My name is Earl. I’m an alcoholic. Hi. Hi.

I wanna thank the committee for asking me to come share. It’s always an honor and a privilege to share at an event of this type. I got up at 4:00 in the morning, grabbed a bag, jumped in the car, drove to the airport, got on an airplane, which is an absolutely absurd thing for me to do. You’ll find out why.

It’s just a completely unnatural act as far as I’m concerned. Getting, getting in a large metal cylinder and go rocketing across the sky. It’s completely wrong. As I, as I’m, I’m, I’m about to get on the plane, I look in the line, and a buddy of mine, St- Jack, who’s the Al-Anon speaker tomorrow at 1:00, you gotta ha- you gotta go hang with Jack

at 1:00. It’s, he’s a great guy. He looks up and he sees me, and I said, “Jack,” you know, “I got an Al-Anon on the plane, my odds have improved.” You know? Getting better.

And Jack, Jack knows me, right? He’s keeping an eye on me. I mean, to me, Jack made me feel a lot safer. Get here, and I’m, I’m the kinda guy that like I get asked to speak some- somewhere, I, I find out when I’m supposed to be at the airport, you know, on what date, and I, you know, I, I get on the plane, I fly, land.

I have no idea what’s gonna happen. I’m completely unprepared. I’m just in the hands of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I get off the plane hoping there’ll be somebody there with some kinda Roundup T-shirt on or- …

a big book in their hand or something. And I get off the plane and, and Suzanne was there. Said, “Right this way,” in the car to the hotel. Everything’s been great.

I’ve had a great time since I’ve been here. Met a lot of great people. I’m happy to be here. So I think I covered all that stuff, right?

Yeah. So, uh, I drank. I gotta tell you, I did not drink until I was 12. I held off as long as I possibly could.

I had been restless, irritable, and discontented for some time prior to that first drink. And it was… I mean, I, I wasn’t like this clairvoyant kid. You know what I mean?

I didn’t, I wasn’t just this troubled child realizing, “You know what I need is a drink.” I had no idea what I needed. I just knew that something was wrong. Something was just wrong, and it started when I was four years old. How long do I do this?

How long am I up here? However long you want. Long as I want. Thank you very much.

For how long I want, huh? All right, all right, all right. I, uh, four years old, I started sleepwalking, talking in my sleep. You’d see me at the pa- foot of my parents’ bed talking to them in the middle of the night, scaring the hell out of my parents.

And, uh, whenever I talked about what I needed to, I’d walk back to the house and get in bed, and they’d follow me, and they’d ask me questions, and I’d answer them, and it was all very s- bizarre. And- … they took me to, had a bunch of tests run on me, and the answer they came up with back in those days was every night before I go to sleep, they’d give me a big tablespoon of this liquid, and it would just knock me out, right?

Um, no more sleepwalking, no more problems. So I think very early in my life I got the information that if things aren’t going the way you want them to, take something. So I sort of filed that away for future reference, you know? Went on into my life, 12 years old, I, uh, you know, I’m, I’m a strange kid, you know?

I’m quiet, but if you take your eyes off me, I’m gone. They did a bunch more tests on me, and they found out I had this very high IQ. I don’t have it anymore, so I’m not bragging. You know?

That began to plummet around 16, right? But, so my father decided time for me to become a man, you know? I’m 12 years old. I’m five feet tall.

I’m 104 pounds. Yeah, man. Right. Good thinking, Dad.

And I, I, I got, I’d gotten accepted to this, uh, think tank of a boarding school for boys. I mean, there were 250 boys, ages 13 to 18, in this school. How I found out I was going to this school was my father came into my room and said, “Get in the car.” “Get in the car. Drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive.” We get there, I get out of the car, he gets out of the car, nobody else gets out of the car.

Puts the suitcase down next to me, shakes my hand, says, “This’ll make a man out of you,” got back in the car, and they all drove off. Welcome to higher learning, you know? I’m like this paralyzed child standing there thinking, “What the hell just happened?” They knew me better than anybody in the world, and they just threw me away. What the hell did I do?

I mean, emotionally, it was a devastating experience. Intellectually, it was great. I mean, you know, the education I received was wonderful. It’s held me in good stead to this very day.

Um, but I, I, you know, that’s the facts, right? I’ve never really bothered with the facts a whole lot. You know what I mean? It’s all about the feelings.

How am I feeling, you know? And I felt bad. And they… You know?

So this is bad. If I feel bad, this is bad, right? That’s me. I don’t, I don’t know why this is going on.

I mean, I know I don’t belong there. There’s 250 boys from all over the earth. I mean, they’ve scoured the earth to find 250 of the brightest, most emotionally disturbed young men they can find. And they’ve thrown us all on this campus.

It’s like Lord of the Flies in this place. You know what I mean? And everybody’s 13 to 18. I’m the only non-teenager.

I’m the youngest and the smallest kid in the whole school. I’m 12 years old. I’m 105 pounds. And 12 doesn’t mean anything to anybody except a 12-year-old ’cause what do you wanna be?

Teenager. Everybody there was one. Not me. I lose.

I just got here. I lose. You know, it’s over. You know?

It’s all wrong. I’m calling home for three days saying, “Please, big mistake. Come get me. No harm, no foul.” You know, talking to my mother, crying like a 12-year-old, right?

And my, my father, you can hear him in the background, right? “Hang up.” You know, Mom going, “Sorry,” like- I did that for three days, and it was like something broke inside me, and I said, “You know what? You don’t want me, I don’t want you.” And I turned my back on my family, and I pretty much never went back. And I began my path as, like, this lone child in the world, and I met Tiny.

I had no tools for living. You know what I mean? I was a 12-year-old. 12-year-olds get told what to do from the minute you wake up till you go to bed at night.

There’s no, you know… Nobody ever asked me, “Well, what do you feel like doing?” They just said, “Go over there. Read that. Study for that.

Clean that up. Go to bed. Eat that.” Nobody ever asked me anything, right? So now I’m in this school, and I’m running around.

No tools for living, and I met Tiny. Every high school’s got a guy named Tiny, right? He’s, like, 6’4″, 240. Plays guard on the football team, right?

He found… Well, I didn’t find him, he found me. And he came up to me and he goes, “How you doing, punk?” And he slapped me in the back of the head- … and sent me and my books flying.

I have no tools for this. I, I’ve never met anybody this big- … you know, that was assaulting me, right? So I had this, like, out-of-body experience.

So I walked up to Tiny and I hit him as hard as I possibly could, you know? Just laid one on Tiny, and this had no effect on Tiny whatsoever. So I’m standing there, I can’t… The sun’s gone, you know what I mean?

It’s called Tiny, right? And Tiny looks down at me and he goes, “You know, kid, you got a lot of guts.” And then he beat the crap out of me. And as I’m taking this beating, I’m thinking, “This is going pretty good.” ‘Cause the fact is, I’m absolutely terrified of this guy. I’ve, I’m in a place of fear I didn’t know existed as I’m taking this beating.

I knew how to take a beating. I’d taken those before at home. But Tiny had said, “You got a lot of guts.” So my violence had masked my fear. The fact that I attacked him, he figured I wasn’t afraid of him at all, which couldn’t have been further from the truth, but that was the impression he got.

My first tool for living was, when frightened, attack. Because it masks the fact that you’re afraid. No one will know you’re afraid if you’re just attacking all the time, which is what I began to do. And I went back to my dorm room, and I’m hanging out in my room waiting for the bleeding to stop.

You know, I got knots on my head. You know, life’s, my world’s just caving in, you know? Word spread across this campus in, like, 30 minutes, “Watch out for that little Hightower kid. He’s a maniac.

He attacked Tiny.” Which is making things even worse, you know? ‘Cause now I got this reputation that’s got absolutely nothing to do with who I am. I’m, I now, I’m now known as that little maniac. The fact is, I’m just a frightened child.

So the cool guys come swinging around, and Matt swung by my room. This guy named Matt, and Matt swung by and he stuck his head in my room and he went, “Hey, you wanna smoke a joint?” And I said, “Uh, well, well, yeah, yeah, I do.” And I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. And I had, I had no idea what that meant.

All I heard was, “You wanna hook up with us?” The answer was yeah. I mean, he could’ve said, “Look, we’re gonna go kill the Spanish teacher. You wanna come?” “I’m with you, man. Let’s go.” “I’ll hold him, you hit him.” I, you know it, I was c- I was crazy, alone, you know?

And we swung by and we picked up Steve, and Steve had a Tupperware container full of cheap red wine. I mean cheap red wine, you know what I mean? No grapes involved. That fortified stuff, you know what I mean?

And which I grew to love, by the way. And we went behind the dorm as two 13-year-olds and a 12-year-old standing behind a dormitory. Children, three children standing there. No idea what we’re doing.

Matt fires up the joint. He just did what you do, you know? And he hands it to me, and I did what he did, and that burns, and that’s weird. I don’t understand that at all, you know?

And then, you know, here comes the wine. Took a pull on the wine. Well, that burns in a whole other way. That, that’s, you know, that’s completely unpleasant, that thing.

And my head’s pounding and thumping. You know, I got, I got knots on my head, and eyes swell, you know. And the wine’s going and the pot’s going, and I mean, just like that, man. That thing that makes me bodily different from my fellows occurred.

And this warm feeling kinda just floated up through my feet and up through the top of my head and s- and the magic happened, man. I was comfortable standing where I was standing, doing what I was doing with the people I was doing it with, and I’d never felt like that before in my life. And I, you know, I th- it was the most amazing spiritual moment, man. For me, it was just, ah.

And I didn’t know, is it the pot? Is it the wine? Is it the fact that I’m standing here with my two very close personal friends, Matt and Steve? ‘Cause there’s a connection going on here now, you know what I mean?

I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t care. I feel better than I’ve ever felt and there’s, and nothing bad’s happening. Nothing bad is happening.

I’d been told, you know what I mean, that you, you smoke that evil weed, man, you know, you’re on your, 30 minutes you’re on your way downtown looking for heroin. You know, don’t go near that stuff, man. I felt no need to go downtown. Not that night, anyway.

That, that demon rum, man. You start drinking that, you know what I mean? You blink, you’re a hobo. You got a little knapsack on your back and you’re riding the rails, man.

You’re just a shiftless, homeless fool. Felt no need to ride the rails. Felt comfortable standing where I was standing, doing what I was doing with the people I was doing it with. It was magic.

It was magic. And n- nobody died. Nobody went to jail. No blood was drawn.

Nobody went to the nuthouse. All those things were gonna happen. But that was not my experience right there, you know what I mean? My experience said, feel better than you’ve ever felt before.

No problem. In fact, I’m no fool, man. I’m doing this as often as I possibly can, and I did every day for the next 16 years no matter what. Which is why, and all this is just my silly opinion up here about this stuff, just a, you know, so- just a drunken maniac rattling on about my experiences.

But my neck of the woods they do this thing, they tell, they say to newcomers, “Just don’t drink or use, no matter what.” Personally, I’m glad nobody said that to me ’cause I’d have said, “Oh, got it” and I’d have been out the door. That’s the deal. I think that kills people ’cause that’s, that’s like half the sentence.

If I could not, if I could just not drink or use no matter what, I guarantee you wouldn’t be here tonight. Yeah. A plane was involved, I’m not doing it. The, the truth is I thought I was going to Cincinnati.

That’s in Ohio, isn’t it? I’m in Kentucky apparently. That’s what I’ve been told. Fact of the matter is, nothing personal, I don’t know anybody in Kentucky.

You know what I mean? The hell am I flying out here for, you know? Work the steps? I don’t think so.

Take a phone call from a whining, suffering, alcoholic newcomer who has not done one thing all day long to, to, to engage in a process of recovery for himself but feels that 3:30 AM is an excellent time to call Earl. I would not take that phone call. I would not do that.

Work the steps? Absolutely not, no. You, why not? ‘Cause I’d be home just not drinking and using no matter what ’cause I could do that.

Fact of the matter is I’m the flip side of that coin. I drink and use no matter what. No matter what. Give me a good reason, I don’t stop.

That’s the difference between me and the problem drinker. Problem drinker gets another drunk driving charge, goes before the judge. Judge says, “You know what? I’m sick of you.

Sick of you, seeing you. You’re doing a year. I see you again, you’re doing a year. We’re not gonna talk about it anymore and I see you again, we’re doing a year in county.

End of the year we’ll get back together and we’ll talk about it then.” Problem drinker hears that and says, “You know what? I don’t wanna go to county for a year,” makes the decision to stop drinking and driving and can actually follow through on that. Me, I mean, I’d start wondering what it’s gonna be like in jail ’cause I’m going. And I’ll try.

I mean, I will really try, right? I understand, drinking, driving, bad. I understand. I’m really gonna make the best of all efforts not to do that, and I’ll stop on the way home from the court.

Knock back 30. And then when they invite me to leave their fine establishment I will go get in my car and drive home. ‘Cause I forget, you know what I mean? I just forget.

Anyway, it’s humble beginnings for me, you know what I mean? Little pot, little wine, no big deal, right? Perfectly reasonable. 13 was pills.

The only reason I took a pill is I was at a party and this guy said, “Would you like a couple of pills?” I said, “Well, yeah.” Again, having no idea what we’re talking about. I took two pills. 20 minutes later I’m laying on the floor very happy. You know what I mean?

This, this is fine. I like this. What was that? Tuinal.

Tuinal. I’m writing that down, man. I’m asking for that by name. Tuinal, Seconal, Placidyl, that was…

You know, I got strung out on all that stuff. 14 I started taking psychedelics. Again, I was at a party. Girl…

A- actually I was hanging out with this girl. I was on a 10-hour pass from this boarding school and I was hanging out with this girl named Debbie. Fond memories of Debbie. Debbie was older woman.

Debbie was 15 and a half. She was also a bad girl. Man, Debbie, like such respect for Debbie, man. I got respect for Debbie, man.

Debbie said, “You want some acid?” I said, “Okay.” And she handed this, she had a lipstick tube, you know, that women carry, and opened it up and spun the lipstick up, and there’s a little pill on the end of it. I went, “That’s very clever.” And I took it and I popped it in my mouth and swallowed it, and she said, “Did you take that whole thing?” Again, me being an idiot, right?

I have no idea what’s going on. And I said, “Well, yeah, I did. You know, it was a very small, it was very small.” “And I’m used to these horse caps, you know?” And she said, “That’ll free hit the white lightning.” Right? A woman over here just went, “Oh.” That’s not good.

Well, anyway, the next two days were very interesting. I can’t… I, I, I remember, you know how you remember like parts of it but it’s just all weird? You don’t know what really happened and what didn’t.

Yeah. But I remember we were in a market pretending we were married. And I had the cart and I looked at her and I said, “Do we have any children?” And she said, “Yes, we have two.” And I said, “Then we’re gonna need these diapers right here.” And then I kind of like just phased back out.

And to this day, I mean, I go to a market, I have a list. You know what I mean? I don’t just idly go into one of those places, man. They freak me out.

The lights and the rows and everything’s perfect, you know? And there’s so many decisions to be made there. And these are the things that I think normal people take for granted, you know what I mean? We get it all taken away from us, so we gotta piece it back together one little bit at a time.

Me, I mean, you, you’ve been in the market and you see, you go around the corner and there’s an abandoned cart. I understand that guy. I understand that. You know what I mean?

I mean, I see a cart like that, I just go… I know. I understand, man. Lot of decisions, got a little overwhelmed, gotta do it, gotta come back later.

15 I started shooting dope. Only reason I did that was I was on a boat in Marina del Rey, California, and a woman came up to me and said, “Would you like me to stick this in your body?” I said, “Yes, I would.” And she did, and it was one of those where you just went… It was a good one, man.

It was a good one. Just that, and all, all I remember thinking on the way down was, “Oh, yeah.” Man, you know? If I’m dying now, fine. That was great.

Ah. Now, identify as an alcoholic. Here I am talking about drugs. Gotta show respect.

All right? I’m a child of the ’60s. Our parents were the alcoholics. We were trying to carve out our own identity here.

We were not going to drink ourselves to death the way they were. We were going to kill ourselves in a whole new way. But here’s the facts. Only real information I have about my life as a result of having gotten sober, stayed that way a while, done my inventory work, and looked back on my life with some kind of sane perspective.

All right? And what I know is this: my drug of choice is what do you got? It’s all anti-earl medication to me, man. You know?

If I can get enough of what you got in my body, I can kill the fear and be in the world. That’s all I, I drank because I loved the effect that was produced by alcohol. The same was true for other substances. So I mean, I’m, my, my favorite’s down and out.

I like heroin. I like barbiturates. I like alcohol. These are a few of my favorite things.

My idea of a good night’s sitting around just checking my pulse, you know what I mean? That’s my idea. But you don’t have any of those? I’ll take a great big bag of the cocaine, please.

I’m, sure, let’s, I’m, I’ll sit around all night listening to the air around my head, you know? Driving down the freeway decoding license plates. You know, just psychotic. Sure.

The plan. ‘Cause for me, it’s not about going down or going up, it’s about I gotta get out of right here right now. ‘Cause right here, right now, I’m self-centered and I’m frightened. Right here, right now, I’m comparing my insides to your outsides and I’m losing every time.

I gotta get out of here. Up or d- down preferred. Can’t? Up, fine, let’s go.

Let’s just go You got to make a move, right? So the drugs would come and go. Whatever was on…

You know what I mean? I, I wasn’t a specialist. You know what I mean? It was, you know, “Give me some.” You know?

The- And they would come and go. I mean, it was heroin one day, barbiturates the next, cocaine this day, but… You know what I mean? All this stuff.

There’s only one thing that was on the bo- on the table every single day. That was alcohol. Alcohol was on the table every single day, and I believe the reason for that, again, just my opinion, I believe the reason for that is drugs are completely unreliable. You know?

There’s no quality control going on out there. You know what I mean? You don’t know what you got till you get it in your body. You know what I mean?

‘Cause I never went to the dealer and said, “Excuse me,” you know, “I’ll take some of that cocaine.” And he n- Never once did he say to me, “You know, Earl, it’s not really that good this week. You know? Come back next week.” “We’ll have something a little better for you.” They don’t say that. They say, “Yeah, watch out for this, man.

You need to cut that again, right? You know, be careful now. Powerful. Very powerful.” Right?

Get home and it’s salt. Right? Um, if you go get a fifth of Jack Daniels, you go get a quart of good gin, you know what you got here. This is reliable stuff.

You can count on this stuff. And by the time I was 16 years old, people were referring to me as an alcoholic, and my response was, “What’s your point?” Yeah, I am. I’m an alcoholic and a drug addict at 16 years of age, and I know it. It’s clear to anybody who comes in contact with me at this early point in my life.

Right? I gotta have a bottle. I gotta have a bottle, and whatever else happens is whatever else happens. I do so much cocaine, I can’t get my mouth open anymore.

You know? And it’s 7:30, the party just started, and I’ve completely overshot the mark one more time. Not a problem. I suck enough gin through my teeth, I’ll loosen up and I can go on with the party.

No problem. Not enough heroin to get you to that cool, quiet, just heart and lungs working place? That’s my favorite place ever, right? No?

No. Gre- Just start sucking on that Jack Daniels bottle, man. He’ll get you the rest of the way. He’ll get you where you need to be, ’cause booze is reliable.

So that’s why for me, in the end for me, it was all about drinking. It was a three, four grams of cocaine a day only to keep me on my feet so that I could drink the way I needed to drink. It was not about getting high. It was about stay up, ’cause you need more, right?

Get that alcohol in. Get that alcohol in. All the rest of it was just a complete waste of my time. You know?

I, it was, it… We weren’t playing anymore. You know what I mean? That last six years was nasty.

16, I went to my first mental institution. Um, dropped out of high school. Father decided I was insane. Locked me up for three months of observation, a year of rehabilitation, which I thought was a little excessive.

And they had the signs. I thought of it when I was sitting here. They got the green exit signs in here, and that’s what they had in, in this nuthouse I was in. And all, I thought, “That’s it.

That’s all I wanna do.” One word. They got it down to one word for me: exit. That’s all I wanna do. I don’t want…

And I’m in there taking three cups of pills a day and shuffling around this joint, planning my escape, right? So I’m getting ready to escape, and I met this girl named Kilday, who was nuts, right? I mean, I had, I, I ate all my meals with Kilday, just to kind of get to know her a little bit, and all you had to do to flip her out was look at her and say, “Hey, Kilday, how you doing?” Kilday- Wow, man. And Kilday just snapped.

Every meal was like dinner and a show. You know what I mean? You know the… Flip Kilday out, she’d run all around the place, and everybody’d chase her, right?

All attention was on her, so I used her as my diversion. I’m sitting at lunch and I’m gonna escape, and I got Kilday, got her flipped out, and she goes that way, and I’m sitting in my little chair, ready, ready, go. You know what I mean? And I’m holding half.

You know? That’s all I got. You know? And you’re like, your brain works fine, you know?

It’s like first time in weeks you try to make a move, and it ain’t there. And it’s, like, demoralizing, ’cause out of the, out of the, out of the nurses’ station, you hear over the intercom, “Uh, Ed, when you got a minute, you wanna grab Earl? He’s making a break for the door.” You know? And, and Ed’s eating his sand- eating his sandwich, going, “Yeah, I’ll get him in a minute.

He ain’t going nowhere.” That’s in no hurry. And you’re over there, you know, and like a normal person would just go, you know, “Bummer, man. Just go sit down.” You know? They’re gonna take you back to your room with no doorknob.

It’s over. Me, I was working. I was working. Till Ed came and got me.

“Uh, let’s just turn it this way, partner.” Damn. This is… You know, I mean, what we’re getting a glimpse of here is my best thinking. This is my best thinking.

Mr. High IQ. Yeah. The next time I got thrown in a nuthouse, I escaped the first day, ’cause I’d learned.

You know? My tools for living were drugs, alcohol, violence, and run. And now, ’cause I’d been thrown in the nuthouse, I realized my fifth tool for living was if you’re gonna get thrown in the nuthouse, you gotta get out before they get the Thorazine in. ‘Cause if you don’t, you’re leaving when they say.

So I’m in the intake process of my second insane asylum. I’m sitting there going, “Yeah, yeah, it’s very, very bad. It’s very, very bad. I’m really glad we got here.

You know what I mean? I really need a lot of help. Hey, look at that.” You know? And I’m moving this time.

You know what I mean? I’m running, the whistles are going, and I got a guy chasing me, and I’m out on the back lawn, and I’m heading for this 12-foot ivy-covered chain link fence. And at this point in my life, I’m, like, 17. I’m an alcoholic.

I’m a drug addict. I’m a high school dropout. I’m at any moment hopefully an escaped mental patient. This is, this is, like, my resume.

This is what I have to say to myself, and I’m thinking, “If I make that fence, I don’t have any problems, ’cause I’ll be drunk in 20 minutes.” ‘Cause I’m the opposite of the, of, of everybody else. I drink and use no matter what. I got lots of things that have shown up in my life by age 17 that say, “This is not working. Your life is just spiraling downward at an alarming rate, and it’s all clearly directly attributable

to drinking.” And my answer to that was, “But that’s like saying to me stop breathing.” This is how I’m, I get out of bed. This is how I take a shower. This is how I get dressed. This is how I go out into the world.

This is how I listen and talk to other human beings. This is how I drive. This is how I, I, I, I look at the world. I look at it through, with this filter on ’cause I can’t take it when you take the filter away.

It’s too bright. It’s too intense. It’s too emotional. I can’t deal with it.

Gotta have my filter on at all times. So I hit the streets. I did three years out on the street, doing what you do to stay loaded on a daily basis. I thought it was like me and Jack Kerouac, you know, On the Road, you know, and it wasn’t like that.

I had it very romanticized in my head, but it was a pretty brutal way of life. Met this woman, we talked at a party for 20 minutes and went well, so we were in love. Through a series of weird circumstances, I went on an interview, and I got accepted to a good business college in Northern California. I’m a high school dropout.

I don’t even have a high school diploma. I just got accepted to college. I go back to my father, and I say, “I got accepted to l- uh, business school. Don’t ask.

Give me a year’s tuition, and I’ll leave town.” He said, “Beautiful.” Hit me with a check. Me and this woman piled all our belongings and eight pounds of hash in the back of this truck and- drove to Northern California for higher learning. She got a straight job. I became a drug dealer, and I had no problems becoming a drug dealer because I had, at this point in my life, I’m 19 years old.

I’ve got no sense of family. I’ve got no sense of community. I’ve got no ethics. I’ve got no morals.

I’m just this loose cannon out there, this wounded animal drinking and using from the minute I get up till I pass out every night, just trying to find a way to be in the world. So be it, and, and I mean, and I’m in business. I mean, I’m studying marketing, production, distribution. And, and I’m applying it to my business.

Business is booming. I think this is all great. She’s got the straight job where she’s the sa– She’s, uh… It’s, the using’s getting a little out of hand for her.

She’s saying stuff like, “I’m too high,” which is a completely ridiculous thing to say. I mean, if you can say it, it’s not true, right? So we, we’re back to LA, and I got to drink the way I needed to up there, right? And we kept the ball rolling.

Twenty-one years old, I get diagnosed to have malignant cancer. Fly back to LA. They do major surgery on my upper back. They tell my family I’m gonna die.

They prepare me to die, and I just look at them and say to them, “You know, you don’t even know who you’re talking to.” When I’m using, that comes up, like, twice a week. You’re gonna die. Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna die. Ain’t we all?

Uh, so I did that, and I went into the nuclear medicine program. I didn’t like the drugs they had, so I went home and got loaded the way I get loaded. I just blew off the nuclear medicine thing, and I beat the cancer thing. I’ve been a long-term cancer survivor.

I’ve been cancer-free long time. Back to school, I mean, just, you know what I mean? That was just kinda like this little side trip. It just didn’t mean anything to me.

I got an early acceptance to USC Law School. Editor-in-chief of my college newspaper. I’m writing inflammatory political articles on a weekly basis. They’re threatening to expel me, you know, every day, you know.

You know, I’m citing my rights, and ar, you know what I mean? And I’m just drunk and loaded, and they don’t… You know, I got hair out like this. They’re just looking at me like, “Jesus, what have we created here?” You know?

This was, this went sideways years ago. And my mother calls me and says, “Look, we haven’t been anywhere as a family in 10 years. We gotta put this family back together. We’ll go anywhere you wanna go.

Let’s just go as a family.” Begging me, crying, using all the mother tricks, you know, and I said, “Fine.” On my birthday, November 7th, I flew back to LA, and we took off to fly to Guadalajara on my birthday, and on the way there, the plane crashed. My mother, my father, my little sister all died in the crash, and I didn’t. And I woke up on this mountain in Mexico, and my skull was fractured, and my back was broken in three places, and my leg was crushed, and my arm was crushed.

I was paralyzed from the waist down, and I was, uh, awake, and my mother was laying right over there, and my little sister Kimberly was right there, and my father was right over there. I couldn’t move. The only thing I could move was my right arm. I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t get to them, and I watched them all bleed to death right in front of me. And I had this, uh, this conversation with God, and I said, “You know what? Anybody that would take a kind, loving, gentle, poetic little creature like my little sister Kimberly and leave a lying, cheating, thieving, dope fiend alcoholic like me on the

planet, I have no use for a God of this type,” and I renounced God. And then some guys came up on the mountain, and they scavenged the plane wreck, and they came up to me. And I could get my wallet out, and I just wanted them to know my name ’cause I knew I was dying. And they took my wallet and took the money out of it and threw my wallet back on my chest and went on through the wreck and got what they could get and went back down the mountain and left me up there to die.

So I, you know, I renounced God, and I renounced any, uh, association with you as well. I had no love of man, and I had no love of God, and I didn’t care what anybody thought from this moment on. I thought, “You know what? I’m gonna get down out of this mountain, and I’m gonna let you all know what I think of this thing called life.” I mean, uh, you know, I’ve been trying to keep a facade going in my life, have things going on, so y’all leave me alone.

Let me drink and use the way I want it. You know what? I don’t need it anymore. I’m gonna do what I want.

You don’t like it? Just step aside ’cause I’m an angry, hostile, terrified human being, and it’s on. And finally, some guys came up, and they got me, and they put me in the back of this truck with my mother, and they took us down to an aid station. They tagged my mother dead.

They tagged me dead, and they sat there smoking cigarettes waiting for me to die, and I just wouldn’t die. I was angry. Mm. And, uh, finally, they took me to a hospital, and then they found out my name, and that meant the Federales had to show up, so the Federales interrogated me through an interpreter for the next three and a half

days and wouldn’t give me anything for pain. They wanted to know what I was doing back in Mexico, which is a story we don’t need to get into here. It was ugly, man. It was just ugly.

And I called a buddy of mine that I was associated with in Northern California who called a family in Mexico City who flew in the plane, who greased a few palms, and they plastered me from the neck down and smuggled me out of Mexico back into the States. I spent a long time in a hospital in s- in Southern California, and they told me I’d probably have a, a withered left hand. I might be blind in my left eye, and I may or may not be walking.

And I remember again looking at him thinking, “You don’t have any idea who you’re talking to, man.” It’s maximum dose of the Demerol every three hours around the clock for I don’t know how long. And eventually, I, I, I got out of that hospital. I had a, a brace that I had, custom-made brace I had made, and I had my cane, and I got up and I walked out of that joint, and three hours and 15 minutes after I got out of there I was so strung out, man, I was looking to connect. And I went on my last run and it lasted for six years.

I was sober three times in six years. They were for 72 hours each, and that was when I would go to this bootleg sanitarium in Hollywood, California. You’d walk in, you give them 150 cash. You give them your bottle of Valium.

You give them your car keys. You give them your, uh, wallet. You give them your gun. You know what I mean?

You go in and you lay down on the gurney, and they strap you down. They shoot you full of anticonvulsants and then let you ride, and 72 hours later they either send you home or the morgue, and they didn’t care which way you went ’cause they got their 150. And I’d reintroduce myself to God and say, “You know what? You get me through this sane and alive, I’ll never drink again.” And I’d get up off that table and they’d say, “You be a good boy, Earl.

Don’t drink. You know you’re an alcoholic, don’t you?” I said, “Yes, ma’am, I do.” She said, “You know, you drink you’re gonna die. You know, you gotta g- you know, it’s getting rough out there for you.” I’d say, “Yes, ma’am, I’m not gonna drink no more.” And self-knowledge availed me nothing. I’d be drunk that night.

Drunk that night. Couldn’t stop drinking. I remember the last time I went in there I said, I… The s- madness and insanity in my life had- it was over the top.

And I remem- I meant it with every fiber of my being. I said, “I cannot drink another day. I cannot drink anymore.” N- It’s… There…

Nothing good’s happened in years. My li- I’m so completely and totally alone. The soul’s just being sucked right out of me. The madness is so severe.

I got visions of dead people dancing in my head. It’s just so dark and I can’t do it anymore. And I left that place and I drank for two more years ’cause I couldn’t stop drinking. And I don’t know why, but I mean, I came to in a, in a, um…

Last time I came out of a blackout I was 28 years old. Both my hands were broken. I had hair out like this and a beard out like this. I was yellow.

I’d had two doctors tell me that if, uh, I didn’t stop drinking this year I was gonna die. So there’s no d- You know, and it was like the fall. You know what I mean? I was getting close.

My thyroid was shut down, kidneys weren’t working, couldn’t touch the liver, heart was swollen. Um, I’d, um… They were deciding whether or not to charge me with attempted murder coming out of this last blackout. Um, I’d been stabbed twice, shot at.

I’d broken 74 bones. I had over 650 stitches in me. My family was dead. I had no friends.

I had no place to live. I was psychotic, and I do not use that term loosely. I could not distinguish between the true and the false, as the book says. I mean, my life was burned to the ground.

It was just burned to the ground. And I just, and I did the, the, the, I, what I… It’s just inconceivable what I did. I raised up two busted hands and I said, “Help.” And they took me then by ambulance to a, um, UCLA emergency.

They pumped my stomach and said, “Get him out of here. He’s a pathetic old man and he’s a drunk. He’s gonna die.” I was 28 years old. Took me to another place.

They kept me five more days. I got worse, and then they took me by ambulance to another place, and this was a place, this was the place to get sober, man. This was an old Air Force hangar, Long Beach General Hospital, under the care of this lady named Dr. Vicki Fox.

She was a real pioneer, a real… She was… You know? We ever start having AA saints, her name’s gonna be in the basket, let me tell you.

Helped an incredible number of people. And it was 42 cots in one room. 21 cots on each side of the bed with sheets drawn between them. And you went in there and if you threw a seizure like me, convulsions, but that’s all you got.

You kicked like a dog, and it was free. And how you earned your cot was you stayed and you faced your kick, and you listened to your body tell you what it thought about what you’d been doing to it. And you just went insane. And 42 guys in one room doing this.

You didn’t sleep a wink. ‘Cause at any moment, you know, somebody’s snapping, somebody’s losing it. Somebody’s pitching up out of that cot, you know, and flopping around on the floor. We’re all yelling, “We got another one!” We’re all shaking, going over there trying to help that guy.

It was nuts. And I left there and they said, “You don’t wanna die, you better go to Alcoholics Anonymous.” And I said, “Okay.” Got out of that place, came back up into LA. For that Friday night I went into the basement of a church on 8:30. Hair out like that, mad dogging everybody that looked at me.

“Do not come up to me. Do not, ’cause if you come up to me, I’m… You come up to me, we’re gonna have a problem.” That was the vibe I was throwing out. “It’s not gonna go well.

I see you talking to each other. We’ll just keep it over there ’cause I’m insane.” And us ter- us frightened, us terrified people, we’re dangerous. Corners like that. “Don’t come at me all smiling with your hand out.” “‘Cause I might get hurt.

It’s not you’re gonna get hurt, ’cause I’m like glass, man. I’m like glass. None of my tools for living work anymore. You come up and shake my hand, you’re gonna ask me a question I can’t answer like, ‘How, how you doing?'” You know?

I don’t know. What’s going on? Beats me, man. I don’t know what’s going on.

I’ll shatter. I’ll just shatter, right? But every meeting’s got a new guy, and all that he saw was other new guy, you know? And he came up, he said, “Hi, beg, I’m an alcoholic.” And I said, “So what?

You know, ain’t exactly the highlight of my life. I don’t know what you’re so happy about. Get away from me.” He looked at me, he said, “Keep coming back.” I thought, “Oh, beautiful. Keep coming back.

Powerful, brother. Powerful.” Right? I’m sure when I’m home pacing, trying to, waiting to, for to get that hour of sleep I’ve been getting lately every night, right? And I’m losing it.

I’m sure that keep coming back thing’s gonna come in real handy. Thank you. If you’re new and they do that to you, I hope you got more courage than I do. They come up to you and go, “Keep coming back,” or, “One day at a time,” man.

Or my personal favorite, “Hey, just turn it over.” It’s a new guy who’s insane, right? Like, that’s gonna mean… Right? I, I hope you got more guts than I.

Just step up to the plate, say, “Excuse me. I don’t personally understand, having been out there for the last 17 years, don’t understand the, uh, deep spiritual significance of turn it over. Would you mind expanding on that for me a little bit?” If they’re in my neck of the woods, if they’re honest, about 75% of them would say, “You know what? I don’t know what it means either.” They said it to me when I came in.

I’m just saying it to you, you know? There’s a guy over there reading the big book. Let’s go ask him. Maybe he knows.

Just my opinion. And I sat in my first meeting, and a guy got up, back against the wall, checking where the doors and windows were, working my game, right? Because that’s all I had. That’s all I had.

And that, and the willingness to go to 1:00 AM meeting. And this guy got up, this old-timer, sixty-five years old, skid row bum, ex-boxer, ex-wino, I remember. And he’s… got up at the podium, and he shared his experience, his strength, and his hope.

I didn’t know that’s what he was doing. Today, I do know that’s what he was doing. And he– But he spoke with this grace and a dignity. He talked about his feelings as a man with dignity.

I’d never heard anybody do that before. You know? And there was just, there was this presence about him. He had this light in his eyes, and he was, like, this passionate guy, and he wasn’t doing that old James Dean shit.

You know what I mean? That quiet angst in the back, not wanting to participate. It’s crap. This guy was stepping right up and going, “This is important to me, and it matters to me, and I feel very strongly about it,” which I thought took a lot of guts.

Stepping up, man. He was stepping up front, and he was talking about this stuff. Talked about how his head would be chewing on him, and he… how he’d, he’d go through a whole productive day with his head chewing on him, using the tools he found in Alcoholics Anonymous.

No wreckage being created, which blew my mind. I’m, if I’m awake, we got wreckage, you know? And this guy’s, like, head doing to him what mine does to me, and he’s getting through, and he’s getting through, and he’s getting out of himself, and he’s being of service to people at a meeting, the end of the meeting, ’cause he knows what a meeting is for. Meeting’s a place…

We have meetings so that we have a place where a newcomer can come and hear a message of hope and a message of recovery. That’s the point of a meeting, and he’d been the newcomer and done that, and they’d given him the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as outlined in that book. And he had worked those 12 steps, and he’d had an awakening as a result of that, and he’d been relieved of the obsession to drink as a r-result of working those steps and had become comfortable sober. And the minute that happened to him, he was now going to meetings to give back, to be there for the new wave of insanity that’s washing up on our beach every day.

And I’m listening to this going, “Whoa.” All in one day. This guy’s amazing. But the thing that did it for me was it was like he looked right at me and he said, “You know what?

I don’t care whether you like what I got to say or not. You don’t like it, go to another meeting.” I love this. ‘Cause it made it clear to me this guy wasn’t selling me something. He wasn’t pitching AA to me, “Come on in,” you know.

He was sharing it with me. I was already in. I was in the room. I was in.

He was sharing this with me. If I wanted it, I could have it. It was for free. If I didn’t want it, cool.

Go to another meeting. Maybe you’ll hear somebody there you can identify with, but by all means, keep coming back till it happens for you. And it happened. And I said, “You know what?” With a look of disdain on my face, right, like All right?

In my head, I went, “It’s cool. I’m coming back.” And I’ve never left. I’ve never left you ’cause I’ve never had any place more powerful to go to, to address the problems that I face on a daily basis as an alcoholic. And that was…

I’ve been here since November 6th, 1980, and I couldn’t… That’s, uh, this November, I’ll have 21 years, and I couldn’t stay sober for a day. I couldn’t stay sober for a day. I quit a thousand times.

But it, that would last like a couple hours. You know? The trick for me has not been, this ain’t about stopping. This is about how do I not start again.

How do I not start again? And for me, I know the only way a guy like me is gonna not start again is if I can find a way to be comfortable sober. Because when I got here and you said to me, “You know, there’s a way for you to be comfortable sober,” I looked at you and thought, “If only that were true. If only that could be for a guy like me.” ‘Cause I’ve been loaded since I was 12 years old.

I had absolutely no experience in my life of being sober and comfortable at all. I didn’t know that it existed. It was outside my experience. I had made a conscious decision to trust you, and I began to do the things that you told me to do.

And I mean, there, there’s so many things that we say to each other in these rooms, but the thing that just does it for me is we got this symbol. I kept thinking, “That’s gotta, that’s gotta be like the crux of the deal or something.” You know what I mean? ‘Cause we got like rings and bracelets and- … bumper stickers and shirts and hats, and I mean, this thing’s everywhere, right?

You see that symbol, you think, you know, “AA,” or possibly a Mason, but you’re thinking AA. It narrows it right down. And I found out it’s this ancient spiritual symbol that stands for mind, body, and spirit brought together as a whole human being. Therein lies the balance I had sought my whole life and never had, drunk or sober.

Never had had it. AA adopted that symbol. Unity, service, and recovery. It’s the same stuff.

Unity is the body. I must bring it here. This is the body to me. I must bring it.

I couldn’t get sober, but we seem to be able to. I must be with my fellows. I must look you in the eye. I must see you on a reg…

I gotta go to regular meetings to see the same people over and over again. ‘Cause I can see you changing, and the s- and the change I see in you is the hope for me. Because I’m too self-centered and afraid as a newcomer in here. I can’t see the change that’s happening to me, but I can see it in you, and we’ve been here the same amount of time.

And if it’s happening to you and we’re doing the same stuff, it must be happening to me. Hope. Hope, the greatest gift anybody could ever give somebody like me. ‘Cause I came here hopeless and alone.

Completely hopeless and alone. It was so dark inside me, and I’d been alone so long. When you said, “Are you lonely?” It was like, “Huh?” You know, when you’ve been lonely forever, it’s not lonely anymore. It’s just where you are.

It’s not in relation to anything else, ’cause that’s all that it’s been, you know? So the unity of the body, I gotta bring it here. I must be with you. Recovery is of the mind for me, the greater aspect of this disease, right?

The obsession of drinking. The book tells me that the persistence of this illusion, this belief in a lie that I can drink like a normal man, that, that it is in any way the answer to any problem I may ever have, is astonishing. That many of us pursue it to the gates of insanity and death. That’s my story.

I end up in insane asylums and tagged dead in Mexico. I mean, I’m the gate guy. You know what I mean? You know, it’s like two drinks and go to the gate.

It’s like that’s what’s gonna happen to me, and I know that about me. I don’t… I’ve never been able to manage it. I’ve never been a controlled drinker.

I never have been. I didn’t have a family to hold it together for. I didn’t have children I had to keep it together for or a job or a career or a goal or a hope or a dream to keep it together for. What I had was me and knowing that the breath of life for me was drinking and using, and that’s what I was gonna do till the day I die.

That was never controlled, ever, for me. And when I got here, I came here destroyed, which was a great way to get here. And you told me to keep coming back, and I found out what that meant and why I needed to be with the body of AA. The recovery of the mind had to be there for me because if I would never got…

If I don’t get relieved of the obsession to drink, if I don’t get relieved of this persistent, aching, gnawing thing in my head that keeps sneaking up on me at the worst possible time and telling me that the answer to the problem I currently face is a drink or to go to a doctor and get, uh, a, a properly prescribed medication to help me sleep at night It’ll say whatever it needs to say. My head doesn’t say, “Go get some heroin.” It doesn’t say that ’cause it knows I’m gonna say, “Thanks for saying shut up,” you know?

I don’t know. Thank you for sharing. No, what it says to me is, “Boy, that back pain you’ve got that you’ve lived with for the last 26 years, that’s a terrible thing. We need a, we need…

At the very least, we need a muscle relaxant.” It’s very, very appropriate. Muscle relaxant equals heroin for me. I’m on my way. It’s like, uh, like the guy I was talking to, a guy I know who got 30 years sober.

He was a young, successful actor in New York. He and another guy, they were working on Broadway, and they were trying to get sober, trying to get sober, trying to get sober. They were e- in AA drunk, in AA drunk, in AA. And one day they just had a terrible, hard, stressful day, and they just said, “Screw it.

We’re gonna go drink.” And they went to their favorite bar. That’s outside the, the, the Broadway theater, and there’s the… You know, it’s so romantic. You know what I mean?

And there’s the, the beautiful burled wood bar, and there’s Tommy, the bartender, behind the bar. Right? Their favorite bartender. And the guy I know walks up to the, walks up to him, and he slaps him on the shoulder, and he says, “Tommy, two double scotches and call the police.”

‘Cause he knows. You know? He knows. He can’t do anything about it ’cause self-knowledge didn’t avail him anything either.

Eventually got sober. He’s got 30 years now, and he’s a remarkable human being. He’s got what I want, light beams coming out of his head. Guy’s lit up.

Want that buzz, right? But I get… To get relieved of the obsession, what do I gotta do so I can get comfortable sober? I gotta work the 12 steps.

That’s what they’re for. Step one is what’s the problem? Lack of power is my dilemma. Maybe we’re able to do other stuff pretty well, but when it comes to the question of drinking, uh-uh.

Powerless, man. If that, if, if lack of power is my problem, what’s my solution? Step two. A power greater than me that could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink.

Cool. I know what my problem and my solution are. Now what should I do? Well, better make a decision to do something about it.

It’s a program of action. Okay. Third step, get down on my knees, turn my will and my life over to the care of a god I do not understand, in my case. I tried to wrap my head around infinity.

It just won’t go all the way around. I did a lot of psychedelics, man. I can get way out there. But I just get as far as I can get to scare the hell out of myself and come snapping back again, you know?

Whoo. I’ll leave that to God. That, that one is another one for you. That one freaks me out.

Turn my will and my life, get back up on the couch, and embark upon immediate plan of action. What’s the action plan? Fourth through nine. Four and five is me, six and seven is God, and eight and nine is you.

Nobody else to play with. Four and five, I swallow a large chunk of truth about myself, and I admit these things before God to another human being. Six and seven, I hook it back up with God and I ask God to remove the defects of character, ’cause I’ll remove the wrong stuff. I, I’ll say, “You know what?

I’m really enjoying this defect right here. You can have this one.” “But I’m keeping this, man. We’ll talk in a week.” Right? No, man.

Just, “Here, God. You do what you think is best with this, and I’ll keep praying for the willingness to allow that to happen, uh, to get me out of the way.” Eight and nine, hooking it back up with you. “I’m very, very sorry. Here’s your money.

Back of the house. That’s it. No big, Oh, what a wonderful person I have become. Check out my spiritual vision quest.

You’re gonna be wowed by me.” Please. These people don’t want my money. They want their money. You’re gonna go give them their money back.

It’s very simple. And it, to make amends means to change, right? It means to change, right? “So I’m very sorry I stole your car.

I estimate the value of the car at $5,000 at the time of the theft. So here’s a check, and if this is to your acce- if you’re, if this is acceptable to you, I will make monthly payments to you until that amount is, is, is paid. And I will not go steal your car and sell it to pay you for the car I stole from you.” You know that that thing, which is the first thing that comes to mind of a guy like me.

You know, just one more deal, and we’ll all be fine. Oh, God. 10, 11, and 12 keep me in the game. ‘Cause I made a pass at it that first time, but I have not come anywhere near dealing with all of it.

I’ve scratched the surface. I’ve become aware of the work that I need to do. 10, I continue to take personal inventory, me. And when I’m wrong, promptly admit it.

11, I seek God. I seek God. I seek God through prayer and meditation. I pray for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.

That’s it. And I meditate to quiet the mind so that when the answers come, I can hear them. Having had a spiritual awakening is the result of working the steps. Having been restored to sanity, soundness of mind, having been relieved of the obsession to drink, having it been, it’s been made possible for me to be comfortable sober for the first time in my life.

I can give away something I’ve got. So when that next… And that was all the guys that gave that to me. I was sponsored for almost 14 years by the late, great Donald Madden right up until the day he died.

Uh, and I stayed with him till the day he died. He, he saved my life. I was with him longer than I was with my parents. And he said to me, “We’ll give you everything we got.

We’ll give it all to you. We’re gonna ask you one thing in return.” What’s that? He goes, “When you catch this buzz, you turn around and you give it away to the next crazy little lunatic like you that comes walking through that door.” I said, “Deal.” So I’ve been doing that ever since. Since I caught the buzz, that’s what I call it, you know, I’ve been trying to turn other people on to it who come to me.

Not, you know, I don’t go walking down the street going, “Hey, come here.” Some guy walks up to me in a meeting and goes, “I wanna talk to you.” I say, “Sure.” I mean, I had a, a… What can I tell you, man? I mean, you know, I’ve been sober 20 years.

I got a life beyond my wildest dreams. I mean, way beyond my wildest dreams. I’m doing all this stuff I swore on that mountain in Mexico I’d never do again. I swore I’d never love a- I’d never, ever love another human being again as long as I live, and I’d never, ever tell you who I was.

There’s no way you’re gonna love me. I’m out. I’m out. And I’m not out.

I mean, this thing goes so far past not drinking and using, it’s a mindblower. It’s a design for living. You get rebuilt in here. Who you get introduced to here is you, the real you, the true you, the truth about yourself, and it’s always much more delightful an experience than we imagine it would be.

When I came up that mountain, I knew… I suffered from survivor’s guilt. I lived. They died.

I had no right to be alive. Every morning I would wake up and think to myself, “You worthless… You’re worthless. You have no right to be here.

Who, what right do you have to be breathing in and out?” So I could have no joy. I could have no peace. I could have nothing. You know, I suffered from such post-traumatic stress it was unbelievable, man.

Can I have some water? Oh, that’s right there. Thank you. Magic.

That’s coming to Unglued. This is a great place to come unglued. I mean, I can’t fly in airplanes. No way.

Plane goes bump, my head goes right to core, primal stuff. Fight or flight. And on an airplane you got nowhere to run and you got nobody to fight. You just have to sit there while your brain throws pictures and images, carnage up in your head to try to get you to do something about this.

A- and, and I get on planes all the time. All the time. I fly about 100,000 miles a year. And I do it for one thing.

I do it for Alcoholics Anonymous. And the good news is, is that I get to prove to myself on a regular basis I’m willing to go to any lengths to stay sober, you know? It’s emotional tonight. It’s emotional because right naturally, God did it to me again.

I’m out there before the thing, right? And I’m just so exhausted I don’t even care. I’ve been up since four o’clock in the morning. It’s just like, whatever, you know what I mean?

We’ll all stay sober. We’ll all get drunk. Let’s see, you know what I mean? You know, I’m just there, and this guy walks up and we start talking, you know, and he was in a plane crash

six years ago. And he’d, he’d heard my tape. And he came here to meet me. Guys

like me don’t get to have lives like the one I’m having. We don’t get to feel a sense of purpose, of value, that we can s- in some way contribute, you know? I cause problems.

I hurt people. I take advantage. I break things, and then I die, you know? Not here.

How about those Vikings, huh? I gotta… Look, what I am is I’m a grateful alcoholic who’s got a life beyond his wildest dreams. I’m living.

I’m, uh, I mean, amazing people. I get to travel in Alcoholics Anonymous. I get to sponsor a legion of guys who sponsor a n- just an army of guys, and they all know that I’m a product of Donald Madden, who’s a product of Norm A, who’s a product of, uh, of Chuck, who’s a product of Bill.

That’s my lineage. And those… That, that’s, that’s what I come from. And they all know about the late, great Donald Madden, and their babies, the, the guys they sponsor know.

And I know that when I… When the guy I sponsor is out of town and the guy he’s sponsoring with thirty-six days calls me up and goes, “Will you take me to a meeting?” And I go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And I go and I get him, and we go to a meeting, and I, you know, and this guy’s gonna speak, and he’s just gonna throw down. And I’m thinking, “Ah, isn’t this wonderful that I get to be a part of this?

That this guy’s gonna throw these pearls of wisdom out,” he does every time he talks. And, and, and, and little Michael here is gonna, you know, get turned on to that thirty-six days. It took me to, like, eighteen years to figure out what this guy was talking about. Michael’s gonna get it in thirty-six days.

And sure enough, the speaker’s talking and it’s amazing. And I’m thinking, “Isn’t this great that Michael is getting this?” Guess what? Michael’s not getting this. Michael is having a fundamentally different meaning than I’m having.

Michael’s got thirty-six days. Give him a chance. He gets his turn. I gotta remember what I was like when I was coming to meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous brand new.

I mean, I was going to this place called Ohio Street, and I would pull up to Ohio Street, and the inside of my head was just like, “Okay, okay, we found the building. We found the building. Good, good, good.” “Now we park over here, and you go in the meeting, you go in the meeting.” You p- They put the keys in the seats. Keys in the seat.

Put your keys in the seat. Put your keys in the seat. What are you gonna sit? Where are you gonna sit?

There’s a guy with a red coat. S-sit next to the guy with the red coat. You spot the guy with the red coat. You know where you’re sitting.

All right, great. Put the keys down, put the keys down, put them… We’re in the building. We’re in the building.

What do we know? Okay, we’re sitting down, we’re sitting down. We’re starting the meeting. Okay, good, good, good, good.

Good, good. I’m here. All right, what do you got? What do you got?

What do you got? What do you got? Come on. What do you got?

Come on, lay it on me. I’m ready. I’m here. Come on, let’s go.

Let’s go. Right? Guy gets up. Guy gets up.

All right, he’s reading something. He’s reading. He rarely saw something. He’s rarely seen something.

He rarely saw… Something, failing something. He’s ra- I didn’t… I missed a lot of that.

I don’t really know what… I don’t really know what happened right there. I, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Uh, oh, oh, twelve. It’s read… Step, step… Twelve things.

Twelve things. Twelve things in Alcoholics Anonymous. Twelve things. Remember that.

I got that. That was good. That was good. ABC.

Twelve things, ABC. Twelve things, ABC. He’s down. He’s down.

I didn’t get a lot of that. Twelve things, ABC. We’ll build on that later. We’ll build on that.

He’s down. He’s down. Here’s another guy. He’s up.

He’s up. He drank. He drank. I drank.

I did that. I did that. I did that. This is, this is good.

I like this. It’s good. He, he, he’s down. That wouldn’t last very long.

All right. All right. I gotta remember that guy. Guy, where’s that guy?

Where’s that guy? Get the face. Get the face. Remember the face.

All right. All right, good. Oh, here’s another guy. They’re passing a basket.

They’re passing a basket. What the hell is… Oh, don’t take the money. Don’t take the money.

The basket goes by. That’s gonna go by. Okay, we’re getting up. We’re going outside.

We’re going outside. Why are we going outside? We smoke. I, I smoke.

All right. We’re going outside for a smoke. How you doing? Fine.

How you doing? Fine. How you doing? Fine.

They’re ringing the bell. They’re ringing the bell. Go back in. Go back in.

Go back in. They’re reading twelve things. They’re reading twelve things. Twelve…

Those aren’t the same twelve things. Those are twenty-four things, ABC. Twenty-four things, ABC. This guy, he’s up.

He’s up. He drank. He drank. I did that.

I did that. Oh, he felt like that? He felt like that. I felt like…

I feel like that. I feel like that guy. I feel like that guy. He doesn’t even know it.

He doesn’t know it, but he’s inside my head. How does he get in? How do they do that? How do they get in my head like that?

That is absolutely incredible. That was ama- This is great. You know what? I think I belong here.

I may in fact belong here. He’s down. That was great. Here’s a guy up.

He’s up. We’re up. They got me by the hand. We’re praying.

All right, praying. I know that… And I would leave the meeting, and somebody’d say, “What’d you think of the meeting?” I’d say, “It’s a great meeting.” And I’d go home. You know what I mean?

I just did something a little different. I mean, I went to a meeting and I won. I won. I was victorious, man.

I was going to bed sober one more day. I win. Didn’t matter, the wreckage and the bill collectors and, you know, the old warrants and all this, you know? I was sober.

The miracle of my life to this day is that I’m sober, and who needs to know that is me, and I knew it from the day I got here, right? So when I go walking into the meeting and I got little Mike sitting there with thirty-six days and it, and it’s happening, and we walk outside and I look down at little Mike and I go, “So what’d you think of the meeting?” And he looks at me and he goes, “It’s great.” I look at him and I go, “All right, little bro, you’re right on track, man.” “You win. Good for you.” And the cycle begins again, you know, this human chain that we’re in.

There’s a buzz to be caught here, man, and it’s all about right here, right now. Just I gotta get between those. Somehow just I gotta get in there. That place that I avoided at all costs.

Remember when it was all about I gotta get out of right here, right now? Up, down, don’t matter. Let’s just get out of here. Now, what I get is right now.

And where else am I gonna have a life but right here, right now? If I’m comfortable being, doing what I’m doing with the people I’m doing it with, right here, right now, then I got a life. Where else am I gonna find God but right here, right now? Where else am I gonna find any kind of peace or dignity as a man?

Where am I gonna fi- where am I gonna be able to battle the flaws that are mine, the conflicts within me that, that carry on because I’m human, I’m flawed, and I’m doing the best I can to get better on a daily basis and not hurt anybody else in the process? Where else am I gonna do that? I gotta do it right here, right now.

It can’t be in my head in the future. It’s gotta be now. Gotta be now. Alcoholics Anonymous gave me back right now.

That’s what it did. And I can think of no greater gift because in there lies the hope for me, the strength that I need to carry through with each day, ’cause I don’t have to do it alone. I get to do it with you. I said before, I don’t know anybody in here, but I know everybody in here.

We all got two things in common. We’re all human beings. We’re all alcoholics. That’s all I gotta know.

That’s all I gotta know to tell you that I love you. I love you, and I’m a grateful member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Grateful member. And when I see that woman sitting right over there in that green dress, she’s got her hands up like this, she’s looking at me and she smiles, she’s going like this.

I go, “That’s it. I’m in.” Loving Kentucky. Peace. I wish you…

Have a good weekend.