Full Transcript

Good evening. My name’s Carl. I’m an alcoholic. Oh, goodness sakes. I’ve been on Zoom for about two years. I get up here and I wonder if I’m wearing pants. It’s got to double check, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love you, Harold. And as Harold said, we’re good friends and we have a good time. And I got to tell you one thing about Harold. When I was here last time, he took me to a prison for a panel. And I’ve been on a million panels in various prisons literally around the world. I’ve been in prisons in Sweden and Iceland and Asia and been on what in Southern California we call H9. You know, you go with somebody and usually all the inmates know the AA-er, right? They know the AA guy’s name. But this time was different. It was about 70 guys there and Harold stood at the door and he knew the name of every inmate. Greeted them by name and then asked them a little question about their life. How’s your mother doing? Hey, did your sister graduate? Knew a little of something about every single person. That was impressive. That was impressive. So anyway, thank you to the committee that had me, that has me here. I’m still reeling from the Al-Anon talk. I just love Al-Anon. Oh, my God. Yeah. If you are an alcoholic who sort of like sort of casually skips the Al-Anon talk, you blew it this time. You flat out blew it this time.

Just wonderful. It’s always a privilege and an honor to see my buddy Chris from Texas. Tomorrow morning you guys are in for a real treat with Judith, I promise you. Some of you in the meditation meeting already saw that, right? It was amazing. So anyway, I’m an alcoholic. That’s the most important thing I can tell you about myself. There’s a lot of things that I care about in this world. There’s a lot of things that I have passion for that I spend time paying attention to. But there is nothing more important than the fact that I’m an alcoholic. And the reason that I believe I’m an alcoholic is really very simple. The reason I’m an alcoholic is because I’ve got a really bizarre relationship with alcohol. That’s it. That’s it. That’s why I’m an alcoholic. And this strange relationship that I have with alcohol takes on a few forms. The first part of this strange relationship that I have with alcohol happens when I drink it. A really strange thing happens when I drink booze. Our book calls it an allergy. And the book says the symptom of this allergic reaction that I get when I drink alcohol is what they refer to as something called the phenomenon of craving. And the best way that I can describe this thing that the book calls the phenomenon of craving in my life is that it seems like whenever I drink booze, the more booze I drink, the thirstier I get. It happens with absolutely nothing else that I drink. An example of that is I’ve got this glass of water. And over the next hour to four hours that I’m talking with you, I love that nervous laughter. You think I’m kidding, right? You know, over the next hour that I’m talking with you, I’m probably going to drink half this glass. I don’t know. I might finish the glass of water. But I can absolutely guarantee you that once I finish that glass of water, I am not going to go buy a case of water and lock myself in the motel room, right? There’s no chance that I’m going to be in the motel room, you know, texting Myrna and my friends Myrna and John, I need another case, man.

Peeking through the level or blinds. I’m not going to do it, right? Not going to do it. But if that was the only thing that made me alcoholic was this bizarre physical reaction that I get, if that was the sum total of my relationship to alcohol, well then, just say no would have wiped out alcoholism, right? Early 80s, Nancy Reagan came out. We don’t have time for any of that clapping. In the early 80s, Nancy Reagan came out and said, just say no. That would have worked. I would have. And I imagine you would have gone, oh, no. And just gone on and lived a happy, successful life, just saying no. You see, I’ve got this other strange part of my relationship to alcohol, and what’s really strange about this part of my relationship to alcohol is this happens when I’m not drinking. Our book calls this the mental obsession. They also describe it as the strange mental blank spot or the thought process that precedes the first drink. This is the part of my relationship to alcohol that used to devastate, break the heart, and confuse of anybody who loved me, cared about me, or counted on me. The best way that I can describe this thing that the book calls the mental obsession in my life is that it seems like no matter how much pain and suffering

[00:05:03]

my last drunk caused, I seem to have a mind that will always paint a picture that makes it okay for me to take another drink no matter what. My mind seems to always be able to rationalize and justify my walk back to the next drink at all costs. So therefore, because of these two components of my relationship to alcohol, number one, I cannot drink successfully because this strange unquenchable thirst that happens. So I can’t drink successfully, but at the very same time, I cannot not drink successfully because of this thing called the mental obsession.

I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t. It’s the ultimate catch-22 we call alcoholism. Because I swear to you, if I could do either one of those two things, either drink successfully or on my own not drink successfully, that’s what I’d do. Well, I actually just lied. You had told me right as I was sitting there, you said, have a good time, but don’t lie. And I’m only five minutes into this, and I just lied because I have no interest in drinking successfully. I used to think I wanted to drink successfully, but I was ill-informed as to what drinking successfully was. I now know, I’m 35 years sober, and I now know what drinking successfully apparently is through witnessing it a number of times and reading about it. So I’m here to let you know what I found out about successful drinking. Let’s see if you’re interested. Apparently, drinking successfully entails drinking approximately two drinks and stopping. Let that sink in for a second. Two drinks and stop. See, I would rather all, what’d she say, 500 registered? I’d rather all of you scream obscenities at me for the next hour rather than for me to be caught in a situation where I have two drinks in me and I can’t get any more. That is a nightmare. I’m going to harp on that physical feature a little bit more because it’s the one thing bar none we all have in common because actually, you know, the fact is we have a lot of things that we don’t have in common. That’s just the cold hard fact because Alcoholics Anonymous is a huge wide cross-section of society. Every single race, creed, color, religion, every single social and economic background, we’re all here. In fact, Alcoholics Anonymous is such a wide mixture of people that right here in this room we probably have a bank president. We probably have a bank teller and I guarantee you we have a bank robber, right? It’s true.

So our stories are different. We come from different kind of families. We come from different cultures. We grew up with different ages, all of that. So we’re just trying to identify based upon that, I don’t know, maybe. You know what? We also drink differently than each other. We really do. If you listen closely in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous when people tell their stories, you’ll see we drink differently than each other. To illustrate this, let’s imagine this. Let’s imagine we crack open one of these doors here and we wheel a giant cart right up the center here and bring it right here and on that cart we got all the kinds of booze we all love, right? If you’re an expensive top shelf drinker, we got it.

If you’re a bottom shelf drinker, we got that too. Mad Dog 2020. I know. There’s always a few guys that start to salivate right about there. And everything in between. And if we all took a good four or five stiff drinks, real drinks, no umbrellas in there, no mixer, a good four or five stiff drinks, we’d all be acting very, very differently, right? Over in this corner, we’d have the good time crowd. Fun, fun, fun. Woohoo. Party, party, party.

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, drink, drink, drink. Talk, talk, talk. If we add a little methamphetamine, talk a little faster. But we’re having a good time over there, right? Over in that corner, we’d have the criers, you know. Right? Over in that corner, we’d have the fighters, you know them. Over in this corner, a bunch of us would be naked. I personally would be visiting the other three corners trying to find a couple of friends to come over here with me. Redhead from the fighting corner, very attractive. So our

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stories are different based upon which corner we’re in, right? Over in the good time corner, right? You get a lot of DUIs. You’re out there on the road, right? Got to go to the next bar. The next bar is always better, right? Got to go to the next party. You’re out on the road, get a lot of DUIs. Over in the crying corner, they don’t even get arrested. They don’t even leave the damn house. Right? They’re just in the closet. The worst thing they do is call you at 3 a.m. Right? Or God forbid, these days, drunk Facebooking like.

So our stories are different based upon which corner we’re in. But no matter which corner you’re drinking in, there’s only one thing we would all be doing. We’d all be back at that cart for another drink. It was really important for me to understand that when I was new in Alcoholics Anonymous, when they said, listen for the similarities rather than the differences. I set that relationship up with alcohol that is just described to you right from the get-go when I first started drinking. I started drinking rather late compared to most people in AA. I was 11. I’m from Los Angeles, man. That’s late. There’s 12-year-olds taking year cakes out there. We lived in Seattle. Harold already said that and set half the room against me because I’m a Seahawks fan. I was born in Helena, Montana. My father moved us to the island of Borneo. I was there until I was 9, from 4 years old to 9 years old, came back to Seattle and doing well in school, loved my family, played sports, played violin.

I took a drink at 11 and everything changed. Everything changed. By the time I’m 14, my hair is down onto my shoulders in front of my bloodshot eyes and my vocabulary at 14 was whoa. Wow. Hey, man. I’d call my mother man. Hey, man. And my parents, really good people, really good people, you know, pillars of their community. They had no idea. It’s like, what on earth is happening here, right? And they blamed my problems on people, place, and things.

They didn’t understand I was alcoholic. So they would do things that non-alcoholics that don’t understand alcoholism would do. They’d try to restrict me from that group of kids, get me out of the public school system and put me into the private school system. They did all of the above. But you see, I’m an alcoholic. My problems are not based upon people, place, and things. My problems are based upon my physical and mental relationship to alcohol. You see, if you change the people, place, and things in somebody’s life like mine, all that happens is that I’m loaded with different people in different places ruining different things. That’s all that happens. By the time I was 17, almost 18, I barely scraped out of the public school system there in Seattle after getting kicked out of the private school system. And my parents decided that Seattle was the problem. So they sent me 300 miles away to Washington State University. I spent three years at that university on my parents’ money. And in that three years, I got approximately 10 credits. At any given time, my grade point average matched my blood alcohol content at about a .25. I did nothing at that school. By the time I was 22, this little story I’m about to tell you will let you know exactly where I stood with my family. Now, my father was Swedish. My mother was Icelandic. Therefore, I look like a polar bear. And I don’t know whether this custom I’m about to tell you about is a Scandinavian custom or whether it’s a Lutheran custom.

I don’t know. But at Christmas time, my parents wouldn’t just send out Christmas cards to their friends and relatives. My parents would send out this big, long Christmas letter that said everything the family had been doing that year. And when I was about 22, I got a hold of one of these letters that had been sent out the previous Christmas. And as I read it, it let me know exactly where I stood with my family. Now, the first paragraph talked about what my parents had been doing that year, another impressive year, I’m sure. The next paragraph talked about what the Morris children had been doing that year. And that paragraph went something like this. Our oldest daughter, Christina, just graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with a master’s degree in human resources. She’s now working for a large pharmaceutical company in the Midwest. She traveled to Europe this summer.

She saw this. She saw that. Her hobbies are this, this, and this. She’s a very happy young woman. We are very proud of her. Our oldest son, Eric, just graduated from Western Washington State University with a degree in marketing. He’s now working for a large advertising firm here in downtown Seattle. He loves to golf. He loves to travel. He’s engaged to be married to this wonderful woman named Mary Lou, who works for a very small company here in Seattle named Microsoft.

A very small company here in Seattle named Microsoft, it was small at one time, and they

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loved to golf together, they loved to travel together, he’s a very happy young man, we are very proud of him, our youngest son Carl just turned 22. Long story short, it literally would take me until breakfast to describe everything that happened over, I’m going to condense about 12 to 15 months, I’m going to condense it right down into one sentence because it would just take too long to describe everything involved.

So here’s the one sentence, a really bad night happened so I joined the Navy. That’s, that’s compressed right there. What I’m about to tell you should concern you if you care anything about the security of the United States. But on my way into the Navy I passed a potential test, it’s called the ASVEP test, and this test that I took qualified me to become a nuclear engineer. That should concern you that the United States Navy would have any type of system in place that even maybe possibly or even remotely would allow somebody like me near anything nuclear.

However, they made me take another test when I showed up at that base for boot camp and I could not pass this particular test. This test is called a urinalysis test is what it’s called. I never knew how to study for those things. I can still picture it like yesterday, I’d been in boot camp about 10, 14 days and in came that, that master at arms, it’s military police, and he had a clipboard and there was about five or six names on that clipboard, I knew my name would be on that clipboard and they read off the names and they took us out of the boot camp barracks and put us into a van and took us from the training side of the Great Lakes Naval Base over to the administrative side.

And the other five or six men were let off at one building, but they kept me in the van and took me to a completely other building and marched me right into the commanding officer’s office, the man who ran the whole Great Lakes Naval Base. It’s an impressive office, really nice carpet, big oak desk, pictures of naval vessels all over the wall. Man behind the desk had so much gold on his shoulders it would blind you on a bad morning.

And as I was standing, I had attention in front of his desk and he asked me my name. This would be the early 1980s, so on this big oak desk he had a telephone and a speaker phone attachment and this man pushed the button on the speaker phone attachment and into that phone he said, Walt, that’s my father’s name. At this point, by 1984, my father had been both active and reserve in the United States Navy for over 40 years.

He was one of the highest ranking chaplains in the Pacific Northwest. This was an old Korean war buddy of my father’s. The luck, huh? This man says into the speaker phone, Walt, out of consideration for our long-term friendship, I thought I would give you a call before I took any action. Your son has gone positive on his very first year analysis test and I’m supposed to kick him out of the Navy right here and right now, but I thought I’d call you out of respect for our long-term friendship and ask you, what do you feel we should do with your son?

Now normally if you met my father, you would see, notice a couple of things. You would tell by his body language and his voice that he loved life. He had a passion for living and you could tell that from his voice and his body language and how he greeted you and interacted with you. You could tell he loved life. You could just sense it. But there was another voice that would come out of that man and it was a weak and destroyed voice like somebody had just kneed him right below the belt.

And I had heard that voice when he was dealing with me quite a bit in the previous ten to twelve years. And that was the voice that came across that telephone that morning and I heard my father’s weak and distraught voice say, it’s just none of my concern anymore. Click dial tone. Remember dial tone? And that man behind the desk kept that dial tone going for a while. I think for the effect. As he stared at me and tilted his head and he decided to keep me in the Navy anyway.

They took away the two-year nuclear school and sent me out to the fleet. And I started and now I’m in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a destroyer and I gotta tell you that I started to experience some of the things a young man is supposed to experience in the military. I started to understand the camaraderie of being in the military. I started to understand the honor of serving one’s country. I started to learn a trade.

[00:20:00]

However, that ship would pull into a port and I would take a drink. At this point in my life, I’m 23, I’m 24, I’m 25 years old and at this point in my life when I take a drink it’s usually anywhere from a two, more than likely a three and sometimes a four-day event. And I gotta tell you that the Navy puts a high premium on you showing back up to where the ship last was. They’re big on that. They’re really big on you showing back up before the ship leaves.

They’re really big on that. They’re big on that the same way AA is big on that whole not drinking thing. But AA, we’re super forgiving, right? We love you. Please start again. Navy, not so much. And I gotta tell you it’s a very strange feeling coming out of one of those three-day blackouts, finding myself on a large pier in a foreign country 6 a.m. And I’m looking up and down that pier going, there was a destroyer here the other day.

I’ve been in the Navy approximately two years at this point and I came to a cheap motel room in downtown San Diego. I started drinking on a Thursday, it is now Monday and I’m in trouble. I know I’m in trouble again and I’m late getting back to the ship one more time. I grabbed what I could and I got back into my car and of course my car is, you know, the old joke, my car is dying of alcoholism right along with me.

It’s held together by rubber bands and duct tape. And I’m trying to get back to the base and at the front of every, this is pre-9-11, security was high but nothing like it was after 9-11. And this was a back gate at 32nd Street in San Diego. And there’s a, at the front of every, at the gate of every military, Navy installation there’s always a Marine that stands duty in a guard shack. And they take their job very seriously, right?

And what they do is if you slowly and politely pull your vehicle up to that guard shack, you will show that Marine your military ID. He will check the sticker on your front windshield. If everything’s in order, he’ll allow you to proceed on to the base. This particular morning I was racing to get back to the ship and I was doing what I was always doing at that point. A new tool for living I’d picked up is that I’d always save a pint for when I had to go back to the ship.

And I tried to down that pint before I got back to the ship and I’m paying more attention to get that half a pint in me, or that pint in me than where the car was going. And all of a sudden my eyes came into focus and I saw that Marine had his head out of the guard shack like. And I’m wondering what’s he so excited about until I look down, I’m going 40 miles an hour. I tried to swerve, the car hit this big cement median on the right hand side, glanced off it, flipped over and bang, right through that guard shack.

I can still see that Marine doing this big dive out of there. And then as I stand before you today I’m so very grateful that the United States Marines are all in top physical condition. This guy did a quick somersault, he was back up, weapon drawn. And it was one of these mornings, God I hated these mornings, where sirens are going off, people are screaming and yelling, running in various different directions, they all seem to be pointing at me like this is my fault.

And I’m kind of coming to wondering who caused this also. I hated those mornings. Stage two of mornings I hate is when I would come to later and find myself handcuffed to a hospital bed. That means that I am injured and I’m in deep trouble. They’re reading new charges on me of course, but that’s nothing significant, that’s just what happens in a guy’s life like mine about every 90 days if you’re living the way I’m living.

But the most significant thing that happened that morning is the Navy doctors prescribed this stuff called Antabuse for me. It’s only in AA where you hear those knowing groans, oh, oh, oh. I was now under orders to show up at sick bay every single morning before quarters and I’d have to sit in a chair, just like you are, just like that, and I’d have to stick my tongue out and the hospital corpsman would put this little white pill on my tongue and make me sit there for a half an hour to make sure the Antabuse actually got in my system.

Over the next seven to ten days I started to experience the most cunning, baffling and powerful side of this thing we call alcoholism and that is I had no alcohol in my system and I was slowly going insane. I remember vividly counting those days on that Antabuse, just… It’s been four days and I’m on Antabuse. Now it’s been six days and I’m on Antabuse. Now it’s been eight days, six hours and fifteen minutes and I’m on Antabuse.

And I started to look around that ship.

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The other men, they’re talking behind my back. All three hundred of them. Have you ever felt that way in AA? The only difference is that in AA we are talking behind your back. Only with love and tolerance in St. Louis I’m sure. On the tenth day I just snapped. I went AWOL from my ship. I locked myself in the same little hotel room in downtown San Diego, Plaza Hotel. It’s on 4th and Broadway. This would have been May of 1986 and in May of 1986 the Plaza Hotel cost $13 a night.

I checked about a year and a half ago, they’ve done a little rehabbing on it, it’s now $19 a night. It’s a fine establishment. I remember I locked myself in that little motel room and I had a, I remember sitting on the edge of the bed and on this rickety little end table that was in there I had a bottle of vodka and a shot glass. And as I sat on that bed looking at that bottle of vodka I remembered that the Navy doctors had given me a very stern warning about drinking on top of Antabuse when they prescribed it for me.

They had said, son, you need to understand that if you drink on top of that Antabuse you will get one of two reactions. One reaction is you will get violently ill. The other reaction is you might die. I remember looking at that bottle and I thought, well, I wonder which reaction I’m going to get. I took one shot and nothing happened. Authority had lied to me again as far as I was concerned. I waited about two minutes just to make sure and I took another shot.

All of a sudden I felt tingly in the face so I looked in this cracked little mirror that was in this hotel room and I was bright red, blotchy and purple in places. Took another shot. All of a sudden I could feel my heart going boom, boom, boom. Looked at my shirt. I was drenched in sweat and all of a sudden like hyperventilating. We’re doing all right so far. There’s something wrong with you if you think this is funny.

I took another shot and up it came. My second sponsor, his name was Eddie Cochran, his sobriety date was December 2, 1951. Truly one of the pioneers of Southern California Alcoholics Anonymous. He called the next thing that happened to me projectile regurgitation. This is a new level of puking I am unfamiliar with. Because we all know normal puking is one of the tools for living we get out there, right?

You guys know you’re just out there in the middle of a good drunk and you just kind of go hark and you just right back at it. It’s only them that think puking is the end of the night for God’s sake. You know, mince if you got it, fine. But if not, who cares? You just carry on. But on this Anabuse, this was different, man. This was like, sort of like this Linda Blair spray across the room. But thank God the Plaza Hotel is the type of hotel room where the toilet is in the same room with the bed.

It’s a design feature, I believe, maybe to make convicts feel more at home upon release. I’m not really sure. But I found the magic of drinking on top of Anabuse and that is if you hang in there. And this is a very important feature if you’re going to drink on top of Anabuse. You cannot half measure it, right? In fact, if you’re going to drink on top of Anabuse, you may need to reach down deep inside yourself for a level of commitment you might not even know you actually have.

But I found that if I kept drinking and kept puking and kept drinking and kept puking for about an hour to an hour and a half, enough of the Anabuse would kick out of my system and I’d quit throwing up and I’d be left with red face, hyperventilating and sweating and I’m all right with that. So I drank on top of Anabuse the last seven months of my drinking. The only words to describe this are desperation drinking.

My second to my last drunk, I was left for dead in a motel parking lot in an area of San Diego called National City. Next thing I knew, I remember laying in a pool of blood and next thing I knew is I came to and I’m on an operating table. There’s lights and men and women with surgical masks. Now you know when you come out of a blackout, you look around at your surroundings and you’re sort of, you’re kind of evaluating, was it a good night or a bad night?

And I got to tell you, in 1986, you come to and you see… Now in 2020, 21, 22, you come to see surgical masks, well, it’s Tuesday, you know.

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No big deal. You know, I got a little frustrated when I got to AA over the way you guys were describing and coming out of blackouts. I don’t hear it that much anymore, but back in the late 80s and 90s, I heard this a lot. People would say, I’m just so grateful to be sober because I now wake up instead of coming to. It was just so horrible out there when I was drinking. I would come to and I’d look next to me and AA, as if they were always the good looking one.

There’s always two sides to every story. The reason it frustrated me was that a number of times in my life I’d come to, I’d look next to me and go, oh, I’ve liked her a long time, this is awesome. She would come to and go, oh, not, oh, no, and run out of there. If I would have known what self-esteem was, it would have harmed it for me. Last night of drinking, I’m being let out of the San Diego jail and I’m being transferred from the civilian authorities back to the military authorities.

The handcuffs are extra tight, you know how that gets to be some of those mornings and my neck muscles are not working well and I’m being led around. They’re doing administrative work and putting me into one vehicle and then another and they finally try to bring me back to my ship and that morning the officer at deck put his arm up and said, wrong answer. Orders have already been processed on this loser, we’re not to accept him on board.

The orders were processed last night and the orders are 90 days in the brig, bad conduct discharge or, then he had this sort of disgusted look on his, he said, or apparently somebody got him qualified for treatment. And I remember when they said treatment, I went, hmm? Now it wasn’t because I thought it was a good idea, I didn’t really even really know what it was. You know, I’d heard of treatment but you know, you’re out there in the bar or the crack house and somebody goes, where’s Joe?

Oh, he went to treatment. You never do follow-up questions, you never go, hey, maybe we should check on him and see what that’s all about and maybe, no, you just kind of go, oh, hmm, right? The reason it piqued my interest when they said treatment because it sounded like something that might be able to help me with the inevitable charges that were coming my way one more time. I now know that it wouldn’t have mattered what I was thinking or feeling that morning because I was in handcuffs and I don’t know about your experience in handcuffs but my experience was always the same.

Whoever had me in handcuffs, never once did they ever turn to me and say, so what’s your opinion on what happens next, right? When you’re in handcuffs, you go, well, they say, and they took me up to a military treatment center and when the doors were locked behind me, that’s when the doors were locked behind me. When the doors were locked behind me, that’s when they took the handcuffs off me. And there’s no better representation of who Carl Morris is without Alcoholics Anonymous than that.

The country I’m supposed to be serving and the society in which I’m supposed to be living in and contributing to is only willing to take the handcuffs off me when the doors are locked behind me. That’s who I am without you and I am to never forget that. So I do 45 days in this military treatment center and I’ve got to tell you as far as I’m concerned, as far as treatment centers go, it’s a fine establishment.

It’s not because they had any new method of separating my body from alcohol. They did as well as anybody. It’s not because they had some new counseling method. I’m sure they offered counseling that any human being could have benefited from. And I thought it was in retrospect that it was so good because four to five nights a week white vans would pull up to those barracks and five or six of us would be put into each van and each van would take off to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and we were brought to you.

And you would see us in Southern California, you still can every once in a while, but especially back in the 80s and 90s, you would see the military men and women sitting along the back of large meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And they allowed us to watch your meeting. I didn’t know I was just watching meetings, didn’t know there was a difference between watching meetings and actually being in Alcoholics Anonymous.

But I got to tell you, sitting in the back rows of those meetings listening to you tell your stories was a life-changing experience. I’m not one of those. And so many of my friends had sort of various difficult responses to Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not. I literally just, I don’t know, maybe drinking on hand abuse for seven months, maybe tenderized my ears for a minute, I don’t know. In looking back, it’s sort of like this.

Many times when alcohol was taken away from me by people that had authority over me or loved me, temporarily, alcohol would be taken away from me. Something would happen, you know, a DUI, a friend overdose, the military, angry. And I’d always be put in front of well-meaning, highly educated people, some sort of counselor, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist. Now I’ve got a weekly appointment with a Navy psychiatrist and a chaplain.

[00:35:04]

I was put into a room with a highly educated, well-meaning person. And they always wanted to talk to me about me. I used to discredit those conversations simply because I would immediately say, I know what, the only reason you’re here in this room talking to me is because I’m here. If I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t be in this room having this conversation. Somebody’s paid you to be here. And they always had their own version of kind of saying, what’s the matter with you?

Why did you drink again when you still had the charcoal on your mouth from when your stomach was pumped? How can you do that? Now, if I would have had the vocabulary in those situations, the vocabulary that you guys have given me, I would have responded to those well-meaning, highly educated people that wanted to talk to me about me. I would have said, I noticed that you are quite shocked by my drinking.

I get it. I understand. But I would have followed up with this. But if you knew how I felt when I wasn’t drinking, you wouldn’t be asking me why I drink. There’s only one thing worse than the price I’m paying for my drinking, and that’s the way that I feel when I’m not drinking. And I don’t know how to say that to anybody. I don’t even know how to say that to myself. But now I’m sitting in front of you guys.

Alcohol has once again been taken away from me. Rather seriously, I’m noticing, right? There’s no alcohol to be seen in that treatment center or here, right? It’s really. I’m separated from it. But now instead of well-meaning, highly educated people, I’m now put in front of you guys. And you guys don’t want to talk to me about me. You guys only want to talk about yourselves. In fact, you would go on and on and on about yourselves, just like I’m doing tonight.

But in that, in listening to your story and the way that you guys told your stories, and the way you talked about your alcoholism, something happened to me. I kind of just call it a lean forward moment of, oh my God, they know. They know. And in retrospect, what I was hearing that you knew is that you know what it means to sell your soul for a drink. I heard it in a thousand different ways. You knew.

You knew. Now if you would have been sitting near me and you sort of nudged me and said, okay kid, what is it that they know that you think you know? I’d have gone, oh, I don’t know. But they know. And, you know, first couple of meetings, I remember vividly one guy got called on, walked all the way to the front. These are large meetings in Southern California, some of them this size right here. And one guy got called on, went right to the front and said one sentence, and he sat down.

He said, my name’s Jack, I’m an alcoholic. My mind would have killed my body a long time ago, except it needed it for transportation. And I’m looking at everybody else, did you hear that? They were all, yeah, Jack says that all the time. But it’s the first time I heard it. I remember one time I was, man, I was extra depressed. And I’m going to bring an old friend of mine in the room, his name was Scott Redman.

He always used to say, I’m not a real suicide guy, I’m much more of a homicide guy, your death always looks better than mine. And that’s my personality, too. But this one time I was really feeling low, really feeling low. And I went into a meeting, and I’m literally secretly, you know, it’s usually when you’re secretly thinking about it that it might be real, not talking about it. And I was secretly thinking about it.

And this old timer said, hey, if there’s anybody in here thinking about committing suicide, I want you to know. And by this time I knew that when an old timer’s talking, if he says he’s got it on good authority, it’s directly from God. That’s what I thought. He goes, if anybody in here is thinking about committing suicide, I want you to know I have it on good authority that however you’re feeling when you do it is how you will feel for all of eternity.

And I went, oh, oh, no, oh, no. However, this man was a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous, never threw a problem out on the table without a solution. He said, so the solution is, wait until you’re having a really good day, then do it. And what I experienced is how Alcoholics Anonymous can take one of us from the depths of our ugliness and dark space. And in one sentence, I found myself laughing from the bottom of my gut, right?

And I laughed that away. Everybody else in the room were rolling their eyes, oh, yeah, that’s Fred again.

[00:40:03]

Tell him the same gosh darn story. But it saved my life. I’ll never forget when I learned that, you know, I’ll talk more about my first sponsor later, but I’m sitting with my first sponsor months later, months and months later. And he had a sponsor, old guy, like 60 years old, 30 something years sober, kind of like what I am right now, right? And we’re sitting in a meeting and one of these old timers starts telling the same story.

I heard him say just last week, same thing. And I said to my first sponsor, Bob, who was only like, he was 23 years old with 16 more months than I had. And he didn’t know what he was doing. And I go, that old timer is telling the same story again, goodness sakes. The grand sponsor reaches past my sponsor and hits me in the back of the head, bang, just like that. He goes, hey, he’s not talking to you tonight.

He’s talking to the new person that apparently you are unaware is in the room. And I went, oh, there’s other people in AA. That was a revelation. So after 45 days, I was let out of that treatment center, just what the orders were. And it was a Friday afternoon and the only thing I, I didn’t know what else to do. But thank God they’d taken us to a number of meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the same car I, a car I got arrested in the night before was brought out of an impound lot and I’m puttering on off that base.

And I remember getting through the gate from that base and I, some Navy clerk somehow did the paperwork that I didn’t need to be back to my ship till Monday. Now that’s stupid, right? Fresh out of treatment, let him go for a weekend, right? But because they took us to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, I vividly remember being at that gate going, I don’t even know where to go. The only thing I know is a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And they’d taken us to this one meeting hall quite often that I remembered, not because it was wonderful, but because I had to push start my car and this meeting hall was on a little bit of an incline. Again, alcoholic tools for living. And it was a Friday night gong show meeting in Pacific Beach, north end of San Diego. And I come into the back of that meeting, it was a big bustling meeting. And the truth about my life is I’m 45 days without a drink.

I’ve got a lot of information. And I’m physically feeling better than I have felt since I’ve been a young teenager. But there’d been no spiritual awakening, spiritual experience, even a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism. And what was even more dangerous than that is I did not know I needed one. One guy that night, though operating on his primary purpose, my daughter’s trying to FaceTime me.

I know, I know, I should have answered it and turned it right here. She would have gone… One guy operating on his primary purpose, right before the meeting, he locked eyes with me. I was kind of sitting there trying to mind my own business, but he kind of… And he beelined across the meeting and sort of almost pushed people out of the way. And I said, hey, rather aggressively, hey, never seen you before, what are you doing?

Startled me. And I’ve got to tell you, if you start at this point in my life, if you startle me and you don’t give me time to think up a lie, I might accidentally tell you the truth. And so when he said, what are you doing? I go, I don’t know. I just got out of a Navy treatment center an hour ago. I don’t know what I’m doing. This guy’s eyes went bing, big smile went across his face. He looked like he had just hit the jackpot in Las Vegas.

I did not know that I had just established myself as the holy grail of Alcoholics Anonymous. A newcomer who accidentally admits he does not know what he’s doing. So this guy’s like fighting his friends, he’s mine, he’s mine, I got him, I got him. I got him. Mine. Mine. I didn’t know there was something else going on in this guy’s life that particular Friday night that made him especially glad to meet me.

This guy’s girlfriend had left him the night before for one of his friends in his home group. I know. So he was wondering what he was going to do with his weekend. Homicide, suicide, get loaded, or grab this newcomer. He’s like all over me all weekend. We don’t have time for that clapping. He was all over me all weekend. We went to like 18 meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this guy was insane over this woman. Flat out insane.

In between this barrage of meetings he dragged me to, he would throw me on the floor, and he would throw me on the floor, and he would throw me on the floor,

[00:45:01]

and he would throw me on the floor, and he would throw me on the floor, And he’d be yelling at me, you gotta go to me, you gotta read the book, you gotta get a sponsor, damn her! You gotta go to me, you gotta read the book, damn her! Now I didn’t know it, but I was getting a very early introduction to your typical AA relationship breakup is what I was getting. But I’m so very glad that that guy, that night, was a guy in Alcoholics Anonymous who had done the work of Alcoholics Anonymous, who had taken the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and therefore he understood that the solution to his pain was out of self, out of self, out of self.

Just because you work the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous does not mean you’re not going to get into trouble with relationships and work and life, it means you’re going to know how to stay sober while you have those problems. That’s the deal. We, we don’t have time for this. By going to so many meetings in the same area of town with this guy over that weekend, I learned something really valuable about how we go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, especially when we’re new.

By going to so many meetings in the same area of town, I saw other people that were at multiple meetings over that weekend. Now I didn’t see anybody else doing 18 meetings, just me and that guy. But I saw other people that were at two or three meetings over the weekend. And what I learned about how we go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, especially when we’re new, I’m going to correlate it to a football game.

Now a football team is out there on the field for one reason and one reason only, to win the game. And how do they win that game? They will huddle up, they will make a plan, and they will do one play. Then they will huddle up again, they will make another plan, and they will do one play. And that’s exactly what we do here in Alcoholics Anonymous. And the game around here is one day without a drink, you’re a big winner.

And how do we do that one day? We run in here and we huddle up. And we remember, we’re bodily and mentally different from our fellows. Break! And we go out there and we try a little of this, and we try a little of that, and we run right back in here. After that weekend, I got back to my ship and one other sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous was waiting for me. I mentioned him earlier. His name was Bob W.

He was 23 years old with 16 months of sobriety. I was 25 years old. By the time I got back to my ship, I had 48 days of sobriety. We always teased Bob W that he’s some sort of hybrid of Alcoholics Anonymous, a hybrid of Bill W and Dr. Bob. His name was Bob W, right? And he kind of went, well, yes, yes I am. And I spent the first two years of my sobriety still on that ship. And instead of when that ship would pull into a port, my first sponsor and I, we would go hunt you guys out.

Every place we went. And as long as we hunted hard enough, we found you. In a million different forms. We might only find just a couple of guys in a coffee shop that were willing to talk to us. Or we’d find a loud, enthusiastic meeting. When the ship was out at sea, and we’d be out at sea for sometimes 11 days, sometimes 22 days at a time without pulling into a port. My first sponsor’s sponsor had told us that we needed to read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous back and forth to each other.

So that’s what we did. We met every night at 6.30 down in engine room number 2 in this little battery shop. Him and I in a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we went through it. And we would read page by page. And Bob, with 16 months of sobriety, tried to share what little he knew. He didn’t know what he was doing. It’s literally Alcoholics Anonymous in its purest form. It was the blind leading the blind.

But you know what? We had two guys that were willing and a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we both had the desperation, and we both had the experience that we’re supposed to have. I’m still sober. He died sober in 2011 of cancer. But I got an incredible gift at his funeral. Up in Portland, Oregon, six young men walked up to me at the funeral and handed me this beat-up, trashed big book. And they handed it to me, and I go, what’s this?

And they go, Bob made us promise that at the funeral we would give this to you. And I look at it, and they go, he said if you open it up, you would recognize it. I opened it up, and it was the book from the ship. It had both our sobriety dates in it. I got a first edition in my office. If there’s a fire, I’m grabbing that one first. During this period of time, I also learned the beauty and the value of one alcoholic sharing with another.

This code that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous, that only we can help us. One alcoholic can affect another alcoholic like no one else can, and we have to take that to the bottom of our soul. And how I learned that I’ll never forget. Like I said, when the ship would pull into a port, my first sponsor, Bob and I, would always go out and find meetings.

[00:50:01]

And quite often, we would split a hotel room to get off the ship. At this point, this particular couple of days, we were in Victoria, British Columbia. We got a hotel room, and then we went out to the AA clubhouse. And after the meeting that night, Bob said, you know, I’m not really feeling well, Carl. I’m going to head back to the hotel room. And I stayed out with the AA-ers and went to another meeting, or coffee, or flirted with a girl, or maybe all three.

I have no idea. And about an hour, hour and a half later, I come back to the hotel room. And apparently, on his way back to the hotel room, Bob had found this other man from our ship named Blair that was just wasted. I mean, Blair had been drinking already for a good 36 hours, and found him laying in the gutter. So he had like sewage on him. He had vomit on him. And Bob had him on my bed. And he got him propped up against the headboard with like an end table, and a chair, and a pillow.

And Bob had the big book out. Now Blair’s like… And Bob is there. We are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly… And I’m thinking, this is ridiculous. Blair doesn’t even know where he’s at. But I added my 10 cents in, and then we carried Blair back to the ship to make sure he got back safely. That’s the last we ever heard of Blair. For weeks, and weeks, and weeks. Must have been dodging us on the ship, right?

But you never chase them down. And weeks later, we’re in port in San Diego. And I’m in my rack. It’s like 3 a.m. in the morning. All of a sudden, I pull the curtain back, and there’s Bob. Bob said, get up. Blair’s on the Coronado Bridge. We’ve got to go get him. Apparently, over the last few weeks, Blair has tried to drink. He’s tried not to drink. He’s tried to drink. He’s tried not to drink. Apparently, he’s at the jumping-off place.

He’s up on the Coronado Bridge. Now, if you are unfamiliar with the Coronado Bridge, it’s such a popular suicide spot, that back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, about every 100 yards, they had a suicide hotline phone, just in case you change your mind. Blair was up there, and he had gotten onto the suicide hotline phone. And this is apparently what Blair was saying to the well-meaning, highly-educated suicide hotline counselor.

Blair was apparently saying, I will only talk to Bob W. Suicide counselor says, who’s Bob W.? Blair said, it’s anonymous. So, she went and got her boss, and they started to do the good cop, bad cop, firing questions, confusing him, found out he’s from the Navy, and what ship he’s from. So, they took a stab in the dark, just like a needle in a haystack, just took a stab in the dark, called down to the quarterdeck of our ship at 3 a.m. in the morning, and said, by any chance, is there a Bob W. there?

Now, my first sponsor, Bob, would guard your anonymity at the level of that ship, but he never guarded his own, so he could be of service at any time on that ship. So, the guy who answered the phone said, yeah, yeah, yeah, Mr. 12 Steps, we know all about him. So, they go and get Bob, Bob goes and gets me, and I get up, right? So, we get into Bob’s car, we start driving down to the Coronado Bridge, and as we’re driving, Bob looks over and says, Carl, get the big book out of the glove box, turn it up on, working with others, like, come on.

And he says, oh, forget it, we’re going to wing it tonight. And we get down to the base of the Coronado Bridge, and everything that San Diego County has available for a situation like this is there, right? The paramedics are there, the fire department is there, the police department is there, the on-duty psychologist from the fire department is there, and they got this staging area, and Bob and I walk up on this staging area.

The fireman, who seems to be in charge, looks over at us and says, is one of you Bob W.? Bob goes, yes, yes, that’s me. He goes, I don’t know what you’re going to do. We’ve been talking for an hour and a half, and he ain’t budging, but here, go ahead. And Bob grabbed this little speakerphone contraption and said, Blair? And you could hear on the other end, Bob, is that you? Bob says, yes, Blair, it’s me, and I’ll get the hell down from that bridge.

Okay. One alcoholic can affect another alcoholic like no one else can. Don’t forget that. We need to take our seats, we need to take our position in our home group, and we don’t leave. Now, a little side note. Because of this amazing, this pandemic, and the amazing way that Alcoholics Anonymous embraced Zoom, each year around Christmas, my home group does not like to ask somebody else to leave their family.

They ask me to speak right around Christmas. And this last Christmas, because our clubhouse set it up for a hybrid,

[00:55:03]

and we got big screen TVs on either side of our room, and were set up with computers, I got to tell that story to my home group, and then tell them, and I’d like to introduce you all to somebody, and on the big screen TV, we heard, my name’s Blair, I’m an alcoholic. Half the guys I sponsor said, we thought that was just a story, for God’s sake. Two years sober, got an honorable discharge out of the Navy.

That is a result of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, an apparently merciful God, and a Navy clerk that lost half my file. That’s how that happened. One of the amends that I was unable to make while I was still in the Navy was that my parents had paid for a bachelor’s degree. I didn’t have one. This is another one where my sponsor’s sponsor gets involved. It’s never good news for you when your grand sponsor gets involved in the decision, is it?

This never goes well. He gave me two choices. He said, you either have to pay your parents back every single nickel they had wasted on that, or you have to go get what they paid for in the first place. So I quickly looked into VA benefits, and signed up for a university right near this little town called Covina. And I packed everything I owned into my car. I was still in the same car that I got sober in, a 1968 Volkswagen, that had a push start, hole in the floorboard, started puttering on up the LA freeways.

And I started to think. I’ve got to go to school. I’ve got to work. I’m not going to have much chance to go to meetings. I’ve got to get a life. I’ve heard people in AA talk about having a life. I need one of those, and I’m going to go get one of those. There was something that I didn’t really quite understand at this point in my sobriety, and I really didn’t understand it, but it didn’t matter that I didn’t understand it.

And hopefully, as long as I took the right actions, that I’m about ready to talk about. But what I didn’t realize, I told you I had a physical and mental relationship to alcohol. Allergy to the body, obsession to the mind. But I have come to learn that I also seem to have a strange and abnormal spiritual relationship with alcohol. And when I say that, I mean that thing that makes me me, that thing that, you know, my parents called Carl, that thing that’s been trying to talk to you for the last hour, that thing that the human spirit, the thing that poets write poetry about, musicians write music about, philosophers and theologians have talked about for centuries, that the human spirit, that part of me also has an abnormal relationship to alcohol.

The best way for me to describe what I mean by that is to skip ahead by 11 more years to the year 2000, because I got to Covina when I was two years sober in 1989. I’m going to tell you this story, explain what I mean by an abnormal spiritual relationship to alcohol. I’m going to skip ahead to the year 2000. Everything that’s supposed to happen in a young man’s life that is in the center of alcoholics, anonymous, had happened.

We’ll get back to that and talk more about that later. But near 2000, my mother calls me up and says, Hey Carl, your brother and his wife and their kids are spending the summer in the south of France. They’ve got a big, giant house. They said, if we come over, we can have a whole wing with a nanny. If you’re wondering how somebody affords that, remember Microsoft money? No resentment from me at all.

No competition, right? But anyway, I go, this sounds fantastic. Let’s go do that. Great, let’s go spend as much time as we can until we’re unwelcome. And she said, by the way, let’s just stop in Iceland and we’ll see the family farm and this museum that’s dedicated to your great aunt. And I go, this is getting better by the minute. Let’s go. So we went to Iceland, spent about seven days there. Had such a spectacular time in Iceland, I’ve actually been back like eight times since the year 2000.

Wonderful AA. Chris has been there. Judith has been there. Wonderful AA. Not the point of the story. The point of the story happens in the south of France. And one of the nights that we’re there in the south of France, my brother says, Hey, Mary Lou and I have been reading about this amazing restaurant at this castle that’s about five kilometers. And they serve a 13-course French meal. Let’s all go there tonight.

And Carl, since you don’t drink, why don’t you drive? And I go, Okay. And since you’re rich, you will pay. Because I ain’t getting that bill. And he goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And so they had the nannies watch the kids. And I drove. And my mother and my brother and his wife, we took off about five kilometers down the way. And indeed, pulled a castle in the countryside. Amazing. This amazing.

Like an amazing, this amazing restaurant in this courtyard, and we embark upon a 13-course French meal. If you, I’ve never had a 13-course French meal before, and if you’ve never had a 13-course French meal,

[01:00:00]

what they do is they bring you a tiny little bit of food, 13 times. That’s what they do. They bring you a tiny little bit of food, 13 times. And with each one of these little bits of food, they will bring you a ridiculously small little glass of wine. And the waiter of the maitre d’ will tell a story about why that wine was paired with that food, and what vineyard that wine came from, and what region that vineyard is in, and what family has historically owned that region of France.

All very interesting, and my brother and his wife recognize a good drinking opportunity, and they’re having a good time. They’re saying, hey, why don’t we try pairing this one with that one, and hey, where’s that vineyard? Maybe later we’ll go for a little wine tasting up there. Now, me, I’m already 13 years sober, so I am trying all the diet cokes of the region. Kept asking the waiter to tell a story. He seemed to get embarrassed for me when I did that.

But my mother, my mother has been like this professional non-drinker her whole life. She doesn’t turn it down. She lets you put it in front of her. She’ll even pick it up, and she’ll barely put it to her lips, and she’ll set it back down. I’ve watched her do that her whole life. Even after my dad died, I used to fly up to Seattle all the time to escort her. She was a very, very prominent businesswoman and mentor to a lot of powerful women up in Seattle in what she did.

And in her later years, she got a lot of lifetime achievement awards, and there were big events, and I would escort her to those after my dad died, and I’d watch her do that same thing. And now at this particular event, these bunch of tiny little glasses are piling up, so she says to the waiter, can you take those away? They’re getting in the way, and don’t bring me any more. And I said, Mom, come on, I’m driving. For God’s sake, have a little more.

And she said, no, no, no, no. No, I don’t like the way it makes me feel. I know, and I should have just left her alone. But for whatever reason, I decided to ask her the million-dollar question. I said, Mom, can you tell me, how does it make you feel? And what she said, literally, I almost fell out of my chair. She said, well, Carl, I’m here having a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I’m here in the south of France looking at just the spectacular colors of the French countryside and just a sunset that is just so beautiful, I don’t even know how to describe the colors.

And I’m listening to the string quartet over here, Carl, and it’s just rattling my bones, and I’m awash with memories of my life. And I’m here talking with three of the people I love the most in the world. And Carl, if I were to drink a little bit too much alcohol, it would all get dull, blurry, and sloppy. I would have a hard time seeing the colors, I couldn’t hear the music, and I couldn’t keep a conversation going with you.

Do you get that? That’s fundamentally the opposite relationship to alcohol than I have. Because what she’s saying is, of and by herself, she can see the colors of life. She can hear the music, and she can connect with God’s other kids. She drinks a little bit too much alcohol, it all gets dull, blurry, and sloppy. You see, me, of and by myself, I cannot see the colors, I cannot hear the music, and you are God damn boring.

You give me four or five drinks, and oh my God, do you see the tapestry of God’s handiwork? Look at those rich and powerful colors. Do you hear that music? I will tell you where that cello was made, whether I know or not. I can make up the name of a German village on the spot. And you, you become very interesting, but not as interesting as me. And I remember having one of those experiences that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous, where you just kind of go, ah.

So that’s what Alcoholics Anonymous has done to me in the last 13 years, and I didn’t even know it. I’m convinced the purpose of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is to awaken my spirit to life without a drink, to find the colors and the music and the connection to God’s other kids. And then my only job is to try to bring that to the next person, period. That’s the only reason we are given that gift.

I arrived in Covina with that idea that I needed to get a life.

[01:05:00]

Joe, how much time do I got before we run out of a CD? Ten more minutes? Perfect. I arrived in Covina, and I was frustrated when I saw the meeting hall. It was, the parking lot was flat. Still push start in that same car. I was like, ah. Went into that meeting, the man making coffee that day, kind of was making the coffee turned like this. He had this medallion that said 1951. You know those big circle and triangle gold medallions from the 80s and 90s?

It said 1951. I knew what that meant. That meant he was ten years sober when I was born. And he walked up to me and said the very same thing that guy said to me when I was fresh out of treatment. He said, but very gently this time, not aggressively. He said, son, I’ve never met you before. I haven’t seen you. What are you doing? This time I had a much better answer. I said, sir, it’s very nice to meet you.

Nice to see your meeting hall. My name’s Carl. I’m two years sober. I’m fresh out of the Navy. I’ll be going to the university here in town. You won’t see me very often. I’m going to be busy. I’ll stop by when I get a chance, but I need to get a life. Thank God Eddie treated me like a real alcoholic. The first thing he did was laugh. And then he said, son, son, son, school and work are wonderful things to do in between meetings.

What he was really teaching me is one of the codes that I had to live by. What he was really teaching me is that I need to live in Alcoholics Anonymous and visit the world. He was urging me, please, son, do not try to hash it out there in the real world and visit Alcoholics Anonymous when convenient. The first thing he told me I needed to do was put new guys in my car. I lightly objected because I had a hole in the floorboard.

He said, do it. Your life will get better. I didn’t see how possibly that could be, but he was ten years sober when I was born, so I gave it a try. And the very first night that I put new guys in my car, I realized this man had not lied to me. My life got better. The new guys could push start my car. He didn’t say how much better. He just said better. Seventeen years sober, I got married. We have two beautiful kids.

I know it’s never happened to anybody else in this room, but the marriage did not work out. I know you’ve all been very successful. But you know what? We had a very important task when we realized we could not stay married, and we both loved those kids. We had to figure out how to be good co-parents, and it was a job, and it was to be taken as a serious piece of business. And we have been good co-parents.

We’ve been divorced since 2008, and our kids are Madison and Ryan. They’re now 15 and 17. If you’re a Facebook friend of mine, you know them. I’m really irritating about that, putting stuff up about them. Anyway, I’ve got to tell you that the thing that happened to me when having kids is I learned how to love somebody like I’d never loved anybody before. And I don’t think a human being has to have kids to experience this, but this is how I experienced it.

It’s like I met who I would die for. This level of love, it’s like I met who I would die for. I’ve never felt like that. I know the Navy made me raise my right hand and say that I would die for you, but I was secretly hoping it would not come to that. And I love other people. I love Harold. I love Joe. Really love Joe. AMOT Audio, a meeting on tape. This man has been doing this a long time, and you’ve done an incredible job.

I love these men. I really do. I love Chris. But you know what? If we’re out at Starbucks later and some guy comes in with a gun and says, Have you met my friend Harold? But if it was my kids, I would dive in front of that bullet if it meant they could live. The reason I bring this up is to bring up this one idea. I would never trade my kids for the first drink. Never in a million years would I trade my kids for the first drink.

However, I am alcoholic. Although I would never trade them for the first drink, I would trade them for the second drink like that. So therefore, remember at the beginning I said I think there’s a lot of things that are important in this world that I have passion for, that I pay attention to, that I spend time doing, and being a dad is one of those things. There’s no way to be a good dad without being in the center of Alcoholics Anonymous.

There’s no chance. I will end with this. Hopefully I got enough time on the CD. Four minutes? Okay. There’s nothing worse than going on to a new CD that has like 60 seconds on it. Nothing worse. An example of what Alcoholics Anonymous has done in my life. 1998, I was asked to come and do this, what I’m doing tonight down in Nogales, Arizona.

[01:10:02]

Before everybody had cell phones, but we carried those pagers. Remember those pagers? And before I left, I called my mother and I said, Mom, if the pager does not work this weekend, if you try to page me and I don’t answer, I don’t want you to worry. I’m going to be in Nogales, Arizona. The pager might not be working. She goes, Oh, you need to get a hold of Don and Leona. They live right up the highway from there.

And I go, Who? She goes, Oh, that’s right. You haven’t seen them since you were nine years old. But Don was the best man at your father’s and my wedding. They’ve both been lifelong friends. Oh, yes, of course. So I call up Don and I go, Don, this is Carl Morris. I’m going to be down the road in Nogales. I hear you live in Green Valley. I’d love to get together, maybe have some coffee or lunch. He goes, Oh, I know.

I hear you love to golf. Bring your golf clubs. I was like, That’s weird. How does he know that? It’s true. I’m like a golf whore. I’ll golf with anybody at any time for any reason. I don’t even need to know your name. I will golf with you. But it’s like, How does he know that? But I brought my golf clubs that Saturday morning. I took off from the conference. I went and met him at his golf course. We started to walk along, started to play, and he started to ask me very specific, pertinent questions about my life.

He knew what school I had graduated from. When I was working for General Electric for years, he just knew about everything in my life. By the fourth hole, I go, Don, I am really confused. I haven’t seen you since I was nine years old. I’ve tried to squeeze in a couple of questions about what you do, but you seem to already know everything about my life. How is that? He said, Well, a couple of reasons, Carl.

First reason, before your father passed away, you could not shut him up. He would go on and on. It was kind of irritating, Carl. He would go on and on and on about you. He just was so proud and loved you so much. That wasn’t news to me. I knew that. He and I had gotten a great relationship before he passed away. But the next thing he said, I could not even swing a golf club after that. He said, Besides, every year I get the Christmas letter.

Yes! If there’s nothing else, that’s good enough. Good night.