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Source: DICOBE-00352 – Clancy I – CORNHUSKER RNDP III – 1980-08-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00352-clancy-i-cornhusker-rndp-iii-1980-08-15.mp3 Duration: 00:55:09
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And record our thanks to this committee and these people who have made this thing possible. These things, if you know as much about them as we do, do not just happen. They take endless hours of tedious work, and the girls that sit at the tables, and the fellows that function like they should, and there is a great deal of action involved in the production of a conference. And I think I can also take the liberty to say, with the goodwill of the rest of the speakers, that this is one of the most uncluttered affairs that we've ever been around.
It has been flawless in its intensity and scope. And this is what amazes me, is how alcoholics who cannot function for three feet, can do things as masterfully as this. And I have another obligation which resorts to the primary purpose of this society, and it also satisfies the whim of some of us older ones. If you would, would all those people in our audience less than six months sober, or those people who are making your first conference, would you please raise your hand?
I've got a little secret for you folks. We've set a trap for you. And you're the ones that we're throwing this thing for. And God be thrilled to death that you're here. This is the last time that anybody will be nice to you. I came to AA and for the first two weeks they loved me to death. And then some other son of a bitch had to come get sober. And I hated his guts. But we're thrilled to death that you're here.
You're the most important thing that we've worked for, around, and by. And we're terribly glad that you're here. Because from our experience, this is an exceptional gathering. And if you want to be grateful for something for just a few moments, these people who have stood behind this podium and have shared themselves with you, had it not been for the facility of Alcoholics Anonymous, this could not have happened.
If we had been born 46 years earlier, no doubt, than we were, this wouldn't have been here. So the whole episode is what all of these speakers have talked about, is the efficacy of God's handiwork. And I record my thanks for that. Now, I will tell you what I am here for. To introduce your, and I use the word loosely, speaker of the evening. And you ask the question, why would they bring a fellow all the way from Texas to introduce this fellow?
And it's the only thing that the committee would not undertake to do. They tried the next state down, and they turned them down. They finally got as far away from Texas and found a fellow down there who was hungry for some good food. And I condescended to come up here. I met this fellow 12, 15 years ago. We were on an airplane.
[00:05:03]
And he was reading the Wall Street Journal, and he was using his welfare check for a letter guy. He comes from a fine Christian home, fine religious Lutheran home up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And as was the custom in those highly religious families, in the bigger families, the youngest child always slept with the parents. Well, I'm sure they didn't mean for him to sleep with them 28 years. The first time I ever met him, I hated his guts.
But our relationships down through the years have progressed to where I have no use for him at all. Let me say a word to the newcomer in Alcoholics Anonymous quickly. You'll never see anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous stand behind one of these podiums and kid somebody that they don't love. We don't kid with strangers. We only play with the ones that we love. I'll tell you the other side of the coin. I've traveled this country far and wide.
And I've seen many a struggling drunk come up to me after a convention and say, Clancy is my sponsor. And I suspect that if the truth were known, he would be the prince of all 12-steppers as far as our society is concerned. I don't care how he does it. But he does it by God. And it is a thrill to me. I consider him one of the finest friends that I have in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's with the greatest of joy that I'll be glad to share him with you and give you Clancy Ives.
My name is Clancy Imus London. I'm an alcoholic. Being introduced by Joe is like traveling third class on the Bulgarian State Railroad. You get there, but Jesus, it's tedious. Joe is a wonderful man and he is known in some circles for his verbosity, which some of his people in Texas call his verbal diarrhea. But if you've ever been in a home in Tyler, you'll see to what extremes this goes. It's the only home I've ever was in where when Joe went to the refrigerator and opened it to get a glass of milk and the light hit him, he gave 20 minutes.
But we don't judge. I think that this weekend has been… I have enjoyed the speakers here as much as any place I've ever been. I really mean that. They really have been top. I've heard most of the speakers before that spoke this weekend and they all seem to surpass themselves. From Tom last night who just gave an excellent talk, the best I've ever heard him give,
[00:10:02]
I mean, at least for my reception. And I unfortunately, the hotel did not choose to honor my wake up call this morning. Well, it's all right. It wasn't all bad. I missed the Al-Anon meeting. But I want you to know that I heard such glowing reports about Zayde's talk that I've done something that I can't recall ever doing in my lifetime. I have purchased an Al-Anon tape. Not quite true. I didn't really purchase it. I gave him a personal check.
And this afternoon, Jim, those of you who weren't here, missed an outstanding talk who put a great deal of wisdom that he has learned and gave it to us as a continuing series of quotations from his sponsor. But his sponsor's got to be a very wise man. And then after the 15-minute break, to come back and hear Lib give an excellent talk on different kind of style, different kind of approach, but just as interesting and just as full of the message of AA.
And I've just enjoyed it very much. And tomorrow morning, we're going to hear a very outstanding lady who for many, many years was a bulwark of our New York office, is now retired, lives in Florida. She looks younger every time I see her, year after year. I think she found what Ponce de Leon didn't find in Florida. And I feel kind of a distinction myself. I guess I'm the first speaker at this convention who doesn't sound like he's got a mouth full of grits.
You may not like me, but you'll understand me. I, too, want to thank Dick and the committee. I was privileged to be here at the first Cornhusker Roundup. And that time I had my son with me, who was just a little boy then, two years ago. And he sat down there in the front row, and I don't think he'd ever heard me talk at an AA meeting before. And we'd come here on the train for fun, and we had a good time.
And I just talked to him before I came in here tonight. He just got home from football practice, and he's too big and too slick to go anywhere with Daddy anymore. He might have come, but he's really my son. He says, I can't go, Dad. Saturday's picture day. They took his picture today, and there wasn't any choice at all on that. But he's a big horse now. He's playing left guard. And it just seems the other day he was barely able to get into my shoes.
But it's a pleasure to be here. A great number of you people have been to Los Angeles. Some of you have been to our group. Some of you came out and stayed there briefly until your own BS caught up with you and came home again. We don't judge. I'm just reporting. I want to say a special hello to Click W and his dreadful pioneers. He moved here from Los Angeles and blames me for every error he's got.
Don't clap for yourselves, you goofs. I'm a pioneer. I'm a pioneer. I'm trying to be sympathetic. And I want to say a special hello. There's a lady in this room who is a high school classmate of mine in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And her name is Alice Welsh. I don't suppose she's ever had her name on a tape before, but… Take this one home to the folks. Don't mention my name, you dirty son of a bitch.
I'm pleased to be here. I'm kind of the fill-in, but while the band tunes up, gets their guitars
[00:15:08]
and drums ready, I, like everyone else in this room, who is an alcoholic, and all the speakers who stood behind this podium, am here because I pursued the will of the wisp of drinking beyond any reasonable lengths. I, in fact, I was thinking today, it seemed like, let's see, last night's speaker was from Louisiana, which is Texas with swamp, and this morning's Al-Anon speaker was from Louisiana, this afternoon we had two speakers from Texas, and our introducer tonight is from Texas. And I'll tell you, you just can imagine what memories those accents bring you, bring back, when you have spent the cream of your youth in the Texas State Insane Asylum. Hearing these same kind of voices saying things like, we're going to hip you. Go hip somebody else, you old… I got in such a state at the Big Spring State Mental Hospital. I was not in the alcoholic ward. I was there for grave emotional disorders. I had made the mistake of staying sober too long, which has always cut into my equilibrium. But I was there about, I remember, I was put in there as a suicide, and I, it seemed, I was put in there not as a suicide, but after I committed suicide in Texas, which seemed, well, it's better than a lot of things in Texas. After I committed suicide in Texas, they took me to the El Paso County Psych Award, and they examined me, and they told me that I had, you know, why are you doing this, a person like you? I was a copy chief of an advertising agency in the daytime, at night I was on the faculty of the university there. I was writing a weekly sports thing for the El Paso Times.
I had a home and a family, children, and they talked me some, for some time, for several days and finally determined that I was a schizoid personality and a depressive, and that I would require some rather intense therapeutics before I was able to face the streets. So they committed me to the Texas State Insane Asylum at Big Spring, Texas, for an indefinite period, which would go until I got well. I'm glad to say we found a way around that. I might have had a call in my talk tonight. But I, I got in that Texas nut house at Big Spring, and I'll tell you, I thought I'd been depressed before, but Jesus, this was terrible, an old red brick thing out in the middle of West Texas. And I sat in such a depression, I don't believe I moved. I might have been there yet, except some guy told me that I better never try to run away from there, because you couldn't escape from that hospital. I remember my heart starting for the first time in two weeks, just, oh, can't you? And it took me just a few days after that, I found my way to, to crack through a door and get down a corridor and through another door and across the yard and across the fence on the north side, and a fox was loose in West Texas. And the only sad thing I remember about that is what they said is true, it really is an escape-proof institution, but you don't know till you get out. You finally get over that last fence and you suddenly realize, Jesus, they can see you're running for three days in any direction. And you feel like such a dumbbell in your white bathrobe, just. And it's just a matter of time until you hear that accent coming back again. Well, there goes that little Yankee sumbitch now! And they snatched me back and interrogated me and determined that if I tried to escape, that indicated I was disturbed.
And the technique they had to deal with disturbed people was to transfer them over to Ward 5
[00:20:01]
upstairs, where they gave the electric shock. And they got, they called up my wife and told her that I was in bad shape and needed electric shock, would she approve it? And she said yes, because she didn't know, and I don't know what she was thinking about. And for the next several months I was on electric shock. I wound up, I never knew this for years till I was down there talking at that hospital a few years ago, that I had gotten the maximum amount of shock treatments that you could give a human being in the state of Texas, 48 of them. And they finally broke me. And I'll tell you when they broke me, they broke me hard. Because one thing when you take a lot of shock treatments, when you come out of it, you don't remember anything. Anything. The last thing I remembered vaguely was being in San Francisco. And I said, what am I doing here? And some, same thing, we're heppin' you. And we were in a ward there, and what gets me thinking about this, I usually don't talk about this, but all these accents made me funny. I go to that hospital every year now, not for their benefit, because those patients, they don't want to hear me talk especially, but I like to go there. And I look up at that ward, the second floor of Ward 5, and it's, there's a porch where they put the people on intense shock, and there's bars and screens, although it's kind of useless because nobody ever does much up there. But what you can, you can look, and you see silhouettes in the windows. And you see silhouettes going this way, and then this way, and this way. And what you do when you're coming off shock, you don't know where you are, or what your name is, or anything about it, you just know you're somewhere. And you walk, until you come to a wall, and then you turn around, and you walk back, until you come to a wall, and then you turn around. And I remember waking up there, and I didn't remember coming to Texas. And I'd been in Texas for some time.
I looked out the window, and it looked like a moonscape I'd never seen before. And I looked around, and a bunch of guys in bad shape, in bathrobes, with bibs that they were drooling on. And I thought, that's strange. And I looked down and saw my own bib, full of drool. And it suddenly struck me, I'm in some kind of trouble. And then there's a kind of a reaffirming of the… I guess they did it because they were short of money. But I always thought, if you ever had to really get some money broken, this would help you. They were short of money in the hospital. I guess they were short of money in the hospital system. But you'd go to the wall every morning, and see if your name was on the shock list. By the time you could read it, you weren't on the shock list. So, you know, it was funny, it was a mix-up.
But there were some of us who were sufficiently flexible that they would have us come in and do things like… They didn't have enough attendants. They had a doctor and an attendant who'd give shock treatments. And then they'd take three patients, and two of us would hold a leg and an arm. And the attendant would hold the other arm. And if you're goofy, and don't know what the hell's going on, and you're just wondering what your name is, you don't know where you are. And somehow, they bring you in this room, they say, hold that leg and don't let go. And they hold the leg, and they shoot this electricity through your head.
Now, if you've ever seen a shock treatment, the whole body goes like that, like you're being electrocuted. And somehow, when you're half-goofy, that's my body there. And they're doing this to me. And I'll tell you, one thing that I always was proud of was my indomitableness. Nobody ever could break me. And I don't remember ever taking a shock treatment. But I'll tell you that what they used to do, they had… You knew shock treatments were going on in that hospital because they had a recording that played. They played some organ music.
When that organ music started, you knew the shock was starting up on the second floor. And a year after I was out of that hospital, and working again, and walking down the streets of Dallas, if I went by a music store, and organ music was coming out, I'd break into a sweat and start to panic. And I'll tell you, it helped me understand what brainwashing is. You don't even know what the hell was happening. But I'll tell you, I became more flexible after that. And pretty soon I was moved to the senile ward, because they needed flexible people to clean up the poo-poo on the floor. And man, I'll tell you, when you get flexible, you don't know how flexible you get. You want me to clean this up? God damn right. And pretty soon I was back to the ward I started from a long time before.
By that time, a lot of my memory came back, and I realized I was in deep trouble. And
[00:25:02]
I didn't know how to get out, because every time I'd say, when am I going to get out? They'd say, you just relax. It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. And that's no answer. And finally, I thought I better do something. I got to be the worst brown noser that hospital's ever seen. Anything anybody wanted, I did it. I started a hospital newspaper. Still running. Unfortunately, they don't have my name on the masthead as founder and first editor. I directed a Christmas pageant. They saw on my record that I had directed an opera at the University of Texas. So they thought they'd give me a chance to show my wares, so I directed the Christmas pageant, which was not exactly like an opera.
It was about a second grade level, so the entire student body could understand it. And the directorial job didn't have many nuances in the performance. Mostly, it was just the director's job was trying to hold the three wise men off the Virgin Mary. We just want to worship her, Clay. Get back there, Lamar. Back, back. I was doing all right, but the months were passing, and I started to remember that I'd had a career and a family, and I thought, this is going to be rather difficult to come back from this to get back on the way up. And right about that, in that hospital, that year that I happened to be there, they put in the first alcoholic ward in the state of Texas in a hospital. And a man named Les Ross was put in as director. And I used to watch these freaks. As my memory came back, little by little, I started to remember, I know about AA. I'd been in AA for seven years, mostly. Intermittent, once a year, anyway. And I knew how to hustle these old fools. And I thought, I'm not going to ever get out of here by being well, because I've got to look good to sick attendants. There's no way out. So one day, I trapped this old fool. I was in an open ward now where you could mill around, and he would cut through to get to his car, and I remember stopping him one day. By this time, most of my memory had come back. And I gave him the AA newcomer look, which old-timers like to hear, you see. I said, Mr. Ross, I'm here on a suicide commitment from El Paso, and I don't know what made me kill myself.
It's just a funny thing. My life is so good when I don't drink, but somehow there seems to be a compulsion to drink. And when I drink, my values all change. I have almost an addiction. I must keep drinking. I understand you people have some kind of meetings. Is there any kind of literature I could read? If I could just get the alcohol out of my mind, if I could return to the God I lost in a bottle years ago. And his old eyes went… He had never seen a sincere newcomer before. All the people he had were committed for 30 days by their family, and they didn't want to be there, and they couldn't wait to get out. And I was…
And I said, could I go to some of your meetings, Mr. Ross? And he said, let me go find out. We don't have crying when daddy is speaking. I've heard of allotots, but that's ridiculous. And I thought he'd forgotten, because I didn't hear anything from him. About three or four days later he came back. He said, you can come to our meetings. And I was going to say, what the hell took you so long? But I didn't. I didn't want to do anything to disrupt it.
I found out again from a man named Shelby Parnell years later. The reason it took so long is because it was forbidden by their charter to let psychiatric patients go into the alcoholic ward. And I became the pilot study in the state of Texas as to whether or not psychiatric patients could go into the alcoholic ward meetings. And they couldn't have made a wiser selection, because I wasn't burdened with any sincerity or honesty. I just, I wanted to be the best.
we went to meetings all the time, and I just, you know, great, old Mr. Ross would give us
[00:30:04]
an hour on the steps, he'd say, now we're going to talk about the steps today, boys, and you'd, nobody could stand it, you know, but he'd get all done, he'd say, are there any questions? And nobody had any questions, but, could you tell us some more about the fourth step, Mr. Ross, and how we can reach into this garbage and translate it to paper and then read it and get rid of the guilt? And he'd just beam and say, yes I can, Clancy!
And the whole rest of the room would say, aw, shit! But I, I didn't have to get them, I had to get him. And pretty soon I got to be secretary of the group, everybody else came and went, came and went, I stayed there, I got to be the old timer, like Joe, here, and I, you know, you'd, you'd sit next to a meeting, some guy, say, what are you going to do when you get out of here, Fred? I'm going to kill that bitch, you know, well, I felt the same way, but I couldn't say it.
I had to be well. And pretty soon they start taking me out of the hospital to little towns around there to give AA talks. Even to this day, when I hear inmates come out to talk at AA meetings, a certain glaze falls over my eyes, and I'm sure they're not like me, but, you know, I give little talks like, say, Franz, at Midland or at Dessa or Big Spring, or, Franz, I'm just proud to be here tonight on behalf of my fellow patients, thank each and every one of you for carrying a message of faith and hope to us in the Big Spring State Hospital.
It seems as though we were on a vast desert of alcoholism and we'd lost our way, but folks such as you called our attention to the tall green hills of sobriety, and we came to those tall green hills, and the hills were too steep for our weary legs, but folks such as you pointed out 12 golden steps that we could take one after another to climb from that desert of alcoholism to return to the God at which we had lost to the vast desert of alcoholism.
Thank you very much. You can laugh at that, but that got me out of the Texas nuthouse. And the funny thing is, I never had another drink until I ran out of Thorazine. I was thinking today, listening to some of these newer members talk about when they, using Librium. I remember when I was sober, three or four years, when Librium came out, working in the medical corporation, and when I saw that revolutionary new drug called Librium, I thought, damn it, I missed it.
I missed Thunderbird, I missed Librium, maybe, no, no, it's, you know, but Thorazine was as good as anything they ever had. Those big orange daubers, you take two of those, and boom. And I came out of that nuthouse and I went back to El Paso, signed out to my wife. That was the, I don't know how they do it now, but in those days, if you were a psychiatric commitment in those state hospitals, you had to be signed out to someone who would be responsible for you.
And then they would tell them, if he begins to act funny, call up. And if they called up, you were gone. There was no hearing, you were still an inmate, signed, and I'll tell you, that makes it sticky around the house. Don't you think you better get that garbage out? Good idea, honey. It was the answer to an Al-Anon's dream, I'll tell you. And I got a, I convinced some people I'd learn my lesson now, because I didn't drink, I went to an AA meeting once a week in El Paso and sat through that hour of interminable nonsense while they talked about steps and God, took my Thorazine and maintained my sobriety, but thanked the speaker if I could find the podium.
I remember at the end of the year, I wasn't really, most of the year was spent in shock
[00:35:00]
treatments and nuthouses, but at the end of the year since I'd had a drink and I remember waiting in Juarez at midnight with a glass in my hand when that clock to hit twelve, now I had proved I could stay sober a year, and at twelve I took a drink, and I felt good, but I was afraid of shock treatments, so I went home, and the next night on the way to the meeting to get my birthday medallion, I stopped in Juarez and had a couple drinks and went to the meeting.
I remember the guy gave me the medallion, he said, have you been drinking? I said yes, I had a couple drinks with dinner, he said well I'm not supposed to give you this medallion, I said you get the medallion for being sober a year, I was sober a year, give me the goddamn medallion. It's hard enough to make this program without being thwarted by dummies, and some people had thought I'd learned my lesson, and shortly thereafter I was hired by the largest advertising agency in the state of Texas, and I went to Dallas, and I worked on the Elsine Almaraz for the board and company, and my wife was pregnant again, she was always pregnant.
Every time we reunited, wherever I came from she was pregnant, nine months and ten seconds later I had married this Catholic. I'm not against Catholics, I know Tom is a Catholic, I'm not against Catholics, but if you're a young guy and you want to make something of yourself, don't marry a practicing Catholic, unless you've got some private resources, because they're nice, and they're wonderful once you clean them up, but you try to argue birth control, and there's no birth control, you say, couldn't we just use some, no, could I just get something for the prevention of disease, no.
She had the priest come over and they gave me two hours on the rhythm system, which was the Catholic answer to birth control, and I listened intently, but I never could pick up the beat. So I always had that terrible weight on me of my warden about to have a baby, and God that was dreadful, but I worked in Dallas for a while, and the same pressures began to mount, and I drank a little bit more, and I didn't take the Thorazine, because I never did like being goofy anyway, I really didn't, because as Jim said today, pills they do something, but they don't quite do what a drink does.
I drank a little bit more, and pretty soon I got fired off my job, and I got so upset I went out and drank all weekend, and I started to come home and I thought, Jesus, I bet she's blown the whistle on me, I bet I'm on my way to Big Spring, but I opened the door and I had a wave of relief, everything was gone out of the house, I don't mean the people, I mean the rugs and the furniture, and I thought just like them, they turn on you, God damn, I knew I had to get out of Texas, and a couple days later I found myself back in El Paso calling up my sponsor, who I'd never talked to, except when I was on my way out of Texas, he'd been my sponsor, and I said, I seem to be having a little slip, could you give me some money, and he said, no, and I got in a fight, I wound up that night in the Juarez jail, which is no place to be, and a couple days later I woke up and I was in the Phoenix Arizona drunk tank, and I woke up at six o'clock in the morning in the Phoenix Arizona drunk tank, and at least I got out of Texas, and some guy had just gotten done kicking my front teeth out, because I had vomited on his bunk, and that was one of the few mornings I was glad that early in my career I'd invested quite a bit of money in psychoanalysis, because once you've been in psychoanalysis and begin to understand human motivations and your own, you always have a slightly more insight than is vouchsafe to most people, remember I woke up that morning, I was so sick I couldn't move my head out of the way of his shoe, but I was almost instantly able to identify his problem, and I think, this son of a bitch is overreacting, I knew I had to get out of there, and I was in there as a drunken disorder they let me out the next morning, and I didn't have any front teeth now, I had two matched
[00:40:01]
Safeway shopping bags with my clothes in, they were gone, when you look that bad, it's 115 degrees in August on the streets of Phoenix, and you're sick and dying, and I couldn't think of a person to give a, you know, there's nothing to do, I had to, I got to get off the street, and so I thought I'll go to A&A, and I looked him up on the phone book, it's a club called the Arid Club on North 3rd Street, and I kind of tap danced over there, looked like a wealthy eccentric, I thought, and I sat there, I thought I'd let somebody 12 step me, but God, they stepped around me and over me, and some old lady finally came over, she said, young man, are you sick, and I thought, oh, am I sick, I'd just been sitting there thinking, everything I've ever touched is gone, my parents, my father hasn't talked to me for years, my mother cries when she hears my name, and that's, I have a bunch of daughters who I'll never see again, but that's alright, because every time I see them, I think of the son I let die while I was in jail one time, I've lost my career, I've lost everything I've had, everywhere I've been, state after state, I've started off so well and gone to hell, I'm an old broken man without any front teeth, and I couldn't think of one person who cared whether I lived or died, and this nice old lady said, are you sick, and I thought to myself, she means to be nice, and I won't hustle her, because, you know, she's trying, and then she said something that just made me crazy, she said, it's so nice that you younger folks are getting to AA before you've had to go all the way.
So I allowed her to sponsor me in a 12 step house, she didn't have much money with her, but I took that, she was so easy, I almost sent her home for more, but I took the money she gave me, and I went to Los Angeles, I was on my way to Seattle, if I could just get to Seattle, I got to Los Angeles, and I couldn't get out of that stinking town, and I went out to the A&A club, because when you look that bad, you can't go to the ad club and say, I'm an award winning writer, you can't go to the junior chamber of commerce, I used to be junior chamber of commerce young man of the year once, you want to sponsor my new front teeth, I went to the A&A club and hung around there and I was so desperate and so cross, I did things even I wouldn't do, in a moment of desperation I got caught stealing the coffee money at an AA meeting, and I got banned out of the AA club, and I went out to the beach, something called the tender loving care club, and I hung around there and that's what eventually became Synanon, it was too sick for me then, and I was sick, and I wound up, I was going to write a book about Skid Row, because I was on Skid Row, but I didn't seem to have any pencil, and I got just waves of what in God's name has happened to me, this can't happen to me, and I wound up getting in a fight at a place called the midnight mission, being thrown out of there for fighting in the food line, because some guy said, get over there against that wall if you want to eat, I didn't like the tone of his lousy, stupid voice, and I told him to go screw, and he and his friends just didn't say a word, just came over and threw me out, and one morning I was living in the all night theater on Main Street for 30 cents a night, and I walked over to the blood bank on East 4th Street to sell a pint of blood, and I hadn't even thought about it, I guess by this time, I found out later, I weighed 108 pounds, and no front teeth, and a t-shirt, and some old pants, and some pennies, and I was an old, old man, and I tried to sell a pint of blood again as I had done before, and they took a drop of blood out of my ear and said my, the iron level in my blood was no longer high enough to sell blood on Skid Row, and that morning I knew I was dying, and I remember thinking, God Almighty, what is wrong? By that time, I wish I were an alcoholic, I really wished I were an alcoholic, or a narcotic addict, or anything, instead of a guy who had just been trapped in his own emotions year, after year, after year. I, I remember thinking, it sounds kind of ridiculous now, but it wasn't ridiculous at that point, I remember thinking, I wonder if my suicide in El Paso, I really died, and maybe this And there was a cold rain falling, just to add a dimension of horror to the whole goddamn thing.
[00:45:04]
And I couldn't get off the street, and when it's cold and raining on Skid Row, and you can't go in the missions, there's nothing to do. You walk so you don't die. And I walked, and walked, and walked, and I walked 71 blocks. If I thought I was going to walk 71 blocks, I wouldn't have started. And I wound up at that lousy, stinking AA club on Wilshire and Fairfax, and I started to go in, and an old man named Tom Jones says, You can't come in here, you stole a coffee mug.
And I thought, You dirty, rotten, AA puke. But I didn't say anything, because I didn't want to make trouble. I thought, What would an AA say? I guess I had a little slip. He said, You never slip, you're just a phony son of a bitch. I said, Yeah, that's right, Tom. But I added his name to the list of people I was going to kill in the future. I had a list longer than I was. He says, Why don't you go in the back room, and just don't tell anybody I let you in.
He said, You just make me sick. I said, Okay, Tom. And I thought to myself, I'm going to pull out your goddamn fingernails someday. And I lay in the back room and thought, What am I going to do? I wish I were an alcoholic, but my problem isn't alcohol. When I get sober too long, I commit suicide. There's something terribly intense about me. I remember a psychiatrist once telling me, He says, You have such intense emotions, you will always have to have some modifying medication, because your emotions are so intense.
They're not erratic, they're just intense. And I didn't know what that could be. And I'd been in psychoanalysis, and I had been in metaphysics. I had found existential truth that would boggle your mind. I got to be one of six people at one time in the whole state of Texas that understood truth. And the other five were just crap heads, just crap heads. I had read philosophy. I read Nietzsche. I loved Nietzsche, because Nietzsche is such a cynical, nasty guy.
I loved him. I didn't always understand him, but I loved him. Nietzsche has said a lot of things. We were laughing about it earlier. I was raised in the Norwegian Lutheran Church, which is a very, very strict church. I heard today about the Southern Baptists. That's where our losers go. They smile in the Southern Baptist Church. They don't in the Norwegian Lutheran Church. Smiling is evidence of wrongdoing.
And by the time I was 12 years old, I realized I was going to hell, because, you know, I hear people in AA all the time say things like, I've been searching for God for 30 years, and I found him here in the program. I never searched for God for 10 seconds. I know where God has been since I was two years old. He slowly circles the spire of the Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And he gives it to sinners.
Boom! And he gives it to Catholics. Boom! And that's okay with me, until you get to be one or the other. But there's a little latitude, and I'll tell you, You can say all you want about becoming an agnostic or an atheist, but if you have that rigorous early training, you cannot quite erode it. You cannot quite get it. You can fool yourself and others for months, but eventually you get to be tired or sick, and it just comes back.
But you're going to hell. It's like Hitler said, If you give me their minds until they're 12, somewhere inside of them there will be Nazis until they're 90. And boy, that's the truth with strong religious. So I had to find some answer to God. Every time I went to AA, even hung around there, I couldn't bear AA anyway, but this God, it makes it intolerable. I don't want to hear about God, because if God exists, I'm screwed forever.
And you go to one of these dreadful meetings to get some cake and donuts and have some old well-meaning old flaky broad come up after you. Well, Sonny, we hate to see you fight God. And it really took every fiber of my being to keep from saying, Well, ma'am, you'll never see me fight God again.
[00:50:16]
And I didn't know what they… I love Nietzsche because Nietzsche said, for instance, that God is dead. One of his characters said, Why worry so much about God? God, if he ever did live, is dead. That's a nice, touching thing to know when you're in trouble. A lot of people think that came out of Berkeley in 1965, but that was written in 1884, and I read it in the 1950s. In fact, there's a very famous plaque in the theological seminary in the East that says, God is dead, signed Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1884.
And beneath it, it says, Nietzsche is dead, signed God, 1906. But I read Nietzsche, and I read Schopenhauer. I didn't understand much of it. If you're really a depressive, I always liked depressives. The founder of this organization was a depressive, and I always had a warm spot. There's a book called The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler. If you ever get terribly depressed, read that. It proves that everything you've ever believed in is phony.
Everything is false. The world is made up of hypocrisy and can't. There is no hope anywhere. And if you're a depressive and read that, that cheers you up. I'll tell you. I don't know why it does, but it does. But you know, I am not… I wish I could be simple. I wish I could be an alcoholic. I wish I could be anything that didn't… I wish I hadn't been cursed with the ability to think. I wish I hadn't been cursed with the ability to spot crap heads.
I wish I hadn't been cursed with the ability to see through the pretenses of the little organizations the world is made up of. I wish I had been born simple and dumb instead of perceptive and unhappy. Well, laugh if you want to. You can't imagine what it's like. That's the way I felt then. Today, I… Pretty much the same, actually. But I thought, I've got to get to Seattle or I'm going to die. So I'll play their sick little game, just like I did with old man Ross in Big Spring, and I did on the guy in El Paso, and Dr. John Ashby in Dallas, and Fred Hanawal in Beloit, and the guy in Chicago, and the guy in Minneapolis, all these guys who I'd hustled when I had bought an expedient to go to A&A.
I'll play their sick little game with them, and as soon as I… I'll just go along with it. I'll play just like I'm coming off shock treatments, and when I get a score, I'll be in Seattle. And screw them. And unfortunately for my plans, I played their sick little game too long. And they warped me. And much to my surprise, I haven't had a drink since that morning, although I never planned it that way.
And it's been… In a couple months, it'll be 22 years, and I haven't had any medications. I haven't, as I've said many times, been seduced by those well-intentioned, but literally lethal members of the medical profession who still believe that problems like mine are caused by a Valium deficiency, or a low on Librium syndrome, or a down with Darvon, or any of the chemicals that dull the perception of how bad it is.
I haven't smoked marijuana. I haven't been at all influenced by the little groups of weeds that grow up alongside the road of happy destiny every so often. Little pukes get together and think they're so cute. They say things like, But the book doesn't mention pot, baby. It mentions people who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
[00:55:03]
That's close enough.