I'm certainly glad to be here, especially for Bill's dinner. I am an alcoholic. More than that, I'm powerless over alcohol. I took my first drink when I was 17. When I sobered up, I was 35. I never was a controlled drinker. I was trying to be a controlled drunkard. I was drinking between drinks, or drinking like I was going out of style from the very beginning. I had no reason to drink. I got stonered the first time I drank, and I blacked out. I thought everybody that drank blacked out. They told me what they did. I thought they were liars. But I drank for years. I drank up a wife when I was 20. I hit my first kid row when I was 20. I spent a number of years over the country. I even went out in the hills of Wyoming, figured I was going to be a cowpoke. I got out there, and I got just as blind in the sheep wagons as I was anyplace else. I don't know if anybody's ever been taken to the edge of town and asked, Why would you please leave? We've got enough trouble with our local citizens without having you around here. I was in a camp in northern Minnesota, and every time I'd go to town, we started out fine, but after that, there were two of us they'd pick up, and they'd throw us in a local hoosegow until we tried to burn it down, so I was thrown out of jail for being drunk and not to come back. But I feel this way. Before I got to the point where my qualifications were A, was that I was no damn good. I mean, nobody wanted me. I had no credit. I hadn't any old kind of credit. My credit was good on Madison Street up to a dime, I think, in any joint. And when I finally called AA, they didn't show up for about five days. I didn't drink, but I thought maybe they'd been checking up on the local saloons and figured I was too bad and they couldn't do anything for me, you know? So finally they did show up, and they told me a few things. Well, at this time, I weighed 110 pounds. I'd been drinking muscatel, and I was on phenobarbital for about three months,…