Good evening. I’m Sam, an alcoholic. Hi, Sam. A member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Dave gave me a list of 23 words that I can’t use this evening. Would you like to hear them? Yeah. I’ll check and see how many we can use this evening here. I, uh, I come from a family of alcoholics, and that’s some of the first things I remember, watching my family drink on a very regular basis. My earliest memories are of my Aunt Bessie telling me bedtime stories, of which she only had two. She said, “Do you want to hear about the time your Uncle Louie was a bootlegger, or when I was a whore in Peoria?” So, I learned the facts of life early on, but I didn’t know that. I learned a lot of wonderful four-letter words, and I said them a lot, and my mother decided to send me away for the cure. She sentenced me to eight years in a Catholic school- .. where I majored in guilt. With a minor in shame. Seemed to be their big suit over there. The first two and a half years, I taught the nuns a lot of new words.

Some that they probably had to ask in confession what the hell they meant. But it took me that long to learn to cut that out and to say, “Yes, ma’am,” and, “No, ma’am.” They taught me about staying every night after school for two and a half years. Then I went in the opposite direction to get them off my back. I became an altar boy. I sang in the choir. I got straight As, and they had no idea this is what I was doing to them. Hey, there’s one that isn’t on the list. I, I’ve been very hostile in my life, you know, and- .. a professional balker. I came out of the womb like that. My mother said to the doctor, “Grabbed your finger and pulled you out,” so. And I wouldn’t have come out. If I’d had a light and something to read, I’d be in there yet. Especially after I found out what went on out here. Many a dream about being back there with all that comfort and being protected.

Anyway, I hung around in this Catholic school for eight years, and the nuns protected me because I was in the family business, which is stealing. And I got into a lot of trouble, but when I got out of that Catholic school, there was no one to protect me, and consequently, I went straight to a reform school, where the discipline was pretty much the same. They had uniforms, and I kind of fit in over there, but some, a few other things happened while I was there. I went through puberty in about 20 minutes. And I came out of reform school a horny little kid loose on the streets with nothing but a hard-on and a bad attitude. Oh, another one. That’s not on the list either. I’m doing pretty good. And that was pretty much the way I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous, too, some years later, .. carrying the same things and no place to put either one. So, I had promised myself I wouldn’t end up like my family, so I didn’t drink.