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Source: Clancy R – Denver 8-1964 – Reel 0805-145B – Date Unknown.mp3 File: clancy-r-denver-8-1964-reel-0805-145b-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:17:33
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I'm going to say something to the members of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. At the rear of the room we have a display which was put up by the members of our State AA Service Committee, of which Ted L. is the chairman. And would the rest of the members of the State AA Service Committee please rise? I know you're all here. Now these people are the ones who are charged by our Fellowship to share the AA experience with the world.
They represent us through our delegate, Bill See, if you'll stand once more, Bill, who attends our General Service Conference each year. Now at this point in the program, we had lined up a man who is a wonderful speaker, who is very well liked in the Fellowship. He has very few enemies in the area, and he was going to give a pitch in order to get you to give us some of your money. Now it seems that he who watches over us has seen fit to deprive us of the privilege of having him with us.
He's in bed at home with influenza, and so I took it upon myself to just say what I have just completed and urge you to help us because our AA Service Committee in this state now has a total balance of $106. The only income of this committee are the proceeds, profit if any, of this conference and of the Assembly, which is held on opposite years. And so I'm going to ask the members of the Finance Committee now to pass the kitty among you, and visitors and newcomers, do not donate, but we won't turn your money back to you if you do.
That I'm sure most of you came here to hear our friend from California, Clancy Eyre. My name is Clancy, and I'm an alcoholic, and I'm happy to thank you. I'm not the only clown in the house now. That's what I call hospitality. I am certainly happy to be here safe and sane and sober this evening because obviously I have not always been, and it's very possible I may not be again someday. That is the burden I carry as an alcoholic.
But I am tonight, and I feel just grand. I feel partially grand because I don't know when I've been treated such, as I mentioned this morning, such a red carpet treatment. I didn't know why until I read the program and discovered I was a nationally known AA personality. I had to go home in the middle of the meeting this afternoon just to study myself in the mirror for an hour. I can't believe a sweet thing like you ever was really an alcoholic.
It's all the more strange to me. I was sitting, as often is the case in conferences or meetings out of town, you hear a variety of people talk, and I've heard some very fine talks today. Things that I enjoyed hearing, needed to hear. I was thinking this morning of the charming lady who got up, I guess it was this afternoon, we had to talk from her trip from Texas to San Diego to a wild trip all in all,
[00:05:03]
with a drunken husband whom she was leaving except he came along. But it brings back a few little memories to me too. I helped bring culture to that state, wherever that lady is, I want you to know that. Anyone here from Texas? I founded the newspaper in the Texas nut house. No applause, just send me Lone Star flags. I like to think that I helped bring culture there. Incidentally, that Texas has got a bad nut house.
It really is escape proof. It's worse than Alcatraz, it's worse than, I've been in several federal penitentiaries speaking about AA, and it's worse than anything I've ever seen for security. I was in there on a bum rap on a lifetime commitment, and I was there about two weeks, and I got thinking, what's a sharp guy doing here with these rednecks, you know, watching me? And I felt bad anyway, because as far as I was concerned at that time, everybody in Texas was pretty far out.
And when you're identified as being far out in Texas, baby, you're way out. This hurt my pride. And so after about two weeks, I escaped from the Texas nut house in Big Spring. I affected an escape, and it wasn't a left right escape, but I realized it's impossible to escape from this hospital in West Texas in Big Spring. You can get out. If you're shifty on your feet, you can outrun them big nine foot, sixty month, or sixty dollars a month guards, attendants, male nurses they're called, but they can't spell.
But it's really embarrassing after you get out, because that's where it's escape proof. Because they can see you running for three days in any direction. And you really feel rather embarrassed out there after a while, just you and your white bathrobe out amongst the chaparral. And it's just a matter of time until those field glasses pick you up. There goes that little Yankee son of a bitch now. I went back and founded a newspaper.
Seriously, though, I don't like to walk too long down memory lanes. It makes me nervous. I don't like to walk too long down memory lanes. It makes me nervous. I don't like to walk too long down memory lanes. It makes me nervous. I don't like to walk too long down memory lanes. It makes me nervous, you know, as it does most all of us. I want to remember it, but not quite so intensely as though I were still living through it.
This alcoholism is kind of a funny gold. And if there's anybody in this audience tonight who is cynical, or not quite sure they're an alcoholic, whether they have a red badge on or not, and feel that this kind of a bunch of stuff, a bunch of goofs are putting out, I don't blame you. Because that's the way I felt in Alcoholics Anonymous for a good many years. As I mentioned again this morning, leave me my mic, I won't swear anymore.
Listen, I hope you're telling me that you can't hear, there's some guy in the back going… But, uh, I, early in my career in Alcoholics Anonymous, I discovered, for my own satisfaction, that I was not really the type of alcoholic that Alcoholics Anonymous was talking about. And as the years went by, and I traveled around to various parts of the country, living in various parts of the country, I was a mover, as many are.
I kept feeling the bluebird of happiness was just beyond that hill, baby, and let's move.
[00:10:00]
My four daughters, I have four daughters, all of them born in different parts of the country. Last year, I didn't realize how this has affected me until the youngest one, I'd forgotten, had lived only one place. I was in Texas, and I had flown back to Texas to see my family, my four daughters. Last year, I got off the plane, the first time I'd seen them in five years, my kids. And the oldest one says, Hi, Daddy! Hi, Daddy! Hi, Daddy! Hiya, Daddy!
But they've all been born all over and lived all over and become very cosmopolitan in their short lives. And I could not conceive what AA could do for me. Before I came, I grew up in northern Wisconsin, and when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I really felt very bad. I'd been to jail twice in this little town, my hometown where my dad taught and my mother taught, and we were a respectable family. And I'd been in jail twice, and I internally desecrated our good name, and I felt so bad, I turned into AA as a possible solution.
After coming to AA, I went to jail 32 more times. Now, let's hear somebody say it, that just shows you how the program works. Seven years after I'd come around to AA, I was committed to spend the rest of my life in Texas in insane asylum as a hopeless suicidal. I used to, when I first got sober, used to have a nut house, alcoholic. But the more I think about it, I wasn't there because I was an alcoholic.
Nothing on my commitment paper said I had a drinking problem, baby. It said, This guy is a nut, and he belongs in a nut house. Because I kept trying to kill myself. And it wouldn't have been so bad if I'd have done it drunk, but this is the way I felt when I was sober. That's why I continued to drink, because it relieved the pain, seriously. And I realized that stopping drinking was not the answer.
At the end of nine years in and out of AA, the last six years perhaps just showing that I was trying at times to save my family or something, I'd gone through the entire spectrum. I drove to my first AA meeting in my Buick. And nine years later, I put in my time eventually as about two years as a high-bottomed drunk, and about five years as a medium-bottomed drunk, and then two years as a low-bottomed drunk.
And in 1958, in October, September, I was living on Skid Row in Los Angeles with my wife and family gone. Everything gone. No underwear, nothing, just me and them. I had a shirt and pants. And I got off that Skid Row for one purpose, to go to the AA club called the 6300 Club in Fairfax and Wiltshire to hustle the 880s for enough money to get out of town. Because that's how I hustled the money to get out of Phoenix, as I mentioned this morning, with some old lady in the Arid Club over in North, when I got out of the Phoenix jail.
And I got into Phoenix by hustling the AAs in El Paso. And when I came to this club, I knew, when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1958, I had no desire to stay sober because I knew it was worse than drinking. I discovered this a long time ago. Maybe you've felt this. I'm speaking as I've felt. There's one thing in my life that was worse than protracted periods of drunkenness, and that was protracted periods of sobriety.
It was much harder to exist in sobriety than in drinking. So the job had to be to find how to drink. But when I came to this club in Los Angeles, I had only two things that I still knew. One, I was not really an alcoholic the way AA described the alcoholics. And secondly, if I were an alcoholic, it was overshadowed by such grave emotional problems that AA would not be enough for my case. You know, I sometimes get kind of a laugh when I hear fellows with a little sobriety pick it up and say, If you're a newcomer, you must have at your first meeting honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness, or else you're wasting your time.
I never met anybody new that had that feeling. that had that feeling. I never met anybody at their first meeting who thought they were
[00:15:04]
really an alcoholic. I never met anybody who came through who thought it would do a worth of piddling in their life. Because, medically speaking, the psychological profile of the alcoholic is such that he does not assume an honest, willing, and open-minded error by walking off that street into a room. He comes in here saying, what are these goons trying to get me for? Bunches of goody-goody. And that's why over the years, I never, I may never have heard this phrase, but I thought I did a thousand times. The classic AA talk to me was always some well-dressed, well-heeled clown standing up in front of the people and saying, friends, I drank fifty years, and one day I walked through that door, and the desire to drink left me immediately. I've never had a bad thought since. I now have thirty-five million dollars, seven cars, and now I trudge the road of happy destiny, and all I've got to tell you, newcomer, is keep the plug in the jug. That may describe you, baby, but that don't describe me. And I couldn't say for certain that I actually ever heard that talk, but that's the feeling I got. That's what alcoholics were. Real alcoholics. They stopped drinking, because that's what AA was for. Sobriety. It wasn't until I was around AA this time, a short time, that something brought forth to me a most amazing piece of evidence. And it's so logical that I'm sure everyone in this room knows it, but I didn't know it after nine years. I could recite large parts of this book. I could debate AA philosophy.
I knew the history. I'd met Bill Wilson at an international conference. But I had never heard this. Alcoholics Anonymous is not a place to go and find a way to stop drinking. That is not the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because if that were the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous, there would be no need for Alcoholics Anonymous. Sometimes we equate alcoholism with people who have drank without drawing a sober breath for twenty years. I tell you, this is not possible. For the last two and a half years, I've been writing for medical journals for my living. Not on alcoholism, but on cardiac malfunctioning and electrosurgery techniques. But I've also done some investigation in the field of alcoholism just for my own sake, so I could see what them guys are up to. And I discover for one thing, no human body can stay intoxicated for as long as six months. It's way beyond the limit. You die. Everybody gets sober. Over and over and over and over. Everybody, theoretically speaking, is a periodic. The period may be very short, but sooner or later you run out of steam. I know five better ways to stop drinking from Alcoholics Anonymous.
If your only problem is drinking, I know five better ways. One of the best ways I know is Dr. Seymour's Alcoholism Hospital on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Every day, huddled figures come in out of sleek cars in the driveway with $600 in their hand. And ten days later they walk out the front door, tall and clean-cut and clear-eyed. Thank you, doctor, you've done it again. You stop drinking in a lot of places. You stop drinking in hospitals. You stop drinking with sincerity in your own home when things blow up once in a while. You stop drinking. I run a meeting in Los Angeles. I don't like to blow my own horn, because as I've been mentioning to Ray, I can out-humble anybody I ever met.
But I run a meeting in Los Angeles. I conduct an AA meeting. And I haven't had a slipper in my group for three years. Not a slipper, not anybody not showing up, not anybody ever
[00:20:01]
with a drink on their breath, not anybody except people there at the meeting every week. And for three years I've made this my labor to help these people and bring them along. I hold this success for three things, I think. One, I have a lot of heart. Secondly, I've got a lot of serenity. Thirdly, they're all on the 15th floor of the county jail. They have found a way to stop drinking. They don't need to work any steps, baby. Just go back to your cell block. There are all sorts of ways to stop drinking, but this is not the purpose of AA, because everyone in this room stopped drinking any number of times before they came to AA. And yet I have the same misconception over and over again. I've stopped drinking, why don't I feel better? I've stopped drinking, why don't things go right? I've stopped drinking, why don't they shape up? What is it? What do I have to do? I guess I'm not really an alcoholic, or if I am, it's because my case is different. I was reading in the paper, you know, about a month ago, as I'm sure you were, about the big peace march on Washington. Not a peace march, but rights march for the NAACP. And I thought, if we could conduct an AA march on Washington and demand our rights, if I wish I could design the flag we would carry. Because the AA flag of every AA member I've ever met, drunk or sober, has the same motto on it.
It isn't, I need a drink, or more booze, but it's a much more touching phrase. But you don't understand. That's the story of my life, baby. The point of AA is not to stop drinking, but after stopping drinking, as we will stop drinking, with or without AA, over and over again for the rest of our lives, how, after stopping drinking, can we change a pattern of conditioned reflex that forbids us to live comfortably enough so that we must always eventually return to drinking in order to stand. You know, this physical sensitivity or allergy to alcohol is much debated. Sometimes you hear your doctor say, it's all in your head, don't listen to those laymen.
Some doctors are members of AA, it all depends who you're listening to. But, as I say, I've worked in this field of medicine, I've always enjoyed some of the medical theories. Let me tell you this to begin with. The American Medical Association recognizes alcoholism as a disease of the body, and it doesn't make any difference what your family doctor thinks, or your neighborhood therapist thinks, or your sister-in-law thinks. They have a board of specialists on alcoholism, just in the same way they have a board of specialists on cancer, and on cardiac malfunctions, and the other major killing, unsolvable diseases. But the only project in this whole tedious thing of the physical sensitivity or allergy that I would like are the primary medical theories. Nobody knows where it's coming from. Why is it there? Nobody knows. Exactly the same stage as cancer is.
Anybody in the world can say what causes cancer, or why it grows, or why the body does not fight back against cancer. Cancer is the only disease the body doesn't fight back against. The body helps it grow and kill itself. And alcoholism, nobody knows why. One school of thought thinks that it's a form of hyperinsulinism, which is a reverse diabetes caused by an improper metabolization of blood sugars. My favorite one always has been, though this is very possible, that it's caused by a malfunctioning of the endocrine, or ductless glands, little glands that are out, that doesn't process alcohol quite the same anymore. But I wish I'd known that ten years ago. Come home?
Where have you been till three in the morning? It's dirty, drunken, swine, and three little kids in there hungry again. I have a malfunctioning of my endocrine or ductless glands. Except, of course, by the time you have to say it, you can't pronounce the words. But very seriously
[00:25:12]
speaking, in the last three weeks in the field of science, they've made what may be one of the great breakthroughs in the field of discovering the physical cause of alcoholism. Some scientists have induced a craving for alcohol in laboratory rats by inserting amounts of alcohol directly into their spinal fluid. Just by putting alcohol into the spinal fluid, they have induced laboratory rats, which before would not touch alcohol, to now prefer it to the other beverages offered. This opens a vast new door. Of course, it remains to need much more research, but it could be a rupture, a rupture of the blood areas, causing an improper amount of alcohol into the spinal fluid. The fact is this. When people like us start to drink, we drink more. That's what it boils down to. And it really wouldn't make any difference to me one way or another, because this is not my problem. My problem is that other half, that horn, because this is where I live or die. I live or die on whether or not, not that I can stand here and impress you or not impress you tonight, or that I can be rich or that I can be poor, but can I go out and live on that street out there for 24 hours without it ever getting so bad again that I need a drink to tide me through? That feeling doesn't come. I think what killed me, has killed me, or has almost killed me many times, again, has kept me from sobriety, is not the feeling of, I need a drink or give me booze, but it's after you've gotten sober and you've tried to go through these things, you go through the actions, and people don't understand, and it's tough, and you're not getting anywhere, and you can't get a job, and so one night you're lying in your bed at three in the morning looking off in the darkness, or you're walking down the street, or somebody's just insulted you or rejected you again, and it's a three-word phrase, I think, that creeps up. It just doesn't say take a drink, it says, what's the use? What's the use? God, I've tried, I've tried, it won't get better. What's the use? And this is the thing that I must have an answer for, and try to forestall, or I am guaranteed to die. Now medical science tells me that you and I cannot live out there without eventually beginning to drink again. No matter how sincere you are, no matter how much you want to, no matter how many tears, the psychological profile of the alcoholic, his obsession with the mind, is such that it renders me unable eventually to live in total reality, and I need an escape. And for an alcoholic, that is alcohol. That is why last year the state of California stopped taking all alcoholic commitments to their state hospitals, and they gave us their reason, there's no sense helping these people, no matter how sincere they are when they're here, we eventually have to send them back out to reality and they all get drunk again. No sense. Let's try to help them. That's what's wrong with Dr. Seymour's health department. They come out on sunsets and they're doing great, but most of them don't make Vermont Avenue, and that's three blocks away. You know, it isn't to stop. After I stop, how do I cope? How do I live out there? And this is a big problem that faces me, and I think you as an alcoholic, and we have to begin with the fact that we come here unprepared to find a way out. I have so many times taken babies of mine to meetings, and seen so many new people at meetings, and as they are everywhere in the world, you know, just sit them down and, oh, point six is going to take an hour and a half. I don't need this. Let's go. I've heard your message. Thank you. One drink won't hurt me forever. And then a year later, they're up blowing out their birthday cake. And then one day I realized I needed sobriety on an all-time basis, and I called up Alcoholic.
And I called up Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think to myself, maybe that's the way it looks looking back, maybe, but that isn't the way it looked that night.
[00:30:06]
It's rather strange that anyone stays here. This is the big problem. Our profile is such that we can't stay. And yet we do. You can't deny the fact that it's been estimated that a half a million people are living out on that street. People who have no right, emotionally, psychologically, to be able to withstand the pressures of day-to-day living. It's a big problem. Where do you come across this hurdle? How do you do it?
Because we've all seen in our groups, we know, these three people, if they were all A.A.'s here, if they were all new tonight, there isn't anyone in this room, after talking to them each for two hours, that could say, this one will make it, this one won't, this one will. Nobody knows who's going to make it. The most unlikely guys stay around. The guys who you pin all your hopes on, who seem to be responding so well, disappear.
What happens? Why? Where's that dichotomy? Nobody knows. Once upon a time, several years ago, when I was getting sober, a guy told me something that saved my life. Even though it was so stupid at the time, I couldn't hardly stand it. He said, if you can work the first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, you'll never have to drink again. And I thought, the three dumbest steps they've given me yet. In case you're unfamiliar with them, the first step says, admitted I'm an alcoholic, become powerless over alcohol, or something, you know.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Second, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore me to sanity. Third, made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. Pretty sticky going. One is, the first one is stupid, the second one is spooky, and the third one doesn't work. And my life depends on such nonsense as this.
Running, I'm an alcoholic! I'm an alcoholic! I don't need that. My problem is to conceal it, baby. You know. And he said, instead of worrying about what you think, or what you found out, or how it seems in your judgment, why don't you work the three steps as they are written in the book called Alcoholics Anonymous? And I tried it against my will, little by little, and they have worked, and they have enabled me to live in the world.
And I think one of them can be taken, two of them can be taken without getting out of a chair, and the third one you can start thinking about. I think. The first step doesn't say you run down the street and say you're an alcoholic. That isn't what's written there. And it doesn't say that you have to admit that you've screwed up everything in your whole life. It says, one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol.
It doesn't say that you were powerless over alcohol for twenty years, or that you've never got sober, or that you didn't get sober for a lot of times. It's just you admit that sometimes you were having problems with booze that must be getting a little worse because you had to go to some place like AA. You know, the fact that you're here gives it away, kind of, you know. In the field of medicine, there has never been a case recorded yet of a virgin going through pregnancy tests.
It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. After the basis for suspicion has been established, they may turn up. That old joke says, I have some very wonderful news for you, Mrs. Brown. Oh, I'm Mrs. Brown. I have some very bad news for you. But be that as it may, we admit we've had some trouble with booze, and that's all we've got to admit. I've had some trouble with booze. I can't seem to drink the way I want to drink.
And that's all that stuff. And that path says, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. It was becoming more powerful than my will. And then it doesn't say, I always thought it said we were admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and therefore our lives had become unmanageable. It doesn't say that. There's a dash in the first step. In the English language, a dash means end of thought, beginning of new thought.
It means that our lives had become unmanageable.
[00:35:03]
Not when we were drunk exclusively. Not when we were everywhere, baby. It was bad, sober, drunk, up, down, over, around, plain third base, shot footing, wherever you happen to be. My life is unmanageable. I can't shake them up. I have to admit, I don't have to admit even in that step that I'm responsible for it. All I have to admit is that they're out of step with me again. If I want it, it's their fault.
You don't understand, she keeps going back to her husband. He's got me all obsessed with living alone every three months. It doesn't make any difference whose fault it is. In the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous, we admit that we are powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable. There's no blame to be laid. I can lay it wherever I want. It's your fault, because you smoke a pipe.
It's your fault. It's somebody's fault. All I have to admit is, they and I don't see it the same way after a while. That's all there is to the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is written in our book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and there's description. I admit I've got some problems with booze, and no wonder, because people are screwing me up. Story of my life. When you get to that second step, that isn't a hard step.
Anybody can admit that much if you don't try to take the implications of what the ninth step means in connection with it, or the fifth step. The first step. The second step gets a little weirder, because it says, Came to believe that a power greater than myself, oh, not that again, could restore me to sanity. I'm not crazy, I'm drunk. I just open my veins now and then to get rid of that tired blood.
I heard something kind of funny. I was thinking about this the day we were talking. Some guys from the Salt Lake City Tribune were interviewing me, you know. I'm a nationally known aviator. They wanted to take my picture for the paper. I said, no, we can't do that. I don't believe in that. Our traditions are specifically against it. I'll let you take the back of my head. He said, okay. He said, never mind.
How do you like that for humility? You'll be sorry when I'm rich and famous. I'll come back to this town and I'll get his job. A power greater than myself, the second step says. And that frightens me, because I know about God. I knew about God in northern Wisconsin in the Norwegian Lutheran Church when I was two years old. And I knew about God at that time, kind of after that. I knew where God was.
He kind of circled slowly around the spire, giving it to sinners and Catholics indiscriminately. Sorry, Father, didn't see you. I came out of sight in old Wisconsin. Maybe you'll get it. But it's kind of an embarrassment when you grow up to realize that your whole life is predicated on ten big ones on the wall. And by the time you're old enough to read them, you've broken most of them. So you wait until you're twelve and break the rest and cut out.
And start to disbelieve in God. If God exists, I'm washed out. So, baby, I better be intellectual. There ain't no God. And try to find reasons. You're not there, do you hear me? You're not there. I'm going to read some books and show you. Get some armor and glasses and be an intellectual. Go to college. But I understand so clearly what Hitler meant when he said, You give me their minds until they're twelve, baby, and they'll be Nazis when they're ninety-six.
That almost killed me. That reconciliation with a frightening God. When they say, Return to God, I can't take it. And yet, I'm reading the second step of Alcoholics Anonymous. It doesn't say anything at all about returning to God.
[00:40:00]
It says, I come to believe that a power greater than myself exists first. And that power greater than myself, as it was so beautifully described to me by a fine man, cannot be denied as a primary step is the power found in the group called Alcoholics Anonymous. That somewhere in here there must be a power greater than myself because they're performing results greater than I can perform. I always get kind of a laugh out of people who say, Before I came to AA, I didn't recognize any power greater than myself.
That's ridiculous. That's the trouble with being a drunk. Everything is a power greater than yourself. If you don't think there's a power greater than yourself, baby, go out and do a job in the middle of the street out here. There'll be a power greater than yourself in a big black and white car. Come right up. And away you go. I don't believe in you. Who cares? Even when you're right, you're wrong.
That's the trouble with being drunk. Everybody's got it. What do you know? You're drunk. The world is full of powers greater than myself. All of them have odds with me. My problem is to come to believe, is there a power that's benevolent, that's greater than myself? The power called Alcoholics Anonymous, if you will, or maybe one group in Alcoholics Anonymous, or what I'm so new and afraid and secretly feeling inadequate and not good enough, maybe two guys.
Anything to which I can say is a power greater than myself. And what do I have to ask this power greater than myself to do? You can't deny there's powers greater than yourself in the world, and you can't hardly deny that there may be that power in here because it's full of people, maybe some of them who have felt like you and are not feeling as bad as you might feel. Come to believe that this power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.
And that's ridiculous. I don't know what sanity is. I don't want to talk about it. If I have a choice, I'd rather be called an alcoholic than insane, because I really know I'm not an alcoholic, but I secretly fear that I am. As that old joke goes, I heard a guy say one night, he says, I don't know what's wrong with me. I sometimes feel like when I was coming off the assembly line and got to the final point, somebody said, hey, God, and I got away without that last nut being tightened.
I don't think babies are made that way anymore. But I know what he means. It's kind of a feeling that, it's kind of a feeling when you wake up at four in the morning and gaze off in the darkness and wonder what's wrong with me, and there isn't anybody in the world you can talk to about it. Who are you going to go and say, I think I'm a nut? Or have this sense of impending doom, which almost destroys me.
It comes when things are going good, and everybody says, you should be feeling wonderful now. Things are going great. And you can't stand it, because you're wondering what's going to happen when you screw it up. I'd rather have them come to evict me from my house than have everything all right, because then I've only got one direction to watch, and when everything's all right, I've got to watch all over.
It's almost that bad. And you can't talk to anybody about that, really. You ever try to come down at breakfast some morning and say, well Blanche, I've got a sense of impending doom this morning. Have you really? Now you've got some great nuts flakes in your hair, too. What a silly game. What do they mean, restore me to sanity? I'm secretly afraid I don't know what sanity is. At least not the way other people describe it.
Maybe sanity is best described, again, medically, psychiatrically. At least they describe insanity very well. Insanity is found in almost any standard medical textbook. This explanation. The basic root of psychosis, of inorganic insanity, the ever-present root, in other words, insanity not caused by brain damage, that is caused by psychotic behavior or patterns or thought processes, the basic root of this…
The basic root of this is always an unnatural obsession with self.
[00:45:00]
It begins there. It grows, unnatural obsession with self, flowers into paranoia, dementia, schizophrenia, any one of these categories. And yet this book is written completely without this knowledge, years away, and on a different part of the country says, it seems the basic problem of the alcoholic is self-centeredness, obsession with self. Why does this make it difficult for us? Because as we, as our self-obsession comes in, it's, we get out of perspective with reality, and frictions against the way we read.
It's the old saying, I thought I was such a wonderful thing when I stepped back and counted myself, and I always came out in one. But when you're a practicing alcoholic, you get two or three when you make that count, you know. Sit there in that fire mirror. I was thinking today, if I were drunk, if anybody was here this morning and saw this comedian get up here with a red nose and the old dress, three drinks and I'd have her out of my car.
Hey! I would flash my bald head at her and she'd flash her homemade stockings and beat me. Think, aren't we both lucky? Sanity, or insanity I should say, is predicated on one fact, the inability to live in reality, the pressures of reality, the emotional conflicts of reality. And if you're unable to live there, you eventually get to what science describes as a point of emotional conflict in which remedial action must be taken.
Or in other words, for us, you get to a point where you need a drink. People who are not alcoholics that follow this psychotic pattern have something else, they kind of crash through the sonic barrier and onto insanity. But booze to me has saved my life, without me knowing it. It has resolved conflicts that my emotional psychological profile could not resolve. Insanity is not measured by what I did when I was drunk.
I would like to think so, I used to think so. Boy, talk about insane. I got on that freeway and I drove ten miles on the wrong lane, just missed a traffic cop, crossed over and drove back. Crazy! Drunker than hell! Uh-uh, that isn't insanity. That's drunkenness. Drunkenness lowers the inhibitions. You do funny things when you're drunk. My old grandmother in Eau Claire, Wisconsin has never touched a drop in her life.
I'm sure if I could get her on that freeway with just the right amount of muscatel, I'd get her to make that same run tomorrow morning, you know. I'd be back. Let's do it again, sonny. The drunks that act the worst are the amateurs, not the steady drunks. The one night of the year I wouldn't go out of my house is New Year's Eve, that's when all them amateurs are out there. Ha! Guys that drink a lot, you develop certain defense patterns.
You get to automatically feel where you're going to lean as you start to fall. You know, this is the mark of the good drunk. It's them amateurs that make it tough, that drive stupidly, that, you know. They're not alcoholics, they're not insane. I'm much saner drunk than they are. That isn't my insanity, my insanity is much more clinical. That after returning to reality, I cannot stand it, and sooner or later I must return to some point of departure in booze.
In other words, to restore me to sanity does not mean to make me in some abstract wellness, but rather something infinitely more important. Can this power in here, or any power, grant me the ability to go out there and live day after day after day, and not have to start drinking? Because the moment I start drinking, that means that my insanity is here and gone, baby. When I begin to drink, that is the crisis of my insanity.
My insanity is an inability to live in reality. All I have to believe in the second step, can I be sincere enough to try to believe that maybe somewhere in here, there's a power that will enable a person who feels unique,
[00:50:00]
who feels secretly inadequate sometimes, who feels rejected sometimes, who feels afraid when he doesn't want to show he's afraid, so he puts on a mask and feels afraid and feels left out. How in the world can a sensitive person like me go out there and live with all those secure people who are all getting along so well? But I have to come to believe it. That's the second step of it. I don't have to do anything, just come to believe that fact.
Maybe up ahead somewhere there's a way I can do this. Third step, that's absolutely enough to drive you normal. Wow. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as I understand it. Did you ever make that test at 6.30 some morning? Okay, God, take it. Better stick to work at 7.30, better get moving. Or as one of my babies said so humorously and cynically once, he said, I came to this program with $105 in pop checks.
You told me to turn it over to my higher power. I did. He turned it over to Sheriff Peter Fitches. I did 90 days in the L.A. County Jail. Don't give me no more advice. No. You can't help but get the feeling sometimes that when you're new that you're going like this. You're just waiting. Comes back down. Long time ago I decided in my judgment that this could not possibly work for me. My case, I was too, I'd been around too much to believe in such things as this.
So I gave up on that stuff. When I was about 6, funny thing, I was talking to a gentleman from your state commission who said he'd heard a tape of mine that I gave when I was just a few months sober, so quite a few years ago now, where I was a janitor. At that time I was one of the top janitors in my block. My windows were the cleanest in the shopping center. I didn't like to talk, but I guess on that tape I said something to the effect that I was happier being a janitor than I had been being an executive.
And it seemed strange to me, but that's the way it was. But my first few months sober were pretty spotty. When I was 6 months sober I was sleeping in the back seat of an abandoned car back at the A.A. Club 6300 in my parking lot. My rise to success was not meteor-like. I was eaten about every third day by this time. I lost my job, lost where I was living. Everything was going to hell. One day I was going down to the Pacific Ocean to commit suicide.
This was about 6 months. The reason I was going to the ocean, I just saw on the A.A. Club television the night before an old rerun of A Star is Born. Remember that, where Frederick March is a drunk and he walks off into the ocean and everybody's sorry? I just got this picture in my mind and I head out for Santa Monica. Santa was about 6 blocks, turned out to be about 15 miles. I couldn't make it. So I called up a guy for the first time in my life when I felt bad.
I called him home, I called him up, I feel good. This is the first time I ever felt so bad that I couldn't do anything. I called up this guy that I'd met at Beverly Hills Day when I was out there hustling the guy one night for a couple bucks. I said, Bob, I've been around this program almost 10 years. I have tried everything. I've been sober now, I've been sober 6 months. The longest I've ever been sober.
I've gone to a meeting every night. I've tried to do everything I can. In my judgment, I can't go anymore. And he really gave me something, a bang. He said, you punk. And it wasn't a party line he was talking to, number one. He said, you punk, haven't you got it through your head yet? You've used your judgment all those years, and your judgment keeps winding you up flat on your can on the street. So, let's start with that predicate.
When you feel bad, your judgment doesn't work very well. Okay. Now, in your judgment, you can't go any farther. That may be true, and your judgment may tell you this. But here's a phrase you're going to have to remember because your life depends on it. When things get tough, and your judgment can't find a way to go, you must supplement your judgment. You must turn off your judgment. You must start doing things by rote.
Stuff that corny, stupid stuff in that book that you think is so corny and stupid.
[00:55:03]
Because part of the insanity is the farther in my obsession goes, the less good my judgment becomes. The very time I need AA the worst is the very time I pull away from it the most. It's a strange phenomenon of the alcoholic, or that obsessive characteristic. And I was so mad, I said, what do you think I should do now, Bob? He says, why don't you go back to the club and write your fourth step? You've never done it in nine and a half years.
Why don't you try it? And I said, you jerk, I haven't eaten for three days. I can't get a job. I'm sleeping in that damn car. Everything is going to hell, and I'm going to sit down and write an inventory. I'm a dirty S.O.B. Ha, that's better. But he cursed me terribly, and I finally did it. And it was ridiculous. Writing an inventory, a sincere moral inventory, isn't going to help you when you're hungry, or when you're tired, or when you're cross.
I survived the day somehow. Thank God, if I would have used my judgment on that step, I would have been dead now, very likely. Because in my judgment, I didn't need it. My two years of psychoanalysis, I went through all this years ago. And the next time I got screwed up, I didn't. He gave me the same rotten nonsense. Take your fifth step with someone. No! Do it! He's very democratic. His finger goes one way.
And so I did it. I didn't take my fifth step because I was a good A.A., or because I was sincere, or honest, and open-minded, or willing. I took it because I was so screwed up, I didn't know what to do, and he told me to do it. But I bragged about it the day afterwards, so it was all my idea. Why don't you people take your fifth step the way I did? Almost every major step I've taken in Alcoholics Anonymous has been under the duress of pain.
And it comes to me that this is the growth factor in A.A. If you're hurting, baby, it's time to go and to do something a little bit more. The whole point of Alcoholics Anonymous, these ridiculous steps that, in my judgment, can't help me, are the very therapies that relieve an obsession of the mind that must eventually force me to drink. When I got up here Thursday night, and Press and Howard were so good about the airport, we sat up there and had a cup of coffee, and I said, I feel so good, I just came from my A.A. birthday party, and all 17 of my babies had come over from all points of the compass and were sitting here telling me how wonderful I was, and I was modest.
Oh, fellas, they didn't really at all. They all give me hell all the time. They point out my shortcomings, and I call them ingrates. But I was saying, you know, these guys think I'm trying to be humble, because on my birthday every year I call them to my house and buy them a dinner and give them a present. I don't take any presents then. But really, I owe my life to these men. Because every time I worked with one of these clowns, I thought I was doing him a favor, and I was saving my life with another therapy of getting that sick mind going out.
That sick mind going out. I must relieve my obsession with self. I can't turn over my judgment all the time, but when I supplement my judgment, it's a matter of, when I'm hurting, I know that I am too far within, and I better turn it off no matter what is right and return to the same simple, silly nonsense it may seem to me to be when I'm hurting that bad that relieves the pressure on people like you and me.
I was talking at a conference in San Francisco about a year and a half ago on this subject, and I said, if you want to stay sober, supplement your judgment. That's what my sponsor told me, and that's what I'm telling you. And after the meeting, some old-timer came up to me and said, that's a good phrase, kid, that, supplement your judgment. I said, thank you, glad to help you. He said, I guess that's why they put it in the third step.
Ah, you're probably on pills. That is the third step of alcoholics allowance. Made a decision to turn my will and my judgment. Decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him, and certainly the God as I understand Him in the third step must be the same God as I understood Him in the second step, the same higher power.
[01:00:05]
If you can't find a bridge to God, try Alcoholics Anonymous as your bridge. Many people have stayed sober twenty years with that. I want to say one thing, after about two years of using AA, my higher power, and I finally got feeling secure enough so I was able to grasp tenuously the concept of God, and I guess it's been several years now since I've gone to bed without praying to God, and praying to God in the morning, and putting my confidence in God.
But still the fact remains, when I was cynical and distrustful and hurting, if they would have told me I had to believe in God, I would have died, because I couldn't have made that step. I had to find smaller steps to go. But this is the story of Alcoholics Anonymous, because without the sublimation of judgment or turning my will over, I will never take an honest fourth step, because in my judgment that won't help me. I will never take an honest fifth step, because in my judgment that won't help me. I don't want to be perfect, so I won't take those steps. In my judgment the only fun I have is when I'm imperfect.
Why should I make amends to those jerks? They've been throwing them to me for twenty years, and here's ten dollars for calling the cops on me that time. Hope I didn't put you out. I'm not doing anything for them, really. Every step in here is designed to work on that obsession with myself. I'm not doing anything for anybody except me. That's why I must never allow my judgment to interfere with the steps when I'm feeling bad.
When I'm feeling good, I can get away with murder, but when I'm feeling bad, that's the time to start running hard. I have never done anything because I'm a good man. I have never done anything that has saved my life because I'm a good fellow. I've done it because I'm a confused, mixed-up alcoholic who keeps trying to use his judgment until it gets right to the precipice. I keep thinking all the time, in the First World War, they had a lot of trouble with airplanes, because those old biplanes, there was no way to pull them out of a tailspin. Once they got in a tailspin, baby, they'd dig out those pilots ten feet out of the ground. They'd be gone.
These guys would dig them out. They'd be pulling back on the stick. The plane was going down like this, and they're pulling back, and they can't pull them out. They lost a lot of pilots and planes. In 1914 at Kelly Field in Texas, one guy got into one of these spins so high, 5,000 feet, that he couldn't wait for that long. So he wanted to make it faster, so he did the thing that would put it tighter in its spin. He pushed the stick forward and discovered for the first time, this is how you bring a biplane out of a tailspin. Completely reversed the logic. He didn't discover the aerodynamics of it for years, but that's how you bring a plane out of a tailspin, by apparently pushing it farther into the spin.
After that, a good many pilots still kept being dug out of the ground, though, because they'd get into a spin, and that sign says, in case of a tailspin, push the stick forward, but the tailspin starts. I don't give a goddamn what that sign says. This is the story of my life. I'm all for it in level flight. It's when I get in a tailspin, I fight it right down to the grass tops, baby, and only at the last minute, it seems like, do I find, oh, all right.
Then I go around the next day and brag, I did it again. I'm getting better, I'm up to about 25 feet now, I'm gracing the treetops, but you know, maybe when I'm sober 50 years, I won't have to go that far. But this is the story of my life. I've got to push that stick forward. I've got to sublimate my judgment at the very time that my judgment says, don't do it. Do what you think is right. Don't put up with this nonsense. This isn't real. This doesn't apply to your problem. Your case is different. You're not really an alcoholic. You're not really. It's their fault.
And I guess that's the whole, again, I believe the story of Alcoholics Anonymous. The great phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous that I never could understand, but I understand it now, you hear this from podiums all over the country, what you must do to maintain sobriety in one word is this, surrender. Surrender what? You're surrendering in what? Fort Zindernoff? What do I surrender? You surrender your judgment, baby, that you've got a better way when you're hurting. You turn it over. You sublimate your judgment.
[01:05:20]
All phrases meaning the same thing. Because no matter how I slice it, my way has never worked up till now. And yet the next time I'm in trouble, I know there will be a germ in my mind saying, you're sober long enough now. You can handle it, baby. Ha ha. I believe this sincerely. I have never seen anybody outside of an institution too sick to stay sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. The only sad cases are the people who have become too well to stay sober in Alcoholics Anonymous.
That is why I believe the first three steps will keep me sober for the rest of my life. With the third step, it is possible for me to do the last nine as the exigencies arise, and to remember that I'm an alcoholic and that my life is unmanageable, that there is a power greater than myself which will restore me to the only sanity that's worth having, the ability to live on that world, and that I do it by doing things that don't seem right to me when I'm hurting. You know, in a very classical sense, I suppose I have a nice success story. My four daughters whom I lost years ago in March of this year moved out to my home in California. We're all living in a nice big home in West Los Angeles.
After all these years, I'm out learning how to mow lawns again and be a good citizen. Well, I must water the lawn again tonight. God damn it. I have a very good job. I have a nice car. I've got some money. I've got the things that should bring me happiness. But I mean this as sincerely as I mean anything. I think this choice should never come. But if I should have to choose between my four daughters and alcoholics and non-alcoholics, and they're the only things in the world I love, I mean it, I would have to give up my daughters again.
Because when I had my daughters and didn't have AA, I slashed my wrists. They had to put me in an insane asylum. And if I had to give up my parents, I didn't talk to them for 12 years, and now we're a chump who visits back and forth. But if I have to choose between my parents and alcoholics and non-alcoholics, I'll have to get along without them until I die or they die. When I had my parents and didn't have alcoholics and non-alcoholics, I wandered off one day and let my son die in his crib. He had to get me out of the drunk tank to take me to the funeral. My parents wanted to help me, but they couldn't. If I had to get along without my job, I would have to do it.
I would have to do it because I had a job many times and it nearly went insane or did go insane and was destroyed and wound up on Skid Row in a bar because I didn't have AA. Alcoholics and non-alcoholics is, again, my favorite slogan. It's not a thing that meets from 8 until 10 tonight in this armory. It is not a meeting in Los Angeles from 8.30 until 10 every night. It is not a meeting in Dallas from 8 until 9.
It is a way to go out and live with them out there. And here is where I come to lick my wounds and learn a better way to do it tomorrow. This is the only thing I have. I'm so grateful to alcoholics and non-alcoholics not for finding you people, although I love you. I know more about you than I know about my own family or my best friend. Because I am you and you are me, I believe. Everything I've ever tested seems to work out that way. I'm grateful that I'm safe and sane and sober. And if the day should come again when I am not, as it happens to people after 1 year of sobriety and 5 years, 20 years, I will not be…
If I'm drunk next month, and if I am, I'm sure there will be people here who said, we saw it coming last month in Charlotte. But if I'm drunk next month, it will not be because, for the reason I always thought, it will not be because Alcoholics Anonymous was not enough for my different unique tastes. Because I know that this is more than enough when I wish to practice it. It is not because I should have taken some tranquilizing pills to get me through the rough spots. I'm not knocking tranquilizing pills for you, but for me they are very dangerous.
[01:10:05]
I was coming into New York when I came in the airport. We came right up through the fog, landed in the fog, big jet, 600 miles an hour, nobody's scared, because they got a ground control approach system there, as they have in this airport. And the pilot knows where he is. He's got a visual indicator for up and down, and when he gets off the beam one side, he hears an A. And he gets off the other side, he hears an N. So he pulls himself back in. This is the way pain seems to strike me, emotional anxiety pain. When I get off the beam, I get screwed up. No matter if I can prove it's your fault, I know that I'm screwed up. I've come to believe this when I've supplemented my judgment occasionally.
And for me to take a pill to get through these emotional problems is just like that pilot taking off his earphones and saying, God, I'm sick of that morse code. Right into the Englewood J.C. Penney story, baby, that's what he went through. I can't understand it. In my judgment, I was just sick of morse code. I need to find a way to resolve my pain, and I have to find within, because if I don't, if I deaden the fact that I'm off the beam, the time will come when it will be too late. I will reach the point where I must resolve conflict, which our book describes as no defense against the first drink, when eventually it just won't make any difference at all.
My job is to find a way to stop it before I get there, and I better do it when I'm hurting, because I'm not going to do much about it when I'm not hurting, unfortunately. If I'm drunk next month, it will not be because I should have exchanged AA for any other therapy. This is not a knock against any other therapy. Some of my best friends are psychiatrists and people working in the field of alcoholism.
But as far as I can tell, they don't seem to have the results that AA does. They have a much better way, but they don't seem to get the results. Whenever I get a newcomer who's had this problem, I take them to Beverly Hills State. He says, you don't understand, Clancy. You're a professional AA. You just like all this crap. You just came here and loved it. You don't know what it's like to feel different.
I say, oh. But I take him to Beverly Hills State, and I say, you want to talk to a psychiatrist, Dick? There's one city next to you. See what he's got to say. Are you a psychiatrist? Yes, this guy is a psychiatrist. It's $50 an hour to work on nuts like you. And he says, doctor. Sooner or later, he always comes up. Doctor, what will I do? I'm not like these people. I'm not really an alcoholic. I have grave emotional problems. What can I do?
And the good doctor's answer is always the same. Because if we laugh about it, he says, you better work those steps, you son of a bitch. That's what I got to do. If there are people who feel that AA cannot help them, and instead they will need religion instead, not in conjunction, but instead of AA, I have a baby of mine in the valley, San Fernando Valley. And I take him over there. Ready made. Sit down and talk to Father Ted. See what he's got to say about it. Father Ted says the same thing the psychiatrist says, only couched a little more euphemistically. He doesn't put it quite so bluntly.
He is an alcoholic. He has a dispensation from the Pope to celebrate Mass in unfermented grape juice for the rest of his life, as all alcoholic priests have in their churches throughout the world. Only time in history such a dispensation has ever been made. Because that booze and alcoholic personality doesn't know that you're celebrating Mass. All it knows is, there it is, baby! It's funny the way I describe it, but it isn't funny when you see people say, you don't understand, AA is not enough.
And yet, every no other way, you can find a representative from every other therapist that has been meeting with him. This is not any of the therapy at all, but this works for alcohol. Now if I'm drunk next month, it won't be for these reasons, I don't think. I'll tell you why I'll be. If I get drunk, my sponsor, the man who saved my life, is drunk, gonna die one of these days, I go up to see him once in a while, forget the truth if you can't help it.
[01:15:14]
One of the greatest men I ever knew, another man, Paul G., I guess I can say his name, Paul Guilfoyle, great man, he saved my life a number of times, died in alcoholic convulsions after 14 years in sobriety. And I'll get drunk for that same purpose as they did. Because now I am well enough to use my own judgment and I don't need this kind of childish stuff anymore. I don't need it. I go to meetings once in a while to help the newcomer, but they don't run AA the way they used to. Come on, let's come over these goops. I don't recognize the value.
I will begin to think that I am strong and completely forget the basic fact for me in alcoholics. Whatever strength I have is due to my own acknowledged weakness, the weakness that drives me to find a way to hang on to it. If I refuse to acknowledge my weakness, then I must be strong and I can't accept a way for a strong person like me. I'm happy to be here safe and sane and sober. I've enjoyed this most enthusiastic convention. I just hope that I, I wish I could bring everybody in AA and my group up here because I know that they'd love you as I have.
This is the only thing that I have found in my life that has not disillusioned me. It has taken me 14 years to make 5 years, but I'll guarantee you it won't take me 14 years to make the next 5 if I can remember to supplement my judgment and to remember the infinite mercy of a power greater than myself that has made it possible. I'm happy you asked me here. Thank you. Thank you so much.