Audio
Transcript
Source: Clancy I – From Venice, California – Date Unknown.mp3 File: clancy-i-from-venice-california-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:05:17
============================================================
My name is Clancy I., and I'm an alcoholic. I'm very glad to be here. The young man who read The Traditions, where did he go? As far as I'm concerned, you've got to read The Long Form, because we need to hear him, I'll tell you. In fact, I'll pick up where he left off here. In my home group, the Pacific group in Los Angeles, we read them The Long Forms, the second Wednesday of every month. There's a thousand people there, and they need to hear them, and they're glad to hear them.
I was a little surprised as he got into it. I thought, certainly we ought to read them, but not at maybe some other meeting. But I really like him. I'm very glad to be here. I'm glad to be back in Naples. I've been coming to Naples every year since 1970. Staying at Bill's and Kay's house down on Golf Drive, and with a bunch of guys from around the country, who are known as the Knights of Humility, because of their arrogance.
There's only one humble knight, and I'm too humble to tell you who that is. But I really love Naples. I watched it grow, unfortunately, but it was a lovely city, and I'm glad to be back here, glad to be at this convention. I want to thank Joe and the committee for inviting me. I first talked at a Florida State A convention, I guess, 30 years ago, over in Miami, and I remember how much I enjoyed that, and I enjoy being here.
And this is really, I feel kind of ill at ease. There's been so much good entertainment, you kind of feel like you hate to spoil it by having an AA talk in the middle of it. Maybe I can get these honeys out here, I like them. I wish one of them would collapse in my arms. They did a wonderful job, though. Today we've got the star-studded stuff, and last night they had the medieval stuff, and I was watching Joe march around dressed like King Henry VIII, and Tommer was some kind of a knight in some gown of some sort, and I noticed Joe kept his costume on and Tommer took his off by the end of the evening.
I said, why is that, Tommer? I mean, what's wrong? Why are you changing? He said, well, it's easy for Joe. Once a king, always a king, but once a knight is enough. I really enjoyed the convention. I've joined the meetings, I've gone to the meetings, I enjoyed last night. Brian, I've heard many times, I always like to hear him talk. I certainly enjoyed Gay's presentation yesterday, Gay Gee, on the singleness of purpose, and unfortunately, most people who need to hear it don't go to the meetings.
That's the trouble with those kind of meetings. Oh, the singleness of purpose, hell, I don't go there. You really find out what A is about in those kind of meetings, and she does a remarkably good job. Those of us that were there enjoyed it very much. Our Al-Anon speaker this afternoon, who is one of my… That's all I have to say about that. She's the only Al-Anon speaker I know of that I recommend people go and hear.
I mean, I don't go myself, but I recommend a lot of people. She gives a very excellent talk, nice girl. It's been a good, all the small meetings have been good, but it's just a good, very fine moment of A history. And it's good to look around and see all these people outside. Can you people in the back understand me at all? Because I haven't been able to understand anybody. That's the secret. It's an amazing thing, and we have some new people. Some of them are reading here, and it's a nice thing to see that.
And it's hard to remember that you look around the room, and I was walking around the hotel today and thinking, I'd like to find some newcomer and say, look at all these people, all doing so well, all casual, and try to imagine every one of them sick, and the men unshaven, and the women smelling bad, and dirty, and drinking, and drunk, and sick. It's been like that. And what a miracle it is for us to be here.
And it's so hard to remember, it's so easy to take this for granted, because that's the bad thing about AA talks. You know how they're going to turn out.
[00:05:03]
Sooner or later, no matter how sad I make this story, I'm going to say, and then I put the plug in the jug. It's just been wonderful ever since. AA would be a lot more realistic at the group level if we'd have speakers every so often say, and then it turned out, god damn it, I just couldn't make it. You'd listen a little more closely to watch, is this going to be one who makes it or not? Because that's the way it is in the groups.
It's a funny thing, we talk a lot about AA and how easy it is, and it is so easy, and there's really nothing to it. It's so strange that so many people slip and have such a hard time with it. I was in and out of AA year after year after year after year, and I don't like pain, and I hate to go back to those meetings and say, well that jerk is back again. I hate these things, and I don't like pain, and yet I keep slipping.
It just seemed as though I wasn't one of the ones God chose. I suppose the main reason was because I felt like I was a bad man and a sinner. I'd hear people say, well I'm sober through God's grace, and when they say that, I know that I'm not going to stay sober. I'm not going to get God's grace. God's grace goes to good people, it doesn't go to bad people. I sometimes could stay sober until I got talking about returning to God, and that was the beginning of the end. I just can't do that.
If I only have one problem with Alcoholics Anonymous, I never could identify. The new people here tonight, you know what an alcoholic is, and you come to AA and admit your problem is alcohol, then you return to God, and then after you get a new life, you show your gratitude by helping others. I can't do any of those things, because my problem really isn't alcohol, and I can't return to God, because if God exists, I am damned.
There's no way around that, and there's no way I'm going to stay around here. In the 1950s, right after they started the Grapevine, Dr. Silkworth, a famous man in AA history, not in AA, but Dr. Bill Wiltz's doctor, wrote an article for the Grapevine discussing slips. He said, I don't know why alcoholics make such a big fuss about slips, as though they're some sort of supernatural thing, or God coming down to punish bad people.
He said, we have someone who has a severe heart attack, and we pull them through the heart attack, and we get them on their feet again, and we give them a regime to follow, a regime of, you must get your rest, and you must watch what you eat, and you have to take certain exercises, and you take these medications, and they say, fine, but after a while, it gets boring, and they start making little alterations, and pretty soon, well, I don't need all that rest, certainly after all this time, and I don't, you know, I can have a little thing to eat, and little by little, and they don't ever go over here, they just go off a little bit, but they keep going off a little bit, and one day they're over here, and they have another heart attack, and sometimes die.
It's the same thing with diabetics, we see it all the time. Diabetics, we get them on their feet again, you can't have sugar, you must take your insulin, take this diet, get your rest, and they do just wonderfully, until after a while, it gets a little boring, and I can't believe a little sugar thing would hurt me, and I don't really need all, I'll get more rest next week, I'll just, you know, and on and on, one day they're over here, and down they go, so that's all that ever happens to alcoholics.
Nobody ever went over there to get drunk, just, I don't need all this stuff, and little by little, you're over there, and you're gone. Don't make a big deal out of it, it's just human nature. And it really, I can understand that so well, looking back in retrospect. I grew up, I was raised in a very strict religious family up in northern Wisconsin, Norwegian Lutherans, you don't see many Norwegian Lutherans in Florida, or anywhere else.
A few years ago, I was speaking in Oslo, and after the meeting, they took me up to, north of there to a place called Gudbrandstollen, where my grandfather had come from in the 1880s, a whole bunch of them came to America. My grandfather and his brothers and all kinds of people came to America in a big mob to get out of that damn climate. And they all settled in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and spent the rest of their life saying, Jesus is cold here too.
And I grew up, and they brought their Norwegian Lutheran church with them. I thought that was kind of funny.
[00:10:00]
When I went to Norway, the Norwegian Lutheran church in Norway is much more liberal than it is in Wisconsin. Because they didn't watch it liberalize, they kept it the way they remembered it in 1885, as much as they could. And you just have ten commandments, you try to observe the ten commandments, you don't sin, and you stay away from Catholics. Which seems reasonable. I wasn't a bad kid, I just seemed to need more fun than other Lutherans.
By the time I was eight or nine, I'd broken a couple of commandments. A couple of days I forgot to honor my mother and my father, and I coveted my neighbor or something. By the time I was twelve, I'd done some more evil things. By the time I was fifteen, I knew that I was damned. I didn't want to be, but I just can't do it. And what saved me is that the war started, and I ran away to the war. But I always had this secret knowledge, I'm really going to go to hell.
You know, you say, well you grow up, you get over that. But like Hitler said, you give me their minds until they're twelve, and they'll be a little bit of Nazis when they're ninety-five. And so one day I was having trouble in school, I was having some trouble with life, and I was small and skinny, I had a bunch of pimples. The war started, and I thought, I'll go to the war, I'll go to kill Japs. And I decided, my mother gave me, I told her I wanted to go to Superior, Wisconsin to visit my aunt.
She packed my little bag and gave me a bus fare, and I took that and hitchhiked to San Francisco. I had no idea where the hell I was going. I got one ride all the way, or I never would have made it. I told this guy, I want to be in the Marine Corps and kill Japs. He said, you're a little small. This guy tried to be in the Navy going back to his ship. He said, you can't get in the Marine Corps. You might get in the Merchant Marine.
They're really crying for men. Anybody that'll breathe, they'll take. He showed me how to go to the Coast Guard office, and I went there in San Francisco. I said, you're only sixteen. I lied my age. He said, you're only sixteen. You have to have your parents' permission. I took it out on the blot, got my parents' permission, and they gave me Seaman's papers right there. The guy took me to the National Maritime Union, and I signed a waiver for my dues, whatever they were.
The guy took me to the Embarkadero and put me on a big ship. An hour later, I was on my way to the South Pacific. It really was fun for about forty-five minutes. These tough guys. They called it a cabin, but cabins have logs. This was a room with three of the worst type of people that any small, skinny, pimply-faced, dumb kid can be with. These guys are called men. What the hell are you supposed to be, kid?
I lay in my bunk, and these guys start talking, and I never heard talk like that. I was in a room with big-time sinners. I thought I'd been a sinner. These were big-time sinners. They'd been doing dirty things with girls in San Francisco for days, apparently. I'd had sex in Eau Claire, Wisconsin at fifteen, but I'd been apprehensive, and I'd been afraid, and I'd been alone. These guys were doing it with people.
And I studied them for a while. Of course, they've all got black hair. Those are the Catholics I've heard about. But I found a niche on that ship. I became the ship fool after a while. Hey, kid, go up there and tell them we need a left-handed wrench. Hey, kid, go up to the bridge and tell the captain we need some elbow grease. These guys all had whiskey in their sea bags, and they'd drink every night, and drink when they got off watch.
It just appalled me, because I'd never seen anything like that. And they'd drink and curse and talk dirty, and I just felt so bad. And one day this guy turned to me and said, How about you, junior? You think you're man enough for a little snort? And he shoved that bottle in my face. And I was dumb, but I was basically a Norwegian Lutheran, despite being a bad one. And I just was developing something to tell him that would just demolish him.
I was going to say, you big, bad man, get that bottle out of my face. I happen to be a Norwegian Lutheran. We don't drink whiskey. And even if we did, I promised my mother and grandmother I'm not going to drink whiskey, and don't you ever do that again. I may be small, but I got some honesty. I was going to tell him that, and he said, Why do you think you're man enough? And I heard a voice say, God damn right.
So I had my first drink out of the first bottle I was close to, and I threw up, and they laughed at me. When they laughed at me, and all the way across the Central Pacific, when nobody was looking, I'd sneak in that guy's sea bag sooner or later, another one, and take a drink, and I'd vomit it, and I'd wipe it up, and so they didn't know, I was so desperate, I wanted those guys to think I was a man, I could hold a drink down, and I never could, and we were coming into Pearl Harbor finally, I saw that movie, Pearl Harbor, last year, it was a terrible love story, but it really had, they had recreated it, that's the way Pearl Harbor looked at the beginning of World War II,
[00:15:28]
and I was, everybody was up there looking, I was down there taking a drink of this slop one more time, the day before my 16th birthday, it stayed down, and I couldn't breathe, and all of a sudden something strange happened, I found myself feeling significantly better, and it was great, I realized why people drink, I didn't, in your teens you learn things, you don't pay much attention to them, everybody in that ship smoked, nobody in my family smoked, they smoked, so I smoked and puked and smoked and puked, one day I smoked and didn't puke, and I smoked two and a half or three packs a day every day for the next 40 some years, I learned to curse a little bit in that ship, I learned techniques for lust, none of them ever worked, but I had at least a starting point, and I didn't become a terrible alcoholic, the next day they took me to Honolulu and bought me four bottles of beer and I got drunk and they laughed and I laughed, it was funny, no big deal, I went on another ship to the Aleutian Islands after that, and I look back and I really liked to drink, I tried to learn to drink from then on, to drink things that wouldn't make me sick, because what I found out as a teenager, that drinking gave me a good feeling, I didn't know what it was, in retrospect I think what it was was so significant, I believe I would describe it as, that was the first time I ever felt the way men looked, and it was just a remarkable thing, holes in me were filled up, and many years later, standing on Skid Row in Los Angeles, my teeth kicked out and everything I had gone after being somewhat successful, if someone asked me why I drank alcohol, I could give them all sorts of reasons, based on my psychoanalysis, I spent thousands of dollars on psychoanalysis, I read books, I read German philosophy, I did a lot of things, and I could give you reasons why, of the conflicts and inter-conflicts in my being, but looking back, one answer I wouldn't have given because I wouldn't have understood it was the correct answer, but the correct answer was, I had my last drink because it made me feel the way men look, that's about the only thing I can describe it.
I remember the last day I drank, many years later, two big guys threw me out of a Skid Row mission, I landed outside on the sidewalk, and I stood there in the rain, a cold rainy morning, sick and desperate, terrible feeling, I didn't know what the feeling was, I know what it is now because I've seen it in others, and I'm sure there are people in this room who've had it, a feeling, there is no friendly direction, you have no more friendly, there's no place to withdraw to, to go back to, to say I'm sorry, you are on your own.
If some old guy would have come up to me that morning and said, you know Slim, you're dying, you're down to 120 some pounds, you've lost your wife and children, you'll never see them again, you've lost your career, once upon a time they called you a boy genius, now you can't even get a job washing dishes. You've lost all your clothes in that car you're driving for someone that you lost in Phoenix, then you went to jail in Phoenix, that's where the guy kicked your front teeth out, so now you're standing here with your blood dripping down your mouth and you're sick and bloated and got no clothes, your clothes are torn and covered with vomit.
You're a little mother up in Wisconsin, she's no longer allowed to accept phone calls from you because your stepfather is so tired of watching you call her and manipulate her so she'll go to her little tiny bank account and send a few more dollars and try to help her little boy. Now you're dying on the street, now you've been going to AA off and on for almost 10 years now and you sit in these meetings smugly even now and think these idiots and their little problems. Why don't you go back to AA one more time and admit you're an alcoholic and do something about it?
And if some guy had said that to me and if I were in a mood to be honest, which I probably would not have been, I would have had to tell him, pal, you don't understand, I'm not really an alcoholic. And he might have said, well prove you're not an alcoholic, I wouldn't have been able to do that because I wouldn't have been able to stand back and delineate the differences, so I probably would have done what people like me do when we get cornered and we're afraid.
I take refuge behind bluster and I say things like, oh get out of my face you son of a bitch, leave me alone, get away from me, because I'm afraid and I don't want them to know I'm afraid. I can look back now and really understand a little bit more about that situation. I mean I knew I had problems, I've had no problems since I was a little boy.
[00:20:03]
I've always had the feeling, I guess, I didn't know what the feeling was until I would look at it later in life, but I've always had the feeling there's something missing in me and I don't know what it is and nobody tells me. But I know when I get close to people they act as though there's something missing in me because they don't seem to accept me the way they accept other people. And I don't seem to fit into places like I want to fit into, like other people seem to fit into. And I feel different, I feel lonely sometimes and I get in the middle of crowds where you shouldn't feel lonely and I feel less than sometimes, I feel superior sometimes, but I don't feel equal to anybody, I feel not a part of things.
And all of these things aren't there all of the time, but they come and go like bubbles in a pot. And I really hate that feeling, I thought when I grow up I'll outgrow it. But I didn't outgrow it, I had some victories along the way, it was fine, but the victories don't ever seem to last, they just seem to last a day and then now what are you going to do to prove yourself? Always got to prove myself, always got to prove something, I don't know to whom or what about. And when I got older I became somewhat successful as a writer and when I had some money and wanted to do something I got into psychoanalysis and I really got to like psychoanalysis, I spent thousands of dollars in psychoanalysis and I don't know why I liked it because all you ever hear in psychoanalysis is news on how you've been hurt in ways you don't remember.
But I really liked it, I used to go out there and think Jesus, it's a sad story but I'm doing pretty well. And I never understood why psychoanalysis helped people like me. I don't know until years later when I was sober quite a while, a few years ago, a guy that I sponsor was telling me how much help he was getting by going to adult children of alcoholics, not the Al-Anon version but the other version.
He said, do you want to go to a couple of meetings? I said, sure I'd love to go. And I sat there and I watched this action going on and I suddenly realized that's what psychoanalysis did for me, it really helped me. Of all the emotions I know, probably the worst one is deep seated guilt, continual perpetual guilt. You don't always recognize it but there's always that ball in your stomach and not only guilt of the things you've done but guilt of the things you should have done and didn't do and it's too late now.
And you go through life, it seems to me, if you're supposed to feel like this, it's always like this, just always off somehow. And what did you think, I don't know of any way to get rid of guilt, drinking gets rid of it temporarily, gets rid of that scale at least, but what did you think of a therapy that gets rid of guilt? And that's what psychoanalysis did for me, whether it intended to work that way or not I don't know, and I don't know whether children of alcoholics, Anonymous is supposed to work this way, but it worked this way for me. It just boils down to this, it works on the principle that the patient is and has always been a victim.
You've been hurt a great deal, it's not your fault. You've not received the love you needed, you've not received the nurturing, the friendly hands that should have been there, and on and on. And as you get that little by little you come to realize, yes I was hurt a lot, and little by little you come to realize it really wasn't my fault. I've been made this way by forces beyond my control, and little by little guilt slowly dissipates. And it's great, although I never thought of guilt dissipating, I just thought of feeling better. But in looking back I can see that's what it does, guilt dissipates. There's a great relief that hadn't come for years, and you say what's wrong with that, that's a great thing, and maybe it is for most people.
But you know, you discover anything that you find good in this world, there's always a little price tag for it, a little tag attached to it. And there are three little price tags for victimization that you don't see at the time, but you can see them in retrospect clearly. One, whether you intend to or not, you must accept and enhance feelings of resentment. Resentment towards the people who have hurt you. Resentment towards the people who have failed you. You go to those meetings, boy, and there's no laughter in those meetings. They are intense meetings of people talking about how they've been hurt.
And the second little price tag you pay is you must accept the fact that you have been made irrevocably different. That you're, you know, you're different, you're going to stay different. I didn't really understand until I heard one of their gurus talk one time, he said, we are like trees, when we were sapling, someone reached within us and pulled out our hearts. And we continue to grow physically, we look like all other trees, but we have no heart and we have no soul because it's been taken from us.
And, of course, the third little price tag you pay, which is obvious if you're like me, intermittent but intense self-pity. I could have been something, by God. You know, I was thinking of that scene on the waterfront where Marlon Brando says to his brother, I could have been a contender, Jimmy, if you'd have taken care of me. And I, well, what's wrong with that? These are inconveniences, but to get rid of guilt, maybe they're all right.
[00:25:17]
And maybe they are for most people. But after I was here a while sober and beginning to understand that and reading this book and starting to understand AA, I ran across something funny in this book. This book lists the three most lethal emotions for people like me. Resentment, self-pity, and feelings of difference. And why are they so lethal? Because they will justify every drink I take until I die from it. And it will never have been my fault. And you don't understand.
And those are the words of people who drink until they die. But I read philosophy. I did a lot of things. I got into German philosophy, which is just impossible to understand. It's just backwards and upside down. And when you're reading it by yourself, you go, huh? But when people are looking, you say, how true. I did a lot of things. But nothing in my life ever helped me as much as a few drinks. I didn't have any understanding that it was an unnatural effect. I just thought a few drinks helps me with anything.
And I love drinking. Drinking gets rid of that scale. Drinking makes me feel like I'm something. And what's wrong with that? I just have one problem with it. I have an unfortunate tendency to over-drink sometimes. Or as I prefer to believe, I have many times been thoughtlessly over-served. And then I act bizarrely. And a psychiatrist told me once, you act bizarrely because you were repressed as a child by the Norwegian Lutheran Church, and you're now just breaking forth. I told an arresting policeman that one night. He didn't even care.
I go to jail. No big deal. When I get drunk, I act badly. So I was sent to my first AA meeting. I was sent there. Someone suggested that some of the town drunks seem to be slowing down their drinking. Maybe I ought to go there and see what they're doing. I went to my first drinking meeting in 1949. That's a long time ago. A lot of you little snots weren't even born. We love you. And I don't know what I expected to find, but what I found wasn't anything that helped me. It seemed to me a bunch of eight old guys sitting around a table. Put the plug in the jug.
What the hell are you supposed to be, a kid? You think you're an alcoholic? I was 22. I said, no, I don't think I'm an alcoholic. What the hell do you think you're doing here? And I tried to be honest. I said, I think I'm too sensitive. I tell you, I never told anybody else that for a long time. If you're working with a newcomer and he says he's too sensitive, or she is, you might try not to laugh, because you may be trying to be honest for the first time in a long time.
But I went to the meetings for a little while. I think the final meeting I went to really got me. The guy said, I stayed drunk around the clock for 20 years. One day I walked through that door. They told me to put the plug in the jug, and I did. And I've just never been so goddamn happy. But I went to work for Fairbanks-Morriston, a nearby city, in their advertising department, and I got drinking a little too much. I went to AA again, same old crap, just different faces. I went to AA again, and after a while, AA is a nice place except for one thing.
My problem is not alcohol. I have some of the feelings they have, but my problem isn't alcohol. I can stop drinking any time, and I have done it time after time. My problem is, once I stop, sometimes a couple days later, sometimes a week later, somebody sneaks into my bedroom in the middle of the night and puts an invisible spring in my gut. And the next morning when I get up, they start to tighten it.
And then just starts the restlessness and the irritability and the resentment of being treated like a child by people who are depending on me. And little by little, I get a little cross, and I try to do things about it, but I know the only thing that will cut that feeling is two or three drinks. And I put it off as long as I can, and eventually I take a drink. But I don't take a drink because I'm a drinker. I don't know how to explain that to people. I drink because I have these feelings. And then sometimes later, I drink too much again. And they say, oh, your problem is drinking. You ought to go to AA. You'll be all right.
And they say, oh, your problem is drinking. You ought to go to AA, you'll be all right. And you have to say, gee, thanks for the advice. But you just want to shriek, but you don't understand.
[00:30:03]
Doesn't anybody understand? My problem is not that. There's something wrong inside of me. But I'll tell you one thing, you don't want to talk about it much. Because I don't want, as our book says, no one wants to look very different from their fellows, I guess. And so I drank and stayed sober and went to psychoanalysis and read books and had jobs and good jobs and went down and had another good job and went down, finally went down in Dallas.
That was the last time I was working for Tracy Locke, the largest advertising agency in the South. And I was helping write these LC Elmer ads for the board company. Down I went and in a matter of just a few days, I guess they'd been setting it up for some time, they had notified my wife, she left. They repossessed my car. I was evicted from my house. I stood, a week after I got, I was working there, I was sitting in the street corner and nothing.
And I got a car to drive to Los Angeles to get out of there. I got as far as Phoenix and got drunk and lost the car and got in jail, kicked my teeth out and lost everything I had and went over to the A-Club and hustled some old lady for $20, told her I was a newcomer for a 12-step house. I got that to Los Angeles and here I am being thrown out of a Skid Row mission. That's, stay out of here, you troublemaker.
That's right, I'm not a troublemaker. Three years ago, I was on the faculty of the University of Texas. Ads that I wrote are running this weekend in Life and Time and the New Yorker and Serving Post. I've had my picture in the New York Times for one of my achievements. But it's hard to explain these things in midair. You know. And I stood outside of that damn old mission in a cold rain and that old guy didn't come up and talk to me.
I couldn't talk to him. But I knew I had to get out of the rain and I was sick and I have to get to an A-Club and pretend to be a newcomer, at least till it stops raining. And I found out we're in A-Club, what it was 72 blocks away. And I walked and walked and walked in the rain and walked and walked and sick, my mouth bleeding, like drenched. And a woman in New York asked me one time, how could you possibly walk that far when you were so sick and desperate?
And of course a number of people in the room know the answer to that. That's the only time you can. You would not ever do that if you had any alternative. And I got to this club in the same old crap in the steps and turned over to God and admitted you're an alcoholic. I had sickening smirks and just, and I lurked there all day long. I had a meeting that night, I had about four pounds of cake that I could eat with my gums.
And they had a meeting on gratitude and I almost puked it up again and just. And then they all went home and I had no place to sleep. It was raining and I said to the manager of the club, I'd better put on my newcomer look. I'm a newcomer and I've lost everything. I have no place to stay. Can you help me? The Maybelline look. He said, you're in luck, kid. A guy named Joe Quinn left an old 49 Merck in the parking lot last summer.
It's a tall grass on it, you can sleep in that. If you want me to sleep in an abandoned car? He said, yeah, good deal, huh? Thank you very much. I still remember sleeping in that damn old car that night, cold and sick and my mouth bleeding. I thought, I can't believe this. And that's why I went into the club and it was Sunday morning, ate some more cake and they had a spiritual meeting about God or Jesus or somebody I didn't want to hear about who was on my tail and lurked all afternoon that night.
There was another meeting and I went to that and ate some more cake and listened to this crap and slept in my abandoned car and it kept raining the next morning. I remember thinking, maybe I'm dead. Maybe I'm dead. Maybe this is what hell really is. It isn't. It isn't fire and brimstone, it's just cold and rain and your mouth hurts and every day someone talks to you about AA. For eternity. And I had no idea then or thereafter that would be my sobriety.
It didn't want it to be. I got sober a lot of times for good reasons. I never wanted it. I didn't want to be sober then. What's the purpose of staying sober? You know, you think, a lot of people think like I used to think, if you really want to stop drinking bad enough, you will. And maybe some people do, but not people of our type apparently. I was in jail one night overnight, just overnight. I was in jail overnight a lot because I have a tendency when I drink to counsel police officers.
You'd think you'd learn after a while, but I always think there's a new officer that needs help. And I got up in the morning, a guy met me and he said, gee, you should have stayed home. I said, I know, I'm sorry. It's gonna be better. I just had a bad, he said, well, you were out drunk last night, your little son died and we couldn't find you anywhere. And that just about killed me because I had a bunch of little girls and one little boy and I could not stand it.
[00:35:02]
I could not, I felt such a wave of terrible guilt and we buried my little boy up in Wisconsin. I still remember that weekend sitting in a living room with my two big brothers-in-law, they're big, healthy farmers, Wisconsin farm boys and their dad, my father-in-law, and nobody said an unkind word to me. They just, have some more pastry, Clancy, here, have some little coffee. Here, can I get you something?
But in their eyes, you could just see, what have you done to our sister, you dirty bastard? You dirty bastard, here, have some more pastry. And we buried my son, I put my hand in his casket, nobody was watching, I said, I promise you, John Emeslin, this will never happen again in our family, I promise you. And we buried him the next day and that was that. I'll tell you, I thought about this, talking to a newcomer the other day, he's having this problem.
I didn't realize how guilty that made me feel. I was sober five years before I could face the fact that my son was dead and I went back, put a gravestone on his grave. I just could never think about it. I got my father and my father-in-law and we went down to this little country churchyard and put the gravestone on our little boy, John. It was really touching, it took me, I didn't realize what a deep thing that was.
But I stopped drinking and I went back to Texas where I was working and I really had a feeling, almost like it was Easter or something. Someone has died, but for a purpose of, to make us all better and we got along fine and my family and I got along fine. We prayed for John's soul and I went to work and got along good at work and things were going well. And I thought, it's so sad my son's death had to happen, but he did it so we could all live.
And it was wonderful till one night, somebody snuck into my bedroom and put an invisible spring in my gut. And the next morning it started, just a little irritability. And the days went by and restless and I'm now coupled with great self-pity. And God, killing my son because I'm bad, what kind of a rotten God damn thing is that? Just, the job, I didn't like the job anymore. It's a bunch of dumbbells and I don't like Texas, I don't like it.
My daughters, they're noisy at night. Mary, take your sisters and go to your room, for God's sakes, leave me alone. And then hate myself, I'm sorry, girls, we'll play tomorrow. And knowing if I could just have a couple of drinks, I could break it. But if you're taking a bow on your son's casket, you can't take a couple of drinks. And one day it got to a point where my wife took the children to church.
I just pulled the car in the garage and took the hose on the exhaust pipe, turned the motor and went to sleep and died. And a neighbor happened to be sitting, drinking coffee in his den, and he noticed that I went in there and heard the motor running, I didn't come out, so he ambled over to see what was wrong and he found me dead in the car. They pulled me out and beat in my chest and breathed in my mouth and they rushed me to the hospital and examined me for a week and determined I was seriously mentally ill and committed me to the state and insane asylum.
Now that's how I get when I stop drinking, folks, that is not a drinking problem, there's something terribly wrong inside of me. I, they classified me as a schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies. I thought about that several times after I'd been sober. And he must be about 90 now, I could probably handle him pretty good, you know. How dare you categorize me as some sort of a dual personality, you idiot!
If I could have gotten my personalities down to two, I would have made it, Jesus! My problem has always been this crowd that gathers in my head at the drop of a hat. Let's get out of here, I don't think we can, what do you think, I'm not sure. Are they looking at you, are they looking at us funny? Yes, they are, you know. I used to hear people today say things like, I'm not sure the program's enough for me, I may need group therapy.
Not me, I just go for a ride alone in my car. That's what's such a good thing about alcohol. Alcohol reduces it to one voice. It may be a bad voice, but it's one voice. Why don't you quit your job and punch your boss right in the face, okay? I almost didn't get out of there. You know how I got out of that hospital? The next year, they put in an experimental alcoholic ward in that hospital. I first went to the state of Texas, and by that time, my mind was getting better from the electric shock treatments, and I was able to pretend to be an alcoholic and got out, recovered alcoholic.
I thanked AA that time. But my problem was not alcohol, and I hung around this club, it was just hideous and dreadful, and I fell into the, every January, I go to the North York Group in Toronto.
[00:40:05]
Now, prepare yourself for an exciting thought here. They have a day with Clancy Eye. In the morning, they have some local guy talk, and then I talk on the history of the traditions or something like that, and then after, they have a question and answer meeting where I answer questions from the little people. And then there's another local speaker, and I talk at night. A few years ago, I was talking, and I've discovered that of all those meetings, the one I like best is the question and answer meeting, because I didn't know I had this.
I seem to have a natural ability to take difficult questions, and if I don't know the answer, I can weave a tapestry of BS while I think of it. You know? Let's look at that from another angle, you know? A few years ago, a woman got up in the back, she says, Clancy, I have a question. If you don't mind, I wouldn't like one of your long answers. I thought somebody ought to slap that bitch. I was giving my all.
She says, every year you come up here and you talk about how you lost everything, and you're dying on the street, and now you've been sober forever, and everything you touch turns to gold. Can you just answer in a sentence or two what happened? Not some long harangue, just a sentence or two. I said, well, ma'am, you couldn't possibly put that in a sentence or two. There's so many psychological things that take place, and things that ain't.
I thought to myself, but if you'd like to come up here, I'll snatch you bald. Maybe that'll take your mind off of you. She broke my rhythm is what she did. I was very upset. That night, I was taking a shower before the meeting, and an answer came, and it was an answer that I could have given her. I probably would know, because I hate little dumb answers. I like answers with body and panache. If we have newcomers here tonight, I hope they leave saying things like, did you hear what Clancy said?
Wet birds don't fly at night. Did you hear what Clancy said? Never mind if the horse is blind. Keep loading the wagon. Now, obviously, these answers mean nothing, but they give the newcomer hope. The answer, I thought it was so dumb, just that dumb. This was the first time I ever felt so bad. I let these stupid AAs tell me what to do. I felt that was the final indignity, the final sellout. I don't mean steps in traditions.
I mean things like, in those days, well, this was a club where you had to be a member to be in the daytime. At night, you could come in for meetings, and I had no place to go, and the manager took pity on me, said, well, you're really a mess. You can come in all day and hang around, but you got to go to the meetings and sit in the front row every night. I had to flip a coin, see if that was worth it, and so I sit in the meeting, and there were no Styrofoam cups that had been invented yet.
Every meeting had porcelain cups, and the old-timers got sick of washing them. They're always looking for some new stooge. You there, boy without the front teeth, you want to wash our cups tonight? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. If I had any place to go and it wasn't raining, I'd have said, no. I don't want to wash your cups tonight or tomorrow night or any other night. Why don't you lick them off with that long, ugly tongue of yours?
I know if I'd said that, I'd be out in the rain, so I still remember that night. Everybody had gone home. I'm standing there in the club. Just the manager's closing up, and I'm still washing those damn cups. I'm thinking, three years ago, I wouldn't have hired these guys to mow my lawn, and here I am being treated like dirt. Pfft. There's a little something to remember me by. Another night, somebody said, we need somebody to help clean up.
How about you, kid without the teeth? You can do that. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. The worst of all Friday night guy said, we need someone to help set up the meeting tomorrow night. Jimmy won't be here. How about you, kid? You live right here on the property. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And I, as I said, I thought I was dead. I just thought, I'll just do this till I die. It can't be long.
And I fell into the hands of a fanatic. Clubs in those days, like today, they have fanatics that if you stay sober very long, they're on you like a pack of wild dogs, you know. Got a sponsor? Time to get a sponsor. Better get a sponsor. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I'd had sponsors. If you're new tonight, let me tell you about sponsors. They all seem to be so nice. Yeah, I want to help you with the stamps and help.
They just want to stick their nose. And I saw this actor come in and out over a period of time and he was a movie actor and I'd seen him
[00:45:01]
in the movies. He's a character actor. But I thought, I'll get some money from this idiot. I'll get some teeth. I'll get some clothes. I'll go back to New York. I'll tell him, yes, I did drink and I had a bad luck of Tracy Locke and some other places, but I've learned my lesson. I'll start work on probation and I'll become something and I'll save my money and I'll come back to Los Angeles and I'll buy this club and I'll burn it down. And I hope they're all in it.
I didn't really understand until I saw the movie Carrie some years later. I hope they all pour blood on them while they're burning too. I said, Bob, will you be my sponsor? He said, sure kid. And he became my sponsor. I tried to play him like a zither, but he was a fanatic, hard to play a fanatic. And over a period of time, what he did, he saved my life. He saved my life very simply and directly. And I don't want to go into some, I could go for an hour and talk exactly how it came about, but I want to get to a point of, because I told Bob, you know, he would try to help me. I mean, he didn't like me very well, I found out later, because nobody likes smart aleck newcomers. I had a smart aleck attitude because that was my defense and I was a loser and I ridiculed a lot of people, but he would take me with him and he would talk to me sometimes. And I remember him talking to me about, you somehow got to come to believe you're an alcoholic. And I, I tried to point him, I can't, I can't be an alcoholic, Bob. I wish I, if I, I wish I were an alcoholic, I could save so many problems over the years, but I'm not.
And it's over a period of time when we evolved was this. The number one problem I can't be an alcoholic is that my problem is not alcohol. It really isn't. It is when I'm drunk, but it's not really alcohol. And he, over a period of time, really pounded into me. He said, I said to him, Bob, I can't take the first step because I cannot admit I'm really an alcoholic. He says, why don't you just read the black parts on the page? What does it say? Does it say you admit you're an alcoholic? No, but that's what it means. And you know it. And I know it. And he finally had to point out to me, he said, I had to admit I was powerless over alcohol. I said, I'm not powerless over alcohol. He says, do you think you're powerless over alcohol? Not really. He says, what do you think powerless means? I said, you hear these guys talk at meetings, they get drunk and they rape nuns and they fly to Hong Kong. I'm just a good guy that's been hurt a lot and victimized, Bob. That's been my problem. Natural reaction to alcohol. What do you think that is? I said, I guess they get drunk and stay drunk. He said, not at all. That's why people die from this thing.
Turns out the unnatural reaction is something you never think about. It's not what it does to you at all. It has to do something special for you. It must almost instantly alter your perception of reality and change your relationship to the world around you and fill the holes inside you. I said, Jesus, Bob, what's wrong with that? He says, if it does that, little by little you get more and more living in a little more fantasy and you come to depend on it more and more.
And eventually, the final stages, you can no longer predict what's happening when you start to drink. I'm not like, I didn't get drunk and fly to Hong Kong. He says, it doesn't mean that. It means for people like us, when we start to depend on our drinking, you may have four or five drinks and go home, go to bed. You may have four or five drinks, go to Mexico. You may have four or five drinks, fall in love with an 89-year-old woman on a walker and stalk her. But just something's going to happen. I said, yeah, that's right. I understand that. He said, the bad thing is this, kid, that you got to have the drinking. I said, well, why do, when it happens, why do people drink?
Don't you understand, Bob, my problems are not caused by drinking. Okay, so I do drink. So I'm having an unnatural reaction. But that's not, my problem is that my life was unpleasant and that's why I drink. Not that I don't get, my life is not unpleasant because I drink. He said, kid, why don't you read what that step says? We admitted we were powers over alcohol, dash. In the English language, dash means end of thought, beginning of new thought. You now must admit that your life is unmanageable. Is your life unmanageable? Not really. He said, you're living in an abandoned car, for Christ's sake. And I said, no, but that isn't what it means at all, kid. It means this,
[00:50:02]
out in Malibu, the richest man in North America sits in AA meetings four nights a week and he could buy all the treatment centers and he could buy all the counselors and all the psychiatrists and said he sits in AA meetings. Why does he do that, do you think? Beats me. He says because he's discovered he's an alcoholic and that's the only way he's going to stay comfortable. He said, all of us are born as human beings. We all have emotions. We grow up. We have conflicts and we have fight through processes and we discover things we can't do and things we can do and that's called maturing. That's called the maturing process. And some of us along the way discover something very fortunate, it seems. I can take a few drinks and get away from those conflicts. I can get a few weeks and run away from those problems. I can do a lot of things and it's great. And I really get away from it. And there's a school of thought that says this happens to alcoholics. That your maturing process slows down and may even stop when alcohol begins to work. But it doesn't seem to make much difference. But all of a sudden now you're drinking. You're getting away from life. Now you're going to get sober. Okay, I've had enough.
And then you discover sobriety is very unpleasant because the one thing you never realize is this. You have a grown-up body, grown-up brain, grown-up abilities, grown-up strength, and all without you being aware of it at the intermittent beck and call of childish emotions. We call them alcoholic emotions because that sounds better. But they're childish emotions. What are alcoholic emotions? I hate you. I love you. I'm not going to that meeting anymore.
Childish. If you want to see alcoholic emotions, stop at a school ground for about 20 minutes. And he said it really gets kind of unman. And eventually you have to drink. There isn't a place outside of these rooms that would imagine that there are people who would drink to forget they're drinking. And that's right, Bob. He said the only smart thing you've said is that your problem is not really alcohol. And you're right. It is. He said your problem is something that sounds like alcohol. And a lot of people don't understand it, which is why about 95% of alcohol addicts still die drunk. It is something called alcoholism. I said, oh, Jesus, Bob. Save that childishness for people who don't know any better. I'm an intelligent man. I may be down and up, but I'm intelligent. That's ridiculous. Alcohol, alcoholism, same thing. He said not the same thing. An alcohol problem is overcome by stopping drinking and cleaning up your act. And all of us have tried that a lot. But in this strange thing called alcoholism, which unfortunately for you and me looks exactly the same to the naked eye, this mind consuming perception distorting bodily eroding thing called alcoholism, you'll discover that stopping drinking has no significant long term effect on your life other than to gradually make it so painful you can't stand it. Some doctors say that alcoholics have to drink to preserve their sanity sometimes. And then you drink until it gets out of control, and then you have to stop. And you stop till you have to drink.
Then you drink till you have to stop. But the one thing you always know, I'm not really an alcoholic because alcohol wasn't really the problem. It's all these other things they don't understand. I said, Jesus, Bob, that's me. He said, there's a name for people like you. I said, what is it, Bob? He said, you're an alcoholic. And I said, well, I'll be damned. I had just spent 10 years of my life and given up everything I had because I could not find a definition of alcoholic. I took these definitions that people had given me that didn't know what the hell they were talking about. It just means an untenable sobriety coupled with an untenable drinking. And you're caught in a cul-de-sac. There's no way out. And I'll tell you that it changed my life because I didn't become wonderful after that. But at least I knew it was wrong. I had something to base on. But then I had a little problem later because I finally had to tell Bob, you know, Bob, if I were an alcoholic, I'd have to take these steps. I said, yes, but I can't return to God. I cannot return to God. Call it what you want to.
And he said, well, kid, there's nothing in AA that says you have to return to God. Oh, return to a power greater than myself? Does that fool people? It doesn't fool me because it doesn't say that. There's nothing in AA that ever asks you to return to anything. You come to believe in something. As our slogan of this convention, came to believe. You come to believe in something. Can't you come to believe in God? I said, no. Can't you believe in AA? No. He says, you think I'm doing better than you are? Yeah. He says, congratulations. I'm your new higher power.
[00:55:04]
And he became my higher power. And a lot of people laughed at that, said, there's that crazy bastard thinks he sponsors God. I knew he wasn't God, but I trusted him. And I had a feeling that he knew how I felt. That's the great thing about that meeting yesterday on the singleness of purpose. Identification. That's what makes AA work. When you can believe someone knows how you feel, you then can do what he tells you. But up to then, it's just information from somebody who doesn't understand either. But I did things for him that I would have done for my father. I would have done for my employer. I would have done nothing. I just did stupid little things and actions and made amends to little things. And little by little, over a period of time, my perceptions changed. And one day, by the time he died, I had come to believe in AA as my higher power. Then I got a new sponsor who was a very, very spiritual man, not religious man, but a spiritual man. And he led me into believing finally that maybe God existed. And maybe God did not hate me, but maybe God loved me. And maybe God's grace did not just fall on certain good people, but it fell on everybody. Because if it doesn't fall on everybody, it doesn't fall on nobody. And we all have God's grace. And it's up to me to somehow open the door so some of that grace can get into me. And that's the problem. And that's a hard thing to remember. You know, I have a different situation than most of you.
Thursday morning, before I came down here, I had to stop my work. This is what I always do. I parked in the parking lot. I came out, and I stepped over the bodies of dying men and women to get to my office. I came out to get my car. I stepped over the bodies of dying men and women, dying from alcoholism, drug addiction. And you might think, well, why don't you help these people? And I've been down there for almost 30 years trying to help these people. But there's a reason why many of them are going to die on that sidewalk. And it's the same reason that people die in Naples, in mansions. And people die in Chicago and all over. It boils down to this.
They are unwilling to take actions they don't agree with. That is exactly what it boils down to. Because once you begin to take the actions here, things seem to change. But that requires a surrender that's very hard to make. I don't know how I'm so fortunate it happened to me. But little by little, I came to believe in a God. And I remember praying, frightening. And all of a sudden, I began to realize there's nothing to be afraid of.
Going back to Wisconsin, taking my mother to church years later, and sitting in that Norwich Lutheran Church and thinking, what was I afraid of? These people in this church are afraid of them, but I'm not. It's the same gods in my meeting in West LA. And that's a great feeling. And as a result of that, my sponsor was able to take me through the steps. And that changed my life little by little. I didn't do it happily. I did it very begrudgingly. But that's the purpose of sponsorship to me. I think the most important thing I know of an AA is to have a sponsor and to be a sponsor if you can. A few years ago, a guy, a sponsor, came to me. And he's the guy that put the flag on the moon. And he said, you know, the Russian government is having a special meeting in the Russian consulate in Lyon. And all the astronauts are invited, Russian and American.
And I can bring a guest on the SST. But my wife and I are divorced, and my children aren't around. Who could I possibly take? I didn't want to see him go there alone. So we got on the SST in New York. If you've ever been in the SST, but it's a long, narrow plane, two seats on either side, very plush. And up in the cabin, there's a clock, a one-arm clock. And you take off, it goes to 3 o'clock, and you circle New York. Then as you get over, the ocean starts to move around. And it gets back to 12. You're now the speed of sound. And it keeps going. And you're up very high. And you can just, God, it's scary. But they treat you well. And then it's great until you land. And you figure, I hope we get good breaks on this. We're going to be in Belgium.
But they do the same thing. They reverse the thrust of the jets, just like they do in Fort Myers. They reverse the thrust of the jets. They just take the same jets that push you this way and stop you. And it always seemed to me that's the great help of sponsors. The same pain that makes it imperative for alcoholics to have to drink. If I can allow someone to change the thrust of that pain, it can be used to get me to take actions I would never take on my own for in 5,000 years. And little by little, those actions take place. And it's just, it's a change in life.
One of the problems I had, one of the problems most new people have is they One of the problems most new people have is they say, well, okay, okay, AA is nice. Why does it work? You say, well, you can read Chapter 5. No, I didn't say how does it work.
[01:00:00]
I say why does it work. And that's the question I used to have in my mind. Why does AA work? Tell me that and maybe I'll do it. And there's no answer to that. In the 1700s, the worst illness in the world was smallpox. The worst takeover cities that I have a book on called Bring Out Your Dead where they bring up the carts going through Philadelphia and people bring out their mothers and daughters and children dead, throw them in the cart, and Jesus is so sad.
No way to stop it. Nobody knows what caused it. There's no knowledge of disease or germs or bacteria. It's just God striking us dead. And in England, a young doctor noticed that there was, he was interested in this. He noticed one group of girls never got smallpox. The girls that did the same things they did got smallpox, but these group didn't. Girls who milk cows did not get smallpox. Some of the girls didn't.
And so he talked to each of them and they found out the girls who had had something called cowpox, which was a minor disease, never got smallpox, but all the other cow girls did. And so he thought somehow it must be something mystic, but if you get cowpox, you won't get smallpox. And he did one of the classic experiments of all time. He bought a little boy named Jimmy Phipps, nine years old, from his parents, and he took him down to where the girls had cowpox.
And he didn't know how to, had nothing but bacteria, just what he did was all right. He cut a little slit in the kid's arm. He took some pus and blood out of the people that had cowpox and rubbed it in the kid's arm, and he got sick and got better. Then he took them to where they were dying of smallpox and cut a slit in the arm. And this time he took a stick with the blood and pus off these dying people and rubbed it in the kid's arm, and he got sick and got better.
And that day they discovered how to keep from getting smallpox. You get cowpox. In fact, here's an interesting thing. The word for cow in Latin is vacus. That's what vacus, vaccination means, injection of the cow. But after that, a lot of people still would, you mean to get sick so I won't get sick? That's nonsense. And a lot of people kept dying of smallpox. Some people didn't, but some people did.
And it wasn't for 150 years they finally discovered that smallpox sets up a series of devices to cancel the effect of smallpox, a virus. And then they knew why, but they had to take it on faith for 150 years. I think someday they'll do that with alcoholism. Maybe 100 years from now some crazed scientist will come out of his laboratory and say, I've got the answer. I found the answer. It turns out that 12 actions taken under a series of dictatorial leadership sets up a trace of endorphins in the upper cerebral cortex that makes it unnecessary to drink alcohol.
He'll say, oh, doctor, wonderful, wonderful, but it'll be too late for us. Christ, we'll all be dead, what do we care? What we have to do to each other now, to newcomers on a continuing basis, we just have to keep telling them, take the smallpox. Take the damn smallpox. Do it, because the actions here are what make the difference. Take the actions here. Because it turns out alcoholics and alcoholics, if you're new, is not designed to make you more and more dry.
God, I've been sober almost 45 years, I've burst into flames spontaneously. The purpose of AA is to very slowly do what alcohol did fast, to little by little change my perception of reality, to change my relationship to the world around me, to enable me to live with some degree of dignity and peace and self-respect, and live in the world that I would have sworn I could not relive in. I don't know anything better than that.
You know, when you're reading chapter five, or reading the traditions tonight, the young man read the wrong form of the traditions, but I was hoping he'd get to the end, because the reason for all of this is the last phrase of the long form of the traditions. Why should we do these things? Why should we continue to stay here? Why should we continue to go to meetings so we don't get this far over here and keep going back and going back?
Why would we do these things? And the last phrase of the long form of the traditions really says it so well. This to the end, that our great blessings shall never spoil us, that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of Him who presides over us all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[01:05:10]
Thank you.