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Source: DICOBE-00333 – Clancy I – CORNHUSKER RNDP I – 1978-08-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00333-clancy-i-cornhusker-rndp-i-1978-08-15.mp3 Duration: 00:55:37
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One non-alcoholic, several alcoholics, did all the AA literature. And he started to work with narcotics addicts. I said to him, Jesus, you never had any narcotics. He says, I know, but they're going to write me in all letters. And he says, I could make myself a million dollars if I run this right. I told him he was crazy, but God, he changed his name to Synanon next year and made himself a million dollars, that old fellow.
I don't judge him. I wish, if I'd have stuck with him, I'd have done something today. And I went downtown and I hung, I was going to write a book on Skid Row. Because on Skid Row, I realized I'd been down there several days and I didn't have any pencil. And I got thrown out of the midnight mission for brawling. And I got thrown out of the all-night theater, a couple all-night theaters. And I got down to very bad shape, 109 pounds maybe, no front teeth.
And one morning, I got out of the all-night theater I was living in. I walked over to the blood bank on East 4th Street to sell that pint of blood. And they told me, they took a drop of blood in my ear and said, my blood was no longer of a proper nature to be sold on Skid Row. I know it didn't have enough iron left. And when you can't sell your blood on Skid Row, it gives you paws. And I, and I'll tell you something else.
When you're cold and wet, there was a light rain falling that morning. I think it was the end of October. And there's, when you're cold and wet on Skid Row, there's no place to go. So you just walk. And I walked and I walked. I walked 71 blocks out to that stinking AA club on Wilshire and Fairfax. An old fool named Tom Jones said, you can't come in here. You're banned. I said, jeez, I had a little slip.
I argued with him. I said, go in the back room, shut off the light, don't anybody know you're in there and don't tell anybody I let you in. I went back there and lay on the sofa and vomited on it in the dark and on myself and thought, I've got to get to Seattle. I'm going to die here. I don't even know what, by that time I wish I were an alcoholic. I wish I were a narcotic addict. I wish I were anything I could stop doing and feel good.
But when your curse is not, you can't find a place where you fit, there's nothing to do. You just do the best you can and look, hope for the next town, hope for the next job, hope for something. And I lay there and thought, I'm going to get me a sponsor. And if I have to, I'll get some money from him and I'll get to Seattle and I'll send it back to him. Or if he won't give me the money, I'll jack roll up in the parking lot, I'll hit him over the head with it.
I'm dying and there's nothing to do. I can't, there's nothing I can do. And I had no idea that morning, or the next morning, or the next day, or the next week, or the next month, I had no idea for a long time that that would be my sobriety date. So I didn't intend for it to be my sobriety date. But in a couple months it'll be 20 years. And I haven't had a drink of alcohol in my body since then. I have been able to evade the blandishments of those well-meaning, well-intentioned, but potentially lethal members of the medical profession who still believe that alcoholism is caused by a valium deficiency.
It's funny, in this day and age, with all we know, there are still little pockets of resistance. But my doctor wants me to take these. I'll tell you a little secret. After I was sober, I was working writing in medical corporations for a number of years. I know many doctors in AA and I know many doctors out of AA. Now I'm going to tell you something. I make no judgment on this. I'm never going to report something to you.
The type of meditations given to people like you and me, Valium, Darvon, the whole school of depressants, are the medications that doctors give to keep neurotics quiet so they can take care of sick people. I'm sorry to tell you that. And the next time you see someone, but my doctor told me to take these, you think your doctor just wants you to keep your ass out of his office. I don't judge. You can take medications.
I don't judge if I'm just reporting to you what the doctors say. I don't want to take any, because I'll tell you a little secret. You cannot cure an addiction to a depressant by prescribing depressants. That's just all there is to it. And I don't care what anybody tells you.
[00:05:00]
That's a fact of life. I have not been seduced by those little groups of people who pop up in AA every once in a while and think they're the first ones to do it, saying things like, hey man, the book doesn't mention pop. And I think to myself, no, but it mentions losers like you. Why don't you just move it along? If you're new tonight, or if you're one of those new people that Dick asked about earlier today, I would suggest to you most earnestly, based on my experience, that you give a big pass to people who take medications for their emotions or who smoke marijuana cigarettes.
Not because they're bad people. Some of them are very exciting. But if they're not going to be around here three or four months from now anyway, then you'll have to make new friends then. So just make lasting friends now. It's so much easier. That's all. I just believe that. If anybody here questions why I just talked about medications, if you give me your address, I'll give you several articles from medical journals written by alcoholic doctors on why you must never prescribe depressants to alcoholics.
I'll be glad to send them to you if you don't believe me. But probably you wouldn't want to read about it. And so here I am. I haven't had a drink, a pill, or anything stronger than an aspirin since 1958. And I've come here tonight at tremendous expense to the committee, and no little inconvenience to me, to ask you newer people this important question. Why can't you recognize your illness the way we did in the old days?
Well, we're sincere in the old days. The work of those old timers like Sybil was screwing it up in the old days. And here I am today, as you can tell. I've got front teeth. Best money can buy. They say you shouldn't pick your teeth in public. That's how I got these. I don't know why I said that. Strike that off the tape, Max. Somebody wake up Max or… See, when I was my first year sober, most of my first year sober, I stayed close to AA.
I lived in an abandoned car in the AA club parking lot. And I got to a lot of meetings. I needed them donuts to keep alive. That's really the truth. Got a job as a guy. The first couple months sober, a guy in AA, a jeweler, gave me a job as a janitor, a guy named Frank White, on La Brea and Rodeo. He fired me on Christmas Eve because he felt I was dusting too long by the watches. And that was the smartest move Frank White ever made.
There was about a watch sale in Seattle two days later. Got a job later, somebody got me a job as a furniture mover and I lasted until noon because I was thinking, what's a man like me as a furniture mover? But I'm going to stick it out. And I walked through a door and said, Hey you! Without the teeth! You bumped my lamp! And he shouldn't have said that. I said, No, you're mistaken, sir. I broke your goddamn lamp.
Boom! I lost that job. Got a job as a dishwasher at the Gaty Delicatessen on Sunset. And I've always been cursed with intelligence. I was able to see that the busboys were bringing in dishes from other restaurants. And I lost that job. I had a lot of heartaches. But by the time I was a year sober I finally held a job as a waiter and busboy. And by the time I was two years sober I was working in a little advertising agency on Wilshire about three blocks from the A Club.
I was living inside them but I stayed near the club a lot. Wrapping packages. Same kind of job I'd had in high school. When I was about two and a quarter years sober I got a job in this medical corporation as a writer, beginning novice writer. By the time I was five years sober I was director of advertising and public relations for that corporation. By the time I was seven years sober I had become slick again and hip.
They brought me into Hollywood and I created Boss Radio for a station called KHD. It had become the most successful station in America. I won a lot of plaques. Baby, I…
[00:10:01]
This is Boss Angeles, baby! Then I got tired of pandering to thirteen-year-olds. When I was ten years sober I was downtown doing public relations for oil companies. When I was fifteen years sober I was marketing director for a big publishing firm in Beverly Hills. Owned a home out by the ocean. When I was five years sober the same wife and four daughters heard the crinkle of green in my pocket all the way to Dallas, Texas, post office box.
Leaped out with a hideous cry. Fled to my side. Nine months and sixteen seconds later… Now, don't stand up. There's only one room for one in the Klanseum of fun to get attention here. And so you can see that everything is all right. Everything is fine. And isn't that a nice story? It is true. That's just wonderful. You come to AAA, you put the plug in the jug, baby. And it's all very nice and it's all true except it's not really correct.
Because if that's all it took I would have been sober when I came out of there. I would have been a success like a lot of the Texans in that house. I would have been a success a lot of times. The most important thing I have said tonight or I will say before I sit down is just this. I said, my name is Clancy Imusland and I am an alcoholic. And that's important because I literally bet my life I wasn't.
And I did not believe I was an alcoholic when I got sober in AA in 1958 and I didn't believe it thereafter for a long time. I felt I could not control drinking but I was not an alcoholic for one simple reason. An alcoholic is a person whose problem is alcohol. And I do have a problem with alcohol intermittently and sometimes it's terrible. But that is not my number one problem. My number one problem is kind of a shapeless, nameless, disability of the emotion that comes and goes that I can't cope with.
I can hide it but I can't cope with it. And sometimes I drink to relieve that pressure. And then when I drink, then my drinking problem takes over. But doesn't anybody understand? That's what I used to think to myself. Maybe I'm a different kind of alcoholic like they didn't have in the early days of AA when they wrote that book. And maybe I'm a… It doesn't do me any good to sit down in a meeting and hear some guy explain how wonderful he is.
And now I no longer get angry or upset. That used to just make me crazy. I remember one time in Beverly Hills, I was there looking for a wealthy sponsor. And I heard a guy that just made me so upset I thought, if that's true, I'm screwed. Because I'll never get to that point. I went up after the meeting, pretended to stumble, and laid a hot cup of coffee down his beige suit. And I was considerably heartened to see that he regained anger, hatred, and all the emotions he'd lost.
Gave me some kind of a chance. You dumb little son of a bitch! And I want to tell anybody new here tonight, that's the way I get if you spill coffee on me so don't run the test on me. I'll have my kid beat you up. How can you be an alcoholic? And I bet there are a number of people in this room now who are wrestling with that because that is the most common problem I know. Yes, I have a drinking problem, but am I really an alcoholic the way they are?
Them. Those alcoholics. And you can go to meetings sometimes for days and it seems like weeks. And you'll never find out that you're like them because they talk about what they used to be like and how good they got it now. And you never hear much about the little bridge. How do you get from there to there? I can get there, but I can't stay there because it's a fight all the time. Fight all the time. And I want to just for a couple of minutes talk about this because
[00:15:05]
this is the most important fact in my life. I believe I would give my life for my son who I think I love more than any other male in the world, but I wouldn't give up AA for my son. I love my family. Today I have a couple of granddaughters. One is ten. Hardly still working on being a father and I've got granddaughters. Working on my image. I'm going to get a black shawl and I'm going to get a pipe. Well, honey, I'm going to be a hot one tomorrow. But I haven't got the role down quite perfectly yet. I want to introduce it at the next family reunion. Well, here's some candy, honey. You like me better than your other grandpa?
I'm not quite so blatant about it now. I still do it, but a little more slick. But how can you be an alcoholic when your problem is not really alcohol? Alcoholics are people when they get sober, it gets better. Now, what do you do when you get sober? It gets better momentarily and then slowly it gets worse. Like all of those things I always look for. You know, I'll tell you something. The name on the door, the picture in the paper, the prestige, the power. I had all of those things to a limited degree. Now, I'll tell you something funny about them. They all work. They all make everything all right, but only briefly.
And then the old feelings come back and you got the thing that was going to make it all right. So, now you got the thing that was going to make it all right and the feelings too. So, it's got to be the next thing. An AA full of people who can't understand that my case is different somehow. I wish it weren't. I wish I were like those people. If I could just find a place I fit, I would be all right. Now, what can I do when they say, stop drinking kid, it's going to be all right. And I know, as sure as I know my name, for me to stop drinking doesn't make things all right. It does for a little while. Now, I'm glad I survived long enough. I'm glad that I got so sick and goofy that some of those old timers got into my head and screwed it up. So, I thought the last thing I've got is my intellectual integrity. Thank Christ they got that. But I'll tell you, probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me was when I found out what was wrong with me. And oddly enough, the one thing I always do, but my problem really isn't alcohol. I'm glad I survived long enough in AA to discover that may be the only valid belief I had on Halloween 1958.
Alcohol is not and never was my problem. If alcohol was my problem, I would not be here tonight. I wouldn't need to be. Because I'll tell you, if your problem is alcohol, if all of your life is pretty okay, except when you drink, and then you go crazy, and then you get sober and everything is all right again, until you drink and then you go crazy, then you get sober and everything is all right again until you drink and then you go crazy.
I've got a way to solve your problem. Don't drink. Next time everything is all right, you're crazy, hang on. Just hang on. You can join Alcoholics Victorious and go to Omaha this fall. If your problem is alcohol, AA is unnecessary. You're in the wrong place. Because AA has no tools to help people whose problem is alcohol. We have no tools to deal with them. And even if we did have them, you shouldn't have to be here. You say to yourself, baby, that stuff has eaten me up. I'm going to drink it no more. That's the end of it.
But if it turns out you suffer from what I suffer from, you may die wondering what's wrong with you. It's something that people think is alcohol, because it sounds like alcohol and we talk a lot about drinking in AA, but it isn't alcohol. It's something called alcoholism. And the difference between alcohol and alcoholism is more than just a three letter suffix. It's the difference between a specific thing and an illness. If your problem is alcohol, when you sober up, no further therapy or treatment is required. You just say, hey man, that's enough. Good.
[00:20:05]
But if you're an alcoholic, if you suffer from alcoholism, when you sober up, unfortunately for you and me, it looks exactly the same to our loved ones, to ourselves, to well-intentioned people who are treating us, to kindly people who are ministering to our spiritual needs. It looks exactly the same. And no one ever seems to know that the hallmark of alcoholism is merely this. It continues on into sobriety. Only you can't see it anymore. It's underground and it manifests itself in emotions. And you are sober and theoretically well, but you're still having deep problems. And everyone who's been in through that mill, and all of us have who are AAs here tonight, know that terrible feeling. I am sober and it was nice for a little while, but here come the emotions back again. Unfortunately, being sober doesn't change facts, doesn't change ill treatment, doesn't change rejection. Alcohol is the only buffer I got against things being intolerable. And I'm supposed to be well when I haven't got it. And how the hell, and you hang on, and people pat you on the back and you try to graciously accept it, but you just know, doesn't anybody understand? Unfortunately, in sobriety, they don't have any test to give you.
They don't, there's no balloon to blow up to measure how your anxiety level is just about to choke you. And the highway patrol doesn't have any white line to walk to indicate that you're secretly terribly afraid today and you can't tell anybody. And there isn't any drop of blood that you can take out of your ear and say, this man really needs a lot of love. He needs understanding and love. Because when you're sober, baby, you're all right. Now, come on, stop whining. Remember what you've done to your family and shape up. And then, you do the best you can. I never worked so hard in AA ever as I did to stay sober when I had no way to go. That's the hardest I ever did. I remember maybe some of you have done things, I've got to the extreme of saying, I've got to hang on here. I'm going to start a new regime tomorrow. I'm going to get up an hour earlier and I'm going to have breakfast for the first time for years. And I'm going to sit and rap with the kids at the breakfast table. And I'm going to go to work a little earlier and I'm going to work today. I'm not going to be there late. And at noon, maybe I'll take a walk through the park. In the afternoon, I'll work and I'll come back and I'll come home. I won't stop for a damn martini with those guys and I'll come home and maybe I'll set up a little garden in the backyard and I'll putter around and I'll sit down and have dinner with the folks and the kids. Maybe after that I'll rock the, read the paper. Maybe the kids will come up and say, Daddy, I'm having trouble. Who was the president before Lincoln? Well, honey, I think you'll find that it was Buchanan. And I just thought, I'm going to be alright. And when time comes, time to get up in the morning an hour earlier. Oh, Christ. And breakfast is a tragedy. And that pig I'm working for is there when I get there. And all day long.
Sometimes I can do it for a day or two, but once it's just, ah, boom, boom, boom. Because that doesn't help sensitive people. I've got to find a place I fit. And alcoholism is a strange illness. It measures self-emotions and the hallmark of the disease of alcoholism, it turns out, thank God I survived to learn it. The hallmark of alcoholism and the deadly aspect of alcoholism is not that you can't get sober. You hear a lot of people in AA sometimes kind of put things together and say, I was drunk for the next ten years. But I'll tell you a little medical fact. You can't stay intoxicated 14 straight days and nights in a laboratory. The body can't stand it. You get sober again and again and again and again. That's what makes drinking so rotten. Again, if you could stay drunk, you'd have a very small
[00:25:02]
membership in AA, I think. You'd have a different speaker tonight. I might still be down at the Chinese Palace. But the hallmark of alcoholism for the alcoholic is something he is never, I have never known anyone aware of it, and I've worked with a lot of people. The deadly aspect of alcoholism is sobriety eventually becomes worse than drinking. And then one day, as our book says, there seems to be no defense against the first drink. And by that time, the patient usually is convinced he is not really an alcoholic anyway because I'm sober now! And this time I'll watch it.
Or this time I'll just get away. And sobriety is an untenable place. And all the lecturers and all the nice old ladies come up to you in their white tennis shoes giving you little shots. Oh, son, I just hate to see you fight God at these meetings. So all you keep doing is saying, well, ma'am, you'll never see me fight God again. Now you'll just get on the audio for a few weeks. And all these well-meaning people, you turn your life over to God, son.
Try that at $105 in hot checks some morning. Fear God? You know what God does? He turns them over to Sheriff Peter Pitches. Well, if you're feeling guilty about your past, why don't you write your inventory? God, I'd give a million dollars to avoid the memories I have, and some plumber wants me to renew them for him. Do you still like me? Yes, I do. Wait till you hear this, baby. Is it really going to help me to have him know that I used to be married to a sheep outside of Butte, Montana? I hesitate to add that's not a part of my inventory. That's a figure of speech. I never went near Butte, Montana.
Make amends for those dirty pukes that have been throwing it into me for 20 years. Here's $5 for calling the police on me that time. Sorry. Meditate, that's a great thing for a suicidal. Just sit in your closet for three hours and sift things out. Have your pistol right along with you. What's the reward? Love and happiness? No. Read the 12th text. You're allowed to drive across town in the middle of the night and let somebody puke on your shoes. Oh, I'm so glad what I found. Now can you puke on the other one? Make it look like a pattern.
AA is a nice place if your problem is alcohol, but it ain't worth nothing if you're sensitive. And that's why the last amazing fact I have to tell you is that that's what's amazing in my life. The only therapy I've had since October 31, 1958 is Alcoholics Anonymous. And it got so bad in my life, I had to try this crap. And after I tried it, it worked. And now I go up to newcomers and say, why can't you try it the way we did? It's the same. I remember a week after I took my inventory, I was still living out of a banned car, but I was in a discussion meeting saying to people, I don't know how you expect to maintain sobriety unless you're willing to write an inventory the way we've done.
I completely forget the reason I took my inventory because I was going to commit suicide and I couldn't find the ocean and my sponsor took advantage of my pain. Things look different on the well side. But you stop and think about it. I want to say one more thing. You stop and think about it. You think, if alcohol is not the problem, what is it with alcohol? What is this sensitivity allergy? You and I think it is, I believe. I have been active, I think, almost every day that I've been sober. I've made an AA contact every day that I've been sober, wherever I've been.
[00:30:00]
work with new alcoholics, I don't have an unlisted phone number so they can't find me when they're troubled, I do the best I can, and the, in my experience, I've always looked for what is it that alcohol does to alcoholics that it doesn't do to other people, what is it that alcoholics have in common, and to the best of my knowledge, I have never found anything, I guess I've listened to 175 fifth steps, I've never found one common thing in people I've talked to, all over the country, in other countries, I cannot find the thread that alcohol does, get everybody drunk, terribly drunk, I've seen people die from alcoholism who never got as drunk as some normie drinkers get on New Year's Eve, it isn't the amount of drunk you get, what is it? In fact, New Year's Eve, that's when it's really bad on the streets, because that's when all the social drinkers are out, it's just unsafe for alcoholics to be out, they don't know, anybody in this room, I'd rather be a New Year's Eve drinker than a social drinker, because they're not used to the things we're used to, they don't have any idea when they're going to throw up, they just talk, anybody here has got at least 10 seconds, you know the symptom, pardon me just a second, anybody got a cert? They don't know when they're going to fall down, they don't know enough to drive with one eye, they don't know when they're going to bump into cars, you develop some skills, what is it that, what does alcohol do to everybody, I've been looking for that and I've never found it, maybe you found it but I don't know what it is, what is the sensitivity, the allergy that alcohol does to an alcoholic, it does to other people, it took me a while to at least to my understanding, understand that, and I came to understand that, it makes the chapter 3 that was read tonight, and all of the books fall into place, and all of the illness aspects of it fall into place, the one thing that we have in common is not what alcohol does to us at all, it's something much more complex, what we have in common is what alcohol does for us, alcohol does something special for 7% of the drinkers that it doesn't do for most people, it has a facility to resolve conflict and alter relationships to environment, now that sounds a little tedious, but I've got to believe that's what happens and that explains people who otherwise are all like you, you say to them, you want another drink, they say, oh, no more for me, I'm starting to feel it, and you just want to grab them and say, that's when it gets good you dumbbell, if you don't feel it, why do you drink? I've met a lot of AA's who say, I wish I was a social drinker, I don't know any alcoholic who could ever be happy being a social drinker, because that means alcohol wouldn't do it for you anymore, you know, once when I was about 2 years old, we went to an advertising agency and I was wrapping packages, one of our accounts was Kamchatka Vodka, and these writers were sitting there, and I was better than they were I felt, but they didn't have any front teeth, I was wrapping packages, they said, why don't you put them on the billboard, I got all these boards up, and I came by with my packages, and I said, I've got an idea, why don't you just put them on the billboard, Kamchatka Vodka, goes, boom, better than all vodkas ever were, and they all, you know, I thought they'd get a little applause, and what's that supposed to mean? It suddenly struck me, my sponsor had lucked out and was right again, it doesn't go, boom, to them, it goes, blah, blah, blah, would you like to have gone through your whole life with all your troubles, have your back to the wall, hounds are tearing at your throat, take a drink, oh God, now they go, blah, blah, no more for me, I'm getting dizzy, 93% of drinkers in the world will never know what everybody here takes for granted, when your back to the wall, and the hounds of emotions are ripping at your throat, you can't stand it, you take a drink, it doesn't go, blah,
[00:35:03]
it goes, boom, nothing may have changed, but by God, it looks like it's changed, that's all I'm looking for, remember one time in El Paso, we were sitting about ten minutes to ten one morning waiting for household finance to call at ten o'clock, to see if they're going to repo our furniture, and I was in my rum days at that time, and I said to my wife, Charlotte, I said, do you want a little drink, and she gave me that same non-alcoholic baloney that every alcoholic listens to, my God, what's wrong with you, you ruined our lives, now they want me to be like you, never try to help an alimony on first law, and I took her two drinks, and by the time the phone rang, I was, I'd been as afraid as she was, by the time the phone rang, I was the only one prepared to pick up the phone, you keep up this shit, I ain't going to borrow from you anymore, nothing had changed, but it looked like it changed, and that's all I asked, just give me a fighting chance, alcohol does something special for you and me, again to say it medically, it alters my perception of reality without physically changing either me or reality, and the only, it's the best thing that can ever happen, the only thing wrong with it, if it does that for you, little by little, you lose your ability to deal with reality unchanged, and by the time alcohol gets to be a problem, reality, sustained reality has become untenable because your tools are either never developed or have gone dull, and people like you and me, the very blessing we have, I can alter the world, I know of nobody under any therapy who in ten minutes can change from a suicidal, depressed, broken man, and ten minutes later be in a bar, smiling and saying such things as, you with anyone granny, it alters, the reason I mention that is because it's something to remember, that is what alcoholism is, it's people for whom sobriety has become untenable no matter under what emotional guise, and whose answer to change sobriety has now become untenable, and that particular disease of is called alcoholism, and once you've got it, you've got better than a 95% chance that you're going to die from it, and you sometimes see an AA, well at least 50% of the people here who never drink again, not true, I think it would probably be safe to say that a majority of the people in this room will die from alcoholism, not because AA doesn't work, and not despite what Bill Wilson said, but when they quote Bill Wilson they always leave out one little qualifying line, remember he said 50% of the people who come through those doors will never drink again, but he didn't say that, he said 50% of the people who come through those doors and make an earnest attempt to practice our program will never drink again, we always leave out that little qualifying phrase, most people will reject AA before they understand what they have to do, we think of AA like a church where you give up doing things, it's just the opposite, AA is a place where you start doing things, where you begin to alter your actions, it's kind of an upside down therapy, every therapy I've ever heard of in the world always says we're going to straighten out your thinking, and when your thinking straightens out, your actions will straighten out, right? Right. AA is the only place in the world who says we can't wait for your thinking to straighten out, that may take some longer than you think, we operate under a different principle, we are going to straighten
[00:40:08]
out your actions and eventually your thinking will straighten out, that's why you can't depend on your motives around here, there's nothing in that book that says motives, when your motives are right, you will take these things, when your motives are rotten, that's the time you better, I don't, I used to, I remember one time with my sponsor, I said Bob, in my judgment, I can't bear anymore self-analysis, he said in your judgment, who cares about your judgment, he said if I wanted your judgment, I'd go out in an abandoned car and stick my head in the window, and ask you for it, but I'm living in a $200,000 house of pacific policy, what will happen to your judgment, your judgment stinks, and I got so upset that day, I cried and wrote my inventory, I showed him, but that's what AA is about, that's why people like me, and perhaps like some of you, it's nice to have a sponsor, and try to get a sponsor again, whom you cannot manipulate, because if you can manipulate your sponsor, then you don't have any sponsor, and go to meetings, and sit there and help other people if you can after a while, people sometimes say to me, why do I have to be such a contentious speaker, and to me, it seems to me the absolute perfect role of an Alcoholics Anonymous member speaking, is to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable, somewhere in between, sometimes you get the wrong impression, you think you're here to get wonderful and spiritual, sometimes you hear people say, I no longer go to meetings, God and I walk alone, and it's very touching, except eventually God seems to say, why don't you have a beer, then they come back, people become sometimes so wonderful here, sometimes after just a few months of writing, you just want to touch the hem of their garment, be cured of your narcissism, but that's not the point of AA, spirituality is an integral part of AA, but it's part of something towards something, spirituality is not where you get, being wonderful, I don't know when you get it there, I thought it was the 19th birthday, it turns out to be the 20th birthday, sometime soon I hope, but the point of Alcoholics Anonymous is to enable people like you and me to live in sustained reality with tools that seem non-applicable, given to us by people ill-equipped to teach anything, to enable us little by little to make reality bearable, and then tenable, and given a flash of comfort, what was that? And eventually find that sobriety eventually becomes sustained, tenable, and better than drinking. Now, anybody can stay sober for a while, that's why you can't afford to quit when you're feeling good for 20 minutes or 20 days, you've got to hang in there, there's a mark between the winners and the losers are the people who are still active, I have nothing to hear from anybody who is no longer active in AA, because as far as I'm concerned, they're moving out, they're floating out, and they don't even know it. Sometimes you find old-timers get drunk, and the saddest thing about them is, I've seen it happen in Los Angeles, an old-timer gets drunk, and most of the people in the group don't know who they are, they've never seen them. Then you see other old-timers come out of the woodwork and come back to meetings for a while until the memory dies off. They're putting them down, but I know that I hear people say they don't have another drunk left in them. I think I've got another drunk left in me, because I'm in great shape. God, I pitched a double-header last Sunday and won a trophy for our group of the best AA team on the West Coast.
Our group is the best AA team on the West Coast. They weren't going to let me pitch, but it's my ball.
[00:45:03]
It's just slow pitch, too, and the ball goes away really, you know, much. I have integrity, sincerity, and a fast, young outfield. I've been married 30 years. Over 30 years now, to the same woman, people say, how can you stay married with all the vicissitudes of your life? Another grit and pluck and married Catholic who could never get divorced. That's the kind of a funny thing, though. I was raised to despise, not to distrust Catholics.
Not some of my best friends. My job is to get the family off to mass in the morning. Raise hell. Get ready. You're supposed to be ready for mass. It's a funny thing. I used to hate Catholics. Now some of my best friends are priests. Of course, I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one. But the point is, I just want to say, you know, in sitting down, as I sit down, the best analogy I've ever been able to find of what AA does and how it works for people like me, maybe not for you, but I think it does, is like this.
I think that all of us are born, and somewhere emotionally or psychologically or psychiatrically inside of us, there's some kind of a scale. And for people like us, no matter how you get there, I've never seen anybody come to AA who, by the time they wrote their inventory, hadn't started to understand that they were suffused with lack of self-worth and guilt for whatever the reason, no matter how deeply buried.
But it's as though the scale is out of balance. And on this side, there's a black, inscrutable, heavy square that just, and it gets worse and worse. Everything you try, you try to chip at it. You use therapies to chip at it, and you read books to chip at it, and you take all sorts of things to chip at it. But sooner or later, it comes back. And one thing drinking has done for me in my life, with drinking, I can make the scale disappear temporarily.
But then it comes back, and the scale's a little bit more. And it gets so bad, and people say, it's going to be all right. And you can't even explain what's wrong. You're just out of balance. You don't know what the hell's wrong. And you go to AA, and there's no help. They say things like, well, just ignore that side of the scale. We're going to work on the other side of the scale. There's nothing wrong with the other side of the scale.
But they gave you a little bucket full of sand called actions, and a little spoon. They say, now, you just work on that for a while. But that won't help. And one day, that scale starts to move. And one day, you keep taking those actions, and you're in balance. I guess that's the day the desire to drink goes away, maybe. And you've got it! And I'm happy! I'm grateful! But through some coarse, celestial gist, there seems to be a tiny hole on the bottom of this one.
And every time you get that baby, right where you want it, oh, it's wonderful, I can stop scooping, oh. God damn it! I think it's safe to say that you and I, to be in balance, must scoop as long as you go to be alive. And if you see people, old-timers get drunk, and God knows they do, it's because they were so well in balance so long, they didn't have to scoop anymore. I have never known an old-timer to get drunk who was still active in AA at the local meetings.
There's the lesson there. I'm glad to be here tonight. I'm very grateful that my son is with me on this trip. Tomorrow we're going to go visit Grandpa in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Now they cry when I leave town, which is a switch. Then visit Grandma, and then we're going to take Grandpa and we're going to go down to the middle of Wisconsin where the last surviving steam engine is still running and we're going to ride on that baby.
Then we're going to go to the circus museum in Baraboo. Then Daddy is going to cry. Should be a nice day, and then I'll be back to work. And incidentally, in work, it just shows you,
[00:50:00]
you've got to be a little careful. Because as I told you, I became rather successful. I live out by the ocean, nice big backyard, everything nice. But AA has a tendency sometimes to warp your perspective more than you planned it to. About five years ago, I was feeling good and feeling that my writing had never been better. I had just gotten a bonus, but it didn't satisfy me anymore for some dumb reason.
I worked to break my butt to get there, and now it wasn't enough. And I found myself in a strange position. I resigned from a marketing job in Beverly Hills, and for the last five years, I have been the director of the midnight mission on Skid Row that threw me out 20 years ago. And people say to me, how could you give up a job to work on Skid Row like that? And I tell them, I'm still looking for that son of a bitch.
He'll be in here one day, and I'll get him. Or else I tell them they guaranteed me such a significant decrease in salary, I couldn't turn it down. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not an alcoholic counselor. I'm not qualified to be an alcoholic counselor. I have always worked and not been able to take the course. I… No. You misunderstand me. I'm not judging. I'm merely reporting. Because I'm not controversial anymore.
But what I do is run a mission on Skid Row. Some of the guys are alcoholics, and some aren't. And we feed 150,000 meals in that building every year. And we bed down 50,000 men. And they're all broken men. And we find dead men in our alley almost every day. And I go out on the curb, and the top of a guy who's fallen down, his head is smashed open. I try to hold him up and wipe away the blood until the paramedics get there.
And it sounds all very dramatic and wonderful. But I'll tell you something. When I get on the freeway to go home out to the ocean at night, I feel about 1,000% better than I did when I left a big office and jumped into a new car and went home. Now, don't misunderstand me. I cannot… You're new. If you stay sober and work this program, we cannot guarantee you your own mission. But we can guarantee you that you'll feel good when you go home at night from wherever you left.
And you may feel good in the morning. I'm glad to be here tonight. I'm honored to be a part of the first Cornhusker Roundup. I am pleased to be with such distinguished speakers as I've heard. Tomorrow morning, interesting thing. Franklin W. is known in his state, Mississippi, among the inner circle as the Pope. People go to visit him and be big cardinals here and there. And I think of all them poor Italians looking for the wrong man.
He asked me to say… I wouldn't say it, but he asked me to say, I am not he, but he is coming soon. I… I'm just proud to warm you up for him tomorrow morning. But the most important thing of all, I'm glad that I have a family, and I'm glad I have a home. I'm glad I support my parents in their old age to help them overcome this heartache they had for me when I was young. I'm glad that I can walk down any street in America.
But most of all, I'm glad I found out where I fit. I found out where I fit. You know, I thought I'd fit. I thought, where am I going to fit? And I'll tell you something, I never, ever found out where I fit, either before AA or after. And I have looked everywhere. Where am I going to fit? I never found the place I fit. And I'll tell you this, I'm glad I didn't. Because it would have been such a weird place, I wouldn't have liked it.
The lesson that you've got to remember is this, you will never find the place you fit. It won't be in Wahoo, Nebraska. It won't be in Salina, Kansas. It won't be in Jefferson, Missouri. And it won't be in Anaheim, California. And it won't be Dallas or any place else. What you learn here is that you take strange foreign actions and allow, in moments of doubt, your direction to come from people who you're not quite sure what they're up to.
And little by little, you'll discover that you're never going to find the place you fit. That instead, you are going to change until you fit wherever you are. You're going to fit here and little by little, tenuously out there with them.
[00:55:04]
And one day, you're just like them. And one day, you begin to patronize them. Just going to watch TV again tonight, huh? I'm going to have fun. And that's what it's about. AA is a place to become comfortable in sobriety. And if you're not making it, I suggest you ought to try it a little harder. Because that's what it's about. Thank you. Thank you.