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Source: DICOBE-00345 – Clancy I – SOBER SAILORS – 1979-09-27.mp3 File: dicobe-00345-clancy-i-sober-sailors-1979-09-27.mp3 Duration: 01:31:40
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Hi everybody, my name is Judy and I'm an alcoholic. Hi Judy. I'm from Topanga, California, and my home group is the Pacific Group, and I've been sober four years and eight months. Welcome to the Thursday 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 sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. It does not wish to 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? All right. Good to see you all here. It is a custom in Southern California and at sea to read a portion of our book, Alcoholics Anonymous. And tonight, Jim Oh has been asked to read this for us. Hi, I'm Jim Oh, a grateful alcoholic. My home group is the Canoga Park Beginners Group that meets in Chatsworth, and I have eight years and five months of sobriety.
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 lengths to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps.
As 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 powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
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, when 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. Twelve, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our prayers.
[00:05:02]
Many of us exclaim, what an order, I can't go through with 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 would, could and would if He were sought. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jim. This meeting, as all the meetings on the Sober Sailor's Cruise, is being taped. If you wish to purchase one of these tapes, they will be made available to you in two weeks. The format of this meeting is two ten-minute speakers, a short coffee break, and a main speaker.
And our first ten-minute speaker is Big George. Hey, hey, hey, hey! Good evening, everyone, I'm Big George and I'm glad I'm an alcoholic. I found this Good evening, everyone, I'm Big George and I'm glad I'm an alcoholic. My home group is the Wilder Group in Honolulu. I'm secretary there and I renamed it, we call it now the Wilder Wilder Group. Has nothing to do with Lynn. And I have 2,177 days without a drink today.
For those who want to calculate, that's 14 days short of 6 years. I was a little bit disappointed, I thought I was going to be second speaker because I thought Clancy was going to be the main speaker and he said, that's alright, Big George use all the time he wants. I lie once in a while too. Well, they tell us to tell what it was like and what happened and how it is now and I can only tell you for me, I can't speak for AA or anyone else and I'll try to do the best I can in 10 minutes.
I started drinking when I don't know, 7, 8, 9 years old, siphoning wine out of a wine barrel that my dad used to make and we lived on a farm, I wasn't supposed to be doing that so you can see booze had me thieving when I was 7 years old. And I drank through school and through high school and through the college that I went to, I played a little ball and we drank all through it, nobody ever, we practiced a lot but nobody ever trained.
And I got married when I was 17, drinking all the time, having a few car wrecks but I was never an alcoholic, I just drank a little bit too much and every time I got in trouble, it was a direct result of booze, all my life. I'm not saying every time I drank I got in trouble but every time I got in trouble, when I got on this program and became an alcoholic when I got on here, I found out that I had a disease called alcoholism and they said you got to try to get honest with yourself and when I started to try to do that and I took that inventory, started taking inventories and stuff like they told me to, I found out that every time I was ever in trouble, it was a direct result of booze, not necessarily with the police but losing 3 or 4 houses, cars, wives, a lot of money, that sort of thing, it was always a direct result of booze.
I went to Honolulu after my 8th drunk driving charge in California, I hit two people in a crosswalk, I wanted to run but luckily I didn't,
[00:10:06]
I managed to keep the guy alive until the ambulance got there and they took me to jail and I spent 24 hours in jail not knowing whether the man had died or not and I prayed, I've always believed in a higher power but to me he was sort of like a celestial bellhop, you do this for me and I'll tip you, I'll do that for you. But this time I said, God if you'll just let that man live, I promise I'll never take a drink as long as I live and I meant it.
I'll be better to my kid and my mother and father, I'll do all these things that I haven't been doing right. I got out of jail after 24 hours and found out the man was still alive and after about two and a half, three days he got out of intensive care and I was so happy I got drunk. And I thought I was about four bricks short of a load, I couldn't figure out what the hell was the matter, why was it every time that I started drinking I had to get drunk?
And it took me a long time to find out, I went in front of the judge and he gave me, that was my eighth drunk driving charge and he gave me a year in jail in this grey bar hotel but by selling my house and the little apartment that I had built behind my house and getting together some money I managed to buy him and the attorney off and so instead of doing a year in the slammer they gave me three years probation I knew that I couldn't go any three years without getting in trouble because I didn't know I was an alcoholic, I just knew that I drink a little too much and I'd watch it next time but it seemed like everything would always happen to me, it was never my fault, you understand, it was always somebody else's fault but I got blamed for it so consequently I was the one that got in trouble.
But I conned my probation officer, but I conned my probation officer into coming to Honolulu to get away from all that bad influence, those cops that had it in for me and all those drinking people and everything so he went for the okey-doke, he said alright, we'll let you go and you report in to this probation officer over here and I sincerely thought I would come to Honolulu and we'd start brand new, I was single at the time shacked up with a gal but she went along with me she had a bigger problem than I did but I knew she had a drinking problem but I didn't have any, but anyway I got to Honolulu reported in and I made my three years without getting in any trouble that the probation officer knew about.
I got drunk there and after I got off probation that's why I wound up with another drunk driving charge in Honolulu that made nine, you'd think that would tell a guy something, wouldn't you? But I won't go into a long drunk-a-log, I've been arrested for booze 29 times, I've been in that slammer 29 times anything from diving from a bridge not being a lifeguard performing an official duty when I should have been arrested for drunk and just about every kind of misdemeanor that you can think of all because of booze but I met my wife Janie and we both drank and we got married, I married her six weeks after I met her we romped and stomped and danced with the maidens in the Temple of the Moon and she divorced me six months later because I had a drinking problem we got back together and went in AA we stayed sober, lived together, divorced I always say we were shacked up and that really turns her off but we lived together for a year because my big book told me not to do any major decisions for a year and we got married 11 months sober so that we could get married on the same day we got married the first time and since I have come into this program it's fantastic, I haven't had any slips, I haven't had to, I've let those other people go do it for me they told me when I come in here They told me when I come in here, get with the winners. I looked around and found one guy driving a big Cadillac and another in a big Lincoln, and that's who I got with.
[00:15:08]
Luckily, why, they had a good program. One had about 12, 14 years, another one 16 years, and I stuck with them. But before I got into this program, I knew I had a problem, but I just, it wasn't quite bad enough yet, I wasn't really bad enough yet. I, kind of like the little kid, his mother caught him out behind the barn playing with himself, and she says, Johnny, if you don't stop that, it'll make you go blind.
He said, well, can I just do it till I need glasses? And that's sort of the way I was. I just wanted to keep this drinking up till I needed glasses. I didn't really want to go blind, but just till I needed glasses. And when we first got married, my wife would, with my drinking, hers wasn't quite as bad as mine, she would always forgive and forget, and then continually remind me that she forgave and forgot.
But I've had a fabulous, fabulous six years in this program. I try to joint venture every day with a higher power. I get up in the morning and I meditate a little bit, and I put my day together. I try to plan my day and work my plan. And I list down the things that I've got to do. I have a construction business, among other things, and I'm a builder. And I list the things down that I have to do, and I say, JC, I hope this is what you want me to do.
And if it isn't, you're going to have to steer me off in a different direction. Now this is what I've got to do, now let's get at it. And once in a while, he steers me off in a different direction. They told me when I first came in the program, do anything you have to do in order to not take a drink. Three or four times at noon I said, JC, you can have the rest of this day, I'm going home and go to bed and watch television.
Where before I used to stop into George's Inn over there and say, give me a double shot of scotch with a beer chaser. And I don't have to do that anymore. With Janie gets better the longer I stay sober, so we're gaining on that. I'm grateful to be here, and if any of you come to Honolulu, I'm in the phone book. All you've got to do is look up Big G, and that's the way it is in the phone book, Big G.
So you come over and say hello. I want to thank everybody for the enjoyment that I've had on this cruise. Keith and Sally that I love dearly, and all of you folks, because I love you all. Thank you kindly. Thank you, George. Our second ten-minute speaker is Barbara C. It's Clay C. I can't read either. Thank you. Hi, I'm Clay Compton. I'm an alcoholic. I'm from Rowan Heights, California. My home group is La Habra.
I've been sober 14 years and three months today. I was kind of glad to see Chuck over here when I wandered around the ship, because I share a lot of meetings with him in La Habra on Wednesday night at the Stag. It's only an alcoholic can get his sobriety in Covina, live in Rowan Heights, and have a home group over the hill in La Habra. I went for many years on this program. I went to so many different meetings that I couldn't make up my mind which one I wanted to have for a home group.
It took me about nine years to find one that just seemed to fit my needs, and that was the Men's Stag at La Habra. They've helped me tremendously by listening when I need to talk and talking when I need to listen. I find that in this program I have a need for both. I can't go sit at a meeting and not open my mouth and I'm prone to do that. I was a loner when I got here, and I've been pretty much a loner all my life.
[00:20:04]
It's been difficult for me to really get acquainted with people because I'm not that outgoing. I caught myself just sitting in meetings and listening and not volunteering. I still don't volunteer hardly, unless I'm really hurting. If I have learned nothing else in the time I've been here, I've learned what I'm hurting, I better let somebody know about it and get rid of that knot because for years I just kept it in and hoped that I would hear something along the way that would release it.
It took me a long time to find out. I should have had a good example. My wife's got five months on me in this program. She talks everything out, and I should have got that example. But we try very, very hard to keep our programs separated entirely. We mixed them up a little bit the first five years. It got pretty popular in Alcoholics Anonymous for couples to go out and talk, and I think that's dangerous.
I've seen bad things happen when couples went out and talked. A bad thing happened one night when we went out and talked. So I refused to talk with her anymore, and she was glad of it. Anyway, we sometimes say things and mean something else, and we have to kind of keep our programs entirely separate. I drank for 33 years, so when I got to the program I knew how to drink, and you all know how to drink, so I won't go into any of my drunk-a-log.
I drank just long enough. When Norma came into the program, she was sent by a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said it would be a good idea for me to go to Al-Anon. I don't know what the hell Al-Anon was, but I'd do anything to keep that woman from drinking, you know. I didn't think I had a drinking problem. I quit a couple times for three or four months, getting ready to do something, like getting ready to go to Honolulu, you know.
I had a goal. I never made it. I was a photographer at a guy's wedding. We were all going over there, and I wasn't going to get drunk at that wedding. I was going to wait until I got to Hawaii. I got drunk at that wedding. I dropped the film all over the place and ruined all the pictures and friendship. I didn't care much for him anyway. He didn't drink like I like to drink. He let me know later on the plane, you know, all the pictures were ruined.
He says, I don't think your camera is any good. I have a brand new camera. And all the way to Honolulu, I was checking that camera out, worried about whether it was going to work or not, you know. I let him do it to me. Anyway, I found out that when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous that, incidentally, I went that five months trying to prove to, I thought, my wife and everybody else that I was not an alcoholic.
I realize now I was trying to prove it to myself because I would sample, you know. Have a couple of drinks at a business meeting or a couple of drinks at bowling. This was no big deal. I did that a lot of times. I'm a periodic, you know. But I would say, see, I drank a couple of drinks, and I didn't get drunk because I was coming to meetings to listen to you people, you know, and I had the idea that, you know, you take one drink and you're off on a drunk.
Although my wife never did that every time she drank either, you know. But that's what I was looking for. So I heard all of the big things, all the bad things, all the times that you were in jail. Now, I was only in jail once and only lost one family. So I'm really a piker, you know, really a piker. So after my last drunken, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous because all my excuses were wiped away, and then I started listening for myself.
And it's amazing how many people came in around that time that had never been in jail, never lost a family, or maybe once like myself. And I started hearing what I needed to hear. I had the wrong idea of running around trying to get identification on my drinking story, which was the wrong thing to look for. And so I started… The first identification I got on my feelings was from a woman speaker because men didn't used to get up and talk about how they felt so much, and women would.
I can't remember this gal's name, but she's very flamboyant. She used to wear a great big hat, and she'd get up to the podium and she'd wave her head around, her hat would slide down, she'd write it.
[00:25:00]
But boy, what a story she gave me, you know? And I went up and told her afterwards, you know, how much she'd helped me, and I was six months sober. And so many people helped me on this program. It was along about that time Harvey walked by me in a meeting one night and says, I wish you'd take your fourth and fifth steps so I could quit worrying about you. And God, I looked at him, he just kept right on going, he didn't even stop.
God, somebody's worried about me, you know, made me feel good. So I went home and went to work. And, you know, that's what it took for me. I got a lot of my sobriety by eavesdropping. People would be talking after a meeting and I'd sidle up and listen to what they had to say, you know. And it never occurred to me to just shoulder in and join the group. I didn't know how to do that. And I'm learning, you know.
I'm a slow learner. I'm gradually learning what's inside of me, my emotions. We've gone through so much, Norm and I together, that I realize that my emotions were buried pretty deep. When you start drinking a 16 drink for 33 years, I believe your emotions are stunted right there. And today I'm being able to uncover those and discover what's going on inside of Clay. And that's the whole thing. As far as I'm concerned, this program, Alcoholics Anonymous, is discovering who we are and what we are.
And I'm beginning to like what I see. I'm beginning to realize that I have deeper feelings than I ever thought I had in my life, you know. I could never cry sober until I came to this program. And now I find it pretty easy sometimes. I always used to think, I wonder if I'd ever be able to cry in a situation like this or like that, when you're supposed to. I don't have to wonder anymore. It's a spontaneous thing because you people have helped me along, got me well enough to this point to where I can do these things natural.
And maybe one of these days I'll get better yet, you know. As far as I'm concerned, the program is a program of growth until, like Chuck says, they pat you in the face with a spade, you know. And I've really enjoyed this and I'd like to thank everybody that made it possible. And I thank you very much. Thank you, Clay. We will now have a brief five second period where we stand up and stretch. Can we get started again?
OK. It is also custom in Southern California, as it is at sea, to read the twelve traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. And tonight Maxine has been asked to read these. Thank you. I'm Maxine and I'm an alcoholic. I'm from Santa Ana, California. I'm a little hazy about home groups at the moment. Since November 9th of 1968 until the 27th of last month, I spent ten years, nine months and sixteen days trying to prove I was not like you intermittently.
And going out to try to prove I could drink like other people. Yesterday I celebrated 30 days. The twelve traditions. One, our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon AAUnity. 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. They do not govern. 3. The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.
[00:30:01]
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole. 5. Each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. 6. An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. 7. Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers. 9. A.A. as such ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. 10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues, hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy. 11. 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. 12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personality. Thanks. Thank you, Maxine. Our main speaker tonight is Clancy I. My name is Clancy Emerson and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Clancy! I'm glad to be here tonight, safe and sane and sober, because as I like to say, I didn't used to be and I may not be again sometime.
And I'm sure there are a lot of people, not a lot, some people on this ship. We don't know who or when, but we'll not be safe and sane and sober again. And it's nice to enjoy it when you got it and to keep doing the things that will help you stay that way. I know I've disappointed a few people. Yesterday I lost my voice. And they were… I'm sorry. I'm from… I'm from the sky. I'm… I'm from Los Angeles and I've been sober 20 years and 11 months.
And… But my voice came back today. I have really… I've really had a good time. I shouldn't say that because everybody says that and we want to be unique and new in our talks, I suppose. But I want to make a… I want to… I have two kind of hang-ups. One is people who screw around with the tambourines when I'm trying to talk. Well, one hang-up is… It's always kind of difficult for me to… It was very difficult for me to make the 10th step because I… It was hard to say I was sorry about anything.
And once I was able to do that, I feel it's a… Even after you do that, there's a certain area you shouldn't say you're… You should never say you're sorry to your babies because it'll make them arrogant. And I… Just take a moment to make a public acknowledgement that I was wrong. Long time ago, Keith came to my office and said, what do you think about an ocean cruise? And I said, are you crazy?
And of course, there's no… There's no gradations with Keith. There's no grays. It's all black and white. It's all black and white. Get out of here. I had three of my assistants lead him to his car and steer him towards his office. Guess he never got there, though. And his enthusiasm and ebullience, the very characteristics which are necessary for such a thing as this, brought it about. And it was really… He carried it off. I didn't think it would ever be possible.
I didn't believe it till I was on the ship two days. I thought I might wake up and he'll still be talking in my office. It'll be fantastic. What do you… And he brought it off. And even after he brought it off, I wasn't particularly interested in going. But he asked me to be the public relations chairman and he asked me to write a brochure on it.
[00:35:03]
So I read the cruise line's brochures and I talked to some people who'd been on this ship. And I wrote this brochure. And when I was proofreading it, it was so well written that I signed up. I… When I read about those lush cobblestone streets in Mazatlan, I… I'll bet. And, uh… I… I've been kind of a little… It's kind of funny. You know, on February 9th, 1971, in Los Angeles, we had a big earthquake.
Early in the morning, 6.30. And as soon as the ground stopped shaking, my phone by my bed started ringing. And my grateful baby's calling me up to tell me they just had an earthquake. And I, uh… It wasn't until later in the morning that I thought, God damn it, I had an earthquake, too. What are they telling me about? You know. And I feel that way sometimes. I felt that way a little bit on the deck.
When people have rushed up to me and said, We don't have any drinking water in our faucet. And I'll scoot them down and walk with them. I don't have any drinking water in my faucet. What are they telling me about? You know. What do I care? For those of you who have gone without anything, I have, too. That's part of the package. It's called the A.A. Fun Trip. But, uh… I, uh… I've had an excellent time on this ship.
And I've, uh… God, I haven't played piano this much since I left San Francisco. Many, many years ago, where I used to play for the girls upstairs, mostly. Here they're gathered around the piano, mostly. But, uh, it's been fun. I want to pay a special acknowledgement to my roommate, Chuck N. I, uh… He is… I really… I want to say this publicly. He's really been a grand roommate. He's one of those pukes that are instinctively thoughtful.
And I just… Every time he does something thoughtful, it makes me think, Now, what should I do? I really hate to be with people who are instinctively thoughtful when I have to stop and think, Now, what would a thoughtful person do at a time like this? It's really… And I am not the world's easiest person to live with, I understand. And I, uh… Because I'm a… I'm a bed eater. I can't get to sleep unless I have six cracker sandwiches and a can of pop and a book and some peanut crunch.
And I just… I said, This doesn't bother you, does it, Chuck? Can I… Can I go down and get you another can of pop? The worst part is his wife sent him the food so he could have snacks. And he… You can have some tonight, Chuck. But it, uh… I… You know, it's another kind of a strange thing about this cruise that it kind of got off the ground and it's gone. And it's, to me, been extremely pleasant.
And I hope it has for other people. And it is not, you know… I've talked to a lot of… I've been privy to the complaints of some people. I understand that. In my… One era in my life or another, I would have complained about things that I was short of. But I can't… I can't imagine what they're used to that this has not been enough to move them into acceptance and enjoyment. You know, that first brochure really was kind of a selling brochure.
And then after we got a lot of applications in, and then we thought, gee, we sent some girls to our group, a couple of girls down to Panama to ride this ship from Panama to Los Angeles to see if there was anything wrong. And they came back and said, well, the Olympic-sized pool is not quite Olympic-sized. And they gave us some time. And so we thought, what we really wanted on this ship, we wanted people who were active AA members who would go along and be part of an AA operation.
So that next letter you got was kind of a negative thing. The pool isn't very big, and it really doesn't… The ship doesn't go anywhere, and it tips over in the ocean, and… You know. And we got about 400 cancellations off that letter. Now, you'd think that would make us feel sad, but it made us feel good. Because we… I don't know who they were, I don't know who they were, but I know that we didn't…
Are you selling coffee during my talk?
[00:40:04]
It's okay for Big George among Wilder group, but… But we got rid of 400 people, I think, who wanted to have a big stage room and be waited on. And we didn't… That is not the theory of this. And what we got… What we hoped we had left were people like ourselves, like… I think we had the cream of our applications who stayed. And… And you're humble, too. Boy, he's got me tagged up. Come on, come on.
And the… But it's really… I think we've had excellent speakers. I've enjoyed them all. I've… I have not gone to both sessions, but I've gone to all the meetings in our session, and all the ten-minute speakers, and all the main speakers were good. And I hope that everybody enjoyed it. I was going to read a poem tonight, but Jack Cernan took the notes. Jack Cernan took the notes. But it seems to me we have the cream here.
And those who… I was interested in Puerto Vallarta, that a number of people were so disconsolate by the hardships they had to face on this ship, they took the plane home from Puerto Vallarta, a few, not very many. And I really… I really thought if I'd known that, I would have had them helicoptered off in San Diego. Because really… Because the whole concept here is a bunch of people doing something together and having a new experience.
Now, you may not think this is a new experience, but this is a new experience. In the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, there has never been any kind of a convention or conference or AA get-together that has lasted this long. In the history of AA, the longest is 3 1⁄2 days, and that includes a dance at the International Convention. This is the longest that 735 intense neurotics have been… have been sealed off.
You know. And… And it's really amazing, because everybody… I… It kind of spoils me. I don't think I would ever want to take a cruise again where I was taking, say, a couple of members of my family or something, and have the rest of the ship be full of strangers and people grinding for a position. And… Because here you can flop down next to anybody on a chair out in the deck and start a conversation, or you can take your place in line to thank the speaker or to go into a dining hall and not have to fight your way to see if they're doing something to you and not bring out that paranoid streak in people like me that I want to make sure I get my rights and all the dumb things.
It just is so nice to be here, and I want to… I want to thank all of you on behalf of me for giving me a… as pleasant a week as I've ever spent in 20 years and 11 months of sobriety. And it really is nice. There's one other thing I want to say before I sit down. I used to drink. And, in fact, this cruise reminded me of it. What you're supposed to do is swivel your ear and hit that tambourine. That's what the others have done.
But almost 30… That was a funny joke I made, wasn't it? But almost… Do you want to have the drummer play a few licks? While I talk about God. Almost 37 years ago, I took my first ocean voyage. Longer ago than most of you, I'm sure. Longer than some of you have been alive. But I was a small boy. I lived in a little town in northern Wisconsin. It was early in the Second World War, and I was 15, and I was short.
Fifteen, and I was short, and I was a year and a half ahead of the kids I'd started grades to with, they'd shoved me ahead, and I always was playing catch-up, it seemed like, and I always had a lot of unease, and I, uh, I wanted to see the world, and I, I hitchhiked to, I told one weekend, I told my mother I was going to go to Duluth, Minnesota, Superior, to visit my aunt, and instead I hitchhiked to San Francisco. I had no idea how far it was. I looked at the map in the school library,
[00:45:22]
two blue states, two orange states, and a green state, and boom, there you are. And fortunately, I got one ride most of the way, and I got there, and someone referred me to the Coast Guard office on Market Street down up there, and they were crying for merchant seamen, and, uh, I signed an application for temporary seamen's papers, and they told me I'd have to have my parents sign it, and I took it around, my parents signed it, and brought it back, and they referred me to the National Maritime Union down on Montgomery Street, and I went down there, and, uh, they were crying for merchant seamen.
They just had me sign a waiver saying they'd take my union dues out of my first check, and they, they sent me to a pier, and that night, I was on a load of torpedo warheads going to the South Pacific, and, uh, about, as the earth went out of sight, I realized I'd made a career mistake, and I, and I told the captain I really appreciate this opportunity, but I, uh, I should get back because we had a big English test Monday, and I, uh, I didn't want to jeopardize my standing in my class, and he wished me well. He, uh, he told me to luck off, and he, uh, told me to get to my folksal.
I didn't know what a folksal was. I'm sure most of you don't know what a folksal is. A folksal is the crew sleeping quarters on a ship. That's all. There was a, not a, not a passenger ship like this, an old liberty ship, and I got into that room, that folksal, and a, and a, I would get, I was small and afraid and a face full of pimples all ready to go at any moment, any one of them, just like, like watching water boil.
And I got stuck in there with three of the worst type of people that any small, skinny, pimply-faced kid could ever be stuck with, and these kind of people are called men, and, uh, I felt a tension when I came in the room because they knew I was going to be on their watch, and they, you know. I tried to ease the tension by telling some of the one-liners that used to kill them in study hall, and, uh, they suggested I get in my bunk and dummy up, and that old ship was going out.
Now, this ship has a little bit of a movement, but an old liberty ship didn't have stabilizers, and they were like corks, and they were, oh, yeah, and I was in my bunk, and these, I was seasick and felt bad and wanted to die, and I wanted my mother, and I, I wanted to cry, and I didn't dare because I didn't want to lose my image. And I just, oh, and these guys start talking and laughing about what they'd been doing in San Francisco, and I, uh, I'd lived in a very, very strict religious home, and I had never heard talk like that. I had never heard of actions like that. I'd heard of it, but never seen people who had done it.
And I remember thinking, these people are sinners. Yes. Probably Catholics, too. And, uh, I don't want to leave the wrong impression, as I often say. I don't want to leave a bad impression. Even at the age of 15, as I was, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, I'd had sex. But I had been apprehensive, and I'd been afraid, and I'd been alone. And most of these, uh, I had never seen these pictures come to life in San Francisco.
And one of these guys went to a sea bag and got, reached in a sea bag and got a bottle of whiskey, something I'd never seen close up. I hadn't met any Al-Anons at that time. And he, uh, he offered his friend a drink and said, you want a little snort? And the guy said, yeah. He said to his other friend, you want a little snort? And the guy said, yeah. And he looked at me with a very unpleasant look. Today that I'm more sophisticated, I would know it to be a condescending look or a patronizing look. But at that time, there were only pleasant looks and unpleasant looks.
That was an unpleasant look. He said, 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, my watery blue eyes blaze. And I didn't say anything, but I thought at him. I thought, you big dummy. I guess you've never seen a Norwegian Lutheran before, have you?
[00:50:01]
Norwegian Lutherans don't drink whiskey. And even if they did, I wouldn't drink whiskey because I promised both my mother and grandmother I would never drink whiskey. And even if I hadn't promised them I wouldn't drink whiskey, my role models were obtained at the State Theater and the Badger Theater in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, every Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. And in my era, good guys didn't drink in movies. Bad guys drank. Errol Flynn never took a drink in his life, to the best of my knowledge. Not in Sherwood Forest he didn't.
There's always a bad crowd, the Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains in that outfit. Buck Jones never took a drink in his life. Always some nasty, filthy rustler named Slade. Man, let's kill Buck Jones' horse, come on. And that guy had the temerity to stick a bottle in my face and he said, you think you're man enough for a little snort? And I just looked up at him and I said, damn right. Because I've always been a little weak under pressure, too.
And I had my first drink of alcohol that day and it just, it staggered me. I took a drink and it burned my mouth and it burned my throat and it burned my stomach and burned my stomach and burned my throat and burned my mouth and burned his shirt the last I saw. And what I remember most about that is not being sick, not being anything. What I remember is the humiliation of their laughter, their sneering, scorn.
There's nothing in the world that anybody that feels inadequate finds worse than having people discover they're inadequate. That's something I've spent my life trying to cover up, but sometimes they just find you out and you just want to die. And I guess it's probably a psychologically sound thing to say that most people, when they feel totally bad, try to find things to blame it on, hooks to lay it on.
You find people in AA who are still blaming things on something that happened when they were ten years old, which may or may not be accurate. But usually you've got to find a reason for feeling so bad and the reason I accepted that moment was that they laughed at me and treated me the next day badly is because I had thrown up and looked like a goof. And I suppose when I look back at it, the reason they treated me as an inadequate personality is because I was an inadequate personality.
But I thought it was because I threw up that booze and every day I'd sneak into this guy's seabag all the way across the central Pacific. Nobody would look at me. Once I got over my seasickness, I'd take a drink. Except if I could just drink, they'd think I was a man, which is absolutely erroneous. And I remember a day out of Pearl Harbor, it was hot, there was no air conditioning, no fresh water, gosh.
Damn boat didn't stop at Mazatlan. It was hell in WW2. And I took a drink of that slop again that burned my mouth and burned my throat and burned my stomach and stayed there. I remember thinking, now if I can just do this and not make a face. Oh, oh, mother, mother. And mother meant something different in those days. That was a cry out to home, not an exclamation of glee. And I, I, alcohol, as I was thinking about how to make my face straightened up, alcohol for the first time began to operate and utilize its special effect it had in my body.
I had no idea then or for years and years that alcohol had a special effect in my body. I don't, never met anybody in this organization that ever knew it while it was happening to them. But it had a special effect in my body. You know, when this old book was written, it was written and the first stories were by guys who had drunk for many years. And then some of them, alcohol started to have a special effect on them and they got into alcoholic drinking.
And they called, described that phenomenon as crossing an invisible line between the time when alcohol is a beverage and when alcohol becomes a, an extra something in your system. And since that book is written, of course, we've, we discover, we've heard about that the, there's all sorts of people who didn't drink very many years and then crossed that invisible line. And now we see a lot of people in AA who seem to have crossed that invisible line the first time they took a drink or they had crossed it somewhere.
And I, I know people like that. I guess I'm one of them because alcohol did something special in my body that I did not recognize, but I felt.
[00:55:08]
And I've heard that feeling trying to be, I've heard people trying to describe that feeling from AA podiums for 20 years. And when you stop, you think, you go to a meeting, you hear people talk about drinking, they say, well, alcohol, you hear younger or older women or women say things like, when I, when I drank, when I was, when I didn't drink, I didn't feel pretty or desirable. But when I drank, I felt more desirable, more pretty. And you hear guys say, when I drank, I, I felt macho or one of the most common men's statements is when I drank, I could go over there and ask that girl to dance.
And all these people groped to find that feeling. I don't know if anybody ever put their finger on it, but in looking back in my life, I suppose it would be safe. It's memorable to me because I didn't know it at the time, but I, but I look back and I think that was memorable because that was the first time in my life that I felt the way men looked. And I didn't even think about it. It just, oh, this is what it feels like to be a man. And then I got sick and threw up and the feeling went away. But I used alcohol after that. Alcohol became the best friend I had because I, uh, later in the war, went in the Navy and after the, sent us to the Navy and the Naval Hospital, they let me, at the end of the war, they let me take some examinations so I didn't have to be a junior in high school anymore.
And I went to college and I got married in college and had a couple of kids. And I, uh, was a member of a championship team and I was editor of the yearbook and I went out in the world and became a sports writer and then I got into advertising work and in advertising agencies and big public relations agencies and advertising agencies and on a faculty of a university and, and, uh, many years later I took my last drink under much different circumstances.
I was not a little skinny kid with a pimply face. I was grown up, but I, uh, had a fam, large family and I had had some success. I had attempted to become sophisticated. I read a lot. I learned a lot. I tried to desperate like I, I was a Sammy Glick in a sense without being successful, but I wanted very much to get there. And I took my last drink a number of years later and I, and I think it would be safe to say tonight, although I would never have identified at the time, I could never have identified it then or for years afterwards, but I think in looking back today, it's safe to say that I took my last drink for exactly the same reason I took my first drink.
I took my last drink to feel the way men looked, but I never would have identified it because by that time I'd been in psychoanalysis before it was slick to be in psychoanalysis, but only intelligent, sensitive people went to psychoanalysis. I got into metaphysics. I discovered existential identities not vouchsafed to most of the people around me. I read Nietzsche and Kant and I, uh, I knew a great deal. I, what puzzled me is why I was in that situation, but now there's nothing wrong with a little skinny kid drinking to feel grown up, but there's something wrong about being grown up and getting bald and wrinkled and having grown up children.
You shouldn't have to drink to feel grown up then, but you don't identify it as feeling grown up. You just, it just does something extra and I never had the slightest, I went to AA. I went to AA off and on for years because people would see me drink sometimes and say, we, you have a drinking problem and I would kind of smile and think, yes, I'm sure that's how it looks to you. Because I never met anybody who seemed to know what was really wrong with me. And what was really wrong with me is that my emotions were more intense than other people seemed to be.
The only, as Yvonne mentioned this noon, the only measurement I had was measuring my insides against their outsides. And I never met anybody who looked as sensitive as I felt. I never met anybody who seemed to suffer as much from rejection, actual or implied, as I felt. I never saw anybody who seemed to be troubled with intermittent anxieties over the injustices of the world. The injustices of the world.
The injustices of the world, the injustices of, the unfairness that, the unbelievable facility by which crap heads got into powers of control, and men of integrity were held back, because they wouldn't sell out, who might if they could get a chance to sell out, who couldn't even get a chance to sell out.
[01:00:16]
But I tried a lot of things. I got into psychoanalysis. A lot of people put down psychoanalysis. I loved it. I just loved psychoanalysis, because in psychoanalysis I discovered that my problems were caused by forces beyond my control, that I had been warped as a child, and I'd been hurt by the depression, and I had been deprived. I didn't even know that. I remember I used to go leave that psychiatrist's office, go out and get my new car and drive to my house and sit there and think how sad it was I'd been deprived. I remember the doctor saying to me one time, you mean you never even had a bicycle in those years, Mr. Emerson? And I brooded about that for two months. He said, no wonder I'm warped, you know.
I was writing advertising about what kids should have, and I never had one myself. I had a mental picture of a little tousled-haired, apple-cheeked, blue-eyed little tyke on the streets of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, watching his little friends ride their bicycles. Go ahead, kids. I'll go to analysis later. It took me almost two months to remember nobody in Eau Claire had a bicycle. One kid did. We thought he was a fag and beat him up.
The only thing wrong with psychoanalysis, you're allowed to talk about psychoanalysis, the only thing wrong with psychoanalysis really is that you get to learn so much about the causative factors of your psychological imbalances that it blinds you to the fact you're not getting any better. It's that old classic analogy. It's like being on the deck of the Titanic and hitting an iceberg, and everybody else rose away, and people like me want to stay there and examine how exactly did we get here.
And you may get the answer. You may find the answer. I've found it a number of times. I've got the answer. Aren't you sorry now? It really doesn't do any good to have the answers to your problem when the whole thing is going down. It doesn't help. I got into metaphysics. One time I was on the faculty of the University of Texas, Del Paso. That was my night job, and the dean of men, at least in our division, called me in, and it was one of those people that everybody here has been confronted by.
You always run across him. Sooner or later you get in some little gym, and you get called in by a guy with thin blue lips, and you just know it's going to be a long afternoon. And they say things like, do you think your family would be proud to see you behaving like this? Or how do you expect to stay working here if you can't control yourself? Or the great classic that's been mentioned a couple times this week, but you have such potential.
When you start hearing that kind of talk, you might as well start packing up your briefcase, folks. It ain't going to be long then. But he made me stay sober to hold my job, and I'd married a Catholic girl, and we had a large family, and she was pregnant again, and I had to hold that job. I know Father Charlie's here tonight. I always think about that, you know. It's unheard of. They're still forbidden in the… I'd married a Catholic, which I thought was tolerant, but I had… my family had warned me, and I didn't know what they were warning me about until it was too late.
But it's unheard of today to use birth control. It's not unheard of, but they don't. But you can imagine, 30-some years ago, it really was… there was no question about it, and we kept having children all the time. And I kept saying to my wife, the other folks don't have children all the time. Couldn't I use something at least for the prevention of disease? Or, you know, just like the other guys do. I can get a package for a quarter down at Rocky's. And she and the priest, she and the priest, or our diocese, came over and gave me a long talk on the rhythm system. And it was very interesting. That's how you don't have children in the Catholic Church. You practice the rhythm system, but I couldn't pick up the beat.
I just… what I really needed… and so I held that job, and in order to hold that job, I got deeply into metaphysics, and I got to be one of six people in the whole state of Texas who knew truth, to the best of my knowledge. And the other five were just crap heads, just… well, it seems to me…
[01:05:00]
It was almost a relief when they put me away, finally. But I wanted desperately to be something. I've tried different philosophies. When I look over my life, it always seemed to me that I was cursed with an extra sensitivity, an extra ability to perceive hypocrisy, and not in myself, of course, but in others. I was forced into it. They did it by choice. I was an extra dimension of needing something more than ordinary people needed. I guess that's, you know, it's again been said here at the podium this week, but it's the same thing again.
All I've ever really needed out of life is a little more than other people in order to feel equal to them. That's all I need. I've never met an alcoholic who couldn't be happy by just having more. Just give me more, and I'm okay for today. And I… it's a funny phenomenon. I don't know how to explain it, yet I'm sure everyone here has some memory of it. If you treat me specially, I will feel equal. But if you treat me equal, I will feel rejected. And that's a funny phenomenon, but it happens.
And I tried… I had these emotions and these sensitivities, this terrible drive to get ahead, and I… and every… and I tried different things, but nothing was ever quite as effective to me as a few drinks. A few drinks eased me down, eased me off. And sometimes when the troubles got too intense, I drank more than I thought that I meant to, than I thought I would. And then I got drunk sometimes, and I got in trouble. And then those well-meaning people who did not see how I felt, but only saw how I looked, would say things like, If you would do something about your drinking, you'd be all right. And every fiber of my being would say, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're another one of the babbits, the drabs, the gray people. Isn't there any place for me? And so I moved around a lot, looking for people like me, and I did a lot of things. And I…
You know, I had my ups and downs. One spring, Junior Chamber of Commerce Young Man of the Year. That fall, playing piano in a whorehouse 2,000 miles away. That… that's hard to work those things into a resume. You just… One spring at the University of Texas at El Paso, directing a grand opera. That winter, directing a Christmas pageant in a Texas insane asylum. It really is hard to get a… really a constructive grasp.
One spring, I was working in Dallas at the largest advertising agency in the South, writing some old ads. Some of you may remember, about Elsie and Elmer the Cow, and those mopes, and all their boredom products. And later that same year, waking up on the floor of the Phoenix drunk tank, and a guy had just got done kicking my front teeth out, because I'd vomited on his bunk. Remember that time, thank God I'd been in psychoanalysis, because I'd… was almost instantly able to identify his problem. I, uh… I remember thinking, this… this sumbitch is overreacting.
And eventually, I lost the things that I thought were holding me back. I lost my children. Never did… I didn't think I'd see them again. I lost my wife. My father stopped talking to me. I… he cried when he saw me, and he finally just stopped talking to me. The day he came, he had to come to my jail cell and tell me that my little son had died while I was out drunk the night before, and he just couldn't stand the pain anymore.
There wasn't any Al-Adam that he knew about, it's just that he couldn't take anymore. And, uh, my mother would send me a Bible verse from time to time, but that… hard to make bail with a Bible verse, folks. But I know that she meant well, and I was touched by it, but I just thought, that's just the way it is. Why does everybody else… why can they live simply, and why have I been cursed with perception?
And sensitivity, and intelligence, and… why do I get these moods that spoil everything just when I get something I want? And I went to AA, because people said to me, you have a drinking problem, go to AA and you can stay working here. So I'd go to AA, and it seemed to me, I don't know if I ever heard it, but it seemed to me for years, every time I was in a jackpot, I'd go back to that stinking A&A, and I'd be sitting there with a bunch of other mopes, and some old gaunt fool would stand at the podium with sunken cheeks, and he'd say, friends, I stayed drunk for 40 years, night and day. Alcohol has been my only problem. And one day I walked through that door, and the desire to drink left me instantly, and I knew I was home.
[01:10:05]
They told me to put the plug in the jug, and I did. And I've just never been so goddamn happy. I don't… I don't know if I ever heard that, but I'll tell you, baby, I thought I did. I don't know what it did for the other Listers, but… And I finally wound up in a place where a person like me can't wind up. I wound up being thrown out of the AA club in Los Angeles, sober, because they caught me stealing the coffee money at a meeting, in desperation.
I got thrown out of the Tender Loving Care Club, down in, say, Ocean Park, that had been started by an AA who had seen a better way to go, and started the Tender Loving Care Club, and he finally threw me out, and the next year he changed his name to Synanon, and if I'd have stuck with him, I'd have been something today, I'll tell you. Somebody come up to me on this deck when I'm transplanting myself, and they say they're not stopping at Mazatlan, they want to know what that means, I just rip out a rattlesnake and say, boom, boom, get him.
A little short of drinking water, boom, boom, get him. And I wound up on Skid Row, and I wound up getting thrown out of places like the Midnight Mission, and banned out of the Union Rescue Mission, and I couldn't believe it. How can this be? Because if I could have just found the place where I fit, I could have been something. I could have been something. And I drink too much, but I don't, sometimes drinking is a terrible problem, but unlike a real alcoholic, drinking is not the problem.
Drinking is a reaction to being cursed with perception, and sensitivity, and being exposed to the unfairness of a world run by babbits and clods, and people who say we care and don't give a damn. And one morning I remember selling a pint of blood in that Skid Row, and they wouldn't take my blood anymore because I didn't have enough iron in my blood. You think that's funny, huh? Wait till you get to the part where I lose my leg.
I did grow new ones, screw you. And that morning I thought maybe I've been born in the wrong century, or the wrong country, or the wrong planet, but something's terribly wrong, and I had no idea. That morning I thought I'll go out to that stinking A&A one more time, and I'll hustle them, and I'll pretend to play their sick little game that I've been doing for nine years, and I'll pretend to sell out.
And I went out there, walked 71 blocks, and it was nice October rain, and I got there, and I was banned, and I had to talk to a guy who let me in to be rejected. And I got in the back room, and I had no idea that morning, or the next morning, or the next week, or the next month that that would be my sobriety date. And that was in 1958, and since then I haven't had a drink, or a pill, or any marijuana.
And something has changed, I don't weigh 111 pounds anymore, I got front teeth, I got fag white shoes like Keith. I said hello to the captain just the other day, I said, Hi, Captain. Covering up his affection. You know, a man in that position can't play favorites. Well, God, there he is now. Rarely have we seen a person… And the funny thing is, since 1950, the only therapy I've had is alcoholics and addams.
Now, I want to say something kind of quickly, because we have such lovely gifts at your place tonight, I don't want to hold you here very long. But you know, the most important thing I have said tonight, or I will say before I sit down, I said, My name is Clancy Imuslin, and I am an alcoholic. Because I literally bet my life I was not an alcoholic based on the definitions of alcoholics that I had heard.
Because I cannot truly be an alcoholic. Because I cannot truly be an alcoholic because alcohol is not the basic problem. And it took me almost my life to discover that if my problem is alcohol, I am not an alcoholic.
[01:15:00]
Now doesn't that sound strange? An alcoholic is a person whose problem is not alcohol. If your problem is alcohol, it can be solved in no time. A person whose problem is alcohol will say is a person whose life is pretty well, goes pretty well some of the time except when he drinks too much and gets into problems. If your problem is alcohol, you don't have to go to these dreary meetings anymore. You just, next time you get sober, don't drink anymore.
And just let the life pass off into an endless gray tunnel of dullness. And you can be happy puttering around the flowers at 8.30 every night. But if you suffer from what I suffer from, you may go to your grave and not have the slightest idea of whatever happened. You may just limp from crisis to crisis and injustice to injustice and problem to problem and disappointment and disillusionment and fear and resentment and build a veneer of studied insolence to conceal the mounting feeling of terror and inadequacy and never have the slightest clue what the hell was wrong.
And it is not alcohol. We are not here in this meeting, we are not here on this ship to discuss alcohol. It's something called alcoholism. Now you think, same thing, alcohol, alcoholism, some synonymous terms, not quite. If your problem is alcohol, there may be some members of the staff here with that problem. I was watching that wake today, there was a funny smell like burning leaves in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, coming down from that deck.
We'll find it, Captain, shut up. But we in AA don't judge. But if your problem is alcohol, when you get sober, only one thing is necessary. You say, hey man, that stuff is eating me up, I ain't gonna drink it anymore. To hell with it. And that's the end of it. No further treatment or therapy is required, except you may have to get patched up. But if your problem is alcoholism, when you get sober, unfortunately, it looks exactly the same.
It looks the same to your family, it looks the same to your friends, it looks the same to your clergyman, if you have one. It looks the same to your employer, it looks the same as a ruler, your doctor. And most lethally, it seems to look the same to the patient. And nobody ever seems to know the difference between a person with an alcohol problem and one who is doomed to die from alcoholism, is that in alcoholism, the disease continues after you stop drinking.
But you don't notice it because you don't slur your words anymore, and you don't stumble and fall down, and you're straight. And people die because they don't realize what alcohol, how it manifests itself, is not in simple, smellable ways. It manifests itself, it somehow seems to settle in the human emotions. It seems to settle in human perceptions. You know, all my life, I thought, once I can find truth, I'll have it together.
And I found truth several times, and I was disillusioned to discover that truth is, tomorrow is invalid. Yesterday's truth, they don't know about it. Now, what is truth? If I could justify it, I bet more mankind has searched for truth and found truth and wondered why it doesn't work. It took me a long time to discover that truth, it seems to me, truth is merely how things appear to me. That is truth as I see it.
It is not reality, it is as I see it. If, an old analogy, but it's still valid, this podium is covered with these big book covers. If I see those big book covers as green, all of you telling me they're blue won't make any difference. Because I see them, I know what they are. And you're either kidding me or it's some kind of a practical joke or you don't know any better. Now, that's a pretty obvious thing.
But in the world of emotional perceptions, alcoholism seems to afflict me to, in a sense, make me emotionally colorblind to some degree. It makes me see things more negatively. It makes me see things out of perspective. It makes me demand more out of the world. And little by little, my perspectives of things get divorced from other people's perspective of things, although we're both looking at the same thing.
And I know they don't understand and my feelings are different. And one day you get to a point of strain and you have to find some way to resolve it. Now, that doesn't make you an alcoholic.
[01:20:00]
There are millions of people like that who are not alcoholics. They are called intense neurotics. Something else has to be present to be an alcoholic. Alcohol has to do something special inside of you to make things look all right again. Now, way over 90% of people who drink don't have that facility. You know, that's why social drinkers can say things like, Oh, no more for me, I'm starting to feel it.
You just want to grab them and say, That's when it gets good, you dumbbell. Alcohol has to alter my perspective almost instantly. But I don't even know it. It just seems to make everything all right again. And when I go on the wagon, things go to hell again. And that's why it's so difficult in AA, because we are constrained to tell you things that when you're new, that you know to be untrue, because you see them differently.
You can see them differently. That's why sometimes you can go to your sponsor and say, That guy's trying to hurt me. And your sponsor says, No, he isn't. That just tells you your sponsor isn't aware. That's all. Well, if you go to see how he is when you're not here. Lady on a passing bus looked at me funny. No, she didn't. Yeah, she did. Were you there? Yeah. That's kind of funny examples, but it interferes with every area of your life.
You wind up in situations that are just egregiously bad, because you wind up as a grown-up person with a grown-up brain and grown-up intelligence and grown-up abilities and grown-up everything, and having to compromise it with the emotions of a child. Childish emotions, distorting and warping. And I'll tell you, the curse of alcoholism is not that you can't get sober, not that you can't go on the wagon, not that you can't clench your fists, but that sooner or later, scientists say in some cases, you have to save your sanity, you must drink alcohol.
And later, you don't know why you did it, so when you're questioned, you maybe find a hook to put it on. Well, that guy said this to me, but in your heart of hearts, I don't know why I did it. I just know that I've been treated badly. Now, this particular combination of things is called alcoholism. Alcohol does something special, and sobriety also does something special, but in a negative way. And I never met an alcoholic yet who couldn't prove that he wasn't really an alcoholic, because his problem really wasn't alcohol.
That's why people in AA who don't know any better search through therapies and therapies and therapies, all of whom are searching themselves to find something that works as well as AA. I've had the privilege of sponsoring a psychiatrist in AA, and I think of all the boobs paying him $50 an hour all day, so he can give them answers that I gotta give them at night for nothing. There's just something wrong with that.
You know. I'll tell you, it's a funny thing. I want to say this and sit down. I know somebody has turned on the red light. Newcombe. Well, Newcombe, good luck in finding a new group. I'm sure you'll find half of them. I'm not a tyrant, I just direct. But I want to say just before I sit down is this. That's why, that's why you can't get sober and stay sober just by shaping up. Because forces beyond your control and emotional reactions beyond your control gradually warp reality according to truth as you see it.
And as truth gets further away from the other people see it, you must begin bending reality to fit what you see. And bending reactions and bending life and bending why they're doing it. You gotta find ways to do it. And without even being aware of it, it's a conditioned reflex. It's nothing that takes a great deal of thought. And you can prove you're not an alcoholic. And you can prove that probably the words that most common of all people like me.
If only. If only. And when it gets bad enough those other three words that bring the end of the torture you say. What's the use? Jesus. I would have been alright except if only. If only. If they. Doesn't anybody really care how I feel? Doesn't anybody know? And that's why if you're new we suggest to you or not so new. If you're sober a while and caught up in negativism and feeling bad all the time.
I'm gonna tell you something. You're being screwed. There's gotta be a better way. Because if there weren't nuts like me would be back in the insane asylum.
[01:25:04]
Another suicide attempt or I would be dead in a little gravestone somewhere as I almost was once. That's why we say to you no matter how slick you are or how much you know or where you've been. Or how hip you can be. When your emotions are out of whack. You gotta remember you don't know it. You feel it. And you gotta find the same way to resolve them. What AA is for? It's program. It's sponsors. You gotta find a sponsor I think whom you cannot manipulate.
Having a sponsor isn't worth a pitch or a warm spit if you're handling him. He's gotta handle you. Somehow. But the purpose of all this is to superimpose reality over what I see. And act differently somehow before I see it. Especially in moments of crisis. That can happen when you're 25 years sober. As by being seen by watching people 25 years sober get drunk. Or 20 years sober. Or 32 years sober. People who now know the answers and therefore I can find a way out of this.
And one day their vision of truth is diverged too far from reality and they must go down. I think in a sense the concept of AA is this. If I see this AA cover as green. And I go to my sponsor and say what colors or he says to me what colors that AA cover. I say it's green. He said that's okay. But starting now act like it's blue. When someone asks you, you say it's blue. But that would be selling out.
You better sell out baby. Because there ain't much of a market for people like you. Now that's a simple thing in covers. But it's an emotional perspective. Is there anyone who's been sobering like the time who hasn't had their bacon saved. By having someone or something superimpose a reality that they couldn't hardly accept. But acted through it and later graciously took credit for it. While in the old days we just automatically did these things.
You knew people. It's nonsense. We are all people who oddly enough walk a tightrope. But it's a wide tightrope if you're taking the actions that enable people to stay here. Doing wrong things don't get you drunk. Stopping doing right things gets you drunk. Because when you do wrong things you get guilty and stop being around people who want you to act right I guess. And so you stop doing them. But the purpose of AA is to gradually squeeze out the things that destroy you little by little.
By adding increments of conditioned action that make your perspective fall into line with the world. And when that happens you got them. You got them. It's kind of funny today I want to say before I sit down. I worked my way back up to the ladder and eventually my family came back. All my daughters are standing back there smirking at me. He held us back. He held us back. Give us money and we'll forgive you.
My son's in law in the casino going through what few pennies I have left. But it's nice. I got some jobs. I got back and I got advertising. I got back in television. I got back in radio. And I got back to being slick. And I got on a home out by the ocean. And AA so warped. You got to remember one thing. When you're warping your perspective back stop. Because I kept going a little too long. And one day I swept right by where I'd been.
And I found myself in an odd situation. I found myself resigning a job as a marketing director. And starting the next day running the mission on Skid Row that had thrown me out 16 years before. And my friends some of them were flabbergasted. Why would you do that? Give up a career that you fought for to go back to Skid Row? And I told them. I said I told that sumbitch I'd be back. They guaranteed me such a significant decrease in salary.
It just drew me right in. And I got back. Such a significant decrease in salary. It just drew me right in. I want to say this to you. Even if you go work the AA program. And go to meetings. And say yes to AA requests. And don't get an unlisted phone number. And allow yourself to be inconvenienced once in a while. Even if you do all these things. We can't guarantee you. If you do all these things, we can't guarantee you that in 15 years, you'll have your own mission, you know, you may, who knows, there's only a limited number of missions for people like that, but I think I can guarantee you that you will not have to drink to feel the way you have to feel to live, of all the gifts I've gotten in AA, it's nice to have, I just, I'd give my life for my children, my little son, the only reason he's not here with his mother,
[01:30:11]
is because he made the football team this fall, and if he misses a practice, it's all over, and between the coach, but between the football team and the crews, there's no question, you know, Bon Voyage, Jack, I gotta go throw a block, you know, but I'd give my life for my family, I'd do a lot of things, but the greatest gift ever, the thing that makes it all possible, is that somehow, by subordinating my judgment to people whose view of reality is better than mine, and being willing to do it today if it hurts, again, of being active, of never saying no to an AA request, since my sponsor suggested it in 1959, of doing a lot of things, it's nice to be on this ship, it's nice to have found God that I talk to twice a day, it's nice to be with friends, it's nice to be anything, but the thing that makes it all possible, is that by doing these things, somehow, when I walk down the street in downtown Los Angeles, or Pittsburgh, or New York, or on this dolphin deck of the Vera Cruz, I can look around and think to myself, my God, I feel the way they look, and it all becomes worthwhile. Thank you.