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Source: Cliff R – From Oceanside, California – Date Unknown.mp3 File: cliff-r-from-oceanside-california-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:06:37
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Hi. My name is Cliff R. and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is the 13th of January, 1970. My home group is the Carlsbad AA Workshop. It meets on Thursday night in Carlsbad, California at 8 o'clock. If you're in town, give me a call. My name is spelled R-O-C-H-E. I believe in anonymity, but you can't look up Cliff in the phone book. R-O-C-H-E. Don't spell it like the bug. They got one of these Mickey Mouse, Lee's Big Idea around my neck, so I'm used to talking to a microphone, but I'll get used to it. Or you'll get used to it too.
I'm just so grateful to be here. It's just been such a fantastic weekend so far. I just love this hotel. How kind they are. They have padded walls. Isn't it wonderful? You know, we just feel so at home now. They just take the doorknobs off the inside here. We'd really be comfy. And I really want to thank Tom and Connie. They've been just an outstanding host. Just wonderful hosts for me. Just treated me great. And Anne and all the people that worked so hard to put this on the whole committee, I thank you because, you know, we couldn't be here if you hadn't done all that work for a year. I love Mari from Canada. She's one of my favorite people, and I'm very sorry she's ill, but I was certainly glad I got to hear Dalty and her other half, the thug. Oh, those two, I tell you, I'd go up to my room and take salt tablets. I cried so much with those two. I'm going to cry again. We're all miracles. Everybody in this room's a miracle, but there's just some miracles that are just so obvious, you know, you can't get here from there. I'm certainly glad I wasn't at a bar with him, because I thought I was tough. He was tough. But they were just incredible to hear them back to back. It just was wonderful. And you know, as Tom said, I've been married over 55 years, and that workshop, applaud her, yeah. I always call her my Al-Anon. You know how they introduce us. Have you met my alcoholic? Sit up, boy, sit up, sit up. Tell them how long you've been sober. But you know, we've been married going on 56 years now, but I sat in that workshop that Scott and Linda put on, and I learned some lessons, some things that I could be doing in my marriage. And I thought about twice as many things that she could be doing in a marriage. So I'll take her the tape, listen to this, and then she'll throw it at me. And you know, I always hate to follow speakers like the Holty and, what the hell is his name, Mark? I worked so hard to learn her name, I forgot his. But I hear speakers like that, you know, rough and tough and hard to bluff and, you know, prisons and back to prison again. And I'm a little fat schoolteacher, drank too much. Do the best you can with what you have, you know. Thank God, Charlie was such a weenie. He makes me look pretty good, doesn't he? And I've known Charlie since the day he got sober, and I've loved him all the time. He's always been a great friend. And of course, the Reverend Ed, whom you'll hear Sunday, probably. The Reverend Ed. When I met him, he was living in Clancy's garage. And he was as big as he is now, except he weighed about 130. If you want an x-ray of him, you just held him up to the light. And he wasn't the Reverend Ed then, was he?
[00:05:03]
He was a lunatic. He was a lunatic. Oh, I loved him right away. He was a lunatic. Clancy made him ride his fourth step, living in the garage. And Clancy had a goat in the backyard. And he slaved over his fourth step for days and days, got it finished, and the goat ate it. Got to tell that to your sponsor, huh? Well, you see, the goat ate my… And Clancy wouldn't have believed him except that the goat died. True story? The goat… So I'm so grateful to be here. I'm just so very, very grateful. And you people have been so kind and so giving and so friendly. I didn't feel like a stranger at all. I never do an AA anyway. What the hell? So my story's kind of humdrum, ho-hum, after these two. Miss Cochise and her husband. I had just won World War II. And I was attending college on the GI Bill Ride at San Jose State College in Northern California. And just gotten out of the service, and another guy and I used to walk to school every morning. Well, we marched. We would march to school every morning. And one morning, we were marching through St. James Park, which is right in the middle of downtown San Jose. And we heard this noise. We were cutting through the park. About seven in the morning, we turn and look. And there was this remnant of a human being lying on the bench there. He was so dirty, he shined. And he was making these noises, and bubbles were coming. And then he stank. And we both retched when we saw the guy. So we hurried through the park, got to the other side.
And my buddy Richie said, that guy was an alcoholic. So I knew what you looked like. And I made a little picture in my head of what an alcoholic looked like. And the picture almost killed me. Now, within a week, within a week of seeing that guy on the bench, I had done about a 40-hour blackout. And I had this old car, and there was a town over across the mountain called Santa Cruz. And they tell me, most of my life is hearsay. Spent most of my life saying, I did? Oh, I'm sorry. Your aunt, huh?
But they tell me, it took months to put the pieces together. But I had driven back and forth about 40 miles between San Jose and Santa Cruz over this mountain road, back and forth. And in Santa Cruz, I had been thrown out of this bar. I bit the bartender in the face, OK? Well, he refused to serve me. What the hell? And so we were ejected from the bar, of course. And this new best friend that I'd met that afternoon, he worked in a yacht club down by the harbor. And so we broke into the yacht club and stole the starting cannon, and came back and fired it into the bar, which pretty much cleared the place out. Whereupon the gendarmes arrived and beat the crap out of us, and put us in jail, and let us out several hours later and back. And I did that in a 40-hour blackout, and the guy on the bench was an alcoholic. And I don't know why I would make a mistake like that. I come from a long, long, long line of alcoholics. Everybody in my family is an alcoholic. A few years ago, the scientists came up with a brilliant deduction. They said, alcoholism is genetic. They say it's a recessive gene. Not in the R. family. It's a dominant gene in the R. family. A little blue gene down at the end of the chromosome going, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh. Only thing he has to say is, one more! One more!
My mother died on Skid Row in Los Angeles at the age of 43. She fell down a flight of stairs in a drunken stupor and broke her neck. And on her death certificate, it says, accidental fall. My daddy died of
[00:10:03]
alcoholism. My sister died of alcoholism. My aunts and uncles died of alcoholism. My grandparents died of alcoholism. I'm the only one alive, because I came to the A&A. It was an Irish Catholic family. Oh, really? Eh, eh, eh. If it wasn't for us, you'd have these things at phone booths. But if you're new here tonight, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not an alcoholic because my father and mother and my grandparents, because of the little blue gene. I'm not an alcoholic because of that reason. When I was new in A&A, and I think Ed knew this guy, he was 35 years sober when I got here. He was a judge up in Ventura. His name was Dick Heaton. Wonderful, wonderful man, was so kind to me when I was new. And Dick Heaton was the president, the national president of Mensa. That's the Smart People's Club. I learned to spell it about two weeks ago. He was the president of Mensa. And he and this other guy in Mensa had done a study of alcoholics anonymous. No, a study of alcoholism while drinking. And they studied it for two years, and damn near died.
But Dick Heaton discovered that the cause of alcoholism is drinking. Good enough for the president of Mensa, it's good enough for me. I'm an alcoholic because I drank enough alcohol to get there. I've always been an alcoholic. When I was 16 years old, I swallowed a half a half a pint of 10-I, and I crossed the invisible line. I don't know anything about social drinking. I don't like social drinkers. Did you ever drink with those weenies? Come on. You know, you take the cap off, and they say, I'll get it. I don't trust people like that. I just don't trust them. And of course, Al-Anons are the outstanding social drinkers. My Al-Anon is sickening. She's just sickening. One time I was with a bunch of Al-Anons. We were going somewhere, and I drove them. Very bright, very bright. And we stopped, and the waiter comes over and says, would you like a cocktail before dinner? And they all look at each other. You want one? I don't know. You want one? I'll have one if you. They had to make a decision. Did you ever make a decision? Guy throws a towel over the arm. Yeah, right here, right here, let's go.
And this one, she says to the waiter, she says, do you have kumquat daiquiris? I said, no, we don't have any of those. And she said, never mind. I said, Sarah, will you look behind the bar? There's 500 bottles back there, and they're all for the old one. You married guys, do you remember that? Don't you think you had a few too many? I used to say, you had a few too few. That's your problem, lady. Have a couple and loosen up, for Christ's sake. And mine was the worst kind, the worst kind. She was a counter. Oh, I hate those counters, don't you? That's your fifth one today. Shut up and eat your breakfast, will you? Leave me the hell alone.
I met my Ellen out in college. She was down on Skid Row looking for an alcohol to abuse her. You want to get abused, you've got your boy here. And we entered this 20-year suicide pact together. I don't know how many of you, but we had the dual disease. We had alcoholism and Catholicism. Consequently, we had a kid every nine months and 20 minutes. What it seemed like to me, anyway. Every time I came out, I'd have a blackout. What the hell is that?
They're all right when they're little, huh? Like kittens. But they grow. And the older they got, the weirder they got. And the older they got, the weirder they got. God knows, the older she got, the weirder
[00:15:02]
she got. Oz the head nut. And after a few years, I became a schoolteacher. I know. I like the women clutch their children to their bosom when they hear that. You know, a guy commits felonies and blackouts, becomes a schoolteacher. You know, just a hobby, lighten up. And I became terrified of having those blackouts, because I never had a good blackout, did you? I've looked for years for somebody in the A.A. who said, oh, I had delightful blackouts, yes. Not what? When I woke in the morning, it was bad news, bad, bad news. Always blood, my blood, unlike you, you know. And wrecked cars and all that nonsense. So after I became a teacher, I just became paranoid about not having blackouts. And so I guess in substitution, I became a daily drinker. And I had to drink every day, because that's the only way I could live. Now, I'm a functioning alcoholic. I'm the kind of guy that goes to work every day, does the job, does it better than you. Who does it better than anybody?
I'm a goer and a doer and an achiever, and I'm a functioning alcoholic. My buddy at home says a functioning alcoholic is one whose wife works. Don't tell that to Nell at my meeting either. Well, I taught for a few years up in the San Joaquin Valley, and then we moved to Oceanside, California. Oceanside is 30 miles north of San Diego, right on the Blue Pacific. And I got a job at Oceanside High there, and I was a very good teacher.
I loved teaching, like Charlie said. And kids loved me, and I loved the kids. I don't care for administrators, but what alcoholic does, you know what I mean? They didn't like me much either, but I was a good teacher. Somebody asked my wife one time, why is your husband such a good high school teacher? She said, well, he's a very well-educated adolescent. I hate it when they're accurate and cruel, don't you? And naturally being macho, I'm a macho drinker. I became a surfer dude. And as Tom said, I surfed until I was 74 years old. Not many of them out there that age. The kids love me. I'm out there. The kids say, help Mr. R. back on his board. There you go. But my back gave out, I mean, I just couldn't do it anymore. But I loved surfing. I just loved surfing. And I got a buddy, we got a surfboard shop down on the beach there in Oceanside, can you imagine? Right on the beach. The mayor of the town owned this little building and been all beat up. So we're going to open this surfboard shop and make a fortune, give surf lessons, fix surfboards, rent surfboards, never have to teach school again. So the guy gave us this building, it was all beat up.
We fixed it up, we painted it, put the windows in, and we got a refrigerator. A couple months later, we got some surfboards too. No big hurry there. Oh, we loved it. Can you imagine for a couple of budding alcoholics, we had these two chaise lounges right on the water. I mean, it's on the beach. We became sunset connoisseurs. Somebody come down in the evening and say, I'd like to rent a surfboard. Screw off, Charlie, we're watching a sunset. These two chaise lounge chairs. We used to measure sunsets by martinis. I was the mixer, I'd say it looks like about a six tonight. The best one we ever had was a 15 martini sunset.
Oh, you should have seen it. It was just glorious. And the sun and Woody and I went right together. They found us in the morning with sunburned mouths. You remember that? I think that should be on the 20 questions. You ever have a sunburned mouth? No? Get the hell out of here. You're not ready yet, pal. Come on back when you're ready. Come back when you're ready. But amazingly, we did really well with that place. We made a lot of money, we did well, but the winter came and it was freezing cold. And in February of 1965, I went down to the shop to repair a board on a Sunday morning, and of course we weren't open and it was cold, and I had a hangover on Sunday morning. Oh, really? Yes. And I was really thirsty, and I went to the refrigerator to see if Woody had left a Coke or something in there. It wasn't a
[00:20:01]
morning drinker then. And Woody had been there the night before and he'd left about this much vodka and a half pint bottle, just maybe half a shot. And there was some orange juice in the refrigerator and I said, whoa, that'll put the fire out. So I mixed up this little dinky drink and I drank it and went on about my business. I had the resin cooking and I'm sanding on the surfboard there. Now, I hope there's some new people here tonight. They used to drag me to these things when I was new. And we're going to go the whole weekend.
Oh, swell. We'll just have meeting after meeting after meeting. But if there are new people here tonight, I'm going to tell you about this because that little bit of vodka got in my bloodstream. You know how it'll do? You know how it'll circulate? And it went boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And my mind talked to me. If you're new, you'll understand, don't you? My mind still talks to me, but I don't pay any attention anymore. I have met the enemy.
He lives here. Only enemy I have in the world is right there. That morning, my mind said, Shame on you, Cliff. Shame, shame, shame. That was Woody's booze you drank. You're ahead of it. Why don't you go up to the liquor store and get old Woody a pint? That's the kind of guy I am. You know, that afternoon I got Woody a fifth. And you know, I just ended up boring. I drunk. My dad used to call it, you know, just resin all over me. The board was screwed forever.
The shop was a mess. And I literally, literally crawled home 11 blocks on my hands and knees. And I got up the next morning, called Ralph. Remember him? Don't you just hate it when it's down to you and Ralph? I hate that part. And that morning I just called Ralph for an inordinate amount of time. And I said to my wife, and she had one of those pre-Al-Anon tics in the eye by now. And we call it the pre-Al-Anon tic. And I said, I got to do something about my drinking.
I'm getting drunk when I don't even mean to. And she had cut this little thing out of the newspaper about the A&A. I don't know why she thought to do that, do you? And a little ad, the only ad we've ever had as far as I know, I hope we don't ever have any other one. It says, if you want to drink, that's your business. If you want to quit, call Alcoholics Anonymous. That's AA to me. We're not a hospital, and we're not a treatment center, and we're not a halfway house.
Hell, we're not very nice people. But if you're new in this room tonight and you want to quit drinking, we'll go to the ends of the earth for you. I know people in this room who'll go to the ends of the earth for you, if you want it. Out on the coast, I know you're not like that, but out there, if you'd rather drink, we have a salute for you. We're kind of crude out there. I don't care. I don't care.
That's the difference between me and a guy who gets paid for it. I don't care. Unless you want it, then I'll go to the ends of the earth for you. But anyway, I called the A&A, and old Stan came out and got me and took me to some meetings. There were like 12 meetings in the Oceanside area at that time. About seven, eight people around a table, staying sober. They seemed to have the collective IQ of an orange.
God, I tried to help them. About the third night, I was laying a little Nietzsche on them, and this guy said, Hey, we keep it simple here. I said, No kidding. You could have fooled me, Leroy. So I went to a few meetings, and then I resigned from A&A. Have you ever done that? That really upsets them, doesn't it? And I hate to tell this part of the story, but by God, it's my story. For the next five years, I was an A.A. loser.
And I mean, if they ever have a Losers Hall of Fame, I'll have a bus right by the door.
[00:25:00]
I mean, I was a loser, over-educated, pompous, smirking, smart-ass loser. I can't even get the smile down. I used to have that little sneer. I can't even do it anymore, you know what I mean? And I'd sit in the last chair of the last row, one foot out the door. It sounded to me like everybody in the chair, his name was Clem, and his wife's name was Martha. They'd been out of bib overalls about an hour and a half.
They were always talking. You know what it sounded like to me when I listened to A.A.s in those days? It sounded like you had been rehabilitated. See, my hero in 1965 was a guy named Eldridge Cleaver. He was a black militant terrorist. That was my hero. My politics were, blow it up or burn it down, I didn't give a shit which, okay? And Eldridge had given this speech a few months earlier. And he was talking about the prison system, where they were always putting him.
And the prison system was always trying to rehabilitate him. He says, you know what they'd never known? He had never been rehabilitated. And you can't rehabilitate somebody who's never been rehabilitated. That's how I felt in the A.N.A. At some point in your wretched lives, you'd been all right. I have never been all right. I was nuts when I was four years old. When I was four years old, you'd stand on the speedway in Venice, California.
I'd stand there a little tight, about this big. When a car would come, I'd go. You know, people would come driving along, look at the little bit, what the hell? And I, like a little soldier, I'd wait for another car. Didn't know how to do this yet, you know. If I'd have known how to do that, that's what I'd have done. And that's how I felt my whole life. I lived on the edge of psychosis my whole life.
Just one step either way, he's gone, you know. But drinking helped, okay. So anyway, I resigned from A.A. And then I'd come into A.A. for like 40 days. And then I'd be drunk for two years. That's a slip. Then I'd come to A.A. for 40 days or 30 days. Then I'd be drunk for a year and a half, in and out. One time I came in in the afternoon, about 4 o'clock. And they 12-stepped me, these guys quadro-stepped me.
They got on all four sides of me, just woo, woo, woo, woo. Oh, I got the message that day. I levitated out of the building. I went over to my buddy Big John's house. He was worse than me. I pounded on the door. I said, John, we're out of alcohol. Actually, we have to go to A.A. Big John said, oh, okay. He was about your size. I led him to the meeting that night and became his sponsor. And the next day we both got drunk.
In and out. What a loser. But I'm a functioning alcoholic. That's why I think I almost died of alcoholism is I just kept functioning. The week I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, this time, I weighed 163 pounds. I had like 4% body fat. I used to surf for like three hours and then get out and run five miles. What do you mean alcoholic? I could bench press 285 pounds. It took me 25 minutes to pass a mirror.
And for God's sakes, don't ask me for directions. I said, it's right over there. My daughters used to get money from me. They'd come up to me when I didn't have a shirt on, which was most of the time. They'd say, V-Up, Daddy, V-Up. Oh, can I have $5? Yeah, sure. I was two years sober, but I figured that out. I was an Adonis. Adonis, what the hell are you talking about, an alcoholic? I was gorgeous.
If you're new, AA has made me twice the man I used to be. And I was one of the top three debate coaches in the United States. That's an honor roughly equivalent to being one of the top three prostitutes in Elko, Nevada. Talking to speech coaches, it's a big deal. I became one of the top speech coaches in the nation by mistake. Principal called me in one day. He did a lot of that. But he'd gotten this flyer in the mail about a debate in the speech.
But he'd gotten this flyer in the mail about a debate in a speech tournament, which was being held 30 miles down the road, San Diego State College,
[00:30:01]
and I was teaching a speech class, so he said, you ought to get some of your kids to go down to that, I bet that'd really be good for them, I bet you they'd get a lot out of it. And I was in big trouble, so I said, what a good idea, you know how we are. And I found about six dodos wanting to give it a go, and we went down the road 30 miles, San Diego State College, we were just blown away when we got there.
Like 50 schools participating in this tournament, like 500 contestants, all the boys were in three-piece suits with vests and ties, girls were in these lovely business clothes, we're in Levi's and sweatshirts. What do we know? And they killed us. We did not win a round. I mean, they scrammed us up in dirts, but they did. I don't know what kind of drunk you are, but I don't care for losing. It ticks me off to lose.
And I went in the coaches' room, there were about 20 of them in there, they're old pals, they're buddies, I'm steamed already. And they'd been doing this for years, and they just loved one another, and they snubbed me. It seemed to me. And so I hung around all day, you know how we are, they can snub you longer that way. And one guy there really ticked me off, he had a lot of hair. That bothered me right away.
No, not just hair, it was that steel gray, you know. Not a hair out of place. Took nine barbers to get it right. Had about a thousand dollar suit on. The other coaches did this when we went in front of him. About two in the afternoon, this guy suddenly turns to me and says, Where are you from? God, I was grateful to be spoken to. And I said, Oceanside. And he said, Oh, where's that? Thirty miles up the road, where's that?
I don't know what kind of drunk you are, but he gave me a resentment. And I went back to Oceanside High, and it took me three or four or five years, but I built a speech team. And I never forgot that gray-haired SOB for a day. I went from 7.30 in the morning until 9.30, 10 o'clock at night, and I'm coaching. The guy next door said, I'd love to watch them leave in your room wiping the spit off their glasses.
A reporter said to my captain one time, What's the secret of your coach's success? The kid said, Terror. She wasn't lying. Hey, she's the chairman of women's studies and the dean of speech at San Francisco State College today. Didn't do her any harm. Bruised on her butt, perhaps, now and then. I always felt so sorry for Bobby Knight. They fired him for choking one guy. And it was a guy. But I don't drink all day.
See, I'm a functioning alcoholic. I don't touch a drink all day. I don't eat all day either. It's better that way, isn't it? And I drink 400 cups of coffee, and I stay pissed off. And so by the end of the day, you're making 150 people do what they don't want to do. That's hard work. By the end of the day, the nerves are hanging out the end of my fingers about that far. My brain's too big for my head.
Every muscle in my body's in a knot. But out in the glove compartment of the car waiting for me, I'm a functioning alcoholic, is a half a pint of hot vodka. Oh, I love to talk about hot vodka to Al-Anon meetings. They go, eh, ooh, eh. But you and I, no. And this hot vodka's in the glove compartment talking to me all day. I don't touch it all day. I don't take a drink all day. I only have to know that the half a pint of vodka's in the glove compartment when I get through here.
Anna would call to me and say, go get them, Cliff, baby. I'm waiting, darling. I'd finish with Alaska at 9, 30, 10 o'clock at night. I'd lurch out to the car, open up that hot vodka, like one of those stogies I smoked in those days. And I don't know what you did, but I always drank half the half pint. Oh, is there anything in the world like hot vodka? Into the bloodstream. The nerves go back up in the fingers and the brain subsides and the muscles relax.
I puff on that stogie. Damn, you're a good coach. And I'd kill the half a pint and sit there in the darkness of the car and have my eight minutes. All the years I was a loser in and out of AA.
[00:35:03]
I never once told you about the eight minutes. I don't know what your story is. This is my story. After I drink about a half an hour, and I don't care what it is, after I drink about a half an hour, something happens to me, and everything in my life is all right for about eight minutes. Nothing wrong with me. Hell, you're not so bad either. I am enough for about eight minutes. And I almost died for the eight minutes.
And I never once told you about it. And then I would start the car and I would drive home and I'd really start drinking. And we had these five kids, and I'm a violent, violent drunk, and a foul-mouthed, critical, sarcastic, mean drunk. And I got drunk the last six or seven or eight years every night at home. And I turned that house into an insane asylum. Everybody in that house was crazy. God knows she was.
Three of my kids are in high school. We're talking the late 60s now. Three of my kids are in high school in the late 60s. My oldest son is working his way through high school as a Hershey salesman. Oh, he was a pimp. You should have seen. Never had to give him any spending money. I used to hit him up for a fifth about once a week. Yeah, Dad. He had hair down to his ass. You know, his head went like this all the time.
Called his mother, man. Hey, man, what's for dinner? Oh, he was a pimp, boy. He loved LSD. He took LSD like popcorn. And those guys, they see things, you know. I'm sure some of you know. He used to scare the hell out of me. I used to be right in the middle of a sentence. He'd say, what was that? Of course, the shape I'm in, I'd say, I don't know. What was it? My drunken mother-in-law lived with us.
And she would say, I'll explain it. My wife and I got hysterical a while back. We used to listen to the explanation. But everybody was nuts. My daughters had boyfriends that looked exactly like my son. The three of them used to get on the couch together. The little kids just wet the bed and walked in the walls. Everybody was nuts. And a lot of hatred in that house. A lot of anger in that house. Just a terrible, horrible place.
You know, I was raised in an alcoholic zoo. And I used to look at my parents and say, I'll never be like you. I was ten times worse than them. But just in passing now, I love to watch my grandchildren. Everybody. Let's get back to that. But I built that speech team. I destroyed my family, but I built that speech team. And after a couple of years, we won one of those speech tournaments. But I didn't say anything to the gray-haired guy.
It wasn't time yet. We know when it's time, don't we? The next year, there were 12 or 14 tournaments, about 50 schools in each tournament. We took first place in every single tournament. I can wait. I think revenge is better than Christmas. The next year, there was a tournament. There were 25 schools competing in the tournament. My team scored more sweepstakes points than the other 24 schools combined.
Then I went up to the gray-haired guy. Remember him? And I put my nose right against his and I said, do you know where Oceanside is now? He just looked blank. He said, what are you talking about? I said, don't you remember about four or five years ago, you said to me, Oceanside, where's that? And he said, we just moved here from Nebraska. I didn't know where it was. That's the story of my life. This guy's in his bed for four or five years.
I'm up at Oceanside, I'll get you, I'll get you. He didn't know it. He didn't know it. I hardly ever tell this story, but I've got to tell you this story. For the new people here tonight, in case you think we get all well here.
[00:40:05]
A few years ago, I had a prostate trim. And this guy did not do a good job. And I'm in pain and I'm getting pissed off. And I wait two months until I'm really pissed off. So finally one day I couldn't stand it anymore, I pick up the phone, dial up the doctor. The little girl comes on and says, doctor's office? I said, this is Cliff R.. That butcher really screwed it up. I'm in terrible pain. And I told her where the pain was and where it went.
Back then, I must have done five minutes just screaming and yelling. I ended up by saying, I'm pissed and glad I didn't do that when I was drunk, for Christ's sakes. The little girl said, Mr. R., this is your eye doctor's office. We don't get all well here, you know. But I showed growth. She and I laughed until we almost got sick. She sat her in the phone eye of mine. We laughed until we almost died laughing.
And I went in the office about three weeks later in the eye doctor's office. I said, where's Evelyn? She's over there. I said, Evelyn, I'm Mr. R.. She says, hi, Mr. R.. And everybody else in the office went. What a fink. But right after that deal with the gray-haired guy, my wife and I had one of our main events, which the neighbors have come to miss so much. Our neighbors never got television until after I got sober.
Weren't you the entertainment for the neighborhood? We were always the, he's coming back. He's coming back. They all had those Venetian blind marks on their forehead, you know. But that night we really had a main event, and I threatened to move out. Everybody said, yay, go for it, Dad. And I moved out, and I'm living down at the beach with my surfboard and with my buddy and his girlfriend. And I'd said for years, if I could unload that witch and those long-haired dope-fiend children, I could drink like a gentleman again.
And I'd gotten rid of them, and that wasn't it. And I was drunk all the time, and I was starting to miss work, which had always been my badge of courage. I always showed up for work. My daddy told me when I was a boy, he said, if you eat breakfast and go to work, you're not an alcoholic. He died of alcoholism, but that was a good theory. It sounded good to me. But I was missing work. I was missing a lot of work.
And I went by the house one afternoon to hang with my wife about money. Cashy salesman was kind of bobbing in the background there, humming a tune from the planet Pluto. And I did something really stupid as I looked back. I turned to him and I said, Dave, what's it like not to have your own man around the house? And Dave looked me right in the eye and he said, it's beautiful. And I am eternally grateful to that 16-year-old kid who was really afraid of me.
I was harder on him physically than any of the other kids. That he had the courage to look me in the eye and say, it's beautiful. And I went back to that dump on the beach and I sniveled and whined and pissed and moaned and screamed and hollered. But I did not take a drink that afternoon. And it had been a long time since I had not taken a drink that afternoon. And I went out on the screen porch and I watched, which is still today, the most beautiful sunset that I ever saw.
The sky and the water and the wet sand were all just magenta. And about the time that the sun was going down into the water, I had what our big book calls the moment of clarity. And Polly calls it the moment of grace. I love that. The gift. Grace, the gift. It's all a gift, isn't it? Just a gift. And I went in the bedroom and dug out the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had it in some stuff. I had read it in one of my travels through the program.
Being an English teacher, I thought it was very poorly written. Boy, I read a lot better this time. If you're new tonight, I read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous for three days and three nights. I called in sick. I didn't go to work. I ate a little bit, slept even less. And I read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I read all of the stories. I read the appendix in the bag. And in the second edition, there was a story called The Professor and the Paradox.
He's in the new book, Spirit and Strength and Hope. Paradox, he's in the new book, Spirit and Strength and Hope, and he saved my life, he was another egotistical school teacher, and he got me right to the heart, and on the third
[00:45:01]
time through the book, on the 13th of January, 1970, at 3 o'clock in the morning, I was on page 63 again, and if you're new, on page 63 there's a little prayer, and that prayer is step three. I always called it the formal terms of surrender, and I knelt down on that filthy little looming floor in that dump in the beach where I was living, and I read that prayer out loud to myself. I read, God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self. I've heard over 200 fifth steps in my years in the program, and the number one defective character of every man I've ever worked with is self-obsession. Relieve me of the bondage of self. And when I was new, I looked up the word bondage, it means slavery. And I had a spiritual awakening, much like one of the other speakers had, where I just knew I was going to be alright. I tried for years to tell you what happened to me on my knees there that morning, and I never could. And two years ago, three years ago, this little girl had a grapevine article.
She's 22 now, and she was 17 when this happened to her. She was in a drying out joint, you know, a treatment facility, and she did the exact same thing that I had done 32 years earlier. She knelt down and read the prayer out loud to herself. And in the grapevine article she said, I was engulfed by a great laughing love. There it is. I was engulfed by a great laughing love. And I knew I was going to be alright. I knew I was not in charge of my life anymore. And I got up and I went to Bill Blake's house. Bill Blake was a little electrician, you guys, the two people in this room knew him. He was just a fanatic little AA, you know, just a little bandy rooster. You know, the real pain in the ass when you're a slipper. You hate those kinds. You know, you go to a meeting and they pounce on you?
You know that kind. Like I am now. And he would come up to me and he'd say, you want to go to Los Angeles with us tomorrow night? No! I felt like saying, I don't care if you creeps here, what the hell, I want to drive a hundred miles and meet some more of them. You know, I would just say, no, thank you. He was always trying to help me. And in that night though, I was at Bill Blake's house knocking on the door. Margie, Bill's wife opened the door and here he is on the porch. Five year loser, obnoxious, over-educated, pompous ass, loser. Are you new tonight? I have never seen anyone so glad to see me in my life. This loser. She saw me. In the house I go. Pours me a cup of coffee. You know, she's, oh, this is wonderful. This is great. She said, Bill's been nuts lately.
She said, nobody to work with. Oh, this is so great. And then Bill comes in. Oh, Cliff! In about a half an hour, I'm thinking, anything else I can do to help you folks out? I'm glad to help any way I can. They made me feel like Cliff's here, we can start AA now. And you know, three weeks later, I was in a newcomer meeting and one of the other newcomers said, what do you mean this is a selfish program? And when the guy asked the question, I knew the answer. I got the answer the night I got here. They'd been praying for me for five years, for God's sakes. But Bill and Margie were more glad for Bill and Margie because they knew the great secret. You can't have it unless you give it away. If you're new here tonight, you better believe this. If you don't hear anything else tonight, you can't stay here unless you're willing to give it away. My little sponsor could give it away like nobody's business. He was the worst speaker in the history of AA. Ed will vouch for that.
He was awful. He never got out of World War II. He had a fabulous story. In the front seat of a car, he had a fabulous story, but he would just choke up up here. He used to say, I've talked everywhere in AA once. But boy, you put him in the front seat of a car with a newcomer. Nobody ever escaped that man. Nobody ever escaped him. I certainly didn't. Oh, he was a fireman. And by the way, after that night, that was the last nice thing he ever said to me as long as he lived. On his deathbed, okay? On his deathbed. He died
[00:50:04]
of emphysema, which is a terrible way to go, you smokers. Anyway, I went to his bed. I had to go to Alaska to talk. And he was, I don't know, I said, I leaned over the bed and I said, Bill, I got to be gone for four days now. I got to go up to Alaska to talk. And Bill was lying there gasping. He says, yeah, they told me. I told them to send you as far away as possible. When he died, when he died, there was almost as many people in this room as there is in this room tonight. He was no speaker in AA. He was just a great AA. Ed was there. And I got to lead the meeting. We had a meeting for him. And I said, how many of you here loved Bill? Every hand in the room shot up. I said, how many of you here had a resentment against Bill? Every hand in the room. I always said, my sponsor never had a resentment. He was a carrier. The nicest thing he said to me for the first five years was, shut up. Shut up. I told him, I have degrees, you know. He says, so does the thermometer, you know, where they stick that sometimes. Oh, he was awful. Thank God.
I was such a pompous ass, you know. They just took a man like that. He was so cruel to me, and I thank him every day of my life. He's been dead 15 years now, and I miss him every day. I miss him every day. I thought the first step was, shut up and get in the car. You know, I'm now going on 36 years sober. The first step is, isn't it, just shut up and get in the car. In the backseat, on the hump. There's a method to that, too, isn't there?
I mean, if you're on the hump in the backseat, you become a 12-stepper. You find a new guy. Hey, come with us. And we went everywhere. The first year was just he and I, and then Pat came along, and then Skip, and then Al, and then Bernie, and then Bob. Pretty soon we had three carloads of guys. But he wasn't the first one meeting a week at the same time. We went everywhere, every southern California. He just told me what time he was picking me up. Pick you up at five.
Oh, shit, we've got to go to Los Angeles. Pick you up at six. I wonder where that is. And he took me to meetings where people were having a good time. He took me to meetings where there was laughter, because he knew me. I can't stay, I'm sorry, I couldn't stay here. I can't stay here without the laughter. To me, laughter is the spiritual part of Alcoholics and Hunters. It's what heals us, it's what cures us. That's why we have these damn roundups, so we can all get together and laugh our ass off. You know what I mean? That's what it's all about. Oh, I love the laughter of Alcoholics. I'd like to get me a new guy. You know, some scuzzbag newcomer. Take him to a meeting. Take him to another meeting. Take him to another meeting. And when I, maybe the 12th, the 13th, 14th meeting, he goes, huh. Gotcha! Gotcha now, you son of a bitch! Oh, once we get him laughing, we got him, huh? My wife and I, she's crueler than me, even, my al-Anon. We get these brand-new little al-Anons, and we take him to AA speaker meetings like this, you know. We get her in between us, where she can't escape. You know, and the AA guys up here, I fell on the Christmas tree and smashed all the presents. This new little al-Anon sitting there. We just take her to another meeting tomorrow night. AA al-Anon, once we get you laughing, we gotcha. Once we have you laughing, we gotcha. Oh, the laughter of Alcoholics. You know, I can't live without it. Nothing I laugh at will ever come back and haunt me again. That's the cure, isn't it? The stuff I used to lie awake and I'd grind my teeth, my stomach turning. It's funny now, and to hell with it. And he took me to meetings everywhere. He was so cruel to me. Whatever was wrong in my life, and I had plenty wrong. I owed a billion dollars and didn't have a brass razoo. My wife wouldn't go to al-Anon.
At a mean month, my kids were on drugs, and I'd have these nervous breakdowns, and I'd go to his house. You know what they're doing over there now, Bill? And he would always listen. He'd say, yeah, come in, tell me. And he'd listen to the whole story. You know how they listen. I find it's good to make a noise once in a while, like, oh. That way they think you're paying attention. But he
[00:55:02]
just, and he never interrupted me. He'd just let me find, I'd find him just wind down. And he would say, go get Al and take him to the meeting. What's that got to do with a nervous breakdown? It doesn't make sense. But I, on that morning, on the 13th of January, I gave it all up. I gave up having answers of my own. And it made no sense, because I hated Al. He was a bigger loser than me. And he was a big blowhard.
You know, so I'd go, he had no driver's license, of course. And he was a 10-year loser. I was only a five-year loser. So I'd load Al in the car, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'd go to the meeting, we'd set the meeting up. Everybody come to the meeting. Everybody go home. We'd set the meeting down, wash the coffee pots. We had real cups in those days. And Al had to wash, because he was so shaky, he'd just put his hands in the water, you know. But I could dry, heh, heh, heh, you know. And I'd load the blowhard in the car and drive him home, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'd let Al off, and I'd start driving home. And four and a half hours ago, I was having a nervous breakdown. And this feeling would come over me. It would start right here, and it would just spread out all over my butt. Oh, God, it felt good. It used to scare me. It felt so good.
It only lasted 40 seconds, you know. I thought it was because I had rid Al, you know. But I mopped floors, and I slid through the door and greeted people, which I really hated, because I'm a real snob. But I, you know, the funny thing was that after a while, I knew your name when you came in the door, and I asked you how you were. I cared. And he took me on all his 12-step calls with him. And we used to get, like, three and four a week in those days.
And I got to see the light come on in men's eyes. And you got to see them get sober, get clean. And that feeling just kept growing and growing. I was sober almost a year when I realized what the feeling is. It's a feeling of being enough. And all the actions I've taken in AA for 35 years now have made it possible for me to feel like I'm enough every day of my life. And Al had gotten drunk once more. He had 11 months and 17 days, and he drank again. And he called me. And I went to get him. And I just gave him the old pep talk. Get a shower, Al. Come and get cleaned up.
And we'll go to the meeting tonight. It's one day at a time, pal. That's all there is. One day at a time. Come and get me. Let's go. And out of my mouth, suddenly I said, I love you, Al. And I knew it was true. I knew I wanted Al to be sober as much as I wanted to be sober myself. And if you're new here, that's what we call love around here. We want each other to stay sober as much as we want to stay sober.
We got a funny word for love, don't we? We call it service. What a goofy word for love. You know, just doing for each other. That's what we do. We do for each other so that we don't have to think about ourselves. And Al got sober. And he's sober. Hell, he's the guru of Santa Maria today. He's still a blowhard, too, if you ask me. But Al and I became this 12-step team. We were fantastic. I do say so myself. We went on 12-step calls every day. We'd do the good guy, bad guy. You know, like cops. We'd almost get in fistfights out in front. I'm the good guy this time. No, you weren't.
We'd go in there and one guy would say to the other guy, you're going to shut your mouth, quit your goddamn whining, and get your ass to the meeting. The other guy would say, never mind him. Come here. I want to talk to you. Action after action. Loving action after loving action after loving action after loving action after loving action. And it really gets to you after a while, doesn't it? If you act loving long enough, you feel love. That's how it's worked out for me. It's the actions I've taken. And by the way, my sponsor was a fanatic on the steps.
And he taught me that if you haven't done the steps, you're not really a member of AA. One through 12, baby. He says, because you're a brilliant intellectual, we numbered them for you. One, two, three. And we did them until he was satisfied. Not to where I was satisfied. We did them until he was satisfied. He was a brilliant man, but he was a simple man. He'd say, you don't need tape. and a Book, That's What You Need, And We Did Those Steps, Oh My God, How They Changed My
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Life, Those Steps Will Change Anybody, They Change Al-Anons, Woo, They Change Al-Anons, And I Did Those Steps and I Took Those Actions and My Life Started to Grow and Change, My First 20 Years of Sobriety, I Was Very Active in the Service Structure, The Word Service Means Love, And I Was a GSR and a DCM, I Did the Whole Alphabet, Ended Up Area Chairman Like Our Esteemed Colleague Over Here, And I Ended Up Being a Delegate in Panel 26, Which Is Just Right After the Ice Age, And I Served in There, My Buddies, They Did Other Stuff, They Were in HNI and All This Other Stuff, And They Used to Tease Me, They Didn't Mean It, But They Used to Say, Oh, Here Comes the Politician, Why Do You Do That Service Crap, You Know, It's Just Politics, And I Used to Say to My Buddies, Way Back Then, I Used to Say, I Do This Because I Want AA To Be Here For My Kids If They Need It. And I Want It To Be AA, I Don't Want It To Be Some Watered Down, Psychologized Clinical Bullshit, I Want It To Be The Program The Little Man Brought To Me. I Want It To Be AA, The Spiritual Way Of Life Of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I Did That All Those Years. Our Youngest Son, Chris, Has 17 Years Of Sobriety. Charlie's Met Him, He's A Pistol, He Really Is Something Else.
He Doesn't Like Speaking, He's The Funniest Man I've Ever Known. He Would Be A Great Speaker Today, But He Doesn't Like It, But He's A Really Good AA. Our Middle Daughter, Jan, Had 12 Years Of Sobriety, And Got A Bad Back, And Started Taking Pills, And I Don't Have Any Opinion On Pills. They'll Cut You Off In The Sunlight And The Spirit And Kill Your Ass Dead, But I Have No Opinion On Them At All. No Opinion Whatsoever. And She Drank Again Of Course, And She Drank For A Year Or So, And Then A Lot Of Great People Worked With Her And Helped Her, And I Didn't, I Couldn't. I Can Help Your Kids, But I Can't Help My Kids. That's What You're For. And They Did Play, Now She Has 5 Years Again, And She's Just Beautiful. And She Sits Right Behind Me In My Home Group, So She Can Remind Me If There's Something Else. She's A Teacher Too. And The Eldest Son, Dave, The Hashy Salesman, He's One Of The Foremost Experts In The World On Coffee. And He's Been Sober Over 4 Years Now. And He Travels, He Travels All Over The World Teaching The Third World Country People How To Crossbreed Coffee To Have Better Coffee So They Don't Have To Be Third World People Anymore. And He Goes All Over South America, Central America, Mexico, He Speaks Spanish Fluently, So He Goes To Meetings All Over There. His Favorite Meeting, His Home Group Is In White Salmon, Washington, But His Second Favorite Home Group Is In Zambia, Africa. Because He's Over There A Lot. And It's In The Canadian Consulate. When He Comes In They All Say, Hey Dave's Here. And He Loves AA. And My Middle Daughter Jan And My Eldest Son Dave Are Both GSRs Today. There's A Couple Of The Grandkids Are Looking Good. There We Go Again. Now Our Eldest Daughter Kitty Went Wrong. She's Been In Al-Anon About 20 Years Now. And She's One Of The Most Beautiful Human Beings. Ed Knows. We Talk, She Talks With Us Once In A While. Kitty And I Go, When Pat Can't Go, Kitty Goes And Talks. She Gives A Great Talk. And You Know, The Steps Are The Program Of Alcoholics Anonymous. Anything Ever Taught Me That, It's My Two Al-Anons. My Wife And My Eldest Daughter. I Have Seen Their Life Change And Watched Them Blossom In The Al-Anon Program. We Call It The Program In Our House. We Don't Make Fun Of Al-Anons. We Don't Sneer At Al-Anons In My House. It's A Program And We Work It Together. And Our Youngest Daughter Mary, She Was Only Seven
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When We Got Here. I Don't Know What The Hell's The Matter With Her. She Grew Up Straight In A Crooked Family. You Know What I Mean? She's Got A Doctorate And All That Crap. Now She's Pregnant With Twins. But I Wanted, If You're New, You Know We Get Together At My House. We Laugh So Hard We Almost Die. The Love And The Laughter In That House When We All Get Together. It's Like I Said About You Guys. You Can't Get Here From There. It Has To Be Done. No Human Power Could Have Relieved My Family. But God Could And Would If Sought. Not Found. Not Found. Sought. If You're New Here Tonight, You Don't Have To Believe All The Good Stuff That's Happened To Me And Mine Is Going To Happen To You.
I Didn't Believe It Was Going To Happen To Me. I Believed It Happened To Bill. And That's Kept Me In The Car The First Eighteen Months. But You Do Have To Believe This If You're New Tonight. You Do Have To Believe That It Happened To Me. That A Sick, Neurotic, Crazy Angry Man Lives Almost Every Day Of His Life. Just Like That Book Promised Me I Would. Happy And Joyous And Free. And That's How I Live And I Hope You Do Too.
Thank You.