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Source: DICOBE-00344 – Clancy I – SOBER SAILORS – 1979-09-22.mp3 File: dicobe-00344-clancy-i-sober-sailors-1979-09-22.mp3 Duration: 01:19:46
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My name is Joe Clary, and I'm from Midland, Texas, and I'm a magazine salesman. Down in my country, in the Southwestern, a few Southwestern states, I sell subscriptions to the grapevine. And I'll be here all week, and if you don't have a grapevine, I'll be very happy to take your subscription, and if you'll give me five dollars, or we'll bill you, and we'll send it in. And I'd recommend to you that you have the postman bring you a grapevine every month.
I've been doing this for 18 years, and I enjoy it a whole lot, and I think next to you, personally, the grapevine is the best 12-stepper in the business. I brought this whistle because I usually work in big halls and restrooms, but I can't do that around here. So, if you hear this whistle out around the deck someplace, I'm selling somebody a grapevine, and you can come over and get one. I've been an ex-officio member of the grapevine committee in New York for quite a number of years, and our motto back there is this, when anyone, anywhere, reaches out for a grapevine, we always want a grapevine to be there.
Thank you. Now, thank you. Hi, everybody. My name is Joe C. I'm an alcoholic from Midland Key, and I want to welcome you to the second Saturday evening meeting of the Sober Sailors Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sex, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
I have stated that I am an alcoholic. Are there any other alcoholics present? Oh, just look at us. Are there any other alcoholics present? That's great. I must tell you that my home group is a 7-10 group of Midland Key. It is a custom in Southern California, NSC, to read a portion of our book, Alcoholics Anonymous. I have asked Al W. to read Chapter 5 tonight. My name is Al. I'm an alcoholic. My home group is a while-alcoholic group in Honolulu.
Chapter 5, How It Works. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.
Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps.
At some of these we bought, we thought we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas, and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful. Without help it is too much for us. But there is one who has all power, that one is God.
May you find him now. Half measures availed us nothing, we stood at the turning point. We asked his protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. One, we admitted we were alcoholic and that our lives had become unmanageable. Two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
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Three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Five, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Six, were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Seven, humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. Eight, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
Nine, made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Ten, continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Eleven, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Many hobbits exclaimed, what an order, I can't go through it. Do not be discouraged, no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not Saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas.
A, that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. B, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. C, that God could and would if he were soft. I certainly do thank you, Al. I got a format to follow here tonight, I hope I can stay with it. These meetings, as all meetings on the sober sailors crew are being taped, if you wish to purchase one of these tapes, they will be made available to you before you leave the ship.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with that procedure. I've had a great day today. You 750 people have really given me a great attitude and been inspirational. I woke up this morning and I read the 24 hour book and I read the day at a time book. I'm not very spiritual, but I think I've said the other night, I've been taught in AA many years ago and it's been helping me a great deal that you can't be grateful and unhappy at the same time.
That's a tool of mine I use every day. When I wake up and I find I'm breathing, I'm grateful. Then when I move around a little and don't hurt too much and get up and stand on my feet, I'm grateful for that. My serenity in the morning is made up of maybe the serenity prayer, followed by God blessing a few people who I think are close to me. Also, I ask him to give me the courage to take an honest look at myself today to be friendly or outward going to all those people who I come in contact.
It's really been working for me the last 10 or 12 years. I don't think I gave you my sobriety date in Texas. We say through the grace of God and with the help of these 12 steps in this program and many, many people like you, I have not had a drink of alcohol since the 12th day of December, 1959. I'm waiting for the applause. The format of this meeting is two 10-minute speakers. A coffee break, which we hope will be just two or three minutes to get up and stretch because they're serving you coffee regularly on the stand.
I'm going to help Jim time these speakers tonight. I don't know what we'll do with the principal speaker, but I had it up in my room so I brought along my watch. I spoke a little long quite a few years ago at a little gathering down in our country, down in Texas, and they gave me a Texas-sized pocket watch, and we're going to use it tonight. Our first 10-minute speaker is Harvey A. Covina, California.
Hi, Joe. My name is Harvey Andrews, and I'm an alcoholic. And I come from the sobriety capital of the world, Covina, California. And we had one of the younger members up here tonight. I have been sober on this program, for the grace of God, you people, and my sponsor, since December the 29th, 1957.
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And in 90 more days, I'll have 22 years of sobriety here. And I love it. Really, I do. I'm so grateful sometimes I can't see because to come on this trip here and associate with all the people that's here and see people I haven't seen in so darn long around the country. You know, for years, I traveled with my company and traveled all over the United States and all over Europe. And I got in every little town in Hamlet and place you could think of where those AA meets.
You know, some places back east, they close up AA on Sundays. You wouldn't think that, but they do. For a salesman or someone who's out there working or doing the things that I did, Sunday's about the loneliest day there is for an alcoholic when he's out there somewhere. And I used to spend my Sundays trying to find some place to go to some meeting or talk to some alcoholic. Sometimes you had to call up the police department to find out where they were, you know.
And they would tell me, some of them. I love being here. I love being on this trip. I'll tell you, it's something else to be cruising and having AA meetings at the same time and hearing the people that's so near and dear to my heart from this podium. I got here and I didn't come here for sobriety, by the way. I didn't come here to get sober, but I stayed long enough to find it. I stayed long enough just to find it.
I'm sober today. Chuck talked about an hour at a time today. It's the most fabulous thing there is and I can keep it down to an hour. But I'm progressive. Christ, two years ago I thought about going to the 1980 convention in New Orleans and was planning for that. The guy said, you're only supposed to live a day at a time. You've got to have a goal somewhere. I can't wait to go there, for Christ's sake, when that opens up.
I had a hell of a time here today. Bob was talking today, Bob Dubian. He was talking about people having roles to play and all the games that people play. He said he played the game of marriage. A few other people were talking about that today. I played that game quite a few times. I'm now with my current wife, number seven. It always keeps them on their toes when you say current. I expect you to have a habit like I have.
I just love ceremonies, that's all. I heard someone talk here today about having ten children. The guy who got his six-year cake. Through the grace of God and his program with a beautiful all-in-one wife, I have eleven children today and ten grandchildren. Isn't that something for an old rummy like me to have? And really enjoy it and love it and love the kids and love what's going on and enjoy the life that I have today.
There's nothing like it in the world. There's nothing like it in the world. To be able to stand here and talk to you, to be able to be associated with you and have you love me until I can love myself. That was a hell of a thing to do. I like to stand here and say that I've been without fear and without envy and without jealousy for the last 21 years, but that would be lying. I still have a lot of fears at times.
I still feel inadequate at times. Sometimes I don't feel like I measure up to you. And sometimes I feel like apologizing for the air that I breathe alongside of you. It's almost like you're always going there and I'm still looking through a window sometimes. But some days I hope I can be on the other side of the window looking back. Thank you. Thank you, Chuck. I agree with you, you know, ten children, I believe, and eleven grandchildren is something for an old rummy like you to have, but it's not too good for such a young lover.
Our second ten-minute speaker is Anne E. from Australia. Good evening, everyone. My name is Anne Edmund Jones and I'm an alcoholic. And I've just learned that I'm a novice in marriage and a baby in sobriety. My sobriety date is February the 12th. My sobriety date is February the 24th, 1970, and it blows my mind to think that I'm here.
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My home group is the Pacific Group, and I commute back and forth from Australia. I'm the latest in commuters. It's terribly, oh, it's marvelous to be here. I drank too much, and I'm glad I drank too much, otherwise I wouldn't be in this place right now. I drank too much and too often, and I took too many funny little pills, and the combination almost caused me to lose my life. And on February the 24th, 1970, I ended up in a psychiatric center, a nut house, a nut house.
And I met a very good psychiatrist. He was very cunning and very powerful and very baffling. I found out that day he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, so he made a very good psychiatrist. He uttered the fateful words that as a psychiatrist he could do nothing for me as an alcoholic, but he knew some people who could help me to get sane. I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous to stop drinking. I don't think AA has the tools for stopping drinking.
I came to Alcoholics Anonymous to get sane, and I found out by staying in this program that through those 12 steps, the 12 traditions and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, that one day at a time I would get sane, and I have got sane as I can get, you know, in nine years, seven months. I've been enabled to do so many things, things that I couldn't do when I was drinking. I was a drunken wife and a drunken mother, and I think the loveliest thing of all that's happened in my sobriety is that my son…
I come over here. This is the third time. I've only been back in Australia six months, and I came back again. But last December the 5th, my son joined me out here, and he's 18, and he had been a member of Alateen for eight years, and he joined me out here. I knew he had a drinking problem. I knew he had a problem, and I knew drink was the symptom, and he stayed out here with me for seven weeks, and he decided after seven weeks of the Pacific group…
The strange part was he wanted to go to meetings with me, and I thought that was strange, but he enjoyed them, and he got so much identification. He was going back to show the Pacific group that he wasn't an alcoholic. And the marvelous part about it is that going back on the plane, he had a good try, and he proved he was, and he's been sober on the program. It'll be eight months on September the 26th.
So, you know, that for me is a fantastic thing, that I, you know, could do nothing for him, but you could. I came into this fellowship with a lot of love. The first meeting I went to, I hadn't had a drink for two days, naturally, in a nut house, and I had been… I'd done a cold turkey, and I didn't know what cold turkey was. I found out. I don't want to particularly do it again, and I know I don't have to.
And I was taken to my first meeting, and I left that meeting knowing that I'd need not drink again a day at a time for the rest of my life, if I so wished. But there was a condition. The serenity prayer says, God grant me. It doesn't say give me. And the conditions to my staying sober a day at a time is that I try to practice these 12 steps on a daily basis. And I fell very short of the mark very often, but I do my best. And that's all that's required of me, to do my best and to learn.
And I made the commitment when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous that no matter what, anything would be better than as I was at that time. I never realized that life could be so good. It isn't always a bed of roses. I found out that the best roses and the loveliest roses have the longest thorns. But I have gained a little emotional stability, and I think this is the name of the game, emotional stability.
To be able to say what I think I should say, to do what I think I should do, and to go where I think I should go, and always to be ready when someone needs my help, because this gift was given to me by the grace of God. I firmly believe that. Through you people. God doesn't work for me up in the cloud. He works through the members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this gift was given to me to use, not to abuse. And I try to use it to the best of my ability.
Some wonderful things have happened in the last nine years. It literally blows my mind that seven years ago, I just couldn't walk after a car accident and I was just lying flat. And you people came and visited me in hospital and gave me the courage to go through all the necessary spine surgery, and convinced me that I could walk. And your convincing me persuaded me that I could, and I'm walking today.
You know, I have been walking for quite a number of years. In Australia, we are rather retarded in AA. I can say that tonight, you know, without worrying.
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I said it at the convention, and they knew about it before I got home. So they told me I was a controversial person. But that's okay, you know. I have a controversial sponsor, so I'm okay. You know, it's okay to be controversial. I have an opinion today. I don't have to rely on standing like a statue in a mute, as I did for many, many years. During my marriage, I married a policeman. I did my best to try and kill him with his own gun, and that didn't succeed, so I really was a failure.
You know, you just don't stand in front of six-foot-two policemen with a loaded Beretta and try to shoot them. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. The gun didn't work. I failed at that. And I thought it would be a crime rationale and I would get off. I probably wouldn't have been here. I would have got off, all right. I've been in jail for the rest of my life. But really and truly, when I got sober, I never ever dreamed that a day at a time I could be free.
I could be free from the bondage of self and free from alcohol, because it dominated my whole life, the whole time for 24 years, from the first drink I had to the last one I had to this day. My life was solely dependent on sedation. I could not function without it, and I was a functioning drunk. And now I'm able to function. I'm able to be a sober mother. I'm able to live reasonably well, and I'm able to mix with normal people.
I've been able to make amends to my family, whom I've hurt very much. I've been able to make amends in lots of places and to lots of people. And I drank in Wales, where I was born. I talk funny, I'm told. It's a bit of a combination. I'm half Welsh and half Irish, and I live in Australia, and I'm in America. So if I talk funny, that's your problem. I can understand me, and I know what I'm saying. But when I was over here, see, I don't have to make any decisions whether I will stay in Alcoholics Anonymous, because I never go away.
I committed myself last January while I was here to do this trip, so I knew that if I was alive, I would be with you all. And the last ship I was on was going to Australia. And I don't remember too much about it, except I was pretty sick all the way over, mostly from alcohol and pills. And it's quite different, I can assure you, being on a ship with 750 sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.
And that's helped me, too. I had a very sweet lady, Charlotte, who suggested last January that I leave my son alone and let him sort himself out, and I took her advice. And so I'm a double winner, and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to Alateen. You know, I'm grateful to the whole of this fellowship, the three fellowships, because I've got out so much. And I've learned one thing, that I will only get out what I put in.
And so I said in the beginning when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous that I would be willing to go to any lengths. And when I came up here tonight, I felt as though I'd just swum from Australia. But it's really good to be here, and thank you all very much for sharing with me. Thank you very much, Ann. Now, some of you may not have coffee. Let's stand and stretch and just a very short coffee break, two or three minutes, so we won't take the time from our speakers.
Thank you very much. It is also a custom in Southern California, as it is at sea, to read the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we've asked Chuck Yee to do that for us tonight, please. My name is Chuck Luth, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm from Phoenix, Arizona. And I really feel privileged to be on the ship with the thousands of years of sobriety. You know, when you think of thousands of years.
My birthday is October 12, 1977. One, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. Whoops, you can turn this the wrong steps. There we go. Yeah, I'm sorry. One, our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. Two, for our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God, as he may express himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants.
They do not govern. Three, the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.
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Four, each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. Five, each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Six, an AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise. Lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. Seven, every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
Eight, Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers. Nine, AA as such ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. Ten, Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues, hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy. Twelve, our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion.
We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films. Twelve, anonymity is the spiritual foundation for our traditions, a reminding us to place principles before personalities. Thank you, Chuck. Well, we've come to the principal speaker of the evening, and I'd like to digress just a minute to say that Midland, Texas is 40 miles from Big Spring, Texas. And your speaker one time was committed by the state of Texas for his eternity, I think, as a nut to the state hospital located in Big Spring, Texas.
And one of the reasons I say this is because for a good many years now, at least 10 or 12, he's been calling me once a year, a month or so ahead of time, and wants to drop off at Midland on a Sunday night and go over to the state hospital and talk to the alcoholic patients over there early Monday morning, and he catches a plane and flies back to California. And those people at the hospital just look forward to that every year.
I mean the staff and the people working with that ward, because that's the most biggest attended meeting every year they have for alcoholics, and it's the only time they say all their patients sit there with attention. They can't get them to go to AA meetings and AA studies very often, the whole group. But his reputation just keeps going on there. Because of this, our AA community in Midland, and my wife Louise and I, we really love this family, and this is the personal part of it.
We've met Charlotte and visited with her quite often, talked on the phone, I've met his son, but I've never met his daughters, and neither has Louise. And I don't know who they are, but I understand they're here with some son-in-laws, and I wish they would make themselves known to Louise and I in the next few days. We'd love to meet them and visit a little with them about their daddy, whom we all love and respect.
And I now give you our principal speaker of the evening, Clancy I. from Venice, California. My name is Clancy Imuslund, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm from the Pacific group in West Los Angeles. My sobriety date is October 31st, 1958. I'm very glad to be here. I am pleased to, as Joe mentioned, to have four of my five children on the ship, and I guess they're all in the room tonight because they're having a test at midnight.
And my two sons-in-law, who I hope will continue their continual efforts to become my favorite by doing more and more for me. I try to play them against each other, and they're both… I can say it right in front of them, and they're so out of it, they don't know it. They're just… I… If you're quite done instructing the waiter, Barbara, we can hold the meeting up a few minutes. Maybe you'd like to have them do a tap dance.
I… I'm not making fun of you, waiter, because I know that you're doing your job. It's the bad crowd you're serving. I… I sometimes think these waiters, I suppose, and these guys and the bartenders and so on, kind of think, gee, what a dull crowd. You don't have much happening. A lot of cokes, a lot of Perrier water, and so forth. If they only… If they had the slightest conception of what would happen…
It would be… It would be… Oh… Some idiot would be up in the wheelhouse saying, take this ship to Dublin, Ireland, it's really
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bad news, but can't you imagine 750 of the scum of the world's drinkers, they could ice skate on the vomit on there, but I am very glad to be here, I guess I'm the first speaker who has been active in the promotion of this cruise, and so on behalf of the committee and all of the people who worked on it, I want to thank you all for coming, I hope you're, I hope you're, no pictures, I used to be Shirley Temple's husband, this was the chairman of this cruise, Keith C., came to my office a couple of years ago, two or three years ago with some story about a plan, he'd like to have a cruise, and I listened to his story, and I said, Keith, you're full of crap, and I said, there's no way you could do it, why waste your time and hours, and here we are, I didn't realize how dedicated Sally was, she got a new set of controls, and just, but I, I'll tell you, it really is great, you may have noticed, this is kind of off the record, I suppose I shouldn't say it, but you know, my job was to write the stuff about this cruise, and I, so we wrote, I wrote the brochure, we sent four girls down here to Panama from our group last spring to ride this ship back to Los Angeles to see if it would be a good ship for us, we like to travel first cabin at the Pacific group, we, we swindled a shipping line out of four comps and sent the girls down there, but they came back with a glowing report and how much they'd enjoyed it, they told us little things to watch out for and so on, so we wrote that, I wrote that brochure and sent it out, and we got about, I don't know, maybe 1,200 or 1,500 applications to go on this cruise, and then I was talking to some people, and we got some letters in and so on from some people, who I suppose you might call the dilettante wing of AA, who, who asked about the size of the staterooms and things like that, and we realized we might be in trouble because I wasn't even, I'll tell you, I was going to go on, as I told people, I was going to go on the cruise myself when I wrote that brochure, but when I was proofreading it, it was so well written, I signed up, I, but we realized we're going to get some people who you wouldn't necessarily see at many AA meetings anywhere, but are, seem to be always available for cruises and conventions, and so I wrote that second letter, which downplayed it, made it sound bad, as you remember, if you got one, saying that the only thing I didn't downplay was that swimming pool, and it was impossible to make that sound any worse than it is. I stood out, I stood next to the swimming pool, I got on the ship, it says, where's the swimming pool, where's the swimming pool? You're about to walk in it, and we got on several hundred cancellations off that first letter of people who realized that wouldn't be, there probably wouldn't be people waiting on them and maybe televising meetings to their stateroom, and we really were, I hate to see them cancel out, I know a lot of us sat around and really worried about that at coffee break one night, and I'm just pleased that we got, the ship is full, we still got people waiting on shore that wanted to go, and the people who are, I think that, I'm sure most of us would agree that whatever, you may have people here you like, you may see people you don't like, because that's, we're a human community, but I would say as far as the general run is concerned, we have people on the ship whom I hope we all like to be with, and that are people who are interested in Alcoholics Anonymous, and not getting on the ship to be, to have a luxury loveboat cruise, but instead to take part in another example of fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, because that's what it's about, and it's great it's on a ship, I don't, the other night they mentioned that this was the first, that was the first meeting held on a ship, and I heard a lady behind me say that no, they did that on the cruise without booze off Florida, but I don't think they had a meeting on the ship there, but they just got on a ship and went to the Bahamas, and had a meeting in the Bahamas, I understand, then came back, I don't believe they had a meeting formally on the ship, because half of the ship were drinkers, and the other half weren't, and it's kind of hard to winnow them out, you know,
[00:35:04]
you have to stand the door and smell to see if they could come in, we are lucky though, this is the only organization in the world where you can smell hypocrites going by, this isn't quite that easy anymore, it isn't, it used to be, that used to be, isn't that true anymore, now you also have to sniff, then ask them to open their eyes wide, just let me look at your pupils of your eyes there Jim, but so this kind of a novelty, a novel first, Alcoholics Anonymous cruise, Al-Anon, sober people, whatever it may be, there are people here who are neither AA nor alcohol, alcoholics or Al-Anons, there are people who are neither one on the ship, there are sober people on this ship, and we are living in relative harmony, and we're living well, and it really is remarkable, because I don't think that, because people like us, I believe, at least the people I have known, I've worked with, my thing in AA kind of has been working with people, and in my experience, I've worked with a lot of them, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, I'm certainly not a miracle worker, but I, at least I've done it a lot, I have never known an alcoholic who I knew well enough to judge him or her, who wasn't basically at the bottom, a loner, basically a loner, no matter what their facade, no matter how gregarious they seem to be, no matter how they come on, they are basically loners, they are basically people who function best alone, even while they're crying out that they are lonely, they want people, but they want people on their terms to play the roles they set for them, and if you don't want to do that, screw you, I'd rather be alone and feel sad, leave me alone, and to have this many people simulating interest in one another, you hear a lot of people say, how are you, but they never stay around to hear the answer, it's hard, and I think probably the cruise will get a little bit better now, because we're past that initial, I don't know what you'd call it, it used to, down at the Big Spring Nuthouse, it used to, the same sort of thing, it used to happen on Sunday night before shock treatments, everybody just got, and what it is, is when you get on the ship somehow, it's hard to remember, and if you're like me, it's hard to remember you're going to be here a week, so you get on Friday afternoon and you just, you keep drinking coffee and cigarettes, and run, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, and by Saturday you're ready to get off the God damn ship, and it just, it takes about two days to realize, I don't have to do all that, this morning, you know, I can relax, it's okay to sit down, people come up to me and say, why am I not comfortable, I said, did you sleep last night, no, no, no, that's a good reason not to be comfortable, because you didn't sleep last night, turkey, you know, so it's nice to be here, but it wasn't always thus for me, and it wasn't always thus for you, and sadly enough, it may not always be thus for us again, because there are people who have been on emotional patterns in Alcoholics Anonymous as successfully as anyone in this room, who are drunk now, who are dead now, I know, we were talking, Joe and I were talking, one of the nicest men I've ever known was the director of the rehabilitation program at Big Spring State Hospital, he came after I left, but he was there 20 years anyway, and he was sober 27 or 8 years, when he got drunk last spring, finally, and went down and can't stay sober, and he's such an authority in the field of alcoholism, that when he goes into a rehab place, he can't stay there, because he knows more than the people teaching him, and he has to go out and drink again, and that's a pathetic thing, to go down, and I would have bet, as much as I have to bet, that there's one guy that'll ever go down, because he really knows about it, but knowing about it doesn't seem to do any good, somehow or other, the spark has to remain present, that keeps you sober, and to me, how it manifests itself, people always keep thinking, I think, I have to get gooder, and gooder, and gooder, to stay sober, until you fall into the perfectionist drive, that has traditionally made alcoholics drunk, all their lives, because people like us have, apparently, two speeds, perfect and rotten, and left to our own devices, that's one, and you ain't gonna make perfect, so pretty soon, it gets to be rotten, a few years ago, Yale University, maybe 25 years ago now, Yale University had a big study of alcoholics, of all backgrounds, and ethnological backgrounds,
[00:40:07]
and social backgrounds, and economic backgrounds, and educational backgrounds, they found nothing, and as far as personality traits, they found nothing in common amongst these patients, except they all manifested strong perfectionist tendencies, that was the one thing, that, one of their great findings, and we are perfectionists, it's hard to remember sometimes, I think that we have to work on getting better, and gooder, as the saying goes, but you're never gonna be as good as you think you should be, because in addition to being an alcoholic, you're also cursed for being a human being, and human beings aren't perfect, they're emotional, and they're fallible, and they react to things, and if it depends on being perfect, we're gonna be in trouble, in fact, sometimes, it's kind of a sad thing, some of the people I have known in AA, some of the speakers I have known, who've got caught up in such an image, that they feel, I've been sober so long, and talked so many times, I couldn't let people know about the bad side, so it's all wonderful, and sometimes I've watched friends of mine, get trapped in this, and when bad times come, there's no one to tell, that they are not as good as they pretend to be, and they have bought their image, despite, that maybe not anybody else has, but they've bought it, and they get trapped in their image, and one day, they get drunk, or they take pills, or they come very, very close to it, and so you wonder, what you have to do, to stay sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, you can't get perfect, and you gotta keep going somehow, and as you get sober, longer and longer, you should, you should be making some significant strides, but how good can you get, and it boils down to, it seems to me, in my observations anyway, of my life, and the people I have known, that doing quote bad, or unquote bad things, or wrong things, or making mistakes, they are not the things, that get you drunk, they make you unhappy, but they don't get you drunk, what gets you drunk, is when you stop doing the things, that keep Alcoholics sober, when you stop taking the actions, that keep you sober, and one of the reasons, we correlate doing wrong, or making mistakes, with getting drunk, is because you do wrong, and people like us, have very apparently, strong consciences, and sometimes kind of sketchy self-worth, and when you get feeling bad, it is a natural inclination, no one likes to feel bad about themselves, so instinctively, you lay that ill feeling, as resentments on others around you, and blame them, one thing I never do, is quote the Bible, but there's a one line in there, that's certainly appropriate of that, and it's, you know, because sometimes when you're feeling bad, you say hello to somebody, and they don't answer you, in the right tone of voice, and you know, they know, and you think, you judgmental son of a bitch, and the line that fits that, the Bible says, the guilty flee, when no man pursueth, they don't know anything, but I feel guilty, and I read their knowledge, into their eyes, that they don't even have, it doesn't mean, whether they know, that I made a mistake, or don't know, that I made a mistake, I feel they do, which alienates me from them, and over a period of time, I stop doing things with them, and as I stop taking the actions, that alcoholics, and honest members are taking, I get to a point, where I'll drink, and it's a hard thing to remember, I have seen people, who have done just terrible things, stay sober, and people have been just almost wonderful, who can stay sober, I had a guy, who I sponsor, still sponsoring, he was a nice guy, I told him all the rest to nobody, he said one thing, I forgot to tell him, I didn't think he'd come up, I didn't tell him, not to rob banks, who would think, to tell that to a guy, you know, you think, that would go without saying, but he was three years sober, he got custody of his children, and he lost his job, and just about went crazy, and he got into a situation, three years sober, as sometimes people do, where he felt, he was sober too long, to admit how bad he felt to anybody, which is dumb, but people get into that, and one day, he just was.
He's dumb, but people get into that, and one day he just was, he was about to lose everything, and he went to his bank, and gave the girl a note, and said, give me some money, and she gave him the money, and he got out, and…
[00:45:02]
He was gonna do it one more time, to get his car fixed up, and he went out, got the note, got the money, went out, and, uh, the car he was gonna get fixed up wouldn't start, he should have somehow got that fixed on spec first, I guess, and a guy came over like this, and they called me up, and they said, are you, uh, do you know so-and-so, and I said, yes, they said, this is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we've just arrested him while robbing a bank, and I said, oh, come on, for Christ's sake, I'm about to eat dinner, what do you want?
And, you know, that's not the kind of call you get, and, uh, but he did, he robbed a bank, and he went off to Terminal Island Federal Pensioner, tenant pensioner, he went by there last night as we pulled out of the harbor, and I, I was glad to see that his training was good, he, uh, got to be secretary of the group down there, did well, sucked around, uh, did a brief stint, judge said he has the best probation record he'd ever seen, but he had to give him something for robbing banks, and he, uh, he got out, and he was headed, he was at a nervous stage at that time, I just happened to be elected treasurer of the, or secretary of the Pacific Group, and so I, I felt it would be a nice thing, so we made him treasurer, and, uh, a couple years later he was secretary, now he's a successful man, and when he gets up, tells his story, he says, and then I robbed banks, people think he's just a kid in them, but he stayed sober all that time, because he kept doing, he went to meetings every night, soon as the banks were closed, goddammit, he, uh, he went to meetings, and I'll tell you, it was touching seeing his baby sitting in the courtroom with him, saying, what the hell's going on, you know, but they were there, they weren't able to call him for a while, they could get out in the harbor and wig-wag, what do I do about this situation, a woman on the bus looked at me funny, you know, but he stayed sober, and I have seen people who were, who have never done anything to speak of wrongs, they just don't do the things that are asked of AA members, and one day they get drunk, now isn't that an irony, and that's, but that's the way it is, that's the story of Alcoholics Anonymous, that's what I believe this book means, it says, action is the magic word, not knowledge, not insight, not wisdom, it's acting out what you are learning, because it gets back to a very significant thing in my life, I was thinking tonight, some of you have heard me talk, I'm sure, see, they're going up and get to the bank now, before it closes, well, the, I wish they would have heard part of my story, I, well, some of you have heard me talk, and I, I couldn't help but think this when I got on this ship, because I haven't been on a ship, my first ship, my first ship experience was almost 37 years ago, that's a long time ago, and I was just a boy, and I was 15 years old, it was early 1943, and I cut out from northern Wisconsin, and I told my mother I was going to go to Superior, Wisconsin to visit my aunt, and I hitchhiked to San Francisco, I didn't know how far it was, had no idea, looked in the school library, and there's a map, and two orange states, two blue states, and a green state didn't seem far, I wanted to see them anyway, I'd never seen a blue state before, but I got one ride most of the way, I got to San Francisco, I didn't know what was going on, I hadn't even been to Milwaukee yet, I was a little, skinny, pimply faced, nothing kid, and I thought I was just, I'd been the slickest kid in our homeroom, so I knew I had it all together, and I, they sent me to the Coast Guard office up on Market Street, and I filed out a form to get Seaman's Papers, and they had my parents' permission, so I took that around the block, and had my parents sign it, brought it back, and they were crying for Merchant Seaman, and they sent me down to Market, or down to, down near the Embarcadero, the National Maritime Union, on Montgomery Street to the hiring hall, and they were crying for Merchant Seaman, I signed a waiver saying I could have my union dues out of my salary, and they referred me to the Embarcadero, and that night, I was on a load of torpedo warheads going to the South Pacific, and I, just, just as we got out of sight of land, it struck me, this is not it either, I just, I, I sighed a laugh to the captain, and told him I really appreciate this opportunity, but we had a big English test Monday,
[00:50:05]
and I really couldn't get back to that, so they went, I didn't want anything to interrupt my education, and he wished me well, he, he told me to luck off, and they assigned me to a folksal, I didn't know what a folksal was, maybe you don't know what a folksal is, but on a, on a ship, and not a cruise ship, a ship, a, a stateroom, what we call a stateroom is called a folksal, a sleeping room, only, and there they had a little bit bigger than these, but there were two bunks, so there were four people in each one, really kind of crowded, and I got in there, and I realized I was in bad shape, because I was small, and skinny, and afraid, and lonely, and wanted to cry, and I was stuck with three of the worst type of people that a kid like that can be stuck with, and these kind of people are called men, and they didn't think I was cute, they just, what the hell are you, and I just, oh, I, I, I tried to ease the tension, tell them some funny little jokes that sounded good in study hall, and, I don't think you're a bunking dummy up, and I lay there, and I was just dreadful, I just, it was so bad, I, I pitched and tossed, and I felt so bad, and I, and these guys got talking about what they'd been doing in San Francisco, and I had never heard talk like that, I, I, I'm a Lutheran, and Lutherans, they just multiplied by cell division as far as I know, I just, and these people were talking about, and I suddenly struck me, these people are sinners, and I, I wanted my mother, or my grandmother, or my dad, or anybody, and I, I was shocked, and I, as I often say, even at the age of 15, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, as a Lutheran, I, I had had sex, but I'd been apprehensive, and I'd been afraid, and I'd been alone, and I, I wasn't having anything to do with these kind of people.
And it was, it was pretty shocking to me, I don't mind saying, and later on that same night, a guy went to his sea bag, and got a bottle of whiskey out of his locker, out of his sea bag, and offered his friends a drink of whiskey, and they all took a drink of whiskey, and he offered me a drink of whiskey, he stuck it in my face, and, how about you, junior, you think you're man enough for a little snort, and I looked up at him, and I could just feel my face flush, and my watery blue eyes were blazing, and I, I didn't say anything, but I thought, you big dummy, I guess you've never seen a Norwegian Lutheran, have you?
You must be one of those Catholics I heard about. I don't drink, Norwegian Lutherans don't drink whiskey, even if they did, I promised both my mother and grandmother I'd never drink whiskey, and even if I hadn't promised them I would drink whiskey, I wouldn't drink whiskey, because I was raised in an era when, in the movies, good guys didn't drink, bad guys drank. Errol Flynn never took a drink, ever, in anything I ever saw, not in Sherwood Forest he didn't, I'll tell you. It's a more of a crappy crowd, like the Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, that whole bunch of crap heads.
Hard lot. Buck Jones never took a drink, I know, all with some rustler named Slade. And that guy had the effrontery to stick a bottle in my face and say, come on, you think you're man enough for a little snort, and I just looked up at him, and I said, goddamn right. Because I've always been a little weak under pressure, too. And that day I had my first drink of alcohol, and man, it was something, it burned my mouth, it burned my throat, it burned my stomach, burned my stomach, burned my throat, burned my mouth, burned his shirt the last I saw it, it was his shirt.
And I was humiliated, I was humiliated. I felt bad I was sick, but I felt worse because they laughed scornful at me. When you feel inadequate, as I spent much of my life, nothing is more infuriating than scornful laughter or scornful treatment. I just wanted to die, there was nothing I could do, big guys, little kid, and I thought later, there's only one thing I might have done, I'm glad I didn't think of it, that would have killed me, I would have been over the fantail, but I might have just said, I've had all I want to take. Lean over, buddy. Yeah. Take that.
Give him a zip in the old eye, that'll slow him down. And I felt bad, and I got in that guy's sea bag all the way across the ocean. It was on a ship like this, in a way, much smaller, but it seemed bigger to me, bigger than this ship.
[00:55:17]
And I got that guy's sea bag every day to try to hold a drink down, because I felt, the reason they rejected me was because I'd thrown up the alcohol. The reason they rejected me was because I was eminently rejectable before they offered me a drink. And I remember a day out of Pearl Harbor, I snuck in there, and I took a drink, and it burned my mouth and my throat and my stomach, and stayed there. I remember thinking, if I could just do this and not make a face, oh, I felt so bad.
And right then, something happened that everyone in this room that's an alcoholic is familiar with, only you don't even know it. And that is, something happened because alcohol does something special to my body, and I didn't know it did that. What's with these lights? I've seen green, red, and what do you want me to do? My time is up? The meeting started at 8 o'clock, Turkey. We got done at 9.30. This guy who used to be in our group until tonight. I didn't get on until 20 minutes to 9. It's now 9.02. Is that what Keith said? Well…
You go find Keith and tell him to… Give him this for me. Anyway, I'll watch the time, son. It's not his fault. He's just following orders. But now I've lost my place, I'll have to start over again. My name is Clancy Emerson, and I'm an alcoholic. But something special happened in my body. You know, when the book Alcoholics Anonymous was written, they talk about something special happening in your body.
They don't put it in that language. They talk about people who drank. Not Ira. They got a lot of people who had drunk a long time. Many of them drank fairly well for a while, and then they got into bad drinking, and they call that moment crossing an invisible line, when alcohol does something special to your body. We call that, it's another term, crossing an invisible line. Now, since that book was written in AA, we all know, there's a lot of people in AA today, some of them on this ship, who didn't drink very long at all, or drank a few years, and crossed that invisible line.
Alcohol did something special in their body. And there are people on this ship, and people here tonight, and a lot of them in AA, who apparently alcohol did something special in their body the first time they ever drank it. But they had no comparative, so they didn't know it. And alcohol did something special in my body. And I've heard people describe that feeling in AA a lot. And you hear it every time you go to a meeting, when people talk about their drinking. They say things like, well, I guess it's, when you really hear it, it's when new people are talking, because they're fumbling, and they reach for, they don't have glib sentences made up yet to pass over that area of their talk.
And they, I just love to hear new people, because they're groping, and they're trying to find what it really is. They don't have trick phrases, and laugh lines, and anything, just, and you hear things like, you hear girls get up and say, I always felt ugly, but when I drank, I felt pretty sometimes. Or when I drank, I felt desirable, or they, I drank to get along with boys. And you hear boys get up and guys get up and say, I, probably the most common line in Alcoholics Anonymous, I drank in high school dances so I could get the courage to ask a girl to dance. And things like that.
And boys say, I didn't feel like part of things except when I drank, or I didn't feel like, I didn't feel worth much, or I didn't, I didn't feel things. And everybody has to grope for this, because there's no way to describe it. But I'll tell you something. I look back, and with the wisdom of retrospect, which is easy when you're looking back, it's hard to describe it at the time. I suppose what alcohol did for me, and that probably isn't too terribly uncommon. I think that day is memorable, because when alcohol did something special in my body, that is the first day I remember feeling.
That is the first day I remember feeling the way men look. I felt the way they looked, like men. And I got sick in a minute or two and threw it up, but for a few moments in time and space, I, that's the way I wanted to feel.
[01:00:08]
And a great many years later, later in the war, I went in the Navy. And I was in the Navy, and I was still a junior in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, high school. In fact, I took some examinations when I was in the Naval Hospital near the end of the war. And I got a high school equivalency, so I was able to go to college. And I was a member of a championship team in college. And I was editor of the year book.
And I went out in the world. I became a sports writer briefly. And I got an advertising work in advertising agencies. And a great many years later, I had my last drink. And by that time, I was much slicker than I'd ever been when I took my first drink. I'd been in psychoanalysis. I'd been in metaphysics. I'd had existentialist insights. I had read philosophy. I'd read Nietzsche. I'd read Kant. I looked for answers continually to try to somehow reconcile the imbalance between my inside and the world around me.
And I would have 20 reasons to tell you why I drank. But I guess in looking back, it would be safe to say that when I took my last drink, in a real manner of speaking, I was drinking for exactly the same reason I took my first drink. To feel the way men looked. Now, there's nothing wrong with a little skinny, pimply-faced puke in the Pacific. That's a nice alliterative phrase. Drinking to feel like a grown-up.
But when you're getting old and wrinkled and bald and your hair is falling out, and, you know, what do you do for falling hair? Just go like that. You shouldn't have to drink to feel grown-up then. And yet, we all are familiar with the phrase, alcohol brought me to this sorry pass. And yet, on the other hand, alcohol, I feel, was the best friend I ever had. Because alcohol is the only tool that I found in my life that on a continuing basis could ease off temporarily the imbalance between my inside and outside.
I don't like to get drunk and in trouble. I don't like to wind up in barroom fights. I don't like to raise hell. I don't like to be arrested. I don't like to have my family bothered by the police saying they've got me again. I don't like to be in the Texas Nuthouse. It's bad enough to go to Texas, for Christ's sake. But being in the Texas Nuthouse, you know, when those people say, We're going to hit you, son.
You know your day has come, baby. And yet, a lot of times, I drank and those things didn't happen. And I thought that was great proof I was an alcoholic. In fact, I went to AA after some problems almost 30 years ago. I was a young man. I was the youngest man by 20 years in the group I was going to. And I thought I'd had some problems, but I got to see these old burned-out fools, and I realized that whatever they had didn't help me.
Their club is for drinkers, and I am a thinker. There's the difference. To hear these old drawn-out, gaunt-faced old fools. Friends, I stayed drunk for 38 years, night and day, around the clock. Almost lost my job on two different occasions. One day I walked through that door, and I knew I was home. And they told me to put the plug in the jug, and I did. And I've just never been so goddamn happy. That may help drinkers. It don't help thinkers. I'll tell you that.
What it did for me was increase my salivary rate about 100% a year. And I felt disgraced when I went to AA, because I'd been in jail six times. Nothing big, just overnights and things like that. And I'd been in a veterans hospital after the Second World War. The following Christmas I turned in at Wood, Wisconsin Veterans Hospital, because I was still having flashbacks from the hell we had over there.
They called it something else. They didn't have a chance to examine me. It was primarily a series of hangovers that I thought were combat fatigue. They sent me home, and I said, nice to see you, right to as big as worse. But after coming to AA, I went to jail 28 times. And I went to city hospitals, and I went to county hospitals, and I went to that nut house. The worst years of my life came after I was around AA, because it added still another note of imbalance.
[01:05:02]
Why can't I do something like that? Why couldn't I have been born dumb like them? Why couldn't I be satisfied? Why couldn't I just come in and say, well, we're going to a meeting tonight, and then I'm going home and rock. And I'd been cursed with imagination and sensitivity and insight and superiority and inadequacy all at once. It wouldn't be so bad being superior except the periods of inadequacy.
It wouldn't be so bad feeling inadequate if you didn't feel superior once in a while. I look over my life. I have two classes of relationships, mostly. About a great many people I knew I felt superior to. A great many people I knew I felt inferior to and resented. The people I felt superior to I had a kind of a basic contempt for. The only thing I don't remember, I don't remember any numbers of people with whom I felt equal ever.
And so, as a result of that, I just knew my case was different. And finally, years later, I wound up in a position I couldn't wind up in. My God, you can't be two years… One year I was on the faculty of the University of Texas. I was doing wonderful things. I was working on a press box at the football games, and I was also directing a grand opera. Now, that's kind of a wide variety of experience.
I also investigated the social conditions in Juarez, trying to find some way to upgrade the population. I did the best I could for them, God knows. I was working in an advertising agency. I was doing all sorts of things. And, you know, it just isn't right that you wind up that year in the nuthouse. The pressure was too great. A year later, I was living in Dallas. I was working on ads that had to do with, you know, you remember?
The old Elsinore ads. And I was a brilliant guy living in a high-tensity, high-tension environment. And it wasn't right that later that year I wake up in the Phoenix drunk tank, and the guy's just got done kicking my front teeth down my throat because I vomited on his bunk. And, fortunately, I'd been in psychoanalysis so I could see what was going on. I remember thinking, this son of a bitch is overreacting.
That's wrong. That's wrong. And it isn't right I should lose my family. Remember, there's a little girl over here tonight who's the mother of my granddaughters now, sweet thing. She was a little girl. She stammered badly. And I remember talking to a guy I knew who was a doctor. I said, my daughter stammers badly. And I told him what had happened, and he said it sounded like you're the fault of it. You know, it's the emotional erraticness that around your house makes you stammer.
And today, I wish I could remember what it was I did, because I'd like to try it again. She's been directing me steadily for a number of years now. But it's very nice. But the funny thing is, how can AA work when AA is for drinkers and when I'm a thinker? And I suspect you are by looking at your face. You know, you're not a drinker. You're not. You're having fun. And it takes a while to come to understand the most important tenet.
It almost cost me my life. I learned it finally when I weighed 110 pounds, and I had been thrown out of the midnight mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles. And I'd lost everything I had, and I was dying of old age. Dying of old age. I felt 30 years older then than I do now. And that was 20-some years ago. When I came to discover, somehow, I didn't come to discover it instantly. It took me a while. I was just going to manipulate them A&As one more time until I could get a score and get to Seattle.
But I stayed too long, and they screwed up my head. And one day I found myself sober 30 days. And I remember thinking, my God. It didn't even, it didn't even bother me. I was living in the back seat of an abandoned car, because there was an AA club parking lot. There was a spiritual fallout that came to me some mornings. I didn't have any front teeth. I couldn't get a job. Couldn't do anything. I remember thinking, I got 30 days.
That's too much to throw away on a whim. I better have a good reason. I got doing things, and I had a bad sponsor who was mean. And I did things to get him off my case. And I got things better. Pretty soon I got a year sober, and then two. And I got a job that I held, and five. And things got better. My family in Texas were living in a post office box. And when I was about five years sober, they heard the crinkle of green in my wallet all the way to Dallas.
[01:10:04]
Leaped out of their post office box and came here and attached themselves to my wallet, where they'd been bleeding me white ever since. I'm getting the ray from various parts of the room. You just wait, Daddy. You just wait. Go take care of him, Jim. Show him the lights. The funny thing is the only therapy I've had since the day I got sober is Alcoholics Anonymous. And the thing that eventually came to me over the years is I think will come to you and countless like us.
We come to discover the very facts that we think render us ineligible for Alcoholics Anonymous on a continuing basis are actually the grounds for AA membership. AA is not designed to help me get sober. AA is not designed to make me be good in the abstract. AA is not designed to have me learn to parrot pretty phrases that will impress people. AA is designed to somehow, after I am sober, little by little, learn to do things differently based on opinions that I cannot understand sometimes or find out.
I think the best analogy I've been able to think of for a long time on that is like, I'll tell you, all my life I've searched for truth and I'm sure you've searched for truth. And you think, well, when am I going to find truth? And you find it sometimes and tomorrow it changes. It just, it's impossible. It came to me a while back. Truth is merely this. Truth is as I see things. Truth is not the same as reality.
That's why there's so much mix-up over about truth. Truth is as I see it. And truth to you is as you see it. That Alcoholics Anonymous board back there. If I see that as yellow, all of you telling me it's blue won't change my mind. You can tell me till you're blue, but to me it's either a gag or a joke or they're seeing a funny light refraction because I can see that. And unfortunately most of life for me and all human beings I suppose boils down to that.
As things are as I see them. Now they're not made up of colors because they're easy to describe, but they're emotional perspectives. And one of the curses of the disease of alcoholism as opposed to a drinking problem is that the hallmark of the disease of alcoholism is when you are sober your perspectives on things get a little distorted. That's what makes alcoholism so baffling and untenable. If it were getting sober and getting straightened out there'd be no need for AA.
But we have to. But I got to go out in the world and I see things a little bit differently than other people see them. Maybe more negatively or maybe more immaturely or maybe more demandingly. But little by little my perspective on things and the people around me get further apart and it isn't really obvious because we're all seeing the same things. And then comes that thing that speakers talk about that one talked about last night.
Then you got to start bending reality to fit your perspectives and you got to alter things and you got to… I don't know anybody who consciously lies to themselves and yet the most important thing in AA that we have to get is learn to be honest with ourselves and everybody says, what does that mean? I've never been dishonest with myself, not consciously. But somehow to reconcile the world I got to warp reality to fit my view of truth.
And you can't do it indefinitely and the perspectives get so varied that one day I have to drink to reconcile it or I have to take pills to reconcile it or I have to smoke pot to reconcile it. And I go down thinking I did everything I could. Don't they understand that? I don't want to… they don't understand. And that's why when you get sober again people say to you, why did you drink? And they think you're joking when you say, I don't know.
So you don't say I don't know. So you make up, you give them reasons. Well that guy said something to me. That person hurt me. That hurt person at the job told me that. It's not a sufficient reason to drink but I'm as baffled by why I drank as you do. But I've got to give you some kind of reason. So you hang it on a hook. And I suppose the greatest thing about Alcoholics Anonymous that I know, to put it as succinctly as I know, is that the purpose of AA, little by little, is to allow me to…
My little is to allow me to superimpose perspectives over what I see to be true. I think that's the mark of a sponsor. For some people, intense people, maybe other people don't need it, but people like me needed it, and some people I've known needed it.
[01:15:01]
I had to have a sponsor who superimposed his perspective over mine. And it'd be just like I'd say to, if he'd say to me, Clancy, what color's that book cover? I'd say, yellow. He said, okay, but starting today, act like it's blue. You can see whatever color you want, but act like it's blue. Now that's a ridiculous analogy, but I acted my way and held jobs. Don't punch him in the face. Smile. Don't make an amend to that guy even though he's hurt you worse than you've hurt him.
Try to be nice to that old bag even though she's obviously trying to kill you. Just superimpose. Which at least enables you to live at peace for a while. They don't know. The great answer to that is, I don't want to be a hypocrite. Well, you better be a hypocrite because the best way you got is goofy. You better take whatever hypocrisy you can get on and work with it. The funny thing is, in the emotions of life, to use that same old analogy, the funny thing is, over a period of time, the book turns blue.
But I got to work at it while it's still yellow. And that's what A.A. just said. You have to act ahead of where you are. And then after you get feeling good comes the other. There's only two critical periods in sobriety. Once when you're feeling bad and the rest when you're feeling good. And because of that, there's no critical periods. And you got to be careful that you don't get carried away with your own ego-starved magnificence, as we all have a tendency to do.
I'm all right now. I've got it all together. And if they don't see it my way, now I know it's them. Because I've got a spiritual program and I'll kill a gymnastics. And you can start moving out again. And that's why I think, I was talking about when I got up here tonight, I think one of the things I like about this crowd, most everybody that I know here, is in that school of thought of people who take the actions in A.A.
So this is the difference how you see things in any given day. You keep taking the actions and it gets warping back in. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Blue, I could have told you that if I'd have thought. Because the world for all human beings gets a little dingy sometimes, and especially dingy people like us. But we're not dingy. We see different things from a different perspective. And I think the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous and why we keep doing it is so that once in a while when you've got to be back, you can't judge when it's got to be, so you keep doing it all the time and it keeps bringing you back.
And then you get to be sober a while and you can smirk at newcomers who don't see things clearly yet and tell them how sincere you were in the old days and how you wanted the program. But the number one thing is, you know, I don't want to make a big maudlin thing about this, but there isn't a therapy in the world that can take drinkers and get 750 of them together at one time anywhere to say nothing of getting them on a ship going to Mexico, for Christ's sake.
What are you going to do with your shipload of alcoholics? We're going to go to Mexico. Good luck to you, Charlie. Try to get a couple of them back, too, will you? And we're all going to get on the ship and come home and by next week we'll have taken it for granted. Sure, so we went to Mexico. Yeah, it was a nice trip, but now what? And we'll completely forget. This evening, on this ship, in this room, is as great a medical miracle as I've ever heard of in medical science anywhere.
But we take it for granted because it happened to us. But we ought to be thankful, be a little gracious, be a little grateful. I hate these people up at the podium saying, say something, I love you to somebody. I don't want to do that. But act like you love them. Smile at some mope that doesn't deserve it. That gives you a whole ship full. Because basically they're not quite as sensitive as you are, so don't let them know it.
Just stick that hand out and say, nice to see you. It's a good time and let's do it again tomorrow. I'm glad to be here. I welcome you aboard. I owe you my life and my sanity. I'm glad my children and sons-in-law are here. But most importantly, I'm glad that for tonight we all see a blue book behind me and it's going to be a good day. Thank you.