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Source: DICOBE-00482 – Dick W – TEXAS STATE CONV – 1973-06-30.mp3 File: dicobe-00482-dick-w-texas-state-conv-1973-06-30.mp3 Duration: 00:59:44
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Good morning. Courtesy of Smirnoff Vodka. I don't know what got you here. I had to shoot my way into AA, actually. I told Midge that this morning. Girl. You know, I had, when Circe called me to come down here, I said, oh, Circe, I said, I just recently spoke over in Longview and Texas City and Oklahoma City, and he said, no, I said, this is a whole different ballpark. This is Dallas. And he said, people down here haven't heard you speak. So I let him con me. But as I got on the plane, I began to have trepidation. That means I got scared.
And by the time I got here, I was practically a basket case because every other person I met said, hey, I just heard you in Oklahoma City. Hey, I just heard you over in Longview. Hey, that's a pretty frightening thing. It really is, because I have never thought that I had too much to say, just my own story. And then I pick up the menu here, and it says Dick W. is going to analyze the 12 steps. I've never done it. How can I start now? So I bought a 12×12. I've got two of them at home, but I hadn't looked at them for quite a while. And I got up at 4.30 this morning. I'd gotten in bed about 1, and I began to read 12×12. And I got up to step 8, and I went to sleep. So I'm not going to try to attempt to analyze the 12 steps. I told Cersei, I said, there's no way, no way that I'm going to do that. Alabama, I call her the little shepherdess of North Hollywood, our clubhouse out there in the valley. Alabama was there when I came into the program. And I've known her since I came in, and she is one of the most beloved persons in all of the entire valley area. She is one of the most ceaseless workers. And I've taken a great page out of her book. This is the action that they talk about that we are supposed to take if we want long-time contented sobriety. We have a number of people around our clubhouse who are old-timers.
And I have watched these people, and they take action. It's been mentioned here, that magic word action has been mentioned up here by every speaker so far. And I'm not going to break the chain now, because I have found that by maintaining my own action, as little as it might be at times, I have been able to maintain my sobriety, such as it is, since June the 12th of 1960. So, as my wife said when she gave me a cake on June the 12th this year, she said, Now you're a teenager. And she smiled and she said, And that's just about it.
When I came to the program, my original sponsor had 11 years in the program, and I just sat in awe of that fantastic, tremendous 11 years. I didn't dare even think about it. And then I was present the night that he got his cake for his 13th year. And I thought, Oh boy, wouldn't that be wonderful if I ever lived that long. For people who are new here, that might seem like a tremendous amount of time. And it is, until you get there, and then you look back, and from wherever you are, six months, one year, two years, five years, it happens so rapidly, because I don't have to hurt physically. Emotionally, yes, because I'm not that much different sober than I was while I was drinking. And with the added thing that now that I don't drink and I don't pill and I don't shoot, drop, pop, and so on, I have no place to hide. And for a character like myself, who has been accustomed to hiding all of my life in something, to be brought in here and to be plunked down and be told,
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Now you're living in reality. Oh my God. I made a little note to myself here whilst I was looking at the book this morning, and it put me in mind, I thought, You know, you hear some strange things as you go to meetings, and I usually make notes. I'll have a piece of paper and a pencil with me, or a pen, and I'll make notes. And there was a little gal up talking one night, I don't think it was out at the clubhouse in North Hollywood, but she was talking about false pride, greed, lust, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth, and she said, They are the seven deadly enemas. I love those little Freudian slips, don't you? Yeah, I wondered what Maurice was doing here this morning when I saw all these girls come up. I don't know whether he and I are Felix Symbols and we're going to make a nudie movie or what. And you'd notice he knew every name of every girl that came up here. Well, analyze the twelve steps. I began to drink, and that's about the extent of my analyzing the twelve steps, because I was told, when I was very new in the program, I said, Mr.
W., that was my sponsor, Larry B. from North H., and he said, Mr. W., he said, Do not analyze, utilize. And when I would ask him questions about the steps, he would say, I'm busy. Read the book. This is a man that you don't argue with. And I found out very early in the game that when he called me Mr. W., he was after me. When it was Dick, you know, we were friends, but when it was Mr. W., he was after me. He has twenty-eight years in the program. I have screamed. I have hollered at him. I have told him that he's full of and that he's ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent full of it, but I was going to hang around and see what that other one-tenth of one percent was that enabled him to stay sober for twenty-eight years. And he looked at me, smiled, and he said, Mr. W., you'll learn, because you will live it. You will live it. I never was, as a child, I always had a beautiful concept of life. I don't know where I got it, but I always felt that life was beautiful and things were beautiful and people were nice and everything. But, you know, even back then, and this was when I was five years old, as I remember, or as I've been reminded, they found me one day out by the garage of my grandfather's place with my nose poked into the opening of a five-gallon gasoline can, and I'd passed out.
I was five years old, and already I had found a substance to pass me out. And when I came to, my grandfather spanked me. He was so relieved. I never liked my grandfather too well. Well, I don't know when the rejection syndrome set in, but I have talked to many psychiatrists and psychologists, a number of them, in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and they have come to the considered opinion that the majority of alcoholics suffer from a rejection syndrome.
And I had to reflect, by golly, I've got it. And I had to remember that when I first came to the program, I'd walk into a meeting and I would back up against the wall by the door and I'd cross my arms and stand there. And if no one came over and said hello to me, I said, see, I knew it. I knew it. And I'd leave. I set myself up to be rejected. You will learn a lot of things about yourself the longer you're in the program, and I feel that I have only just now begun. I don't know whether sniffing that gasoline at age five ruins some brain cells or not. I've been accused of it at times, of being retarded. Especially after I'd been in the program for a few years, I got over into
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the psychic and the occult and a buff of astrology and all that sort of things. I began to write books on out-of-body travel and ghosts and all that sort of thing. And a lot of my friends said that W. was a real bad alcoholic. He came to AA, he sobered up, and then he lost his mind. Some of the people here have reminded me that there are some of the people here who have not heard some of the idiot things that I did while I was drinking. There's one little Virgo girl down here in the front who asked me if I would particularly tell about an incident that happened during my drinking. You know, the second step says that we will be seeking a return to sanity or relieve us of our insanity. Now that bothered me for a long time, and I've had some talks with a lot of people about that insanity. And I have come to the conclusion that, and I have heard that Bill Wilson, when he was asked what his opinion was, if there was anything in the big book that he might possibly change, any one word or sentence or anything, he said, well, possibly the word insanity to restore us to sanity. He said, we're not insane.
We're not insane. The things that we do make us appear to be nuts whilst drinking. But he said, when we're not drinking, the majority of alcoholics, and this is the opinion of psychiatry also, that we are emotionally disturbed, distraught, aberrant, variant, but it's not insanity. And for so long, I went around for the first two or three years saying, I'm insane, I'm insane. And finally, Larry B. said, well, you knock that off.
He said, I'm getting sick and tired of you talking about how insane you are. And then, of course, I went the other way. So he sat me down one day, and he said, well, now, as far as that insanity thing goes, he said, tell me some of the things you did while you were drinking. So I said, well, you know, I did this and that and the other. He said, well, that's normal. I drank up in a tree. He said, well, that's normal. I shot up my house. He said, that's normal. He said, but that's not insane.
He said, but that's not insane. And I had to finally just let go of that word insanity, because sober, I am just about like any other human being. The only difference between me and them is that I can't drink. I can't drink. I can allow myself just so much resentment, just so much rage, so much hate, so much self-pity. And then I have to be aware of what I'm doing and pull myself back. This is part of the growing up process that I have found. And boy, I'm telling you, it is murder for me to try to grow up. The first 45 years of my childhood damn near killed me.
Is Father Larry here this morning? Are you back there, Father Al? Great. This young priest whom I've met down here around these areas, we were having a talk yesterday with Woody Woodrow, the three of us sitting there having a talk. And he said, well, you know, I don't drink. I don't drink. I don't drink. I don't drink. He was Woody Woodrow, the three of us sitting there having a talk. We got into the God concept thing about what's your idea of God, what's your concept of God, and so on. And he put it a very beautiful way, and I said, may I steal that? So he said, yeah.
Now I'm giving him full credit for it. You look at a picture, and you can tell something about the artist by the way that they draw. So you know what I'm getting to already. God has drawn a picture, and we're part of it. We're right in the middle of it. We can tell a lot about the artist by what he has drawn. I don't know whether that makes any impression on anyone else or not, but what a magnificent picture, and yet many of us question the existence of God.
Then we talked about the fact that we will reach out and say, God help me. And the man upstairs Help Me, and the man upstairs, and I have come to believe in this program, maybe I haven't
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made too much progress, but the God isn't out there, over there, up there, or around there, He's in here. Because if God is God, then He has always been, is, and He always will be, and if I'm one of His kids, I've always been, am, and always will be. So I, but I, I still continue to look outside of myself for my help. And we got talking about dependency and independence. I never thought that I had any great dependency on anyone or anything, and I come to find out that I have been totally dependent on others all of my life. And since I've come to Alcoholics Anonymous, you people, through my dependency upon you, have enabled me to become somewhat independent, because you've helped me get up on my own two feet. You're there when I need you, and I need you all the time, but I need you more at some times than I do others. And if I was wondering why I was invited down here to speak, it was because of that. Because on the plane, I actually got very, very disturbed.
I became angry. I said, why did you put yourself into this position of going down there and repeating your story before a bunch of people who've already heard it? And I said, God, why did you let this happen to us? Can you get us out of this? And there was no answer. Oh, how I waited for that voice. It just never happened. Or if it's happened, it's been so low that I couldn't hear it. But when I did ask for help, finally, very quietly, very quietly, after I got out of Van Nuys jail, I came to AA. And I have been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since then. I cannot envision any other way of life. This is what I know now. This is what I have been seeking all of my life. I don't have to justify myself to you people.
I don't have to apologize to you people. I don't have to wonder if you're looking down your nose at me for the things that I did or the things that I tell you publicly. Because the more things that I reveal to you, the more you seem to love me and the more you seem to accept me. That's pretty odd. In today's society, we are on oasis. Alcoholics Anonymous is a real oasis. You look around you about the things that are going on, and our very strength is not in any leadership. It's right within every individual within this room and within these meetings throughout this country and around the planet. And I think one of the biggest things about having a conference, a convention, a celebration, is the fellowship, but even more so is to get all this power that is within us within one room and let everybody else see that it works. What a tremendous amount of spiritual power there is here. I have a particular, particularly warm feeling for y'all down here in Texas. And I should imagine that I've spoken in just about every place there is in Texas, so I'm doing a swan song. It seemed like every other month I was invited down to Texas to speak. My wife says, they love you in Texas. I said, yeah, I think I'll move down there. She said, they won't ask you no more. That drinking up in a tree, I was, by that time, I was buying my vodka in those half-gallon bottles and putting it in a little cradle, and I set it up high, and I put a nozzle on it so I could, you know, go by it and hit it like a fast draw, and then carom off the walls and wait for my wife to make a comment. And she always did,
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ultimately. And then I was out the door, around the drive, up into my walnut tree, where I had a bottle hidden. I told a psychiatrist about that, and she said, what did you think about up there? That kind of put me down, you know, and I said, well, what does any 44-and-a-half-year-old ape think about up in a tree with a jug? Nobody knew where I was. Then she asked the $64 question. She said, whom did you think cared?
When we get to the place that we get in our drinking, most of us, we are sure that we are the sinner-sure of all eyes. We're seeking love, yet we're throwing it back. We are destroying the very thing that we want. My wife used to come out, because that'd be right around dinnertime that I'd do that, and she'd come out and call for me. I'm squatting up there with my toes curled around a branch. She would come out calling for me, and I'd say, look down, there's a stupid broad. She didn't know where I was. I didn't know where I was. If I'd have had a tail, I'd have swung.
I imagine if I'd kept on drinking, that's what would have happened. But that was normal. I tell you, that was normal for me. I was quite active. I was a practicing alcoholic, and I was also a gun collector. Now, that's always recommended for a practicing alcoholic. I had 56 guns that I'd collected around the country. My favorite was a .357 Magnum that I had had adapted to my own hand. It all really jazzed up. I used it in a series I did called U.S. Border Patrol. But I liked that gun. It had an attraction. It was such a beautiful thing. I used to look at it from time to time and say, I wonder if you're the one. I wonder if you're the one what? Well, I figured that sooner or later, I was going to shoot myself. I was going to kill myself, and that was going to be maybe the gun that did it. I was sitting in my living room one night. My agent was sitting about 20 feet across the room from me. I was sitting in my favorite shooting chair up at the head of the room, and I had this .357 Magnum in my hand. I just, you know, hang it aside and finalize, pull it up, boom! I pulled off a shot at him. He was about half-bagged, and he said, it cracks when it goes by. The hole is still in the sash of the window. It missed him about that far, went above his head.
You know, it was a hip draw. It was the best I could do. What did I think about when I pulled off that shot at that guy? And he said what he said. A so-called normal person would have been pretty disturbed at what they'd almost done. I looked at him, and I thought, you idiot, next time I'll aim, because oh my God, how I hated myself. What was I doing? I was turning it on someone else, turning it on someone else. I also, right around that period, I began carrying three guns on me, those little rimfire .41 Derringers that they used to use on the riverboats and the gamblers used to use down around here in Texas. One at my ankle, one at the waist, one on the armpit, or one up the sleeve, you know. Somebody said, well, what'd you carry so many for? I said, well, you don't know what position you'll be in when you have to get to them. The interesting thing was, there was nobody after me, to my knowledge. But that was normal for me. And it's an interesting thing, and Alabama knows this, that whenever they get a call from a person who wants to try to begin to start maybe AA, and they are a gunman, guess who they call? Well, I got news for you, baby, I don't know what to do with them. And I'm scared to death of them. I'm really scared. Because I don't do those things anymore, my way of living, my way of thinking has changed.
I hope that it has improved. Not that I don't walk under my walnut tree and look up and see that character sitting there. I can still see him in my mind's eye. I got on a plane to get
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down to Miami to make the last four shows of a series that I was doing, that one that I mentioned, U.S. Border Patrol. I wore a smoky bear hat and chased aliens in that series. And usually I didn't start drinking early in the day, but this day I did. And I drank what the stewardess would allow me to have. I think at that time they wouldn't serve you over Texas or something. You people were drinking it all on the ground here. And I drank what I had brought along with me. It wasn't too much. And I got off in New Orleans, and somehow in that short 20-minute stop, I managed to find a fifth. And I got back on the plane, had a couple of snorts to get comfortable, and then I got two guys across the aisle involved in conversation with me. And you people who have heard this before, if you please bear with me, they said there was one person here who hadn't heard it. So I'm talking to them. And I asked them questions like, where are you from? This one guy, and he said, Germany. I said, you live there? He said, yes, I live and work there. I said, you an American citizen? He said, yes. I said, you know, just make conversation. I said, you have to have a passport. He said, no, I don't have a passport. Any Border Patrol chief knows you got to have a passport. If you're an American citizen, you live and work outside this country.
So I asked the guy with him, I said, where are you from? And he said, around. So I got out a piece of paper and a pencil, and I began to make notes. I'd ask them questions. I'd say, is that right? And when I thought I had enough information, I called the stewardess and said, would you like to speak to the captain, please? And she said, what about? Who are you? Now, I did not tell her that I was the chief.
I pulled my attache case out from under the seat, and it had one of those big blue and gold U.S. Border Patrol Bureau of Immigration. Oh, very impressive. I wish I was half as smart, sober as I was brilliant when I was drinking. And you know, if my wife had been along on that trip, that incident probably wouldn't have happened, because with that much flit, about a fifth and a half in me, my left eye rolled over in the corner, like a tilt machine, you know, and the red light goes on. Well, she wasn't there, the eye was over there, but they didn't notice it. And when I came into show business 33 years ago, one of the first things they told me was, always drink like a man. Now, I don't know whether I drank like a man, a woman, a dog, or what I drank like, but I always walked straight, I always articulated, that left eye would go.
The stewardess, I finally talked her into taking me up to the pilot's cabin. I count the pilot, the co-pilot, the radio operator, and the engineer. I read my notes, I told my story, and the captain says, what do you want me to do? I took over the plane, you know. I said, when you get close enough to Miami, you call your office, call the board patrol, tell the chief to meet me at the bottom of the ramp, I got a couple of live ones back there. And he said, I'll do it, and he did. We landed in Miami, they had ramps in those days, I was the first one down the ramp, naturally. I was very active. And there was no chief there, but there was a cordon of men lined up, and there was a truck with a searchlight on it going around, and I wondered who was coming in, and it was me.
Because the word had gone out that a border patrol chief has two spies on flight 704. So as these gentlemen alighted from the ramp, I took them by the cuffs of their coats, and I said, gentlemen, you will remain here, this is a citizen's arrest, till the proper authorities arrive, and with that, the proper authorities who were over there arrived. And they said, who are you? And I told them, I said, who are you? And they lined us up and marched us across Miami Airport, down into the interrogation room, and since these were the spies, they put them up on a table, and put me in a nice, comfortable chair. And I read my notes and told my story. There were six police in that room. The sergeant was conducting the interview, and these guys were sitting there shaking, and with great, pristine glory, I was reading all these things about these guys. So I got through, and I reached under the seat and pulled out my attache case, opened it up, took out my jug.
Seat and pulled out my attaché case, opened it up, took out my jug.
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I'm glad you're proud of me. Because it'd been a long story and I was thirsty. Not only that, I was a practicing alcoholic and I was trying to hit bottom and I was having a hell of a time finding it. So the sergeant looked at me, they all looked at me, and I guess they saw their left eye or in the corner. The sergeant looked at the two guys and he said, you gentlemen may go. He looked at me, he says, you better go too.
Well, they didn't like what I'd done. In four days, about the morning of the fourth day, we were out in the Everglades shooting some scenes and a very personable young man approached me and he said, are you Richard W.? I said, yes, he said, here. They were subpoenas. Quarter of a million dollars against my ex-boss, quarter of a million dollars against National Airlines, quarter of a million dollars against me and $47,000 punitive damage.
$797,000 worth. I said, baby, if you're gonna go, go big, you know. If I settle for one, take three, they're small. What was my reaction to that? Case of mistaken identity. Could have happened to anyone. But it didn't happen to anyone, it happened to me. I set it up, didn't I? There was no amount of rationalizing. I tried my best to rationalize that and justify it to people, to attorneys. One battery of attorneys even threw out my case, we won't touch you.
So I had to get another one. I told my wife, I said, these guys set me up for this. Those police were against me, they were trying to get me in trouble. Had nothing to do with that booze, had nothing to do with me or what I had done. Here I was very successful in my own industry that I'd worked very hard to get ahead in for 20 years. I was destroying it. I was rejecting those things and I was rejecting myself.
There's that rejection syndrome again. So, four years later, which was three years after I came to the program, I had to return to Miami to stand trial for that little caper. And I called Larry B., and I said, Larry, they're only after money. And he said, how much was it? I said, $797,000. He said, yes. And I said, well, I ain't going. He said, Mr. W., our book says that we will be willing to make amends, clear up the wreckage of your past.
I said, well, I'm willing, but I ain't going. Because I could see myself breaking coral in a striped suit down in St. Augustine for the rest of my life. A few more talks like that, and I went back to Miami on National Airlines, very quietly. It was on a Monday morning, as I remember, that I flew down there and the stewardess came by with her tray of drinks. She said, would you like to have something to drink?
And I said, no, I have to be home by next month. I arrived in Miami, and I went right to my aunt's place where I was going to stay. And I looked in the telephone book, because you people had told me that wherever you go, you can find AA, and by God, you'd better evade yourself of it. I looked in the telephone book, and I found, I think it was Friendship Club down there in Miami. It no longer exists now.
I called them up, and they weren't too far from where I was staying. I didn't get a car or anything. I trotted over to the clubhouse. I busted in there, and I said, my name is Dick W.. I'm an alcoholic. I'm from California. I'm down here to get tried, and I need help. And I spent the next three days there at the clubhouse from the time it opened until the time it closed. And the day that the trial opened in the Miami courthouse, all out through the audience were members from the Friendship Club.
Little smile, little wink. Judge would call a recess, and there they were around me. I had trouble going to the men's room. I'd ask for help, and by God, they were going to see that I got it. They were right there. The trial was four days long, and for the first time in my life, I took the stand. And I told the truth in public to the best of my ability. You know, they poke a microphone practically down your throat.
Seven-man jury sitting over here, this audience of people, and the attorney out there asking me all these questions. I admitted that I was an alcoholic.
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I admitted that I'd done all these things. I admitted that I lied in my deposition, and I lied in my statement. The judge was sitting there. It was kind of a hot day, and he had his hands like this, and every once in a while, he'd look at me. You better believe it. Every once in a while, I said, God, you know what's going on down here. So the jury was out about two-and-a-half hours, and I was positive that the moment that they had gotten into the caucus room, or whatever you call it, that they had already judged me guilty, and now they were setting the penalty.
And it'd be St. Augustine, you know, the whole bit. Well, when they came back in and found out they'd been watching the World Series, everybody got off of the general charge of $250,000, and I was guilty on the punitive damage charge, $47,000. And immediately, that little voice said, see what you'll get for telling the truth. Those plaintiffs were awarded a dollar apiece, because they had lied on the stand, and I'd tried to tell the truth.
And the jury believed me, because they saw all the clippings that had been in all the newspapers, including the New York Post, and they said, this guy has got to be telling the truth, or he's, you know, insane, and he should be put away. They even said later that they had talked about going and preparing a place for me. Dollar apiece, so they could never sue me again. Well, the judge called me back in his chambers when that was over, and I like to bring this out particularly.
He said, you members of Alcoholics Anonymous, when you're practicing your program, he said, you are beautiful. He said, it is a wonderful thing to watch. He said, you're the fourth member of AA who has appeared before my bench as a defendant. And then he added, you're usually defendants. If there are any visitors here, that was laughter of identification. No one knows us better than ourselves, right?
All we have to do is raise our hand when they say, are there any alcoholics present? We know one another. On the way back from that trial down there in Miami, I was so comfortable and I was so filled with this tremendous sense of gratitude that I decided right then that I would never again question the book, the people, anything about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn't for about three weeks.
If it is true that there are about 850,000 people in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, that's how many ways there are to work this program. Because you take the steps and you interpret those steps in your own way, to your own life. I found out to my own satisfaction that we are not different. We human beings, one from another. There's males and females, thank God. But as far as being different, this we are not.
And now back to the God concept again. Isn't it a pretty tremendous thing to meditate on the fact that there are three and a half billion people on this planet and there are no two fingerprints alike? Isn't that quite an artist that can do that? There have been nine billion people live on this planet and I'm told that there still are no two fingerprints alike. Of those three and a half billion people and the people sitting here, the hundreds of people sitting here in this room, there are no two voice prints alike.
We're not different, but we are unique in that there is not another single living human being on this planet just exactly like me or just exactly like you. What an artist. What an artist. So that is my God concept and I don't want any smaller concept. I like to, when we get to talking about it, and I have read the book where it says God as you understand God, and I like to change that and say God as I don't understand God.
I don't even want to try to understand God. How can I understand something that I'm too small to understand? And if I reduce God to a thing or a mental picture that I can understand,
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he's too small for my wants. So I just want this God thing to remain as big as it is. And you know, when I was new in the program in the first year or two, I would hear the people with a lot of time in the program say, well, the longer you're in the program, the narrower the path gets. The narrower the path gets. That used to scare me. And I'd have talks about it with other people. Now I am living to find out. Yes, that is true.
I have to be more careful now about myself because I know more. But the narrower that that path gets, the broader the horizons get. Now I don't have to watch where I put every foot and look down all the time. Now I can look up. Now I can see the sun shining. All of my life, I looked at people, well, after my childhood, I looked at people as obscure objects. They were there. They were threatening, actually.
And since coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, particularly in the last two, three years, I can look at people, I can look into their eyes now. I can appreciate that they're another human being who feels, acts, and reacts like I do. They have the same instincts and the instinctual desires and drives that I have. And I can appreciate another human being. I am learning to live through you people. And I have only begun to scratch the surface.
I'm going to leave tonight and go back to California because I got a hot business meeting that I've been waiting 13 years for. Wow. Anyway, it hadn't been easy. And I inherited a client. I don't call them babies. I call them clients. I give them a little status. NAA. This client asked me to be his sponsor at his second meeting. And he happened to be a member of the Catholic clergy. He happened to be a brother of this order.
And I said, well, brother, why don't you ask a Catholic boy? And he said, God forbid. He said, Catholics don't like for their clergy to have feet of clay, but you damn Protestants, you don't seem to care. This association with this man has been one of the most rewarding things that my wife and I have ever experienced. We never had a son. This guy is like a son to us. Six months after he came to the program, he was supposed to be dead.
You've met him. Betty. You know who I'm talking about. Alabama. People from out in California there. He was sitting, sleeping, sitting up, plugged into an oxygen bottle, taking 50 to 60 capsules and pills a day. His lungs were so full of fluid that when he coughed, he'd break his ribs. That's normal. Eleven and a half years later, and as of tomorrow morning, he's arriving on a plane in California. He's just returning from Rome where he was ordained a priest in his order.
And I am so proud of this little character that I just can't tell you. Seven of the people, seven of the guys that I've tried to work with are dead of alcoholism. It got to the place where somebody around the clubhouse would ask some guy, Who's your sponsor? And they'd say, Dick W.. They'd say, Oh. Mine were dying. And I told him, I says, Brother, you stay on that path. He says, I'm afraid to drink. I think W. would kill me.
We have a real good working relationship. This new priest and I. He calls me a Protestant bastard and I call him a Catholic bastard. Now you can't keep it much more simple than that. I made a note to myself here. And it says, Of myself, I am nothing. The Father doeth the works. And as we trudge the road to happy destiny around the country, as we meet, meeting to meeting and place to place, would you please remind me of that?
Because I have a tendency also to get off into side issues and become grandiose. Also, to get off into side issues and become grandiose and lose sight of what I'm trying to do, and I begin to drive again.
[00:45:01]
These things I want. These things I've got to have. And then I forget to work the program. I don't drink. But it is the quality of sobriety that I'm talking about. All of us can get a great quantity of sobriety, but it is that quality. And thank God that I was asked to come down here and speak today and horrified when I saw that I was going to analyze Twelve Steps. But that forced me to buy Twelve and Twelve, which I have two at home, and I read it at 4.30 this morning, and it sure was an eye-opener.
That's a great book. That's got a lot of good stuff in it. Well, the last thing I did before shooting my way into AA, I'd been drinking about two-fifths a day for ten days, the last ten days of my drinking. And finally on the last day, which was June the 12th, I took my last drink, I started drinking early in the day and I was out at some guy's house, I don't know, and I came home and my wife, who had been going to Al-Anon for eight months before I came in, for some reason, and she sleeps late in the morning, she was up, she had her clothes on, and she had her running shoes on.
Because when I came in the door, I kicked off my shoes, I pushed over a table, I looked at her, I said, now I'm going to kill you. And with that, she split. She said she ran about six blocks down to a friend's house. Well, I had another couple of drinks, I broke up everything in the house, shot a couple of holes in the house, a couple more. And then I took my bottle and I went into my den and I sat down and I cocked my .357 Magnum so it was fully loaded and stuck it in my mouth and sat there meditating.
And as Larry B. used to ask me, he said, what else would you do at a moment like that? The baby was nursing on his bottle. Now the moment had arrived. Are you going to stay or are you going to go? You know, some of us arrive at that point like I did. Some arrive at it in different ways. But it all means the same thing, you hit the bottom. Now, God had given me many opportunities to straighten up, to come to the program.
I'd been going to meetings for eight months. Drinking, drunk, before, during, after. I couldn't identify, I wouldn't identify with you people. I said, I didn't do what you people did. Oh, listen to that one over there. Holy mackerel, look at that one. And you people said, you keep drinking, you will. And I kept drinking and I did. Now I had reached the bottom. I was sitting in there with that gun in my mouth.
And there was great silence. I wanted to go. I didn't want to go. I was afraid to stay and I was afraid to go. You know, that awful moment. My mother, who was in a wheelchair, had gone into her room to get out of the line of action. And finally I thought, I will call my friends to do this job that I was afraid to do. Meaning the Van Nuys Police Department. Because I'd played, I'd done a lead in a kid's series.
And I'd worked very closely with the police departments all over the country. So I very carefully took the gun out of my mouth. I uncocked it and laid it down. You can get hurt like that. And I called the Van Nuys Police Department. I got a fellow on the phone named Scotty, I found out later. And I told him what I had in mind. They were to come out to my house. We were going to have a shootout in my front yard.
The OK Corral all over again. So Scotty told me what he thought about the idea. It wasn't very complimentary. So I fired the gun alongside the phone. That bullet was still in the parquet floor of my den. There was a short silence as Scotty said he got up off the floor and changed ears. And he said, where do you live Mr. W.? And I told him, he said, we will be out shortly. I said, thank you very much.
What happens to our dignity and our self-respect? What happens to it? I was barefooted, I had on a pair of slacks, no shirt. And I got up and put on my Sam Brown belt. I dressed. Saw that the gun was fully loaded. I didn't want to shoot the police, I wanted them to shoot me. Because I was afraid to. I wanted to go.
[00:50:00]
Well, I don't know, maybe it was 15 minutes. My mother called in and said, there's some men out in the front yard. And I said, thank you very much. I got up and started out of my den down the hall. And I could feel those bullets hitting me. They were going to put nice big holes in me. And the nice cool air. I wouldn't have to suffer anymore. I'd had it. So I turned the corner to step outside my hall there.
I have a mirror and I stop and comb my hair. But wouldn't you? Can't go out with your hair all messed up. Barefooted, pair of slacks, no shirt, Sam Brown belt. You can't go with your head all messed up. So I stepped outside and Scotty had gotten off the desk. To come down, the word had gone out that Captain Midnight had gotten off Ovaltine. I found out later that there were 12 policemen out there and about 3 or 4 photographers.
They'd all been Ovaltine drinkers, I guess. So I advanced to the edge of the roof. I have a very low sloping roof on my house. I advanced to the edge of the roof. Scotty was standing there. My peripheral vision was quite narrow but I could feel these things moving around. It was these people. They had everything trained on me but a 155. And we had a talk. Scotty and I did. Finally I raised my hands and I said, You draw first.
I think I can beat you. They have pictures of me doing that. They have pictures of me doing that. Well, I couldn't have found that gun if I'd had 20 hands. And anyhow, as I said, I didn't want to shoot them. Well, three of the policemen going around behind my house, getting up on the roof, came down. When I did that, they jumped on me. And the next I remember, very vaguely, was lying on the floor of the back seat of the police car.
My hands handcuffed behind me. Two cops with their feet in my back smoking cigarettes. And I'm saying, Well, fellas, this isn't what I meant. Let's go back and do it again. Let's go back and do it again. I'd been in the show business a long time. I wrote that script. I was producing it, directing it, scoring it, starring in it. And they ruined it. All in 15 minutes. Well, I was booked into Van Nuys Jail.
Properly photographed. And I had, and sometimes I talk about this spiritual experience that I think it was that I had. Sometimes I don't. Because, well, I'll go ahead and tell it. I woke up, came to, about four o'clock in the morning, lying on this metal pad. Not a stitch on me. Not a stitch any place in the room. Nothing but me and a thunder mug up at the head of the room. And I got up and I just stood there.
There was a 2,000 watt bulb in the ceiling with mirrors so they could see you. Watch those idiots from the front office. And all of a sudden, I see myself standing over here. And then one of those bars was glowing white hot. And I heard my voice say, God, I embrace the flame. And I walked over and put my arms around this thing. I saw myself do it. And then it just faded out. And that was all there was to it.
But I never forgot it. So, after I'd come to the program, I told that one night, in all naivete, sincerity. And some guy came up to me after meetings. Well, he said, you don't even have to go to meetings. You had a hot flash. You know? You had it, daddy. You know, you're all right. Well, that made me feel pretty bad. And I thought, well, gee, you know, that happened to me. And how am I going to tell it?
Well, then later I heard a story that I used to help qualify that. And that's the Protestant sitting next to a Catholic priest at ringside. And the bell rings. And one of the fighters gets up and crosses himself. And the Protestant said, Father, does that really help him? And the priest said, Only if he can fight, my son. Only if he can fight. We don't fight. And Alcoholics Anonymous, if I have to fight my alcoholism, if I have to fight a drink, I'm going to lose.
I have to turn my drink problem, my emotional problem, and my spiritual problems over to a power greater than myself, whom I do not understand, but whom I know is there. Some might say that this is blind faith. I think it's wide-open-eyed faith. Because I can see around me what God has done. I can see all these. And now I can feel. I can feel you people. I can feel nature. I can feel things. I can feel ideas.
We had a fellow out at our clubhouse for many, many years. He was an older fellow. And I always remembered what he said when he would finish his talk.
[00:55:03]
And that is, he would pound the podium and he would say, regardless of what happens, good, bad, or indifferent, you just don't drink. And I thought, that's silly. That's silly. The emotional blasts that will hit us as we live this program can just be a bear. And this is what separates the men from the boys. The girls from the women. The breaking the shoestrings, as was referred to yesterday. But I have lived through these emotional blasts, which I have never lived through before.
And I've gotten on my knees, and I've prayed, and I've gone out in my backyard, and I've lain down, sprayed eagles, and said, God, please help me. I can't do it myself. And that power has come, quietly. I know that within just the last three years, my business, which is no business now, I blew myself out of business in 1960, and then the business went down the drain. I'm sure that wasn't my fault. Three years ago, I began to write.
I had no idea that I could write professionally, and it turned out that I could. So, during all that time that I was writing, I was still saying, God, come on, something's got to happen here. It was happening. Because I was sober. I was hurting emotionally. I wasn't hurting physically. I was hurting spiritually because I wasn't letting go. Now, in just the last couple of weeks, things have progressed.
And this is sort of, I guess, a progress report. That's about the best I'm capable of right now. In just the last three weeks, things have progressed to the point that I cannot believe. I just can't believe it. I've written a couple of screenplays. I've written a television series, and they all seem to be good. I hope this isn't taken as grandiosity, or anything like that. And for someone who is coming into the program, I want to tell you that just because you get sober, you ain't going to write a screenplay.
But they told me that if I would do these things to the best of my ability, turn my problems over to God to the best of my ability, work the program to the best of my ability, these things would happen in God's name. These things would happen in God's time, not my time. And I've questioned that every step of the way. But I'm kind of seeing it work in my own life. I hope it continues to work. If it doesn't work and it falls apart, you people have given me enough strength.
I think I can withstand some more blows, but I have to stay active. I've got to be here. I've got to be there. I have to be with my people who understand me. They don't want me to go back to drinking. They don't want me to get off the track. You know, in the story of Joseph, with the 11 and 12 sons, Jacob went about and he asked each one of his sons, he was trying to find out who was that one in the golden chain that led up to the man we know as Christ.
And all of his sons gave him an answer, but that wasn't the one. And Joseph, in talking to him, said a very simple thing. He said, and, you know, God is love. And Jacob said, what'd you say? He said, God is love. That is what I have found here. I've heard people make remarks to the effect that the spiritual side of AA, what is the economic side of AA? What is the material side of AA? To me, it is pure spirituality, not religion, pure spirituality.
And I think we are so blessed to be select members of a group like this, of which there is no other kind on the face of this planet. And as Dr. Bob said, and I love those words, for God's sake, let's keep it simple. So that's what I try to do, and that's why I didn't try to analyze 12 steps. Thank you very much.