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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 811 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: ken-c-history-and-recovery-in-cocaine-anonymous-ca-2003-archive-811.mp3 Duration: 01:05:13
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Look at all the empty seats. Nice mic. I need a stool or a longer. Ah, Ralph's here. Same seat as last Friday in Texas. Ralph and I were in Texas last week. I did the same talk on Friday night. Hopefully it's a different talk because I'm tired of my own talk. First, I have one question. Is this like the opening meeting of an L.A. area convention of Cocaine Anonymous or is this like a sleep fest in here? Is there any energy? Let's go. Come on. Nineteen goddamn years. You know? Oh, who am I? Who said that? Jeff? It sounded like Jeff. I'm Ken C.. I'm an alcoholic.
For those of you coke addicts that wonder if I'm a drug addict, I shot cocaine for 15 years. I suffer from the disease of alcoholism. That's why I identify as an alcoholic. I also shot heroin, a few other things, you know, beat it with a hammer, cold soak it, quaaludes, barbiturates. Something about syringes going from point A to point B was like, you know, the fastest possible way. So why not? Who was it who asked me if I was nervous? Neil did. Neil asked me if I was nervous. And you know what? For the first time since I spoke at the World Service Convention in 1990, I'm anxious because it's taken 19 years for my home group to ask me to come speak at my home convention.
You know, I have friends here from London. When I spoke in London, I have friends here from Arizona. From when I spoke in Arizona, you know, one of the great opportunities, you know, I've spoken Edmonton with Percy. You know, I got here living in a Volkswagen Rabbit with no money to my name, not knowing where my next meal was coming from. And I've had the opportunity to speak around the world because of a life that Cocaine Anonymous has given me.
Now, a lot of you guys know who I am. Some of you guys don't know. So just the brief thing is, is that rumor has it that I am the oldest surviving member of Group One of Cocaine Anonymous who got sober in this or whose first meeting was Cocaine Anonymous. Now, Richard in the back was at the first meeting of Cocaine Anonymous. He's the only person in the room that's here from the first meeting of CA. Now, he didn't stay sober, but that's between him and God.
But, you know, the great thing is, is that Richard and I are still friends. Happy Howard. My good friend is not in the room tonight. Who's here? You know, I'm from January. Class of January 1983. Howard came into CA in January 83. And, you know, how many people in here have less than a year? Damn. Well, congratulations and welcome to your first convention of Cocaine Anonymous because you're in for one of the most special weekends that you've ever had in your life. You know, one of the most fantastic experiences that you'll have in your life.
I remember my first convention of Cocaine Anonymous and I believe we had World before we had LACA, you know, and it was spectacular. Up in Santa Barbara on the beach, people from Alaska. Yeah, that sign out in that other room, for those of you that have seen the timeline of CA, it's all wrong. You know, forget it. The dates and stuff are so screwed up on that. The story in HFC is a little mixed up too, but, you know, same line as last week. A lot of you guys know from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, the story of Bob and Bill and all you people who claim to be steadfast members of Cocaine Anonymous barely know the history of CA.
You know, a tree without roots dies. Learn what your roots are. And it's not about that I'm around from those days or Richard's around from those days or any of the other people around from those days. Find out what the process was. You know, find out what the process was and understand what happened around here and how it came to be. You know, and, you know, and I really need to back up for a second because I need to thank the convention committee for asking me to come out here and share, especially Sean, wherever Sean is and and Neil B for those of you that think Neil is, you know, some crazy old cantankerous fool.
[00:05:10]
Neil's one of the most loving, kind, gentlest people that you'll ever meet. You know, you laugh and I'm almost in tears because you really don't know Neil. You know, Neil is, Neil, in my twenty and a half years of being in CA and being involved in service, Neil has done more service work at every level, including world service, than any other human being alive. And the only reason I say it is because he's not in the room. Oh, no, there he is. He's hiding in the back. He's hiding in the back. But Neil knows, you know, Neil knows that I care about him and we don't always get along.
And that's the great thing about Cocaine Anonymous. Me and Happy Howard in the old days, we used to fight like cats and dogs. But one of the greatest things about Howard is, at the end of a GSR meeting with 150 people, he'd come right up to you and be the first guy to give you a hug and tell you that he loved you. Because he understood that being of service was about being of service and it wasn't about personalities, you know, that it was about showing up, having a commitment, carrying the message, trying to grow, and then trying to grow personally by being able to love through the stuff, you know.
All this stuff in the back is distracting. It's so funny because I was walking around today and I hear people talking about who's going to be the speaker tonight. And I'd be standing next to them and they're like, yeah, this guy Ken C. is speaking tonight. And it's, you know, it just kind of, it's kind of cute after 20 years of seeing who knows you and who doesn't know you. It's a program, you know, that's still around. And that's a gift that Bobby Sober. I was actually taking a cake at a meeting one night. Bobby knows me from when I worked for the Allman Brothers, for people that know what that is.
And I had waist-length hair. I looked like the Sphinx, you know. And I'm taking my second cake and I kind of look like I am now because we change. And Bobby comes up to me after the meeting and goes, are you Kenny from Atlanta? Are you Kenny that used to go out with some groupies that I used to go out with? And I said, yeah. And he goes, it's me, Bobby. And here's a story that I haven't told in a long time, is that Bobby and I were arrested on a heroin bust. We were the first people arrested by the Atlanta Vice Squad when they formed the Vice Squad. We were taken to jail. We were put in separate cells. We didn't see each other for 18 years until he came up to me at that meeting as CA that night.
Then, a couple of months later, we were at a midnight meeting in L.A. or we were at the Friday night meeting in L.A. and two other friends of mine were there that I used to get very high with, a man and a woman. And they were both taking their 30-day chips and they said to me, is there another meeting we can go to? And I said, let's go to Promises at Brotman, you know, 1130. And the three of us are standing in the lobby. Bobby walks in and it turns out, because of my failed memory, that those two are the ones that bailed us both out of jail that night. And he was the one that had introduced the two of them and they hadn't seen him since the night they bailed us out of jail. And we're all standing in a meeting of Cocaine Anonymous.
So if you don't think God works in my life, you know, and I said it last week, I fly on the wings of angels, period. And my life is so blessed. I used to think that I was a lucky bastard because of how many times I laid down a motorcycle or put a car into a river on quaaludes or put a syringe in my arm and woke up the next morning asking what happened. You know, just those little incidences. I always thought, man, I'm just so lucky, you know. And then I got here and through the process of having spiritual experiences over and over and over again that I've learned that God is just another, you know, coincidence is just another way of spelling God, you know, that my life has been filled with God since I was a little boy and I just didn't know it. You know, I just didn't know it.
And and I'm one of these people. I didn't plan on getting sober. You know, I never woke up one day and said, let's see, it's January 14th, 1983. Maybe I'll go to a meeting tonight. You know, I didn't wake up that day and say, maybe there's a rehab that I could check into and work out this little drug problem that I have.
[00:10:00]
You know, I had just come from a geographic where I had left L.A. to move to Tucson for a few years, got as insane as humanly possible, came back to L.A., was living in a Volkswagen Rabbit. Now, I'm six foot six, so Volkswagen Rabbit isn't quite like a king sized bed. You know, I had a few bucks in my pocket. My life was about in the morning. I would get up, I'd go to the 7-Eleven, I'd buy a newspaper and the biggest muffin that I could get and a cup of coffee and I would eat it and I would go to the park and I would sit there and I would read every single word in the L.A. Times because I had nothing better to do.
And then when I was done, it was like, okay, what do I do now? You know, and I was bouncing around L.A. for a couple of weeks, you know, trying to get a hold of friends, afraid to get a hold of other friends and, you know, and by sheer grace, I called up one friend who said, you know what, he'd meet me for dinner. And they met me at Barney's in West Hollywood or they, he met me at Barney's and he said, another guy is coming. And I said, well, who's this? And he goes, it's this guy, Charlie, and he's my sponsor. You know, I was like, so what's a sponsor? And he says, well, he'd been going to AA for a year and a half and he had 90 days.
And and then this guy, Charlie, showed up and, you know, they didn't 12 step me, but they sat there and they talked to me. They listened, listened to what I had to say. Now, when you're 31 years old and you're living in a stolen car with a little bit of stolen money and you don't know what your next day is going to be like, it's not like I came in with a good attitude and bright opportunities, you know.
And and they said, you know, if you're really serious about about what you're doing and you think you might want to change, why don't you come with us to a meeting at Cocaine Anonymous tomorrow night? And CA at the time was five weeks old, you know. And and they took me to this meeting. And when I woke up, I did not plan on getting sober. I did not plan on stopping to take taking drugs or drinking. You know, I went to the meeting because I thought maybe there might be an opportunity there. You know, it was about an opportunity and a meal. And, you know, and I showed up at this meeting and, you know, it was the old Motion Picture Health and Welfare Fund on La Brea in Hollywood.
And they sat me in the middle between a couple of people where I couldn't get out between Zachary H. and this other guy. And there was no escape. And I got up and a guy got up and he was all dressed. He was, you know, nice looking. He was a clothing designer and he talked about making a lot of money and losing a lot of money and making a lot of money. And I'm sitting there counting Rolexes in Hollywood going, what am I doing here? You know, and I just was so uncomfortable. I was crawling out of my skin. It didn't matter that everybody else in the room was a drug addict, because when you knew, you know, that's not what you're thinking about. You're thinking about how afraid you are and how scared you are.
And, you know, and they opened up the meeting of participation and this guy stood up, you know, and he talked about relapsing. He talked about how he'd been in and out for a long time, you know, and he'd been relapsed. And one more time he was crawling around on his hands and knees picking stucco out of the carpet, peeking out of the windows all night long, being totally insane. You know, my ears lit up, because that's the way I got high.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but, you know, give me a cold bathtub with some tinfoil over the window and some pinholes. I could have a good time all night long in that bathtub, you know. Little fix, check for them, you know. Now, I wasn't a smoker, so we didn't drop stuff on the floor. But I was a scraper, you know, where it talks about scraping the edges of brown bottles or whatever that means. But I tell you what, you get a big Ziploc bag and start scraping it, you'd be surprised what ends up in the spoon. It'll break you out into some serious sweats.
And Bobby knows. He's sitting over there. Oh, yeah, those days. And I just thought of a flash. We'll have to talk about something afterwards. There's a blue liquid cocaine, if anybody's ever done it. Remember that one? But I heard this guy, you know, and then he said the one thing that changed my life forever. And he said that the reason he was back in a meeting was because he knew this was where the hope was. You know, this was where the hope was if he wanted to get his life back.
back and I realized you know like I said I was there looking for an opportunity but what it really came down to is I just wanted some hope I was 31 years old I had finally started to believe that I'd grown up to become the piece of shit that my stepfather always told me I was going to be you know I had nowhere to go nothing to do hardly any friends my sister had said that she wouldn't
[00:15:00]
even bother to spit on my grave you know and I'm alone in the world in this Volkswagen rabbit and I heard that Inspiration, There Would Not Be a Cocaine Anonymous, You Know, Between Tom Kenny and a few members of AA that put the first meetings together, which is called the Whatever Meeting in LA, CA came forth, but Tom came up to me and asked me if I had a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I said no, because I'm a newcomer and why would I have a big book, and he said here I want you to take this and I want you to go back tonight and I want you to read chapter three more about alcoholism, and my friend who took me to the meeting said that as long as I was willing to go to meetings I could stay on his couch, I slept on this guy's couch for five months, and I went back to his place that night and I read chapter three more about alcoholism, I didn't start on page one, I didn't start on the blank page, I went right to more about alcoholism, you know, and by the time I got done reading the first page, you know, it started to hit me, that awakening started to hit me, by the time I got to the bottom of the second page, you know, I started to understand that maybe I really wasn't this crazy fool that I thought I was, that maybe I suffered from what it described in the book.
Now I have to tell you that I come from an alcoholic family. I watched my mother at 47 years old in Tucson in St. Mary's Hospital in a halo bed with screws in her forehead and blood dripping down, and the last time she could communicate with me she blinked her eyes, because she had rolled her car six times in a drunken stupor. I never saw my mother a day in my life without a cocktail or a beer in her hand. I never once in my life heard my mother tell me that she either loved me or loved my sister. The last time I saw my stepfather, he was riding off with the Hell's Angels in Tucson, Arizona, after I had just pulled a gun on him. You know, I used to ride around with guns, I wasn't afraid of guns. I'm sure there's a few other people in here that weren't afraid of pistols.
My idea was in Tucson, for those of you that don't know, because it's a cowboy town, that it's legal to wear a firearm on the outside of your body, as long as it has bullets in it. Because they figure if you're wearing a gun, you better make sure you've got bullets in it, because somebody else wearing one, you might be dead, you know. And I used to ride around Tucson with a .44 and a shoulder holster on my Harley Davidson, you know. That was it. And, you know, like I said, that's the last time I saw my stepfather, riding off, you know. And so I've seen the disease of alcoholism up close. Up close in my family and up close, you know, in my life. And I got, you know, I grew up in New York City.
I was in Greenwich Village in the summer of 67 and 68, driving around a 59 Chevy, flashing peace signs, thinking we were cool. Crawling around on our hands and knees at the Fillmore, you know, being crazy little hippie kids, letting our hair grow and stuff, thinking that we had it all down. We were the, you know, we were the next generation who really thought we knew something. And then along came Class A narcotics and destroyed the whole thing. Oh, I think there's still our hippies up in Portland, aren't there, Sherry? Where are you? And by the way, Sherry and, um, you know, I tell you what, when I got out of the hospital, when I got here, I couldn't feel a thing. When I got here, I had two emotions, two emotions that I thought, you know, I thought, I thought I was like angry and I thought I knew how to love. And at best I was confused because it was more like lust and fear, you know. And today I have these emotions where I can look in, look in a room and see somebody or I can think about Sherry's story about the airline stewardess last night. And those little miracles that happen all around us every single day, not just me, not just you, but every one of us has these little miracles happening, you know. And it and it takes years sometimes to get the blinders off to really see the miracle, you know, that's around us on a daily basis. And and both of them gave such beautiful talks last night for anybody that missed it, you know. And there goes that train of thought.
OK, so I'd seen the disease of alcoholism and and when I got sober, it was the juicers against the dopers, you know, and I was obviously a doper. And so I didn't want to be involved with alcohol. I didn't want to be around alcoholism. I you know, none of that. When I got here,
[00:20:01]
I thought easy does it meant don't tailgate. You know, it was I had no knowledge of 12 step programs. I had no knowledge of halfway houses. I had no knowledge of rehabs. In 1977, after a really good hard run, I was actually living in a house with no power, no water, but plenty of money for coke, shooting coke. And, you know, I was on the second story locked in the bedroom and those damn guys with the rifles were in the backyard again, you know.
So I decided, you know, I couldn't do anything. I didn't have any weapons. So I better call the police. So I call the police. They showed up. They said, we don't see anybody. Now you got to realize vision for you. I had hair down to here, a tank top. I've been shooting coke for hours and hours and hours living in a house with no running water. And I opened the door to the police, you know. Now the worst part was, is that after they left, I went into the back of the room and I saw a tear in the screen and I thought they had scaled the walls and were cutting open the screens with knives, you know. So I locked down the bedroom and stared at the doorknob and watched it turn. And after I couldn't stand, after I couldn't stand that any longer, I called the police back. And they're brilliant reasoning was better than my brilliant reasoning. And they took me to Fulton County Jail for the night. And, you know, and I came down the hard way that evening.
But after I got out of jail, I had this brilliant idea. Maybe I should go dry out. But this was 1977. And, you know, there weren't a lot of rehabs. There weren't a lot of care units. And I thought, well, there's always the Georgia State Mental Health Hospital. And then in a gleaming moment of clarity, I thought, well, what if they don't let me out? You know, because I was psychotic. You know, I was psychotic. You know, I have to tell you.
And I haven't told these stories in a while. And Richard was reminding me and Ralph was reminding me. And I'm not going to tell the spot on the wall story, but that's a whole another thing. You like the spot story, don't you? I'll tell that maybe. Oh, so so now I completely lost my train of thought again. I'll explain this reasoning for losing my train of thought in a little while, if I remember. There is a point to the whole thing about checking into the we're wanting to check into a hospital. But 18 people said one different thing. Yeah, but there's something after that. Do you remember, Ralph?
You heard the talk last week. But anyway, yeah, I know they wouldn't let me out. Would you let me out if you see me like that? But but anyway, so we'll move on. We'll move on off of that. I'll tell I'll tell the spot story. The spot story is, oh, psychotic. Let's get back to the real sickness, the insanity in my in my early days. You know, I was a black tar heroin shooter, if any of you guys remember that. And so when I first got my first cocaine, it came in a little tinfoil bundle and it was a quarter of a gram for ten dollars, you know. And I was like, you know, and they said, oh, man, you're going to love it. You're going to do this. You're going to have an orgasm. It's going to rock your world. And I'm like, I'll try it. Let me tell you, overcoming a black tar addiction with a little shot of cocaine. No way. You know, no way. But then a few months later, my roommate and I at the time, we ended up with, you know, a Ziploc kind of full of this stuff. And so we decided, let's go for it. You know, and we realized that a half a gram at a time was the way real men did it, you know. So we're doing it. And all of a sudden, this maniac starts running around the house and turning off the lights and turning off the music. And I'm like thinking, what's going on here? You know, and he's like, come here, come here. And he calls me over to the front window and he goes, look, look at that car over there. I'm like, yeah. He goes, there's a guy behind the fender. You can't see him, but he's behind the fender. I'm like, I'm doing, I'm matching him shot for shot. I'm not seeing anybody, you know. And then he goes into the back of the house and I'm watching him and I'm like, you know, he's like, and he goes, come here. I go to the back of the house. He goes, look, look at the bush. There's a guy behind the bush. And I'm like, dude,
[00:25:02]
you're nuts. There's nobody out there, you know, and we went at it for the whole night and it was insane. And, and, you know, but the next day he calls me out in the backyard and goes, look, the bush is broke. I told you there was a guy behind the bush. I'm like, I don't know where this comes from, but you're out of your mind. Now, fast forward about six or seven years to 1977, where all of a sudden, you know, I'm well into the window run stuff, but I go from guys with rifles into spacemen. They were about seven foot tall with hooded capes and red eyes. And, and I mean, here's the window and I'm here and they're there and we're like this. First one to blink loses, you know. You see, that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was there were nights where the big guys didn't show up and a little guy showed up. And the problem with the little guys was they scampered.
So they'd scamper from chimney to chimney or from tree to tree. And you'd be like this, you know, and then I'd get, then I'd get like really ballsy and I'd go out and try to catch me one. Cause I figure I'm bigger than they are. I can get one. So that was why I didn't want to check myself into the Georgia mental state hospital. See, there actually was a point to it all. Now tell them, I'll tell the spot on the wall story only cause is that for me? Just tell them I'm busy. And I said this last week, you know, we didn't have cellphones or answering machines when I got sober. There's this thing called vibrate. Especially if you're an attorney, a single mom or a bails bondsman, your phone should be on vibrate and anybody else should have it off or in the room. Period. End of story. You go to a, you go to a movie, you sit in a movie for two hours. You don't smoke a cigarette. You don't answer a phone.
You're in the one thing that's going to save your life. And you allow yourself to get distracted by something that's not even that important. What is that about? But that's only me. And what do I know? I don't have any opinions. Do I, Leon? But, uh, you know, that's one of the great things. If you stick around here a long time, you can say any GD thing you want from the podium because there's not one person in here, I don't think that's got more time than I do in CA. So I can have some Pavos tonight, you know, or any other night, actually, you know, seeing a funny thing was, is we were talking about service work earlier and I'll get back to the story on the spot on the wall. Um, you know, I'm from group one.
I was on the first board of CA LA, you know, I was the chairman of LA area for almost five years. You know, I've worked on probably six LA convention committees, three world service convention committees. I was around with Neil at the forming of the first world service board. I was around for the opening of both world service and LACA offices. Um, and that's what gives me the right to talk about some of this stuff. I've been a world service delegate.
I put in a lot of, a lot of work into making sure this fellowship did something along with saving my life because I wanted to see it save other people's lives. And you know how I knew it was saving other people's lives for the first time where it really hit me. And this is why that board in the other room is wrong because when we did the first world service convention in Santa Barbara and we did the state countdown at the end, the table next to me was from Alaska and the table next to me was getting sober and cocaine anonymous in Alaska. Now when me and Johnny and Reggie and Kenny Lombino, and those are the guys who are in the room that wrote the format that CA uses with the words all mind altering substances and we changed the words of the steps and there were no other circuit speakers that are out on the tour making that comment that we're at that meeting, not to mention any names, but some people are laughing because they know there are no founders. If you hear somebody from a podium saying they're a founder, go up and ask them about it. But here we go off on that tangent. So anyway, when we were sitting around doing this stuff, you know, I had 90 days, Johnny had 9 months, Reggie had about 60 days, Kenny had about 60 days.
We had no idea that people in Alaska were going to get sober and cocaine anonymous.
[00:30:03]
That was the gift. The gift was, is that we were agents of God in the right place at the right time doing God's work, and we were stupid enough to show up and keep doing it, and miracles happened around us for us and other people, and continue to do so every day, you know? And that's what it is about getting service work. There's absolutely no reason why every single person in this room does not have a commitment in Cocaine Anonymous, none.
You know? Now, Neil's sitting back there going, well, you don't have a commitment in Cocaine Anonymous. I did 12 years hard, hard service work in CA, and I'm about to maybe do some other, and Neil told me tonight, he goes, I think I'm done. You know? And we reached that point. But you know what? I still make coffee at another meeting. I'm a greeting at another meeting. I help clean up at another meeting.
I still have panels at the VA. You know? I'm involved this day because it saves my life. Back to the spot on the wall, 1977 was a pitiful, pitiful. It was pitiful. It was also pivotal year for me and my disease because that's where I, that's where I crossed the invisible line that we talk about. You know, I've been shooting cocaine since 1970 and having a pretty good time of it other than, you know, a few psychotic episodes.
And I was back in Atlanta visiting a friend, and he was my first friend that made it to the real world of drug dealing. You know, the 911 Porsche, the big house, you know, like he'd made it. And I ran into him at this club, and he said, do you want to party? And I said, sure. And we went back out to his big house out in the country, and he came out, and he dropped this big wax ball on a table, and he hit it with a knife, and it opened up, and it was cheese wrap, and it was Peruvian flake, you know, wrapped in red cheese wax.
And then he brought out a box of 27-gauge syringes, about 100, and said, do as much as you want. You're our guest from L.A. And I was like, no problem. So I take the butter knife and throw it into the spoon, you know, and I do the little deal, and I do the little deal again, and I turn around back to the table, and I'm sitting there, and he goes, well, how was that? And I go, well, it wasn't quite what I was looking for.
You know, only that special Los Angeles rock and roll arrogance that I had. Now, mind you, my favorite expression at the time was, the very best is barely good enough. And so he goes, go ahead, do more, do as much as you want, you know. So I take the butter knife and throw it back in, and do the deal, and turn myself around, and I'm sitting there, and I go with my hand like this into the glass, and all of a sudden, my hand's going like this, and it's hitting the side of the glass.
And I go, well, you better put this down. And then my feet start going like this. And then my hips start, my shoulders start, and the worst part was, is that my head and my eyeballs were going in opposite directions, and this really loud noise went through my head, you know. And it was like, and I looked over to my friend, and I said, is this really happening, or, you know, is this a hallucination?
And he goes, nope, that's really happening. So, you know, the sweat starts pouring off of me, and they pick me up, and they put me in another room in a rocking chair in front of an air conditioner, like, a foot away from my ear. They wrap up a bunch of ice cubes in a towel, and they wrap them around my head, and they stick me in this rocking chair, and I'm just holding on, going like this, you know.
They're like 100-mile rock. And, you know, and I'm an old psychedelic, you know. My, you know, better spirituality through psychedelics was my motto for most of the early 70s. And I'm sitting in this room, and it has all this flowery wallpaper on it, you know. So it starts to swirl, so I'm thinking, no big deal, I can handle this. And then the swirls start going faster and faster, and then the swirls start closing in, and I start to get tunnel vision.
And the tunnel starts to get smaller and smaller and darker and darker, until I get about the size of a half a dollar, and it's just this black spot on the wall that's going like this, and I don't see anything else except this spot. I mean, I'm like at Six Flags, holding on, you know, just like my head. And I know, as sure as I'm standing here, that if I lost that spot, I was dead. I was dead, man, it was it.
I was on the edge, you know. And then all of a sudden, the spot broke, and I was just tripping, you know. And then I go back into the other room and go, are you okay?
[00:35:07]
And I go, yeah, I'm fine. He said, you sure? I said, yeah, let's do that again. Now, I shot coke for five or six more years, and every time I did it, guess what I was looking for? I was looking for that thing, man, grand mal to the max. And the worst part is, nothing like being in a grand mal and wondering if you lock the door, because it's a long crawl to the door, you know. And, you know, and that's the way I did it.
You know, that's where my disease took me. Now, I was a little hippie flashing peace signs, taking LSD, thinking I was finding God through Timothy Leary and Alan Watts, you know, and that was my life. You know, I was in prison at 17 because of my anti-war beliefs, you know. I got a thing the other day. This is a kick for any of you old-timers, as I look at Leon, and I don't mean in sobriety. Somebody was talking about the Freedom of Information Act, so I said, I'll send away for this, you know.
What a kick to see my record. You've got to realize, I was trailed by the FBI for the year. I was under investigation by military intelligence. I was doing some wacky stuff, you know, and I wasn't even high. So I get this brown envelope, like really governmental looking, to be opened only by addressee. And I open it up, and there's another brown envelope inside the brown envelope. And I got it out and started reading it, and it was wild, man.
It was like, I forgot, I was like running with the Black Panthers, running with the Weathermen, running with the SDS. For you young kids, talk to Leon or Ralph. They'll explain it to you. But it blew my mind. You know, it was like a real flashback. And where that came from, I have no idea. But, so anyway, when I got my big book, and I identified with the disease of alcoholism, and I thought I had a chance for hope in my life for the first time in my adult life, I jumped into this thing with all the enthusiasm that I could.
And you know why? Because I was told to. Somebody told me to get a commitment. They didn't suggest it. They told me. So I thought that meant that I had to do it. You got to get a commitment. Oh, I better get one or they're going to kick me out. You know? I was told to go to as many meetings as I could. I was told to be as enthusiastic about going to meetings as I was about getting loaded. I used to drive to Laguna Beach to score, you know?
So why wouldn't I drive to the valley to go to a meeting? You know? And, you know, and that's the stuff we did. And we hung out. I mean, there was only, what, 20, 30 people in group one, Richard, maybe? Something like that? I mean, and we hung. You know, we did what we had to do. Now, you got to realize there were only two or three meetings, so we ended up in AA. You know? Because there was nothing else, nowhere else to go on those other four nights of the week.
So, you know, we just got involved the way we needed to get involved. So I've hit the halfway mark, and my mind is racing all over the place because I didn't take a nap and I drank too much coffee. I know. Ralph knows how my mind works, so when I see him grinning, it's like, oh, here we go. Yeah, but you know what? I can talk about the big book. I can talk about the 12 and 12. I can talk about all of this.
We had these conversations before. You know, self-knowledge avails us nothing. Information goes only so far. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, that's a big one. You know? That's a big one. I came here with no God other than what I'd read about in some books. I'd seen Star Wars about seven times. You know? I'd taken enough acid to stop a train. And somebody said, you know what?
Go out to the ocean and pray and try to stop a wave. And I sat at the beach at Gladstones, and I said, you know, I'll do this. And then I heard somebody talking about praying on their knees for the first time. And I went up to Tom, and I said, man, I don't know if I can get on my knees. That just doesn't seem like a good idea, you know? And he goes, take your shoes and throw them underneath the bed.
And when you get up in the morning and you're down there on your knees, you know, looking for your shoes, just stop and say a prayer. And that's the way I prayed for the first time on my knees. And, you know, if I heard somebody coming, man, I was up off my knees so quick. Because you just weren't going to catch a big man like me down on my knees, you know? Ain't going to happen. And, you know, but slowly I got into the process, you know.
And the process revealed itself to me. And it will reveal itself to all of you. You know, I prefer myself the 12 and 12, you know. I study the 12 and 12 regularly. I read the 12 and 12 every single day, you know. I go to 12-step study meetings. Because that's what I believe in for me is the source of my recovery today.
[00:40:01]
You know, it's different for everybody. I'm not saying I don't read the big book. I'm not saying I don't recommend the big book. The big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, saved my life unlike anything previously had ever been offered to me, you know. And I'll tell you why I read the 12 and 12. Because when Johnny died, you know, it scared the shit out of me, you know. Because I'd been a service for a long time.
I couldn't go to a CA meeting without people bugging me. They would ask me questions about this tradition, and this concept, and this. And I'm like, can't somebody just leave me alone, you know. And I was afraid of that pedestal. It's a long way to fall, you know. And then my friend Willie O, that some of you guys know. You know, Willie was the first, I believe, first chairman of the Board of World Services.
You know, and Willie got a little happening thing going with those viking him. You know, and Willie would have been 21 this year. He's alive and breathing. But you know, he's not 21 years sober, and his life is shattered. Absolutely shattered. And when that stuff started to happen, I got scared to death. Because somewhere in here, for me, at around 12 or 14 years, I got really spiritually arrogant.
You know, I was up there. I could quote the book. I could quote the 12 and 12. I could quote the 12 concepts of World Service as printed by the Alcoholics Anonymous. I could tell you everything you needed to do to run a good convention, which is why I'm not on the steering committee anymore. I could tell you how to run a good meeting. I could tell you how to do everything you needed to do in recovery.
You know, I could keep you sober. And then I realized that if I kept that up, I had one option. Actually two, and I'd seen both of them just happen right in front of me. And it scared the hell out of me. You know, and I had to find out what that was that I was lacking. And what I was lacking was humility. Because the humility I learned at the beginning of my sobriety is a lot different than the humility you learn at 15 years of sobriety.
Now those of you that don't know yet, trust me. Stuff changes. I have yet to see one person in any 12-step program get on his knees and do the 6th and 7th step, and their little lid flip open, God come down with the ice cream scoop, and say, character defects, be gone. Don't work like that. I didn't see anybody strutting across the pool today. Don't work like that. You know? It threw me back into the 6th and 7th step.
And it threw me back hard into the 11th step. And when I opened up the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and went to 6th and 7th, there were two chapters. Not two chapters, I'm sorry. Two paragraphs on 6th and 7th. Written approximately in 1937, 38, published in 39. I went to the 12 and 12 and opened it up. 43 paragraphs. Written in 1946, 47, published in 51, after it was approved by the conference.
Now my thinking leads me to believe that if somebody had said in 1970 to Bill Wilson, what are your thoughts, not only on the steps, but 6th and 7th, we might have way more than another 164 pages of written material that he might have put down there. Because it's a constant uncovering. And if you guys look really carefully, in the 12th step and the 12 and 12, nobody wanted Bill to talk too much about 6th and 7th in the sense that it was a daily reprieve for your character defects based on your spiritual condition.
But he slipped it in, in a half a sentence in the 12th step, where he talked about that the only way these will be removed is if we ask them daily. Daily, if we work on our character defects. And that's where my life's been for the last 5-6 years. You know, that and meditation. Because there's a lot of lip-flapping. Oh, I hate to say that. Did I just say that? There's a lot of talking about meditation and prayer and meditation in the rooms of all 12-step programs.
All 12-step programs. And yet there's very little real true meditation going on. I'm not saying that I'm not putting anybody down. I'm not judging. I'm not being critical. From my own experience, in 15-16 years, there was a kind of meditation in my life, but it was not soul meditation. It was mind meditation. to a personal relationship to a power greater than myself. I'm going to quote the big book.
On page 45 it says the exact purpose of this book is to find a power that will relieve us of all our problems. You know? And it talks about that we don't find God, that we find a power greater than ourselves.
[00:45:00]
That we develop a personal relationship with a power greater than ourselves. You know? And I've had many, many, many spiritual experiences throughout my sobriety, you know? And when I was new, I used to sit or lay or kneel and pray, and especially after reading Bill's story, man, I wanted that white light coming through the room, strike me, you know what I mean? Strike me. I wanted that, like, burning bush, somebody, like, throw me something big so I can know that, like, there really is a God, you know?
And what happened for me is I had little spiritual experiences, one after another, one after another, more and more and more, and my life began to grow, and my life began to fill up. And today, my life is an absolute miracle, an absolute miracle. I'm already tired of telling this story, but it's, like, a huge thing in my life. You know, a year ago May, a year ago May, I was in the ICU unit at Cedars-Sinai, hanging out on the ceiling, watching them call a code on my body, and I was watching the doctors and the nurses run around me and call out my vital signs, and I was, like, hearing everything.
I could hear the Chicago accent of the main doctor, you know, and I'm, like, hanging out about up there, looking down, thinking, what the hell is going on down there? And, you know, and I had basically clinically died that day, you know, and when I woke up two days later and came to an ICU, and my sponsor was there, and I said, did this happen the other day? And he said, yeah, how did you know? And I told him, because I watched the whole thing, you know, and what had happened for me, not what had happened for me, what had happened to me is that a month or so before I had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Now, that wasn't one of the promises that I thought I was going to get when I got here. You know, I'm a pretty big, healthy guy, you know, I've been an athlete my whole life in some regards or another, and, you know, a little hep C, what the hell, you know. We can handle that, we're real men. And, but when they tell you you've got something growing on the inside of your head, freakazoid. I mean, it's like, no, you're not talking about me, you know.
And, you know, and they told me I needed immediate surgery, you know, I needed immediate surgery. And both my doctors suggested this one doctor in L.A. at Cedars, Keith Black, who's like the prominent brain surgeon in the world today, he's been on the cover of Time and he's been in 60 Minutes and the whole deal. The guy was doing transplants at 16, published at 21, I mean, he's a genius, you know. And nobody could get me an appointment.
And I was at a men's stag, sharing with an old friend of mine, that I was freaking out, you know, that I was freaking out, because they told me they didn't know if I had 90 days to live or not, you know. They said, we can't tell anything, you know, it's just, you got a 50-50 chance, you know. And the next day, my friend called me up, Howard, so glad you could make it. So the next day, this is what you can get away with if you stick around long enough, you know.
So the next day, my friend called me up and he said, was the doctor you were talking about, Keith Black? And I went, yeah. And he goes, did you meet Pierre sitting on the couch next to me? And I went, no, why? And he goes, well, Pierre's a newcomer, he's been in and out for a while, he went to high school with Dr. Black, he's going to make a phone call for you. So the next day, I happened to get lucky enough to get an appointment to see an associate based on a cancellation.
So I went into the doctor's office on Thursday and I'm checking in and my phone rings and I answer it and it goes, is this Ken? Yeah. This is Pierre. Are you still trying to see the doctor? Yeah. And he goes, hang up. I'm going to make a phone call. So my sponsor and I sit down. This woman comes out. She goes, Mr. C.? I said, yeah. And she goes, I just hung up with Dr. Black in New York. And as soon as Dr. Grode is done with you, he wants the doctor to call him.
So I went in there and they put the pictures of my brain on the wall and they said, I'm like freaking out and the doctor excuses himself and he comes back and he goes, I just hung up with Dr. Black in New York and he's going to be back in town on Sunday. He wants to see you on Tuesday and he's going to operate on you in two weeks from today. Now two of my doctors and myself couldn't get to see this guy, you know.
And so I called up Pierre and I said, dude, can I buy you lunch? You know, and I wasn't able to hook up with him. Pierre was a fast living, high life kind of guy. Drove Formula One race cars, hung around Vegas, hung around guys with crooked noses. I mean, this guy had it going on.
[00:50:00]
Big house in the hills. I mean, you know. And I went in for my surgery and I went through this process and I was down for about three months and out of it. And about four months later, I, you know, and I called Pierre on and off throughout this and we played phone tag. He'd check up on me and I'd try to hook up with him. And one night my sponsor took me to a meeting and my friend walked in and he said, did you hear about Pierre?
I went, what? He said, Yo Deaton died last night. If Pierre walked in here and sat right there, I wouldn't know him. But if he walked up here and said hello to me, I'd know him by his voice and a heartbeat. Why Pierre came into my life and was able to put me in a place where my life was able to be saved. Because 10 years ago, they couldn't even do the kind of surgery that I had. They didn't have the technology, you know.
And there's only one other guy in the world besides my doctor that could do it, you know. And why Pierre came into my life and I was blessed with the grace that came along with him and why he wasn't around to live, to get sober, I have no idea. But I fly on the wings of angels, you know. And if you want to talk about grace in here, you know, 19 years ago when I came to this convention for the first time, there were no little kids running around these meetings.
There's a lot of grown up kids looking for women to make kids. I did that. A few other people in this room did that too, by the way. And you know, and now there's all these beautiful children running around, you know, the triplets who came in and, you know, walk up and give me a hug. You know, it's like mind boggling to me, you know. And what we've been given here is love. You know, if you listen to any of Dr. Bob's old tapes, you know, he talks about some kooky stuff out of a good book and, you know, the way those old timers talk.
But he goes, you know what, it all comes down to love and service. And that's what he talked about. I came here from a family where I was never told I was loved once. I was like 28 years old when my grandmother finally kind of took me aside and told me how much she really loved me. You know, none of these kids that are here, hopefully, are ever going to see the disease of alcoholism the way that I saw it, the way that you saw it, the way that I experienced it, the way that you experienced it.
You know, I got friends here tonight from London. You know, when I got sick and got diagnosed, I think it was Neil who sent out an email that I was dying and was going to be dead in three weeks. You know, Neil's emails, right? Neil, I'm just picking on you. But, you know, and I had to send out this mass email all over the place telling people, you know, pray for me, but I ain't fucking dead. So don't write the obituaries yet, you know.
And I got emails from Jackie in London, from Nick in London, from Percy in Canada, from Jennifer in Costa Rica, people from around the world sent me this stuff. You know, I wouldn't know any of them if it hadn't been for the service work and the commitments that I had in Cocaine Anonymous. You know, and they love me. I was with my friend Lionel Brown saying, Lionel, this is overwhelming me. I'm freaking out.
You know, I don't know how to handle love. I came in here with self-hate. Self-esteem was a step up, you know, self-loathing, self-hate. That's what I knew. That's what I had, you know. And I saw you look at your watch. If you go like this, you know, you're in trouble. And I said to Lionel, you know, I'm getting overwhelmed. And he goes, you know what, man, there's a lot of people that love you. And even at 19 years of sobriety at the time, I still had a hard time believing that there was this much unconditional love in my life.
Because I'm an arrogant, cocky son of a bitch a lot of the times, right? See, I knew there'd be a few women in the back that would clap for that. Hey, this is an improvement. You know, there was a meeting I spoke at one time where there was like seven women that I slept with in the second or third row. And one of them sponsored about four of them. And I think so far this weekend, I may have run into two.
Two in 20 years is pretty good. But anyway, I don't know where that came from. So anyway, the reasons I have memory issues, I just explained. You know, I suffer from a lot of pain in my body. I suffer from memory stuff. I suffer from I still have a brain tumor. I have five other six other tumors actively active. This is the other thing that happens my speech actively growing in my body. I'm having another surgery in about two or three weeks.
[00:55:00]
That's going to put me down for a while. I'm a benign little puppy, but I keep popping those little knuckleheads. But but you know what? I'm right here right now breathing in and out with God flowing through every every pore of my body. You know, and there's no secrets around here. There's no secrets around here. You know what? I still have the same blue book of Alcoholics Anonymous that I had 20 years and seven months ago given to me.
Nobody like came up to me three or four weeks later and said, here's the green book. This is the one for the winners. We just hand out the blue one because we printed too many of them. Nobody like came up to me and said that meeting directory we gave you. That's where we send the people that we don't think are going to make it. Here's the meetings you need to go to. You know, I got the same tools that every newcomer in here gets when they show up at the door.
You know, I got a handshake and a hug, a meeting directory and a big book. You know, and I was told to be honest, open minded and willing. And that's what I was. And you know why? Because I didn't know any better. Because I had gotten to the point where I was desperate enough, you know. And hopefully if you're here tonight and you're new, you're desperate enough. Because if you're not now, you will be if you're an alcoholic or you're an addict who suffers from the disease of alcoholism, you know.
And the journey is fantastic. The journey is a miracle. You know, there's times where I like am a little depressed and a little pissed off at God, you know, and stuff's going on. And, you know, I have a sponsor that's living on a death sentence right now with Parkinson's disease. And he says to me, you know what? You don't have a date. Sit back and enjoy it. Accept what's going on. You know, I still go to seven to nine to ten meetings a week.
You know why? Because when I was a kid, I learned how to ride a bicycle and I never forgot. I went to a few meetings, learned about the steps. Two weeks later, I forgot. I keep going to meetings because I keep forgetting. I need to be reminded over and over and over again, especially from newcomers, because I tell you what, I saw a lot of commercials that said, this is your brain on drugs. A lot of damn newcomers showing up still, you know.
So obviously something's going on out there. I'd rather see you guys coming back scouting than my ass full of arrows. You know, we're so blessed. We're so blessed. You know, a gentleman described Alcoholics Anonymous as the greatest event of the 20th century. And he included that with all 12-step programs. The greatest event of the 20th century, because it created more social change than any other single thing that's happened.
You know, it brought a kind of spirituality to the human beings that nothing previously had ever done. Because we don't know race, we don't know creed, we don't know gender, you know. We know spirit. Spirit of truth, spirit of heart. And when you come around here and you stay sober, your life gets filled and filled and filled with spirit and love. You know, it's such an amazing thing we have. It's such an absolute, absolute gift that we have, because it can go away like that.
You know, it can go away like that. And I keep waiting for you to go like this, man. You're freaking me out. Quit looking at your watch. You know, and hey, I feel better now. You know, and I'll just wrap it up. You know, a few years back, I got invited to go speak in Ohio, you know. And when you show up in Ohio, you know, if you're somebody like me, I'm like, where the hell is Dr. Bob's house and how fast can we get there, you know.
And they said, you want to go to Dr. Bob's? No problem, you know. And so we drive over to Dr. Bob's house and we get lost and we pull up and, you know, when you go in and there's a red and white tablecloth at the kitchen table and you sit down and they have a percolator coffee pot. For those of you that were born maybe before 19-whatever, you know, and I don't even know. And you sit at the actual kitchen table that Bob and Bill spent many, many, many nights talking at, where they came with the concepts of the Twelve Steps, you know, and I sat there
[01:00:03]
you know, listened and spoke with the woman that was in, you know, the foundation people that ran it and they ask you if you want to take a tour and I went upstairs and we go into the room where they have the bookcases filled with the Oxford Group material and the Emmett Fox material and all the other early stuff and there's pictures on the wall and then they show you a movie where they use the recreations of the original scenes, you know, and I got done watching that movie and I'm walking back downstairs and I mean I just started bawling, you know, just crying and this woman was about this big and about 75 years old and she comes up to me and pats me on the back and goes, it's okay honey, it happens to a lot of people and I'm like, oh, just falling apart, you know, and then I go downstairs because the basement's the Dr. Bob gift shop where you get your Dr. Bob t-shirt and your coffee cup, your ashtray, your unedited version of the big book, a lot like that room over there, hats and actually the plastic hats with the open mesh, very trendy right now, you know, and I'm standing there and I look over to the side and there's these two great big bushel baskets full of like chunks of rock, you know, and I say, what's that? She goes, well, we had a problem with the back of the house so we've had to tear out the whole back of the house and we're redoing the whole porch and stuff and I say to her, so you're telling me that's like the foundation from Dr. Bob's house? And she goes, yeah, and I'm like, well, can I have some? And she looks at me and goes, yeah, I guess, so I'm like filling my pockets, I got my bag with my t-shirt and my coffee cups and my manuscripts and I'm filling them up, you know, and I'm taking all these pieces of rock back and, you know, and to this day sitting on my dresser every morning when I get up, there's a piece of the rock from Dr. Bob's house, you know, and over the years I've gotten to break that stuff up and give it away to people on their birthday and, you know, and I said it last week, you know, if Ralph wasn't here, it would have been a whole different talk, but, you know, the thing for me, we're a member of a 12-step group. If you choose to get hung up on alcoholics anonymous, cocaine anonymous, narcotics anonymous, marijuana anonymous, crystal meth anonymous, you know, so be it, but the truth lies in the principles and the truth lies in the message and what happened to Dr. Bob's house was is that I got to go to the place where the rock hit the pond, you know, where the origination of the truth and the spirit started and when that rock hit the pond and the ripple started to go out and I've been graced and blessed to become a ripple, you know, when I got here, I took my six-month chip and I went back and sat down and I tried to light my cigarette and I was going like this because I was so scared to death that I just stood up in front of 200 people and had to be profound at six months, you know, and today I get to sit up here and talk and be comfortable and be at one with you guys because I know every single one of you because I know who I am and I know who you are and every one of us is a ripple and every one of us gets to break the chains of alcoholism, you know, every one of us is a living example of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step programs of Cocaine Anonymous and any other group that some people will ever see, so you can't just be spiritual and principled in these rooms, you got to take it out there into the world because you're it, you're it, you're the example, you're the living example of the big book, you know, and we're all blessed, man, we're all blessed, we're blessed to be a ripple, you know, and if that's the best I'll ever be, I'm totally happy with it and it's just okay because to breathe in and out is the best that it gets. If you think there's somewhere behind the door number two there's a new Mercedes and a house in Laurel Canyon, forget it, you got to work, you know, the main thing is is that every one of you guys in here has the exact same opportunities that I had, every one of you guys in here has the chance to expand your mind and your heart unlike anything you've ever known in your life, every person in here has the opportunity to become not only the best person they can become but the most beautiful person that you've never even been able to dream about because the grace of God is smiling on us every minute of every day whether you like it or not. Open your heart, open your ears, participate in your recovery and wonderful things will happen and I want to thank the committee again for asking me to share.