The Paramount Group in Paramount, CA

Pleasure to introduce our main speaker, Johnny H from Long Beach.

Hi everybody, my name is Johnny Harris. I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here tonight sober. Thank my friend Michael for sharing privilege and may participating in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Among them strange people who believe that it's some type of a privilege to be allowed to come and sit in the room. I hope I don't want to get it through my sick head that I have a right to everything that goes on in Alcoholics Anonymous because I stumbled in here and got sober and stayed that way. And I tell you that because everything in my life is good and decent is the byproduct of the God I discovered sitting and meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now I'm extremely pleased tonight to

be one of the few who's fully clothed and in my right mind.

I just thought that passed that on little make my sponsor heavy happy in heaven.

You know, I I hope I don't ever in my lifetime

who get where I was

60 some years ago. Tonight

I was crawling around myself in solitary, confined at a maximum security penitentiary.

I pray God I never forget that.

But it could.

My life is awful good. I could forget that. Very simple.

I could get to take it in my mind, I've done enough. I've reached my peak in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I been sober so long that I'm almost a fire hazard when they present me with my cake

and it's really easy. See, I'm an alcoholic. I'm not a drinker or I'm not a drug addict. I'm an alcoholic. And if I don't continue to grow along spiritual lines,

it doesn't make any difference how many years I haven't had a drink, or how many meetings I've gone to, or how many babies I sponsored or how good my life is. If I don't continue to grow along spiritual lines by constant effort and work with other Alcoholics, there's a good chance I'll drink. Because I'm I don't have any more choice about that. And I do about flying back to Long Beach without my car.

It's just a simple situation,

so I can never forget from whence I came. There was an old, old thing. It was said a long time ago. If you forget the past, you are condemned to relive it. I didn't write that, so I just want you to know that you that bothers you get mad at the person who wrote it.

But I don't know. I don't know. I was born needing some type of an answer.

Now, the problem with that is I don't know what my problem is. Kind of hard to seek the answer to a problem if you don't know which problem is. And I had no idea wrestlers and heir have been discontented, but I have no idea that those are the symptoms of the most deadly illness ever been known to mankind. I didn't know that. How would I know that? I hadn't been in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Shit, I didn't know it. I knew a lot about drinking.

Everybody in my family drinks. They're Irish. You're supposed to drink if you're Irish. You're supposed to get drunk and beat the hell out of your family on Saturday night. That's what you do if you're Irish. And whoever survives the king for the next week, that's the way they work their deal out now. I don't understand that.

Earlier on in my life, the psychiatrist said to me, didn't that bother you as a child? And I said, oh boy, yeah,

I was in my victimization stage at that moment. I'm looking to get out of something. That's what I'm trying to do.

But you really want to know the truth. They were asked me that question today. It never laid a glove on me. It had nothing to do with the way I turned out. It had nothing to do with anything other than I was looking for the answer to something that I couldn't find. And so I had to continue to look and continue to look and continue to look. When I was a child, I went to church with my grandmother because my grandmother got a great deal out of church.

And I said in Sundays and my grandmother Jeff Churches, my grandmother's getting with it over there.

She's singing and doing all that. And I'm just sitting there standing around like a lot of newcomers and they, what's this?

You know, you get me in two now, Mary

and I don't know what's going on. And I said when am I going to get my grandma? She said. When you go down front,

right we're down front.

And I remember what the guy said, but he said something.

Next time I ask for shit when I get sprinkled, why I got sprinkled

and all remembers if the water was wet. I don't know anything about anything else. But you see what I've learned is there's nothing wrong with my grandmothers church,

there's just something wrong with your Jackass sitting in it me. See what I'm doing? I don't know this,

I almost died learning it.

What I'm doing is I'm looking for something way out here to make me feel better in here,

and that only goes to prove to me that the problem has always been there. And the answer to my problem happened on the back porch of my grandfather's house one day watching him drink with yard of a fruit jar. Who is she that he'd made?

He sent it down. He went somewhere and I picked it up and took a drink of it. It's all it did.

Yeah. I don't. I don't remember any spiritual experiences. I just remember

if something hit me in the head that said

I don't give a damn.

I'm not good enough to be around the good people, but I'm too good to be around the bad people. That's right here.

But it wasn't ready for what happened next, because it doesn't happen to everybody who drinks. Maybe one out of 10 people who get this reaction from alcohol that I got, and I didn't even know I had a reaction to it. You see, once I put alcohol into my system,

once that's in there,

I am powerless not to take the next drink. We were talking about it on on the break here and Guy probably said he's one of the guys that I could probably quit drinking. I can't.

Once I start to drink, I can't quit drinking. I have to drink. It was that way when I was sitting on my grandfather's house was three days later I was pulled off from underneath the bridge and stood in front of a judge and sentenced to the Hutchinson State Reform School.

20 years later

I took a drink of alcohol and was pulled out of a car in confidence, stood in front of a judge and sentenced to 20 years of penitentiary.

Now that's what happened to me when I drank. I got drunk in wet places,

travel around out there. I went from reform school to reform school to junior penitentiaries to penitentiaries to nut houses. Now they call them treatment centers.

I like knockouts a little more Beggar. It's a little more macho. Oh come on, if you're going to be bad, for Christ sake, be bad. I mean, don't quit drinking 'cause you puke a little.

Hang in there.

Give it everything you've got. Alcoholics Anonymous work awful lot better. Will you run out of options? I gave it everything I had out there. I threw it all in there. I didn't leave nothing for guesswork. I took every bit of talent that God gave me and use it up. I took my family and used them up.

I was responsible for the death of my 17 year old brother.

I destroyed my mother.

I've destroyed my mother's soul and reached inside of her and took all the life that she had inside of her all the time, powerless to do anything about it whatsoever.

And I never knew anything. But I every morning I woke up in my life before I got to you. I'm overwhelmed with guilt for my actions 'cause I was never able to fake the idea of a blackout because I knew exactly what I did every time I did it

and I didn't understand all this other kind of stuff that was going on. But I do know

yet if I took a drink of alcohol or stuck a needle in my arm, the guilt went away for a period of time. But when I woke up in the morning, it was all back here. Big numbers sitting there, what I'd done. And so I had to continue that cycle over and over and over again.

I ended up at handcuffs in the backseat of a police car under the chain gang going to the penitentiary. I didn't have any more choice about that than I did about flying around this room because I could not, I could not stop drinking or get loaded. And I got involved in juvenile hall and early 40s with a street gang

I live with for 20 years of my life,

which didn't help the guilt any by what you had to do to remain a member of the street gang.

I'll tell you my nickname. Street Game Widow Loco.

Well, you don't need nothing else to kill you with an image in it and something like that. You know man,

I sitting around watching to walk walk. I invented going out the door tonight.

I invented that juvenile hall

and I don't know what it was. I got the saddest idea. I don't know, 1951, I I was on a way to the penitentiary and my mother come to visit me in the Los Angeles County Jail.

I remember what she said to me as vividly. She said it yesterday. She screamed at me through the visiting screen and said look what you've done now, scum. You've killed our baby.

I went back to my cell and I knew I was supposed to be doing something, but I didn't know what. I didn't have the simple gift of tears that God is every creature on the face of the Serge because I didn't think they were necessary. And besides, I'm dying with this image that I'm building up time and time and time again with that nickname, willingness to do anything.

And I don't understand what's going on. I think showing somebody that you care for weakness. And I'm standing there handcuffed between these two detectives.

A couple of my old partners are standing there watching me make sure I don't do anything strange.

And it went on to penitentiary, came out there for year 4 1/2 years later Secretary was going to win there.

Nothing changes. Nothing changes.

I walked out same way I walked in.

About 18 months later, or two years later, I'm back in the penitentiary again.

Or this time I had two years unrestricted

with all the money I needed, all the fanchiness that I needed,

everything, all the drugs that I needed. I had it all for two solid years. And I ended up strapped down her bed in the Los Angeles County jail, 128 lbs of bright yellow with a doctor stand at the foot of my bed looking at me and say, son, you're going to die, nothing we can do for you.

That did not seem like a bad idea to me. If you want no truth,

I was just a little tired. The image is getting a little heavy and heavier all the time. The chores to keep widow alive and well

getting more, more demanding all the time. And it's just, you know,

I was praying that I'd never have to look at my mother ever again and see that look I put in her eyes.

And so it seemed like a great idea.

But the day passed and the night passed, and the doctor came the next day and looked at me. Look at your little chart

and said, son, you're going to die sooner later. We're going to you're going to make it. And I said OK

when he didn't know either. So one night, after a period of time, I don't even know how long it was, it was night and day and day and night.

Nothing to ease the pain or take away the guilt.

Somewhere in the middle of night I screamed out to prayer or said in my life. I said, oh God help me now. There was no blinding flashes of light. Nobody come running down the hall with a dozen Donuts. See, we got an A meeting down there.

Go there and sign this court card and come back. You'll be exonerated from whatever. I just went to sleep for a little while

and I got better and better and better and two weeks later I'm up running around a jail looking for some more of the poison and put me back on the bed I just gotten off of

to good reason for that and to back up my little head today,

just like it was 60 some years ago that night.

I know back here what makes you be heard. Go away.

It never leaves me feeling of the first drink. I know exactly what makes you put me in the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong set of circumstances. I'm drinking. I don't have any choice about it whatsoever.

And so I got ordered again. I spent the next two years of my life

absolutely tortured. Happy death,

trying every rotten, filthy corrupt. A thing I could do to see somebody have me, somebody kill me.

And the reason the longer that period went on is more sure I was that I was so bad that God wanted nothing to do with me whatsoever.

You know, I mean, my grandmother said to God punished little boys who were bad. I hadn't done anything when he started working on me. My way of thinking

and that two years kept going by. I kept getting in worse situations, in work situations. I got thrown out of San Quentin because I was too corrupt to live there.

Many more places to go than San Quentin. I'll say anything. They found one up in the hills where I couldn't hurt anybody,

and here I ended up on a Sunday morning, November the 4th, 19159, sitting on Little Knoll with some of my gang members waiting for the connection to come off the visiting room so we could get loaded. That's what we do in penitentiary. We just come here and sit and wait like the majority you're doing tonight.

I'm going to tell you you've already got everything you're going to get,

so you forget about that waiting. The only thing here and Alcoholics Anonymous is an opportunity to be of service to God and the people about you. There's nothing else here for. So if you're looking for some type of long extended period of sobriety,

it's still the only opportunity you've got to be able to service to God and people about you. And I realized that that day, because they had some women with them, this little line of people come walking across the yard.

And so being in the penitentiary for a period of time, and now I'm going to be there for a period of time,

I took every opportunity to smell perfume.

No matter what kind it was, I wouldn't smell it. That's part of my idea,

and here's what happened. Nobody in my gang said to me whether were you going, man?

They just shut. Well, he's doing something crazy again.

And I wandered into this thing called Alcoholics and obviously as big as this building, this little quant Hut, Quonset Hut, and they had two big gays up here on the back. They didn't have all these names. They had two big A's on this and I don't know what that meant but it was an anti aircraft brigade.

I have never been to a A nobody ever give me a court card and say go. They didn't do that,

they just said I was a blood sucking parrot. So I in society had no right being around decent people.

Try that

in an open courtroom. I think you got some machoism about you. I don't know what's going on. I'm sitting there. I asked, the guy said what is this? He says there's Alcoholics Anonymous. I was embarrassed by that.

Here I am sitting in a penitentiary, and I'm embarrassed by people who tried to help me.

Now, I don't know you're trying to help me like you don't know we're trying to help you.

You know, I'm slightest idea about that.

You know, all I know is I don't understand what they're doing here.

And so when I don't understand something, what I do is make fun of it. That's my MO because I got to keep the Wed alive alive.

You understand that? A bunch of you in here still trying. God bless you.

It's a tough hill to climb, baby, let me tell you that.

I don't know what's going on. I make fun of these people

sick. That really is.

Here I am. I'm setting in the penitentiary. I have no idea when I'm going to get out of the penitentiary, not at all. And I'm making fun of people who are leaving it an hour.

That's how far your sick ass image can carry.

You think you're guided to get it?

I don't know this,

and right away at my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous almost became my last meeting

because these people got up to this podium or on the stage where they were at

and they said things like this that you hear everywhere today.

I used to drink.

I don't drink anymore

and everything is just wonderful.

What?

I'm sitting in the back row in the penitentiary,

and I'm crazier than alone. I'm about two steps away from a straitjacket at all times, and I was physically sober as a guy saying that. So you know what that says to me?

How could I be alcoholic?

Alcoholics, The only one I've ever seen said they drank. Then they quit drinking and life got wonderful.

My life never got wonderful. I ended up in straitjackets and shock treatments when I was sober

and that's not wonderful

and I don't know what to do.

I had no way of knowing my life hung on a thread

and I finally told my told myself you know which is real good information for me telling me something.

I finally make an effort for help

and you're going to get there. I had no way of knowing that morning in November of 19159 my prayer was starting to be answered that I made in the deathbed 2 years before that. I had no concept of that because you don't look like Angel to me.

I had no way you were an Angel. So our angels are messengers of God. That's about the best description you could ever be. I saw the ugliest Angel

about that long period of time that I have ever seen. Isn't it?

His name was less Hamlin. He'd done 23 five years in the penitentiary and he was my baseball coach when I was a * second baseman for the San Quentin Pirates for a couple years.

So I had something in common with him.

And he stood at a port of Alcoholics Anonymous, this little bandit, just a drunken bandit, and said something that all the great learned men and women

for 20 years as a water state of California and the federal government didn't seem to know.

He said you don't have to live like this no more if you don't want to.

You don't have to do it like this no more.

Nobody had ever told me that.

What I was told by these great learned men as I sit across the table from them,

if I didn't drink these things and swallow these things and smoke these things and shoot these things, I wouldn't have any problems.

And what none of them ever took into consideration was I wasn't doing that when they told me that,

and I just accidentally was in a straitjacket most of the time to protect them.

I tried to attack a psychiatrist one time in a straitjacket. Now that's a lessons utility.

What happened to me is I got up.

I recognize this more than anything else now. The prayer started to work. That little Angel carried that message to me that nobody else knew that I knew. They didn't know 'cause they didn't have the words to tell me. They knew.

And I asked him, How do you learn how to live? See, I'm not interested in being sober from that day to this. I'm not interested in getting out of the penitentiary because I'll know I'll be right back again. I just want to know how I can lay down and sleep all night without that reoccurring nightmare that woke me up every single night of my life without any type of high-powered drugs in my system.

It's screaming at me at the village and screaming my mother did,

had seen at that gravesite in 1951, on and on with thousands of people. I destroyed my selfie self center, walk through life. That's what I wanted

and hear what his answer was. You know, this is a little strange from some of you people and Alcoholics Anonymous today, kind of far fetched, he says. There's a book called Alcoholics Anonymous in the library. If you go get that book, I'll go home and pray that you find some part of you in it.

So I went over to library the next day. Prison librarian stole the book. Alcoholics novel.

You gotta, you gotta understand how hard it is

to take off that image. You got to understand how it's like a snake peeling your skin, 1 skin right after another. That's a deadliest thing that happens to people like me. I can't get rid of my image. I'm dying, but I'm going to hang on to it because it served me well for 20 some years of my life. It protected me from everything

for 20 some years of my life. And it's awful hard to turn back the clock. It's awful hard to improve. It's hard to change. But you don't have to because if you get some type of a power greater yourself in your life, that will change you. And there's no effort involved in it whatsoever. So I opened your book to read it,

and I read most of it, not most of it. Bill's story and a couple of other things. I hadn't paid much attention to anything else,

and I was going to come to you and tell you that it wouldn't work for me because my case is different,

that I must take in half a room. You think that kind of nonsense? You understand my case is different. I'm an alcoholic. And yeah, you're an alcoholic and an idiot, that's what.

Sitting in an A meeting forum for gods sake.

But what saved my life today, then and tomorrow?

Here's I read the doctor's opinion in our book.

Here's a description of what's wrong with me had always been wrong with me. It described why I drink,

what it does to me. It doesn't do for other people

what I have to do if I don't want to drink again. And if I don't do this, I will drink again. I have no choice no matter whatsoever

and said I need some type of a psychic change and I don't know what that is.

I didn't have the slightest idea,

but the description of what was wrong with me

almost took my breath away.

And I made a decision right then and there to become responsible for my own actions.

And I started to do the things the book tells me to do,

not somebody else told me to do, because the book was my protection from everything else.

I didn't trust anybody else.

If you don't trust yourself, how you going to trust anybody? How do I do this? No, I'm not going to talk. Look, I'll just do what the book says. If the book tells me what's wrong with me, the book also has a solution on how I can get better and how I can find some way of life. I don't need somebody to point that out to me. The book says taking these actions and

having a spiritual way of life from spiritual principles embedded into my life as a result of certain things,

I will begin to change.

And so I walked out of a man's office a little while after that, 3 1/2 hours with him.

I told him about every rotten, feel too corruptible thing I'd ever done in my life.

I told the man the things that day that would have kept me in the penitentiary for the rest of my natural life.

There's only one reason I'd do anything here.

The instructions are in the book

and what I hear here and it's not in the book. I automatically know his gobbledygook and has no use in recovery of alcoholism from the alcoholic. It may benefit to people who drink drinkers, moderate to heavy drinkers, but it has no use for the alcoholic. The book is written for Alcoholics and my type because

the program that incorporates in your life and no matter where you're at, you can incorporate this program in your life. But first you got to clear away the record of your past.

You got to be able to give freely what you found here,

very simple. And the way you do this, it's through few set of principles that are outlined in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I've started trying to clean up the wreckage of my password. I'm in the penitentiary.

Do that. I wrote to jails and to Pedro trajectories to different people, because in my day they had a thing going around called secret indictment. You come walking out of a penitentiary and they're standing there smiling at you with them gold badges.

Come here,

we're going to take you to another place just like this. Those are called secret indictments. You get out of a penitentiary, you go into a penitentiary and you don't even know it's waiting for you. That's what's bad. But you know what? A local can handle a heat baby,

but it didn't happen.

But I wrote these letters to these various authorities out here and

I had help from the minister in that institution how to write that letter, explained to him what was happening, that I needed to have the information before I came out of the penitentiary. And you see, I never knew when I was going to get out of the penitentiary.

I never had any idea that I was going to get out. I think I had two to 20 to run. I didn't know when I was going to get out,

but I ain't care. I found some way to learn to sleep at night.

On the 4th day of June 19161, I walked out of the penitentiary.

I walked out to a world I didn't know anything about

armed with one thing,

and it's held me in good stead for the last 57 years of my life.

I was armed with this magnificent program of recovery in my life. There at least the first nine steps of our program recovery, which I was told by Pop a long time ago.

If you work the first nine steps of our program recover to the best of your ability, you will become surrendered.

There ain't no way in the world to keep much of an ego after that's your squeeze so hard.

But I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a job. I didn't have a driver's license

and they have a Social Security card. I never worked a day in my life. I didn't know what it was. All I know was that I sober and I was going to get to go to an A a meeting, which had been my dream for a period of time.

And my idea was I would do anything to ask me to do

if they let me come and sit in their meeting.

Yeah, I don't expect nothing out of Alcoholics. Not I'm not here to get anything.

I got everything I needed out of that book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and being able to be of service to God and people about me warms my life so fully that it's hard for a guy as dense and as dumb and as far back out of life reality that you get great joy it is to remember of Alcoholics Anonymous and watch people recover here.

It's almost the thing that's sadness of watch people not recover here

who be the same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, year in, year out, 30 days, 60 day, new again, new again, new again, new again. And the problem with this?

It ever changes,

you see, no matter how long you've been sober. I'm sober a long time.

I still have to grow on spiritual lines,

so that means I have to have some concept about spiritual life. It ain't about me,

it's about being of service to God and the people about me.

And my God has been responsible for everything here. Where the God I discovered here,

but the service was a fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at my sponsor taught me about

my sponsor. A guy by the name of Normality just told me he was going to be my sponsor.

I didn't ask him.

I didn't need one.

I work steps.

I bought the sickest statement you could make around here.

You got to know what's going on here

and that's why people stumbled over the traditions. They have no concept what goes on here.

I get a kick out of mad at people in my Home group and we read the long form they go

have no way of knowing they wouldn't be sitting in a meeting sober. Bad men for those traditions.

My sponsor taught me about that,

but he told me about other things too.

He taught me how to be member of a fellowship that I didn't know anything about, and he didn't do it politely.

He didn't. He just showed me by his example and he wouldn't let me do things that I thought were proper. I'd be standing ready to go to a meeting I've been begging him to take me to and dressed in all kind of attire,

tank tops and shorts and flip flops, my hair slicked back. I was still slick

where I was under. Where was Louie Compte?

Here I am. He drove up to a corner, look at me and drove off.

I didn't think that was funny.

You don't know how close that was coming for you never to hear one of normality shapes.

And when I asked him why he said would you go to church dress like that Johnny? And I said no, I wouldn't.

He says, you're not going to my church. Just that was it. He always explained himself to me. He says if a newcomer wants anything at all from you, Johnny, whatsoever, they want to see some change. If it's nothing more to put in a pair of long pants and wearing a collared shirt,

it's before earring for fashionable.

Every guy asked me the other day, Eggs Change had that and I said, no, you can't change the spiritual program for God's sake. He said the fellowship. I told that's a different story. He said what they're about to fellowship and I said, well, when I got here, the men had tattoos and the women wore your ring.

Put down your pipe and smoke it.

I couldn't drive a car because I didn't have a drivers license. My drivers license had been suspended for the rest of my natural life, which is a long time when you're 30 years old.

And so he should.

What am I going to do? He said. Well, just get to the meeting. They'll take you home.

I'd ride my little girl's bicycle a couple times after I got my little girl back

rotor to my own neighborhood

being being a little bell on it.

Your homies were sitting over there in your fancy cars and their fancy suits.

Hey, where? Oh, that ain't doing well. Any baby?

Yeah,

it's doing real well.

Good. Most of my homies are back in the penitentiary, and most have been there for the rest of their national live.

I would have been if I was alive long enough. If I hadn't. If you hadn't come to me,

See, that's why I come to you, because you came to me. I didn't invite you. If I had known you were coming, I went and played baseball

because I don't know what it is.

And I shook her own off to find out what it was.

My sponsor was a wonderful man.

He showed me how to live in his fellowship,

showed me through his actions were sponsorship was he showed me the sponsorship is not yelling at somebody or talking down to somebody or making them do something to change their way of life.

He just showed me what to do and he said

you'd either do it or not do it.

You not do it and suffer the consequences or you can do it, enjoy the consequences. That's entirely up to you.

You're leaving. It's just getting good, man.

I'm talking. I'm going to talk to you about my full pardon,

but you knew this is a wonderful way of life. I'll tell you that.

If it wasn't something wonderful,

why do you think I've been here all these years?

See, I've been sober in and out of institutions. I've never so been sober out of one, but I was sober in them all the time.

If I hadn't found something better here, some better way to live, some would join us in it. Don't you think I'd have left a long time ago?

That meant for that little man come in and tell me how showing me how to live or find a a set of directions on how to live here sober. I can still be wrapped up some her diet a long time ago on the streets,

but I got a wonderful life. I've raised two glorious daughters. I've got 4 grandsons,

5 great grandchildren. One of them is a great grandson

and Eric shrunk metal. None of them have ever seen me drink,

thank God, and it has nothing to do with me.

That's because I love Alcoholics Anonymous

and my main ambition of life is to carry the message to the alcoholic who's still suffers.

Yeah, my Home group and most Have you been here?

We have a greeting line that has about 200 people in it. It's almost like running a gauntlet

and I go through it every week and there was a little gal there one night by name of Mary,

and I got to tell you a Mary's story because Mary, I walked by saying Mary a little. What about that tall about that little girl that read the traditions or whatever it was Rose here, whatever her name, that's how. See, when you're egotistical, you can't remember her name. She just pointed out

and Mary had on jewelry

everywhere. She had about seven different colors of hair and a trick suit.

Now it's not. A trick suit. Today is fashionable.

It was a trick suit in my day, you know, that's where they got them short to come up here and dresses to come down here. And

yeah, you question you ever saw one song with my day, which is how much

just reporting facts to

I'm not trying, I'm not trying to you who's got trick suits on be worried about it, but you should be.

And I said, hi, my name is Johnny, which is Mary. Well, I married my mother's name, so I thought about that.

Mary told me she had one day. So I come back there next week and there stood married.

Hi Mary. Got a week now, huh? She said eight days.

You learn. So no matter how long you've been sober, you learned. Never short a newcomer a minute,

and as time went by, I watched Mary change in that line.

First thing I noticed about her? Her hair was all one color.

I ain't saying nothing. I didn't say no. You're sorry. Can you say hey Mary, You guys say we'll be two people. I just smiled. Mary said. Hi Mary.

You know, all of a sudden I went by this. She had no more jewelry in her face. I don't know where it went. She didn't have it. And it goes on and on. One day she was dressed properly with her dress and her blouse and a year ago by and I sit in my seat with tears in my eyes

as Mary got up on her stage and took a birthday cake from her sponsor for one year,

glowing and shinier hair down in a pretty dress on.

And I'm overwhelmed again by that's to pay off in Alcoholics. And I don't see the payoff here. Ain't ain't at all just being sober if that's all you're getting out of Alcoholics and I'm if you're wasting your time at ours too. The payoff is to watch this miraculous thing happen to people here. But you see, it has had to happen to you

or you will never recognize it

as it happens. And most of the people and Alcoholics Anonymous today will never recognize it because it'll never happen to them. They'll stumble and they'll fall and you will not change. They're still going about their busy little words, snapping their fingers and dragging their legs and hoping by some strange hook that God will open up the floodgates and that I'm happy with Joyous and free. It won't happen

without the actions of a spiritual way of life and the willingness to give it away for free and for fun

just because it was given to you.

I pray God that everybody in this room never has to take another drink again.

I pray God, I wish I could give you everything I found in Alcoholics and honest the joy that's in my heart for being able to come down and see my friends and I've known for years and years and years.

The joy that gave me to see these people still sober and still busy in Alcoholics Anonymous makes me understand that there's more here than lighting a candle and a damn birthday cake and calling that successful. So thank you very much for allowing me to come and share my nonsense with you one more time. And let me tell you this, I love you and you're not a damn thing you can do about it.