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My name is Clancy Ellis, but I'm an alcoholic. I'm empty. Who's ever got that camera, do not make another photograph in the meeting. I don't know how to be told that, I hate to sound set up like a nudge, but that's what AA's about. We don't take pictures in meetings, you can take pictures all night out here, but not in AA meetings, ever, ever, ever. That's all I have to say tonight, and I want to thank you.

I'm very glad to be here, I've been here a couple times before. I was contacted briefly about coming down here for the first one in 1983, but I had other commitments, and I didn't really want to come anyway, because it didn't sound very attractive to me, a Jim Shaw item up in the country somewhere, in some canyon in Oklahoma, I could just, well, I'll pass on that one. It turned out to be very successful, they had good speakers, everybody talked how much fun it was, and the next year I found myself suddenly available.

I've been sitting around my phone year after year, I was looking through the program on the back of the program, it listed all these speakers you've had over the years, it's an amazing thing. I know every one of them, every one of them, every one of them since 1983, and some are dead now, some are gone away, and some are missing, but most of them, they all were activist members of AA and Al-Anon, and most of them still are.

And so it's a continuing thing, I was thinking, you know, when you get to be an old-timer around here, I guess, you get kind of a deeper appreciation of tradition, of things, you want things to keep going the way they are, you know. As was said earlier today, Scott, talking about his children, he hopes someday that AA will be here when they come, in this present form, I presume he meant, because in some places it isn't.

I was thinking about that earlier this week, in Wednesday night, I led a meeting, chaired a meeting at the Pacific Group, and they had something there that warmed my heart and most of people's hearts there, that you never find anywhere in the world that I know of. We installed a new secretary, and the participants that night, as they are each year on that date, were all the secretaries from that group, extending back to 1963, from the time the meeting started, the ones who are still alive, all of them sober, all of them doing well, and really kind of a, they get about two minutes each to talk, but it really is something, you know, and for the first, I sponsored the first 20 secretaries, then they got away from me, then they insisted on women's secretaries, but it really is something, you know, it's a great thing, and then the outgoing secretary gave the main talk, and just, everybody had a wonderful time that evening.

And there's something great about tradition, and yet, we also know that nothing ever stays exactly the same, life moves on, different approaches, different things, and many times in Alcoholics Anonymous, there are always people come in and say, well, there's a fellow in our area named Bobby E., who talks a lot about how, well, you wouldn't take a medical text from 1939, and expect it to keep you well now, same thing with this book, we should have a different book, because this is out of date, you know, and he's made a career for the last many years of killing people, first telling them to stay out of A, and then A isn't enough, and I don't, I'm not judging him, but I know he used to hang around my back porch, I wish I'd let the son of a bitch die, but, because I don't care what anybody believes or what they disbelieve, that's their opinion, because when you stand at the podium of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's always been my opinion, you should be talking about Alcoholics Anonymous, and if you don't choose to talk about that, go somewhere where they want to hear what you want to talk about, because we all got our own thing, that's why I can never understand people going to meetings, and writing about it week after week after

[00:05:01]

week after week, and finally say, why don't you go to a different meeting, why sit here and be uncomfortable, that same guy there, doing it right, go somewhere else, no, I like this meeting, but Alcoholics Anonymous is a great traditional thing, and I, like most of the people here, hope it stays the way it is, because it's the only thing that's ever worked for people like you and me, once upon a time in the 1840s, there was an organization that worked for us called the Washingtonians, and after about five years, a number of those people felt, maybe we should change it, change our trust, because we've helped so many drunkards, we should help all kinds of people, not just drunkards, and by 1848 they were extinct and all 200,000 of them died drunk, and there's a great lesson there, most people who come here and want to argue about how we do things, have no idea that they want to reinvent the wheel again and again, without knowing that this is kind of an outgrowth, this has been an excellent weekend, I think, I'm sorry I had a terrible time last night, I didn't get here until very late, because there was a terrible thunderstorm in Denver and we couldn't land, we circled Denver for a long time, lightning, one plane got hit by lightning, just hideous, then we landed over in Colorado Springs and sat there for a while, and got to Denver and all our planes had gone, got another plane to Oklahoma City, we got to Oklahoma City and sat there because some lady on the plane had a heart attack and they couldn't let anybody off until the medical people got on and treated her, and we were all getting a little edgy by this time, I could just die, die, let us off this plane, I wouldn't say that, but other people around me, I begged them not to say that.

Then I got in the car and drove over here and it was fine, and I was doing fine until I got to this road up here, the main coming from Methodist Road and I saw a car coming right up near bright lights and blinking their lights, I thought, now what, the damn place is blown up, and I stopped and they stopped and there was a car full of young folks from this meeting, and their grand-dame, sitting in her nightgown, saying, is that you? Hardly any way to answer that, you have to say yes.

And they brought me in, we had a good time, glad to get up early this morning, see a lot of old friends, and very much enjoyed the meetings this morning, enjoyed dawns, talking to Ellen, and Scott, I've been with Scott several times recently, in fact, I was thinking about that, he talked about being in Beartooth and in Mountain High, I was with you both times. And this afternoon we went into town, it's always fun to hoo-rah the main street of Hinton, you talk about the world's thinnest book, things to see in Hinton.

It did take us five stops to find an ice cream cone, we did that, we had a good time. And here we are tonight, tomorrow night, Bob will talk and wind up the conference, he was a fine talker. And I'm sorry I missed hearing our speaker last night, Karen, I've heard her speak several times, I hear her speak almost every day on the telephone, this ear is just a little swollen up, but I've always described her, I don't know if anyone else has, but I always think of her as a human hummingbird, her little wing goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrr, and she does all, I just got back from, I just bought a little liver from Duke and Kerry, it's a nice way to start the morning. Was that so Karen? I really don't give a shit what you mean.

But every Monday morning she comes all the way downtown when I come to work, there's some flowers on my desk that she puts every Monday morning.

[00:10:07]

That way she doesn't have to go to meetings again that week. People say, where does she get the time to do all these things and still come down and bring you flowers? Wings are going a thousand beats a minute. You can do all sorts of brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I was interested in looking on the wall, the theme for this year's The Fellowship of the Spirit. The Fellowship of the Spirit, we've talked about that a little bit recently. One of the guys, our Secretary, mentioned it the other night.

I've thought about this a lot lately. We forget there are 234 organizations that now use the 12 steps. These are what they call 12-step groups. Alcoholics Anonymous is not really a 12-step group. The main one is not. Alcoholics Anonymous is not a 12-step group. Alcoholics Anonymous and the reason for its success is that it is primarily a fellowship. It is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope.

And in so doing they pass along the information on taking steps and doing things. And we do a lot of things that have nothing to do with the steps really. Many of these 12-step organizations, all they know is the steps are there and they do the steps and that's it. And there's no fellowship, there's no warmth, there's not much of anything. You know, it's an interesting thing. The first 12-step fellowships, I mean 12-step groups outside of AA, the first one was Gamblers Anonymous formed by a guy named Jim Willis, a friend of mine.

In the late 1950s, he was a, at that time he was married to Sybil Corwin, and who has gotten after a lot of sobriety in the world. But unfortunately he's in the hospital and her mind has gone to Alzheimer's. But she was a wonderful woman in her days, she had 56 years. But he founded GA, and he founded GA because he was a gambler as well as an alcoholic and he saw there were other gamblers and he wanted to help gamblers who were not alcoholics.

So he founded GA, and they founded GA, and it really did quite well. They had a lot of enthusiasm. To this day, all over the world, Jim Willis is regarded the same way we regard Bill Wilson. You go to a GA meeting, they talk about Jim and Jim said and Jim did, you know, like we say about Bill. And he got so wrapped up in it that he forgot for a while he was an alcoholic. I mean he was doing the 12 steps.

And so everybody was really surprised when he got drunk and died. And so he was kind of a, not a success in A, but he always was a success in GA. And that's how they remember him, the man who never gambled again. And OA was founded by some members of AA who were also eaters. And they wanted to do something for other eaters, they founded OA. In fact, that's one of the great examples I've always tried to remember of why you have to be an alcoholic to be an alcoholic stonemason, because of the identification.

When they were about two years old, they'd come over to the AA club, which I used to belong to, the 6300 club, and they'd get speakers and ask them to come over and talk to their beginning little organization called OA. Not people with eating problems, but anybody to talk on the 12 steps or the program. And they asked me to come over one day to speak on the obsessions, obsessions of the mind. And I always was an authority on that, as long as they don't ask me to speak on the recovery from it.

But I can talk about the obsessions themselves. Yes, let me tell you about my other one. And I gave a nice talk to about ten old fat broads sitting around a table. That's what they were. And I gave them a fine talk. And this was, I guess, 1960 or 1961, maybe, and 60, I guess. And I sat down, I said, well, I hope I've helped these ladies. I really wanted to help them. I really was very full of enthusiasm.

And they started talking, and I couldn't believe my ears. I just couldn't believe my ears. A woman over here said she'd eaten a whole chicken and then a half of another chicken. Christ, you know, just have a chicken sandwich or something, you know. Some woman over here talked about. Some woman over here talked about eating ice cream and ate ice cream and ate a half a gallon or something.

[00:15:03]

I just, oh, oh, no wonder you're fat, for Christ's sake. Someone over here talked about it and she talked about eating until she couldn't eat anymore and then she put her finger down her throat. He didn't have a name called bulimia then. He just put her, made me puke and ate some more. I thought, God, don't shake hands with me after the meeting. I can see doing that for drinking, but eating? Everybody does it for drinking. I'm a little drunk a little too early tonight.

Have they got a cert? But they've been somewhat successful, but not terribly. One of the disappointments, I would think it's safe to say, is Narcotics Anonymous, formed in the late 1950s. And people always wonder, why did Narcotics Anonymous ever take off? It's been successful in small places here and there, but it's one of the, maybe the first or second big program. And it has a lot of, has had a lot of members.

And it's always been my theory, it's just my concept after studying it for a long time and knowing people in it, that narcotics addicts have a different approach than alcoholics. Because people who take heroin are not, they take heroin to get out of the world. And alcoholics, as a rule, drink alcohol to get into the world, to feel like part of things. And heroin addicts, most of the ones I know, it is essential they look cool.

You can't be enthusiastic, you can't be rah-rah, because that isn't the mark of, you know. So you go to these meetings and we just lay there, man. And it's kind of funny, but nobody ever, very few people make it. Unless they happen to go to AA as well, happen to be an alcoholic as well, because there's no, it's twelve steps, there is no fellowship. There is no fellowship. The fellowship, and the fellowship, they talk of the fellowship of the spirit here, to me, is not anything mystical, and it isn't anything to do with religion, it isn't anything to do with fellowship with Jesus, at all.

It's something to do with the fellowship of the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous. One alcoholic working with another alcoholic. And it's so simple once you get it. I have at times tried to equate getting sober in AA with learning to ride a bicycle. Much more complex, of course, but in a sense the same way. I remember years ago, having two of my grandsons in my backyard, in the driveway, trying to teach them how to ride a bicycle.

And I was little John and Joe, and they kept falling off, and Joe got a bloody nose and John scraped his arm, and they were starting to cry, and I said, I don't want to do this anymore, Grandpa. Yes you do, you just don't know it yet, Joe. At the end of the day, they couldn't ride a bicycle, and I just felt horrible. And a few days later we tried again and they fell down and they cried and avoided me.

But eventually something happened to them that's happened to almost everybody in this room. I'm sure in this room, this field, open field. When you're an old timer, you can sense people creeping up on you. When you've got a conscience like mine, you better. But eventually something happened to them. One day, each of them, I don't know if it was the same time or different time, something happened to them that's happened in earlier in this tent, and nobody can explain how it happens, to this day nobody can explain how it happens.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, you get a sense of balance. Why? Who knows? But you can now ride a bicycle for the rest of your life. Ride a motorcycle if you know how to ride anything, two wheels. But you cannot give that ability to someone for whom you would give your life. Isn't that strange? It's a simple thing. Everybody's got to get on their own bicycle and fall down. And in a much more complex way, that's what's so difficult about Alcoholics Anonymous.

It's so simple once you've got your balance. But when you get your balance, it's just hideous. And some people, after they get their balance, don't choose to follow the rules of the road they go down again to.

[00:20:05]

As most of you know in my work today, I see people like you and me die from alcoholism. Die from drug addiction. Die from hypothermia, sleeping on the sidewalk in the cold weather. Die from stabbing. There's a lot of illegal aliens come across the border, and they get wound up in Skid Row, and they're afraid, and they're lonely, and somebody challenges them. The only thing they know that can't speak the language is stabbing.

I see all kinds of death. And I want to just grab these alcoholics anyway and say, come on, you have to be like this. I've got a way out. I've got a way out for you. Works fine. Like I say to Joe and John, come on, you want to ride a bike? Here we go. But then I've got to remember, if it could be transmitted that way by well-intended people, or by good intentions, or by desires to be of service, if it could be communicated that way, why did I slip year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year?

The worst years of my life came after good people tried to take me to AA and teach me how to stay sober. And I went to AA every one of those years, sometimes more than several times, different places. And at the end of that time, I knew as much about Alcoholics Anonymous technically as I know today, I guess. I could quote the book. I could do a lot of things. I could talk about the steps. I knew what they were.

I knew all about them. And yet I found myself standing on a street corner in Los Angeles wondering what happened to me. Wondering what ever happened to that little kid that had such high ideals and hopes and had them… I look over at my left. Like I'm sure most of the people in this room, in this tent, you people out there in the fields, up there in the tree, hey! But I think that we… I think the difficulty here is to come to understand that somehow people stay sober here.

And as I was starting to say, I look back, as most of us have been, strange mixture of… I don't know anybody more idealistic than alcoholics, at least when they're going, starting out, and looking for good things in the world and want people to be good and want things to be right and have absolute honesty and have absolute purity perhaps and absolute open-mindedness on these things. And little by little just become more and more cynical when you find out it isn't that way.

People come to AA very cynical and very disbelieving. I think they're that way because they've been, to them, disappointed again and again and again in the others and in the world about them because they make unrealistic demands on the world, I suppose. One of the reasons… That's one of the great reasons, you know, that Alcoholics Anonymous… Bill Wilson was so strong about breaking away from the Oxford group because the Oxford group, and still does, the Akron, Ohio Alcoholics Anonymous and that area around there still are very big in the four absolutes, which is absolute honesty and absolute love and absolute purity.

And Bill was very much against this. And I think rightfully so, at least for people like me. Because I am by nature a perfectionist. That's what I want. I want absolute love and I want absolute purity and I want absolute things and I can never achieve them. And in my life, if I can achieve them after a while, I don't even try at all. I just… I want things to be right and if they're not right, screw them.

I left to my own devices. I want things to be right. I want my family to be wonderful. All I ask of the world is that it stay wonderful. Never realizing that's the mark of a child. You want the world to be wonderful. And nothing is… I tell you some bad news. Not bad news, it's basic life. Nothing is wonderful after you're used to it. It can be deeply cherished, but wonderful, we think it was wonderful, that kind of 16-year-old exciting…

[00:25:05]

The best example I know, you hear that sometimes when you sponsor men in AA. Must be the same for women who sponsor women here. Oh, I think I met the right girl. She's wonderful. When I saw her coming out of detox… I just want to take out your machine that says, Oh, Mr. Emerson's not in today. He goes home a long time ago. I don't know where he goes. The example I've used a thousand times, I don't know a better way to say it.

We were having coffee at the restaurant. We reached for the sugar, and our fingers touched, and there was a spark. I swear to God, there was an actual spark. I don't know. And if you can't afford an aha machine… Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You hate to tell them the bad news. You know, brace yourself. It is not going to stay like this. Even if you love her, even if the one chance in a billion that your relationship lasts more than three weeks, I mean, it's just…

Maybe even if you get married someday through some miracle of AA, and you have a little white picket fence and a little toddler in the front yard, and you'll be sitting with your love in the kitchenette and having a cup of coffee. Reach for the sugar, and your fingers will touch, and you'll say, Give me the goddamn sugar. Right? Right? But when that happens to people like me for most of my life, I feel betrayed by them.

They have let me down. They are not wonderful anymore. They are human. And that's what I think one of the great things in Chapter 5 is read tonight. Well… Jennifer is the only fan I've got. That's that. Well, that's not right. I'm trying to be nice to you. I have two or three others somewhere, but I just don't… But that's why, to me, it's always the great operational part of Chapter 5. It's the thing that comes after the chapter.

We've heard it. We can all recite it, you know. But in order, I can go through it. Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, we are willing to grow along spiritual lives. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. For people like me, idealists who demand perfection, I have to work on that.

I've had to work on that much of my sobriety to remember you just take it, and little by little, and you try to make it a little bit better. And some days you don't do very well at all. I think one thing that's good about AA, if I can remember it, you know, many people, many people get together on… I haven't even said it yet, so what are you laughing at? Are you an Al-Anon? Laughter Maybe, maybe Joe will let you tell a joke tomorrow morning.

Anyway. One of the things that has always been of great interest to me is this idea of progress. You know, it's an interesting thing in the twelfth step, the only step that's been changed in AA when it was first written and first printed in the first edition of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, twelfth step said, having had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps, we try to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I've carried the message of alcoholics and so on. And his followers had to come up afterwards and say, Bill, that isn't correct. You're the only one who had a spiritual experience. We didn't.

[00:30:00]

I've been sober four years and I haven't had a spiritual experience yet. You're the only one who hasn't. And you've never as a result of these steps, you had it in Towne's Hospital coming off a drunk. The steps came a long time later. How do you explain that? And he had to realize that, that it wasn't, it wasn't a leap to spiritual growth. He operated in a much different, it's where you take actions and little by little, you do something that has never been done in the history of the treatment of alcoholism.

They bring about an incremental spiritual experience. Not whoo, the way Bill Wilson got his, but the way we get ours. Make amends for that bitch. Are you crazy? And eventually bring about a changed perspective that the spiritual experience brought about. And that's why they went back in the second printing of the book and changed the 12th step to having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps.

And that's the way it's always been. And I look back at my life with this little idealist running off to sea at 15 to get out of little Eau Claire, Wisconsin, because I think the primary reason was that I had experienced like a little bit as someone else had earlier today, where I'd done fairly well in school. I'd been shoved ahead in school because I was a fast reader. My dad was a teacher and I was a small town.

I was very bright and they shoved me ahead in school. And my parents got a divorce when I was about 11 or 12. And I lived a very, very restricted religious atmosphere at Royal Region Lutheran Church and I'd never even seen a divorce. I'd never seen a divorce. And all of a sudden, here's my parents getting divorced. So my father, of course, it seemed to me he had deserted us because I lived with my mother.

And I instinctively did something that, I don't know why, indicates something about me, not about them. But without missing a beat, without missing a beat, I immediately began doing the absolute worst thing a child can do in that situation. I was the only child. I began playing my mother against my father to avoid discipline. When my mother disciplined me, I'd run to my father and tell him stories about her.

When my father disciplined me, I'd run to my grandmother and tell her stories about him. When they both would get together, rarely I'd go to my grandmother and talk how they were being mean to me. And so I avoided discipline when I was 12 and 13 and 14, and I thought I was really kind of clever. And my life just disintegrated. I found myself learning things when I was 15 that I should have learned when I was 13 and 14.

It sounds ridiculous, but really few little niceties about life and how to treat people and things like that. By the time I was 15, I was flunking out of high school. I was a junior in high school when I was 15 and flunking out. And so my wounded idealism, as most of you know, I ran away from home and hitchhiked to San Francisco. Dumb little thing with a pimply face. I guess I had bad pimples. Nobody ever called me Pizza Face.

How many of you heard that this morning? Isn't that sickening right before lunch? They always call me Pizza Face. Anybody want to go to lunch? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. And I, on that ship, I got on a ship, lied to my age, got some Siemens papers. They were crying for a Siemens paper. You're already in the Second World War on that ship. Over a period of time, somebody gave me some whiskey, and I vomited it up, and I drank some more because I wanted to be a man.

I vomited it up, and eventually I held some down and made that first big step into the rest of my life. I discovered alcohol made me feel better. If you don't, you know. I've always admired people, not really admired them, I've actually resented them and envied them, who see their world, who see their life with great insights. And they say things like, When I held that drink down, I realized I'd gone into a new garden of experience, full of many flowers and fruits to be savored over the coming years.

And I left that garden to come to this wonderful program. I never knew anything like that. All I knew is, if you don't puke and you can breathe, it makes you feel better. That's all I knew. And I learned to smoke on that ship, and I learned to swear, and I learned to lust effectively. I had, again, I have to say this for the newer people, so you won't feel different, but I don't want to give the impression of religious perfection.

Even at the age of 15 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, I'd had sex. But I'd been apprehensive and afraid and alone.

[00:35:07]

I'll tell you, that's the only way I can imagine even Lutherans doing it. Because, you know, you just, there's a mixed message in there. At least there was to be in that church. Sex is dirty. Methodist church, Southern Methodist, Southern Baptist, same thing. Sex is dirty. Sex is evil. Sex is the Satan's work. And you must save it for the one you love. For the one you love. But I survived on that ship, and I got on another ship, a little smarter, and a little smarter later in the war.

When I was 17, I went in the Navy. We went to the Wars on Naval Hospital up in Northern California, being sewed together, and they passed around some tests. And I've always been good on tests, because I've always loved to read. And that got me a high school diploma from the Armed Forces Institute. Although I'm still a junior in high school, I've got a diploma. I went back to Wisconsin after the war and went to the first class after the war to college.

It was such a lucky thing I got that high school diploma, because if I wouldn't have, I don't know what the hell I would have done. They'd have wanted me to go back to Eau Claire and start my junior year of high school again. I never would have done that. I don't know what would have become of me. I mean, I was out of control anyway. I went to college, and that was an interesting class, you know. I went to our last fall, September, we had a 50th reunion, the beginning class of 1946.

And it really was a class, the only one of its kind in the history of the country. There never will be another one like it, for very good reason. All of a sudden, millions of guys get out of the service. And some of them were old, and some of them discovered they could go to the GI Bill, go to college, whether they felt like going to college or not. At least you could get paid for it and something to do while you looked around.

So the campuses were just flooded with returning veterans, and there would also be kids just out of high school. So you'd sit in the English class, there'd be some old ex-chief petty officer, saying this to some little 17-year-old girl just out of Black River Falls High School. You put out? Really a strange potpourri. Most of them drank heavily, went at night and drank and got expelled and fight and caroused.

It was just an idiot's goddamn time. We just loved it. So we had this 50th reunion. I was glad to see somebody who didn't look so old and terrible. I suppose they felt the same when they looked at me, so it all worked out. But it was a great experience. But anyway, I went to college, and I got married in college. This girl, black-haired, raven-haired, flashing-eyed beauty, I felt. And there was some conflict in my family because she was Catholic, and I wasn't.

They used to hate Catholics. Still do, actually. And we got married, and I went out in the world. I became a sports writer. I didn't quite graduate. I got expelled two weeks short of graduation, but it wasn't my fault. It was a series of bad breaks and misunderstandings. But anyway, so I felt bad about that for a long time because it broke my parents' heart, and I'd been hired to teach journalism at Duluth, Minnesota, Denfeld High School.

And I was in jail, and they sent me a letter. Not much, not very long, just long enough to get a letter saying, you're fired, that's where you start. And the dean of the university sent me a note and said, all you've got to do is hang on two more weeks, I beg you. It was summer school because I had spoken on behalf of our class at commencement. I was the commencement speaker for our class, and some old teacher gave me a three-hour incomplete in English history, and I was in summer school working, and it all kind of went bad.

And so I went out in the world, and I felt bad about that. I got a job in the newspaper writing as a sports writer. It turned out to be the favorite job I ever had, really, and I probably would have kept it except my wife had this Catholic disease of significant fertility. And we kept having children, and I'd keep getting better jobs. I became a national distributor of small Catholics, just boom, boom, boom, you know.

And I got into advertising and public relations, and all these years I drank, and all these years I smoked, and all these years I lusted effectively, and all these years I cursed, and did a lot of things.

[00:40:01]

And that's why I stood in the – and I went to AA. I was sent to my first AA meeting in 1949. That's a long time ago. Most of you little snots weren't even born. We love you. And I'm sure AA to me then was the way it is to some of you young people now. A bunch of old, burned-out fools in their 30s and 40s and some in their 50s sitting around a table and saying – I don't know what they said. And to me they were saying, I stayed drunk night and day around the clock.

One day I walked through that door. They told me to put the plug in the jug, and I did. And I just never felt so goddamn wonderful. Why should I tell your face, you know? And I hung around there for a while, but I went to AA off and on and on, because I did drink a lot sometimes. It wasn't anybody's fault. Because alcohol to me is the best friend I ever had. If it weren't for alcohol, I don't know what the hell I'd do.

It gets me through my bad feelings. It gets me through my feelings of inadequacy. It gets me through my feelings of something missing inside of me. It makes me feel like I'm something. And I go to AA, and these people are – alcohol seems to be a terrible problem to them. And when they stop drinking, they feel better. And when I stop drinking, I feel bad. And sometimes I find myself standing on the street corner after all these years, some success.

And I guess I hear I was quoted last night in some little show held here. Yes, I had my picture in the New York Times for achievement. But I could not believe this could happen to me, because I'd been in and out of AA. And all I had to show for all the years I was in and out of AA, and in psychoanalysis and in reading books and doing things and trying so hard, my life was a series of trying to atone and drinking to get over terrible feelings I couldn't stand, and then falling into traps that I'm sure most of us have been in without ever even realizing it.

Drinking to forget you're drinking. It just seems so silly. But you don't really drink to forget you're drinking. Drinking gets you in situations that make you feel bad. And you have to drink to get over feeling bad. So you really drink to forget you're drinking. How can you explain that to anybody? And just knowing that sometimes alcohol is my problem, but it really isn't my problem. It is what it isn't.

I can talk drunks and I can talk jails and I can talk hospitals and I can talk nut houses with anybody. And I can out drink most people I know. But I'm not like that. I'm not an alcoholic. There's something dreadfully wrong inside of me. I've never questioned that. I've been trying to disguise it since I was old enough to recognize it when I was a kid. But it isn't being an alcoholic. I wish it worked.

It would make it so much easier. So much easier. The main difference between alcoholics and me, and I know this from going to meetings. Their story's always the same. I used to drink and I got in deep trouble, emotional bad life, and came to AA and got sober and they cleaned up my act and now I feel better. I've always believed that. I've always believed AA works. I'll tell you something. I've said this a lot of times.

I have never known any long-term drinker, drunk or sober, who does not believe AA works. I have never known any long-term slipper in AA, drunk or sober, who doesn't believe AA works. Which begs the question, if AA works, then why are they out there drunk? Because of the other little thing that comes right after that. It's usually said more quietly, but it's the thing that causes people like us to die.

All these people say the same thing. I always say this. AA works and it works great. But not for cases like mine. Just that little thing that changes everything. Not like cases like mine. Because I'm not really an alcoholic. I'm like a reverse alcoholic. Almost like a 180-degree difference. Unlike alcoholics, it is when I stay sober that the emotions get so painful and my life is ruined. that the emotions get so painful, and my life gets so terrible I can't stand it sometimes, and eventually I can't stand it, and I drink, I have a few drinks, I don't drink because

[00:45:00]

I'm a drinker, I don't drink because I have an obsession to drink, I drink so I can feel sometimes the way alcoholics seem to feel when they get sober, so I can feel like I'm something, so I can feel like there's no holes in my Swiss cheese gut, and there isn't… Please turn your tape, and I'll rewind, turn your tape and continue on side two. And then sometimes I drink too much for various reasons, and then well-meaning people say, you've got a problem with alcohol, you ought to go to some place like AA, and by that time when you get in that situation you have to say, gee, thanks for the advice, but inside of your voice just wants to shriek, but you don't understand, my case is different, I don't, I tried to stay sober once, and that didn't work, and it didn't work at all, and so that morning it was raining, I had to get off the street, and I had walked 71 blocks out to an AA club that I'd been asked to leave a few days before, before being in there drunk and raising hell, and I hung around that club and I hated it, but I was in a town I didn't know anybody, Los Angeles, my family was in Dallas somewhere, they had left me, my children, I'd never see them again, I would never, I couldn't, I used to be a boy wizard, they used to say in the advertising agencies, now I couldn't even get a job washing dishes, and I lost my clothes, all the clothes I had left were the clothes I had on, and I had my front teeth kicked out in the Phoenix jail about a month before that, and I just couldn't believe this, how could this be happening to me? I'm not a bad guy, Jesus Christ, what is it?

You know, is this God's punishment for me being sinful? Maybe, and I hung around that club and I hated it, not only was it an AA club, it was full of AA fanatics, I don't know anything more disturbing to intelligent slippers than being around AA fanatics, Jesus, they're really a dreary bunch, I'll tell you, for example, you know, now I'm not a mooch, I've never been a mooch, except when I've had to be, but from time to time you have to communicate to people how they can help you, otherwise they wouldn't know, you might say to even AA fanatics, you have to say things like, I seem to have lost my family, my wife and children, I've never seen them again, I've lost everything through alcohol, and I've lost my clothing, I've no place to stay, I'm cold and wet and sick, I haven't eaten, if I just had some fresh clothes perhaps, and a place to stay, maybe a few bucks, I haven't tried AA yet, but I know it'll work for cases like mine, because alcohol is all around, if you just return to God and find a new understanding of life, that's a pretty touching little vignette, you know what AA fanatics say?

Just go to a lot of meetings, work the steps, it'll all work out, and the answer to that of course is, oh gee sir, you're number one with me, and I had no idea that morning would be my sobriety date, those days, I wound up sleeping in an old car in the back of the parking lot, hidden parking lot of this club, I ate cake at meetings with a pound, here comes the cake fanatic, I hated these mealy mouth pukes, I felt that terrible feeling, I don't know, part of me absolutely, absolutely not enough around these people, another half of me just intellectually superior to them, Jesus, you're a bunch of, and maybe if I were stupid I could do this too, but, and never knowing that that'd be my sobriety date, I didn't intend for it to be, I look back now, you know, I'm sure as I've said it many times, anyone's stayed, anyone's ever slept as long as I did, I've stayed sober as long as I have, it always gives me a little unsettling feeling to be the longest sober, like there wasn't a countdown,

[00:50:04]

I always, I was hoping whoever that guy was back there, he'd have more time than I did, because I, I like to see a few people, I was looking at that, thinking about that program, and I'd seen Bob White, and all these old guys that were such great old champions, a lot of them did, Bob White and Gene Duffy, and a lot of people were great old wheel horses, and strong dynamic founders, they always remind me of the great pioneers who, you know, come out to the west and fight the Indians, and run their cows, and do these things, and little snots like us come along and build farms, and try to throw them out, you know, and in a way it's almost that way nowadays, some of these, all those goddamn old timers, you know, they just, I used to think that when I was newer, and these old guys, and yeah, Chuck Chamberlain's so smarmy, and these old fools, I was a year or two sober, and as you stay sober longer, they really, they, their value is enhanced if they are active, and there's also some old timers who are not quite, you know, that's what they tell you, they, if you're around here, stay around the, stay around the winners, run with the winners, so if you're kind of newer, you've been around a while, you have to say, well, who are the winners? How do you, how do you determine if they don't have a sign saying I'm a winner? Is it the old people have been sober the longest? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. There are old timers in the area that I wouldn't even ask for directions on how to get to the corner, because they're old, they're just, they're no longer active, they just come and sit and be negative sometimes in meetings, they just, they don't want to hear anything, they want to hear about the stats over here, I just put that, stop drinking, goddammit, you're going to miss you, and it's all very funny, except they kill people sometimes.

So who are the winners? Well, as far as I can determine, I've been looking hard for a lot of years, the winners are the people who are currently sitting in the meetings, who are currently trying to do the things, whether they're being instructed to do them by their sponsors, or whether they've learned how to do it on their own, or whether they're trying to instruct other people to show, and therefore doing it themselves. Any one of these people, whether they know it or not, most of them don't even know what they're doing, but they are being of service to God and man, they don't even know it. Well, I'm going to do that, I'm going on the goddamn meeting early, make coffee, I'll be there, and then when it's said, we'll take Fred home, that son of a bitch, they are the winners.

And they say, stay away from the losers. Who are the losers? Hard to tell. Sometimes they're the fun people, they're really fun. I'll tell you how you can spot losers, because you better spot them, because they'll kill you. They say things like, oh, you don't have to do all that crap. Come on, I never had to do all that crap. Don't do all that crap. That's, you know, and they'll kill you. They'll kill you sometimes. All the years before I came to A, while I was sleeping in A, I did some bad things. Most of them unintentional. I was always saying, I didn't mean to. That's the story of my life. I did not mean to. I remember when I came to A, and I was telling someone, I was feeling bad one night, and I said, you know, there's not much chance for me, because I can't return to God ever, because I've broken all 10 commandments.

I've broken all 10 commandments. And that leaves you, then later, of course, I remembered that it wasn't exactly true. I had never coveted my neighbor's manservant. It's a little beachhead there. But a lot of the rotten things I've done over the years, my early years sobriety, I traveled all over America when I could get a chance, and made amends. I went to Dallas. God, I almost, it was terrible. I went to Dallas, the guy I used to work for there.

I said, I'm an A, and I come to make amends. He said, what are you doing in A? I said, I'm an alcoholic. He said, you're not an alcoholic. I said, yes, I am. Why did you think I did those things? Because I thought you were a lousy son of a bitch, and I think you still are. If I hadn't meant from the fear of my sponsor, I would have gone over to the desk of them and just, what do you think of that? I'll be back in five years and tell you, I'm sorry for this.

I've made amends to a lot of places, a lot of people, but the one thing that's always stuck in my craw, whenever I hang around A a while and I go get drunk, I usually take one or two people

[00:55:02]

with me, just talk them into going with me. I'm sure I killed some of them, and I feel awful. There's nothing I can do about that. That's why I keep always trying to, as best I can, work with people to get them slippers, get them back in AA, because somehow there's some mystical writing of the scales, although you can't write the scales. But you want to stay with these people who say, don't do those things, because it turns out that the actions you take here are what makes AA work.

That is what brings about the incremental spiritual awakening. In all the times I've been around AA, and I've known a lot of people, I sat and talked to Bill Wilson for an hour, lived in a time when I could do that, go to his office in 1963, that's over five years, and sit and chat with Bill Wilson. And to be, I used to say that and let it go with that. I must also add one thing more. I look back on that with just, it makes my skin crawl, and I'm sure probably 40 minutes that hour I talked. I told him all the wonderful things, what AA had done for me, and how much I appreciate it.

I remember his face, I didn't know what he was thinking. And I don't know how many dozen times I've sat in my office now, and just found my face going, What goes around, comes around. But it was a great experience talking to him, and being in his presence, and I chatted with him, and I chatted with him at the International Convention in 1960. I was a year and a half sober, and I had a chance to hear Ebi talk, the only talk he ever gave at a convention.

And he got drunk after that again. And I listened, I met Sister Ignatia, and all these people, just like going to Gettysburg and seeing the Union Army there. And I've had this opportunity to do all these things, and I have stayed active. Now all the things I've done, seeing Bill Wilson, talking to Bill Wilson, shaking hands with Sister Ignatia, talking to Ebi, all these things. What's the most important thing I did? Just staying active in my group. That's the most important thing I've done, to stay sober, because that's what it's about. These other things are great, but they come so often. Sometimes it happens today, it's a funny thing, I've noticed this, it may have happened to you, but people who like conferences, they no longer go to their groups, they just go to conferences. And they think, boy, I'm really at the crest of it. You're not. AA is at the front lines in those local groups. And if you've got a crappy local group that you can't bear to go to, you better find another one, or you better start one, goddammit.

Because your life depends on it. Because that's the action we take here. And the actions are what bring them out. But the actions are based on the fellowship. Without fellowship, you just got a series of abstract information. You could do all these steps. Some people do them, loners out on ships, I guess. But they have an implied fellowship. They just know when I get with people, it'll be different. But otherwise, it's an intellectual exercise. And intellect has never won. The great problem here turns out, took me a while to understand this after I was sober, but it's really a basic truth. Whenever strong, neurotic or intense emotions such as ours, get sometimes, are in conflict with the power of my mind to control them, and they stay in conflict, eventually, the emotions will always eventually win. The brain gets tired and walks away. I do not have the power to inflict my will to control these intense emotions. And we've all thought that.

And so what I've done in my life, and you've done in your life, read things, and talk to people, and get information, strengthen that damn power to control those goddamn emotions, because they destroy me, and work on it. And just, yeah, I got it now, but eventually, boom. Always. And you go to AA, and you say, I'm going to need some help with these emotions. No, you don't need any help with emotions. Don't worry about it. You're going to take some actions. That's crazy.

I've got to have something. I've got to have some more under, that's why you want to make A more complex than it is. Newcomers want to, is this all there is? All this little crap, and go to meetings, and talk to people. That isn't enough. I need something more. I'm going to be, that's, that is enough. I need something more, because I got, you don't know how my emotions are. And that's basically the, I've seen that way.

But it turns out the actions of AA, and the important actions, what they do, they do nothing to strengthen your will.

[01:00:05]

But they bleed, they bleed neurosis from this side. They make the emotions less intense. So it brings about the same effect by doing it entirely differently. But it's hard to see. You say, but maybe I can make this work. You know what that's called? That's called willpower. And power of the human will to control emotion. And it doesn't do it when you have intense emotions. And the one thing, the great symptom of alcoholics is intense emotions.

Intense emotions that eventually require the healing additive of alcohol to resolve perspective of, just, I can't stand. And so it's, we get caught up here in little debates of whose story is worst and who suffered the most. And I'll tell you, that's also extraneous. It all means nothing, but we have to talk about it. I've been a high-bottom drunk, and I've been a low-bottom drunk. And as far as I can see, they have their pluses and minuses, and they both stink.

High-bottom drunk has got some advantages. When you're sick, you can go do something about it. If you need to get across town, you jump in your car and you drive across town. If you need a drink, you can get a drink. If you, it's not bad at all. Low-bottom drunks have just the same thing in reverse. Sometimes when you're sick, you just stay sick. That's all you can do. You got nothing else to do. When you need a drink, you can't get a drink. You go out and beg somebody to give you a drink, and they have them sneer at you.

When you get across town, you walk sometimes. When it's cold, you're cold. High-bottom drunks, when it's cold, they go in the house. What's the advantage of being a low-bottom drunk? The great advantage of being a low-bottom drunk is this. You no longer have to pretend you're okay. What a great blessing that is. You don't even realize it. But you don't have to pretend you're okay anymore. No one jumps in and says, how's that deal going? No one says, how's the family?

Nobody ever jumps in and says, how's our thing going on the job? Nobody in Skid Row ever talks about your past, and you don't talk about theirs. When you're a high-bottom drunk, no matter how you feel, you've got to suck it in every day. And put it together, and go out there and pretend you're not the way you know you are. You've got to pretend everything's all right. It's got to be all right. It's a funny thing. Those are the kind of people who commit suicide.

You ever hear an odd statistic, as odd as you'll ever hear? Of all the deaths I see on Skid Row today, I have never seen a suicide. Isn't that odd? Living in agony and pain and dismay and disgust. But suicide comes as a battle between your outside and your inside, and you can't stand it. They no longer have an outside, so who cares? You just get through today. We talk about living one day at a time, that's what they do on Skid Row.

Just get through today. And these guys who we envy are living their quiet, as the poet says, lives of quiet desperation. You just can't make it right. I've sponsored people who range from the guy born under the bridge in El Paso, the illegal alien that never got any much higher than that in his whole life, on the run, on penitentiary, it's just a terrible life. And I've also sponsored, for example, the daughter of one of the most famous men in the 20th century.

Now this is their inventories within a week of each other. And they both realized their father was the problem. I mean, it's just an amazing thing. You wind up here with all sorts of things. Instead of the do, we talk about genes, just the genes. There's really a battle in life. Is it the environment, or is it the genes? And it's impossible to decide. Because anybody here who has a large family knows, the same family, living in the same house, with the same parents, with the same environment, some of the kids turn out well and some don't.

Who can figure that, for Christ's sake? The same genes. Some have an interest in education, some want to do something, some don't. Dawn was talking this morning about her kids at different stages. Alma finally made a turn to be a minister for being a girl who would moon them in church.

[01:05:10]

I didn't mind the story, but he got hot. But in the same family, you know, entirely different personalities, different things. How can you explain that? How can you explain people who are alcoholic in the same family? I have a bunch of kids, three of them are in A and three of them don't like to drink. How do you figure that? So you can't really, you can't really isolate things. You just have to, it's almost as you take it as they are.

But if it turns out that you drink a lot, and somehow we can come here to get here long enough to understand that it is not a drinking problem we're here about, then you got a chance. I think of myself, what kept me sober? That A club. No wisdom, no knowledge, I knew more about A than most of the people trying to help me. But for the first time I began doing stupid little things that had never been up to my standards before that.

I didn't do it because I believed in them, I didn't think they'd work, but just to get them off my back because I was in a vulnerable position. And I did things. These crazy goddamn activists, I call them activists now, they're fanatics now, but now I can see they're activists. They're always doing something. I remember finding myself thinking, I'll be saying one day, thinking, God, I've lost my children, I'll never see them again.

I wasn't a very good father, but I loved them. I loved them, I really did. What can I ever do about this? Come on, it's nice of you, we're all going to the meeting, hop in the car. You're thinking about my career? God, I was something, boy. I was slicker and snot once upon a time. I directed an opera at the University of Texas, and I was just slick. I worked in a big advertising agency, and I helped write the well-seen unreads for the board company, and I was something.

And now I can't even hold a job as a busboy. What's the sense of even trying? At least I can drink, I've got some comfort. God, if I was ever going to help Phil move his furniture. Oh, shit. I really never had time to work up a good mood is what I did. And then I survived long enough to get a sponsor, who I allowed to intimidate me. I didn't realize I was lying to him, but I guess I respected him. I didn't like him, but I respected him.

That's one of the great problems. Sometimes you think your sponsor should be your pal. Not if you're a loser like me. You want someone who's going to give you a pat on the back on the occasional time you do something right, but someone who you resent because he can see through you. Just hate on me. And he intimidated me. And I'll tell you, I remember he took… The classic example I always use, I always use, always will say, I don't know a better way to say it.

I was a few months over standing in front of the podium at a coffee break at one of the meetings in Hollywood. And I was looking at a woman over there. I was just watching her. I just hated her. I just hated her. She was an old timer. She had two or three years. And she was a smart-aleck, snotty thing. And I hated her. She had hurt my feelings several times. I was just looking and thinking. I wasn't going to do it, but I was just having the pleasure of thinking, I wonder what would happen if I just smashed her goddamn face.

Just… It brought me some pleasure to think about. And all of a sudden, here comes my sponsor. Percy! I want you to apologize to that woman. Jesus Christ, you can read my mind. I said, why do you want me to apologize, Bob? Because last night at the Frank Randall group, they said you called her a bitch. Here's a little word of advice to the new people. Don't get sponsors who have spies everywhere. I said, Bob, she is a bitch.

I don't care what you think, you're a loser. You apologize.

[01:10:01]

And I just turned to him and I said… You bitch. And he got me taking a lot of dumb actions. I want you to go to that Central Hollywood meeting on Tuesday night. Oh, Jesus, Bob. It's full of weirdos, you know. Some of the men dress like women over there. Some of the women dress like men. One guy wears an Arab costume all the time with a Bernouz. Bela Lugosi goes to that meeting, Bob. Christ, if you doze off, he'll suck blood out of your neck.

It's full of weirdos, Bob. You'll fit right in there. Now, I've quoted you a lot of times. She was kindly to me. But I've forgotten all those times. I just… I remember individual times that he was… And he got me to do things. He intimidated me. And I wanted to just tell him. The guy told me one time. He said, you know, you don't have to take that crap. I don't know what sponsors are for. Don't tell him you'll fire him when he can't do that anymore.

I said, yeah. Bob, now what? Well, nothing. And he eventually got me to take the actions of alcoholics out of me. Eventually, I lost my job as a dishwasher. He got me to use that pain to get me to take an inventory as far as I could ever take. I take my inventory as a psychiatrist. I want to take it out of work after. You know, what does that do? And a couple weeks after that, he drove me along the ocean from Los Angeles to Oxnard.

He gave me a flashlight. He said, read it. And I had been so upset when I wrote his inventory. I put in things I'd never told a psychiatrist. Jesus, you know. He said, why don't you tell your psychiatrist? When you're paying that kind of money, you can't risk rejection. That's why. You did what, sir? Get out of my office and wipe off that chair on the way out. But I read this inventory. And I was just terrible.

And I thought, he's going to hate me. But he didn't. And I've taken that trip maybe 200 times since then. On the driver's side and some other little puke over there with a flashlight. Let me explain this part before I read it. Amazing thing. Inventories are absolutely nothing after you've done them. And yet people die every day rather than take an inventory because they are so convinced their case truly is different.

But there's only so many things you can do with your mind and your body. And everybody's done them. I'd give anything if I could hear anything. I haven't heard anything new in an inventory in 25 years. It really gets to be a dull thing. I just hope I don't get an alien or something from you. That's how we do sex up here. Oh, yeah. But all I'm trying to say is little by little I took the actions of alcoholics down.

I don't have the time to go into explicitly how I did it. I made amends to people. I made amends to people I hated. I made amends to my father who I hated. And he and I became very close. I made amends to people. I did things. I tried to make things right. And it's been a long and continuing program for me because unlike many people, I have not become wonderful. I do better. And I've done some things over the years, I guess.

But I think I'm probably the best I've ever been. But I've still got a ways to go. That's why I stay. You know, sometimes you hear old-timers talk, and they say things like, I drank and went to the bottom of the barrel. I came to this wonderful program, and now I'm doing fine. Everything's great. My family's good. And that is the way it is. That's podium talk. It's true, but it's podium. How you go, you don't go down like this.

You go down like this. All right, I can handle it. Oh, Jesus. And you don't get better like this. Oh, I found a program and a new life and a sponsor. Oh, Jesus Christ. That's why you have to develop habits of sobriety, and that's why it's so hard to learn to ride the bike. You can study that book for ten hundred years, but you've got to get on the bike and try it. That's the only way you're going to get your balance. And you've got

[01:15:02]

to surround yourself by people who are doing it so that you find out ways to do it better. And little by little, good things happen. I eventually held some jobs and became somewhat successful again in radio and television in Los Angeles, long after I was sober and did fairly well. And my family moved back and we had another child, and he's grown up now, he's thirty-two. They all seem to be doing well. My oldest daughter was just recently assistant attorney general for the state of New Mexico. She told me once when she came home for Christmas, she said, you know, Dad, when I was a little girl, you used to send us to our room. I said, yes, I did, Mary. She said, well, when you come to New Mexico, I'm going to send you to a little room. I don't go to New Mexico. I didn't lose nothing there. But she's in private practice now, so I get it safe. But all in all, we hear all this variety, the potpourri of speakers. You hear Karen last night and Scott this morning and Bob tomorrow and Evie Allen. We talk about the same thing, all different things, all absolutely different things. Some high-bottomed drunks and some low-bottomed drunks and some lose everything and some didn't lose anything. But they all have one thing in common. They reached a state where they had been using alcohol to make unbearable sobriety bearable and now alcohol is a problem. And now you are screwed. That is the nut of it all. And it turns out that's what makes alcoholism so dreadful. Not that you can't get sober.

Anybody gets sober, you get sober, go to treatment centers, go on the wagon. But eventually you'll discover being sober gets unbearable. So you got to drink. But drinking is unbearable. You got to get sober. What do you call that? That is what's called alcoholism. And that's what A is about. A is not designed to get you off drinking. A is designed to have you take actions that relieves the pressure of this terrible sick emotion so that eventually sobriety becomes bearable, tenable, one day preferable to drinking. Who could believe it? Who could believe it? I have taken sobriety for granted so many, many times over the past 38 years. But when I stop to think about it, it sends a shiver down my spine to how close I missed it. Almost came to missing it. And there have been times after I was sober that my mind has said, you don't need to do this anymore. You've done enough for the time to take care of yourself. Without ever realizing this is how you take care of yourself. So I'm glad to be back at the Canyon Conference, see all those giants on the podium, on the program. I know that AA, I listen to the young people talk around here and I'm pleased. Every time I see where there's young people enthusiastic, I feel there's hope for AA tomorrow. Because there's a lot of places you go to AA and there's no AA there at all. If you ever go to the Northeastern United States, you can go to meetings and meetings and meetings and never find anybody talking about the steps ever. Nothing. And it's all very cute and all very clever, but there's never any, you have two lengths of sobriety. Bob and I were talking about it before the meeting. There are people 25 years sober, there are people eight months sober, there's nothing in between. Because they've just all been too slick to do these things anymore. So that's why we want to do these things. It is knowing all this. You can memorize the book. It makes me feel bad sometimes when I see young guys or young girls get up and they think they've done something wonderful by being asked to read the chapter five and they recite it because they memorized it. That isn't worth a pitch or a warm spit.

I mean, I understand what you're, and I did it once too. I'm not putting, but I'm just telling you, it's doing these things. I would rather, I would rather have you take a newcomer to a meeting than know the whole chapter five by heart. Because that's what it's about. As Dr. Bob said, that's where the phrase came from. Dr. Bob in his last talk in the first international convention, he said three things that are as true tonight in Oklahoma as they were in Cleveland in 1950. Let us, let us not, he said, let us keep, let's keep our program simple. Let's not louse it all up with Freudian complexes that may be of interest to the scientists, but have nothing to do with our work here. When boiled down to the end, our work consists of love and service. We've heard that phrase again and again this weekend. We all know what love is. We all know what service is. That's all there is to it. And secondly, let us never be too smug to stop and turn and give the man behind us a pat on the back, take him to a few meetings and do these things because none of us would be here if someone hadn't done it for us. And the third thing he meant, which is true

[01:20:00]

tonight as ever was, let us guard that erring member of the tongue and try to use it with kindness and love. Because we all know many of us have been destroyed by someone's tongue and we've destroyed them with our tongue. And we do this and none of us are ever going to become wonderful. I'm glad that over the years I came to believe in a loving God. That's one of the great things. I'll tell you something else that I came to do, I would have never guessed in many years, I've lost my fear of death. Who would have thought such a thing?

I've lost my fear of death. When that plane was bouncing and the thunderstorm yesterday, people were screaming all around me and I was just upset because I lost my place in my paper. I wouldn't care if that plane went in. I didn't want to die, but it didn't really bother me because I really feel there's got to be something beyond this. I've got to feel this. Go over there and Jimmy Lee Shaw, make him give me a cup of coffee the first day.

And try to avoid Chuck Chamberlain so I don't have to get him one. And with that attitude, I may see neither one of them. But this weekend, again, they've said this and I've, you know, I've said this, I have to keep saying these same things and my story hasn't changed. But when I was in the Big Spring Nuthouse, you know, and I eventually wound up with 36 shock treatments, which just made me crazy. The next year I was not off because I was never going to get out of there. And they put an alcoholic ward and I hustled, you know, by the time I remember, I knew how to hustle AA's and I got transferred to that ward and I remember going there the first day I'd been over there. And I'd never been to a meeting in that area where they did what they, you know, I sat in there, I thought, Jesus, I've been around AA, but this is just terrible to hear some guy get up and say, you know, most in California we say, my name is Fred and I'm an alcoholic. People say, hi, Fred.

I'm from the Big Spring, around there, even parts of Oklahoma, around the south. My name is Fred and I'm an alcoholic. And through the grace of God and the power of this simple program, it's not been necessary for me to drink any alcohol or take any moncedating or tranquilizing medication since my sobriety date. And for this, I'm truly grateful. And they all say, oh, Fred. I guess that's all right, but we were just coming off electric shock, you know. And I swore to myself, if I ever got into a position of power or strength and I never will, but if I did, I wouldn't give them some song and dance like that. I'd give them the truth anyway. So that's why I've come here tonight at tremendous expense and no little inconvenience to tell you the truth. And here's the truth. My name is Clancy Emerson and I'm an alcoholic. And through the grace of God and the power of this simple program, it's not been necessary for me to drink any alcohol or take any moncedating or tranquilizing medications since October the 31st, 1958. And for this, I am truly grateful.