too, see,

but I see Aiden and I see a lot of the young people come in that I admire, you know, And it's a rust sitting over there. You know, These are guys that have gone through Cider House and since I've been sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, I was sober 10 years and a probation officer from Huntington Park over at Walnut Park

Probation office between he and my sponsor Duke took it upon themselves have all my felonies taken back to court, the guilty pleas removed and the not guilty pleas entered and all my citizenship rights have been restored. To all intents and purposes, I am not a convicted felon because of this program and because of you people, you know, I didn't know, didn't even know what was happening. They did it because they weren't sure they could get it done. This brownie got it done.

This is one of the benefits that you don't because

I would work with his babies. My best friend is a judge or retired judge, but he's still working in the courts. And some of you know him, some of you have been given the little nudge from the judge the, the court card. You know, he and I invented that court card. One day he was hearing a jury trial. And he, I come into his courtroom and he gives me the office. Come on up there. And we stood there and he's telling me about how he's having a hell of a time trying to send letters out to A, A 'cause he never knows where these people are gonna go

send it to A. So he was gone. Wants to give them the card to get it signed and bring it back to him. And we designed the thing and I took it to a friend of mine over in Huntington Park, and he printed the first one thousand of those. And they become county forms and city forms and all courts all over the country. That court card was right here in the Downey courtroom is where it got started. If you ever come to my house in my living room, I've got one of the first 1000 cards with a note on it from Judge Emerson that he gave to me in this frame

there one of the 1st court cards. Now this is because I stayed sober and alcohol. I was best man at his wedding. And that's pretty weird that a a judge and an ex convict can be best friends, you know. But these are the good things that have happened and this is the benefit of staying sober, keeping my nose clean. Quit screwing with other people and quit fighting and arguing and and all this kind of stuff. You know, I found the greatest argument. Stopper is the word 2 words. I'm sorry,

you know,

I, I shouldn't have said what I did or whatever it happens to be. Instead, I got to be right. I can be wrong and I can apologize and it keeps me out of trouble with you. And when it keeps me out of trouble with you, it keeps me out of trouble with me. And it's all through these 12 steps. The first three steps are the AB CS after the things you know that.

I think that this is the greatest text

of a living program that anybody could ever have. You know, I'm not a religious man. I don't believe in religion. I think that most religions are worse than the mafia, you know, I really do. You know, they threaten you with the loss of your the most intangible thing you've got is your immortal soul. If you do not believe as we do, you're going to burn in Hellfire. And I don't even know what Hellfire is. I think we make our own hell right here on earth.

But I do believe that there is something, and for lack of a better name, it could be good. It could be God, it could be Buddhist, Hindu, Allah,

you know, help man has had a supreme being ever since way back when and he's also had booze ever since way back when he had booze before he had dope. Dope is just a added kicker. You know, it's a little higher high maybe, You know, but Zoroastrians had

booze way back then. Noah, when he landed on error at the first thing he did, was planted a vineyard so he could get some griefs to stomp and make some wine.

You know, it's out there and it's available. There's liquor stores all over the God damn place. I can drink if I want to. It's legal to sell it, legal to drink it, legal to buy it. But I choose not to because I've learned these things and Alcoholics Anonymous that I am a person who cannot control and enjoy my liquor drinking.

And if you want what I have the Peace of Mind, you know, I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I bet you I don't die of starvation,

you know. And I got friends. I got people that I love and they love me. I look at I look around this room and see the people. I see Carl here. I see Michael here. I saw Michael when he came and he used to pick him up over there and Firestone have him walk across the street and I'll pick you up on the other way because I have to swing around out of the way from my house. But we got over to Cider house, right, Mike, see. And I, I see that the people here that from way back when I see Paul, remember he was

about, you know,

but he's one of the prides. He's one of the prides that this has happened, you know, and it's, it's been a just a wonderful, wonderful trip for me to be sober and Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you want what I have, this enthusiasm, this love for my, my fellows,

you're welcome to it because it's in this program and it's with you people and it's here. It's in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Read the book if you have it, reread it. If you have, it's in the book. If you'll read page 112 in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, the 1st 3 words will tell you what to do,

and I ain't going to tell you what it says, but you get the book

and read page 112, the 1st 3 words

and it'll work. It'll work. You know, there I can see I got one back here looking now.

That's good, but tell them what it says First. Three words on page 112.

Read this book

with that right? That's what that's what it's all about. And but if you want what we have, this is what's there for you. You know, I, I, I went to a meeting Friday night and it was a men's stag meeting. And then God damn, the sniveling that I heard that went on there will drive you crazy. You know, there's one guy spent 15 minutes talking about his wife getting a God damn restraining order against him. And The Dirty bitch had no business doing that.

And I'm thinking, man, you know, in the 1st place, if you got a sponsor, he's the guy to tell you. Don't say that at an open meeting. You know your personal problems, call your sponsor and talk to them. That's what it's about. You know, these are the things that my sponsor, Duke Carson died and idiot Kanye became my sponsor and he died and Mela Villa became my sponsor and he died. And I'm afraid to ask Carl to be my sponsor.

I've outlived all these people, see, but Duke was 92 years old. The other guys were younger than I, but they were wonderful guys. Those of you that knew them, get a sponsor, somebody that you can talk to, somebody that you aren't afraid is going to tell everybody else what you've told them. I in the 1st place when I made my inventory and I wrote down all the bullshit that I had done and I started with now and went backwards,

Duke told me. He said don't go back to year one and bring it up to here, you'll never get there.

Struggle was bothering you right now. And what is there about yourself right now that you don't want to tell anybody? You don't want anybody to find out,

and that's what I started with. I've still got that same nickel notebook pad. I've heard people say you're supposed to burn it. Bullshit. I look at it and I add to it. When I find something in there that that I've done that bothers me, I'll wrap myself up. Promise, I'll never mention that in anger again.