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Source: 1970 Miami International Convention – Clancy I. – International Convention Recording – RS 05680.mp3 File: 1970-miami-international-convention-clancy-i-international-convention-recording-rs-05680.mp3 Duration: 00:28:42
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One of his tapes about a week or two ago, his tape, and the phone rang, he said, hello, watch your old drop, this is Clancy from Weyand, California, and boy, I'm telling you, no one else would have done that but Clancy. My name is Clancy I., and I'm an alcoholic, and as I'd like to say, I'm very, very glad to be here today, safe and sane and sober, and I want to thank Watt for those brief introductory remarks.
When I get to be of main speaker caliber, they're going to make me a leader. A dear man and a good Alcoholics Anonymous member, I very much enjoyed, I identified and disidentified with both these excellent speakers, I identified a great deal with the problems of Sheila Loretta Josephine, and I just, I disidentified, I don't see how you can get it down to two or three personalities like that. I never needed group therapy, I used to just lock myself in the closet.
And I identified a great deal with Harry's intellectual attainments, mine were now widely recognized, there was more envy in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, but I didn't, there's one thing he said that just hit me like a rock, there's a whole difference between a Clancy and a Harry, who is a nice guy. I said, if he was half a kid, he'd run errands and not take coins. I took the coins and screwed the errands.
You won't remember my face. But I have quite a trip down memory lane. Yesterday, at 8 o'clock in the morning, the first leader that stood at this podium was the guy that spoke at my first AA meeting in 1949, in the hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And they had brought me from the Eau Claire County Jail, where I'd been through a series of misunderstandings. And I was a young guy, and sharp and brilliant, except I was a cop fighter.
And in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, they don't much go for that, there's hardly any place to go except after 12, except for the bus people and stand around and look at dirty books. If you can't make it there, you're going to go to jail, that's all. But he's a very interesting guy, and I love him very much. In fact, a policeman just before the meeting came up and handed me a note, and this is serious, I can't find the note, but he handed me a note from him saying he's in an ex-delegate meeting and he's sorry he can't be here this morning.
And so I'm cutting you off, Homer, wherever you are. And last night, the last speaker of the evening was the guy who is currently my sponsor, some 21 years later, and some difficult times. And I was talking on the phone a couple weeks ago to another sponsor I had in different cities who said, I can't hardly believe that you're still alive, but if you're really going to stay good, Miami, I have to call him up to thank him for helping me to get to this point. He says, send me a tape at your expense.
Well, that's fair enough. I'll give him a stiff check here. But I'm glad to be here because I've heard in the last two or three days many wonderful talks from wonderful people who have found this program and marched into life. And I, in a sense, am kind of a cull. I represent another facet of those who come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I am a loser. A bad loser, a sick, hostile loser. As I like to say, where I live on the beach in California, we get a lot of rebellion these days. You know, I'm sure you get some of it here, but not like there. It's really rebellion.
A lot of kids out there shaking their fists at the steamroller and saying, I defy you. And they're romantic until the steamroller gets to them and leaves them, you know, just flat laying there. And I understand what they're saying, except for one thing. I feel kind of sorry for these dumb kids. They think they're the first ones that ever rebelled. They think they're the first ones that ever did that. I've been doing that as long as I've been alive. I've been fighting and kicking and screaming, and it sure is a pain in the butt after a long time, I'll tell you.
[00:05:15]
I came to AA when I was quite a young man, the youngest man in AA in the state of Wisconsin at that time, and I lasted a couple months, and I realized I wasn't really an alcoholic because these old fools, their problem was booze. Booze was just a vehicle that gave me expression. If I had problems, they were to be hidden, not blamed on booze. And I went to the next city I ran to, I went to AA, and I had a sponsor, and I just about, I blew myself out of that tub in a couple years. I ran away to the next city and I got a sponsor and I blew myself out of that tub in a couple years. I ran away to the next city and I blew myself out of that tub in a couple of years. I ran away to the next city.
The next move was significant, but for a downhill pull I left San Francisco for El Paso, which has got to be some kind of an indication. And I thought I was tolerant, I thought I have to go seek lower companions where I can make it. When I got to El Paso they put me in the Texas State Insane Asylum. One of our distinguished graduates sitting right down here in front. An ex-Miss Booby Hatch. And I got out of there and I ran to another town where I got blown out of that tub and on and on and on. And nine years after my first meeting, I'm thinking to myself, whatever happened to me?
I have a college education that I had just before I made my first move out of Eau Claire. I come from a nice family of religious people. I have everything going for me, except there's something wrong inside me. There must be. Why am I standing outside the blood bank here on the skid row without any front teeth and a torn t-shirt waiting to sell a pint of blood for four dollars? Knowing that, like Sheila, my four daughters are gone forever. They went along the way. My father hadn't talked to me for many years.
My mother, when she knew who I was, would send me a Bible verse from time to time, which provided mild consolation, self-evident. I couldn't think of a single person in the world, and I'd been in a lot of cities and I knew a lot of people, that I could call or write or contact and have a reasonable chance of thinking they would answer me or care what happened. And by this time I was notorious in AA. I was one of the few people in Alcoholics Anonymous in Los Angeles that was banned from the AA club, sober.
Now when these things happen, you start to get the feeling there may be something more than a drinking problem involved. And nine years later I knew, as well as I had known in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that I was not truly an alcoholic. And I knew it perfectly for one reason, because alcoholics are people whose problem is alcohol. My problem is not really alcohol. It looks like a problem, and it is a problem sometimes, and it smells like a problem, and I can pass in any AA group anywhere as an alcoholic.
But I secretly know I'm not an alcoholic because alcohol and alcohol is, more importantly, an answer to me. It makes things soften up a little bit, because there's something wrong with me. I have never had any objections when I wasn't an alcoholic at that time. And they say, is there any alcoholics here? Because I secretly do. I was putting them on, those dummies, you know. But if anybody said, is there anybody here that secretly feel they're insane?
There's one back there here in Stoney. And that's why it's kind of funny that the last guy I hustled, he told me he couldn't help me because his sponsor told him to stay away from me. He dropped me off in front of the AA club one morning at six o'clock. An AA club that didn't open for five hours, and when it did, I was banned. And I couldn't get out of Los Angeles. You've got to get a score to get to the city limits.
Most towns, you just, you know, you get a score and you leave town. In Los Angeles, you need two scores, one to get to the city limits and another score to wherever you're going. And I couldn't put two scores together, and I was a hostile, nasty, rotten, front-toothless, 115-pound piece of failure. And that's why it's kind of amazing to me. That was on Halloween morning in 1958. Kind of amazing, I opened the door, and I lied to the guy, and he let me in, and I never had another drink.
[00:10:00]
Last night, Chuck said something interesting, and he says it quite often. He said, I'm not going to let you in. Last night, Chuck said something interesting, and he says it quite often. He said, I never had a sponsor. And I'm sober. I've heard him say that many times, and that's certainly true. I hear many people sometimes say, I don't have a sponsor, or I don't get so involved, and I stay sober. Yet there are other people who seem to get so involved, and they barely hang on.
And I've thought about that over the years. And I think, I want to discuss something with you this morning, if I may, briefly. I don't talk about it too much in talks, but I wanted to this morning. There might be somebody here who feels a little bit different. Who might feel a little bit unique. And doesn't really fit in to 11,000 people like all of them do. You can spot them outside in the coffee line.
They get that 10,000 mile stare. Take me to my room. Take me to my room. Why don't you just work the program? But over my experience the past few years, I've come to a rather, a conclusion that satisfies me. There seems to be two major schools of alcoholism that I'm acquainted with. And I mean this very seriously. One group seems to be people who grow up, who make some basic social adjustment to life.
Then they begin to drink heavily. And eventually they drink themselves into alcoholism. And they become indistinguishable from all other alcoholics. There's another group, and I don't know how large it is, but I know a lot of them myself. Who grow up and never make that first basic adjustment to living. And then they become alcoholics. And they're indistinguishable from all the other alcoholics, except for one thing.
They have nothing to return to called normal living. They have no idea what, I wouldn't know normal living if nothing bit me in the leg. The only normal living I know is perfection. I've never had it, but I always think of that as to be happy all the time. Have wonderful family. Hold a job and don't have bad thoughts when you drive by girls in miniskirts. And like Larry said, when people run over your foot, say, I hope I didn't hurt your tires, sir.
And that's what I mean when a wife says, I'm a 50-yard dash man all my life. Because I can do that for about 50 yards. You know, I can be the, every time I'm full of remorse, I can be the best man you ever saw. Really, Charlotte, I'm going to be a better husband and father. We're going to have a new life in a new town when we reunite and have our week of happiness and the ensuing daughter comes along.
It's going to be wonderful. Every one of my four daughters have been born as a result of a reconciliation. But one day, if you're like me, one day you know and I know that you've done your 50 yards and the walls start to go. And the wind says, Clancy, this is a crappy town. But being a good fellow, I'll try to stay around until the termination of pregnancy and leave. We never had any runaways in our family.
None of our children ever ran away from home, I'm very pleased to say. I wish I could say that about Daddy. Daddy left often and far. I have a cosmopolitan family. One daughter was born when I forgot to go to the nuthouse. And I saw her about five or just about shocked me out of my wits because I said, Hiya, Susie. She says, Hiya, Daddy. She was a Texan. And it scared me because in Texas, the Texas accent to me connotes shock treatment.
Every time I hear something I say, Now you just relax, boy, we're going to hit you. It's all the same to you, I'll take my hip on DC today. Whatever my problems are, I'm not truly an alcoholic. I have something grievously wrong. The best description I've ever heard of that in my life, I think, is I heard a guy say one time when he was a boy, I've never heard of that in my life, I think, because I heard a guy say one time, and he was a big untutored guy, and he said, uh, all my life, I've kind of had the feeling that when I was coming off the assembly line, I got right to the last operation, and somebody said, Hey, Bob, and I said, Yeah?
[00:15:15]
And somehow I got fired after the last screw was being tightened, right? And I can pass most of the time, but when the pressure's on, you're, clatter, clink, clink. And I've gone to some excellent psychiatrists, I've tried every therapy I know, I've tried every therapy I know, because intermittently in my 50-yard dashes, I was a good writer, and I worked in good advertising agencies, and I wrote beautiful things, between disintegrations.
It got a little hard after I lost my front teeth, because, you know, things get up to fives, you can't say it. But I didn't make it in California that way, I made it as a dishwasher and a furniture mover, for three days in each job. And, uh, pick and shovel man, there's a man sitting right down here who I used to envy till I was sick, because we lived in the same 12-step house for two weeks, midway through my first year, and he had a job downtown as a clerk, and he got on with a sack of lunch every morning in a white shirt, and I thought, That rotten thing.
And the guy would be along with his truck, and say, We're gonna go out and dig some clay now, here's your pig. And another sensitive road, and I lost that job and moved back to my abandoned car, don't touch that blanket. When I was down in Shreveport, I got enough on lock to put him in state prison for a long time. Since Chuck is now my sponsor, I try to emulate him in every way I can, so there's gonna be a long meeting.
But I don't want to get involved in little details, because in this short amount of time, I want to say something. I have tried Alcoholics Anonymous in conjunction with psychotherapy. At length, when I had money, and spent a lot of money on it. I tried Alcoholics Anonymous in conjunction with medication, some to pull me up out of suicidal depressions, and I wound up in a terrible suicidal… That's why I was put in an insane asylum in Big Spring, because I'd committed suicide.
I was committed as an alcoholic, I was committed as a schizoid suicidal depressive with no prognosis of recovery. There was no alcoholism on my rap sheet at all, just… I had to simulate alcoholism to get out. As I heard a guy say one time, but one time I tried to commit suicide so many times, it started to damage my health. And I had medications to pull me down, and I went to them AA meetings, and listened to them success stories.
I tried Alcoholics Anonymous in conjunction with fringe religions, where you sit on back porches and mispronounce Long's words. I tried Alcoholics Anonymous in conjunction with fringe religions, where you sit on back porches and mispronounce Long's words. And discuss the transcendental rebirth of the spirit. And think about a ship, they go red. They're all square out there, they're babbits. We know.
And then the sun comes up and we crawl back in our caskets and they all get up and go wild. I tried Alcoholics Anonymous in conjunction with every therapy I've been able to find and I have an inquisitive mind. And that's why it's kind of strange for me to say, isn't it funny today that I'm standing here to tell you that I've been sober just about 12 years now. And the only magic I have ever found in my life is Alcoholics Anonymous, unsupported by any adjunctive therapy, no matter its worth.
I am here today to tell you that a crazy, insane, lost, frightened animal, when driven far enough and given some involved guidance. Not the guidance of here's your book, now do right. Involved guidance has enabled me to live in the world. I hear miracles of things happening to you, that is not the miracle that impresses me. The miracle that happens to me is that I can walk out on Biscayne Boulevard and not be afraid this afternoon.
And when I'm not afraid, I don't have to be hostile. And I don't have to hurt people. And I don't have to… Now here's a kind of a small miracle.
[00:20:00]
We came down a couple of days earlier and went over to Bill D. from Pittsburgh, he's a wealthy eccentric that has his own… Summer home over in Naples. And I roomed with a priest. Now I'm, when I was three years old I learned you don't do that. First they'll try to get your heart, then they'll try to get the White House. Yeah. Some of you don't know that God slowly circles the Our Savior's Liturgian Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
And he gives it to sinners. And he gives it to Catholics. And that's okay with me, Jack, I'll tell you that. Here I am rooming with a priest. Now the rest of the AAs in this community were out in the bay. We were out in the Everglades addressing a group of 20 apathetic prisoners in the Collier County Stockade, which is not air conditioned. And every once in a while somebody would come by to dust their eyeballs, you know.
Now why would anybody do that on a convention week? Why don't you have fun? Because to me, at least for me, these are the actions that are required for me. I don't impress them on anyone else. I am kind of a… People sometimes think they're hurting me a little bit when they say, you know, you're a terribly controversial figure. Because I'm one way. I say, this is what I am. And I don't speak for any AAs.
But I secretly think I do. But don't tell them. I am one way. They don't understand. When I get to be controversial, that's progress. There didn't used to be any controversy at all about me. I was that dumb son of a bitch. But I'm not an AA. I've had many wonderful things happen. If I had a lot of time, I could tell you about it. When I was sober five years, finally, my wife and four little daughters finally made one more trip up to California.
And we all lived happily ever after, I guess. And like the young lady, we had a son representing that reconciliation. It was our first sober reconciliation. I've had my job now, a hostile punk like me for the last several years, I've been working as a public relations executive. I just go around making friends with people all day long. And I say, hi Harry, how have you been? How's the wife and kids?
And in another 11 years, I hope to be interested in her answers. I am not what you would call a good man. Compared to almost anyone on this program, I am sure that I am, on an abstract scale, probably not among the weller. But I know this. I am the best Clancy I. I have ever had. I am living year after year after year in that world, getting more comfortable. I am not as spiritual as I might be.
I have come to believe in God, but not as effusively as some people talk about on the podium. But I've had a chance to 12-step many people who have been so spiritual that they couldn't get to meetings anymore, because they were beneath their dignity. Something my sponsor in Los Angeles told me 11 years ago, I've never failed him. I have never said no to an AA request in 11 years. It's easy to say yes, yes, I'll come to Miami and address them.
It's something else when some old goof comes up, hasn't it? Would you give me a ride home? I'm going the other direction, but I hear you've got a car. I happen to be a circuit speaker. Screw off, Jack. You may think that, but what you say is, why yes. And the nicest thing I know, at least for nutty people like me, your motives never have to be right. You can have the rottenest motives that ever do in the world.
But if you do the things, you will feel better. And if you do them wrong enough, your motives will change, I believe. As I say, I've got a nice job, I've got a family, I don't have to sleep in an abandoned car. I'll have a sleep in my own car if I want to sleep in a car. Sometimes we're all five of them kids and my granddaughter goes in there, and I think, where's that old abandoned car? Just for a couple of days.
And the wind is shouting, Clanker, now, now. But I tell you this, I had to find something in Alcoholics Anonymous that I would have swore, after nine years around this organization, was not here. And I tell you, today it is here.
[00:25:01]
I had to find some way to replace what booze did for me. Because without that, I am unwinding, just the springs are breaking, blah, blah, blah, and I've got to cut. What booze did for me, it made the world comfortable. What Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me is taken away one way to make the world comfortable and given me a continuing way to make the world comfortable. The miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous is not that I'm sober.
I was sober in the Texas nut house for a long time. I was sober in 32 jails after I came to AA. I've been sober a lot of places. It's not that I've got a coat that I stole off Joseph and his brethren. I'm getting so square now, I can afford to wear eccentric clothes. The miracle of AA is, if you feel alone and afraid and think you're the only one that knows that secret sense of inadequacy that you can't talk to anybody about, and you know you really don't fit in, and you know that no matter how much they like you, pretty soon they'll reject you, and they'll get tired of you, your clever little phrases that you've memorized.
If you ever get sick of being alone, like Walt said, the disease of loneliness. If you ever just want to cry, and you can't cry. If you want to kill yourself, if you want to run, if you want to do all these things, and you think that makes you unique, disabuse yourself of that idea. There are a lot of us here. And what I'm here to tell you is you don't have to feel that way for the rest of your life, for God's sakes.
If you commit yourself, don't be a diddly. Stay away from the people who are trying to find out how little they have to do to stay sober, and get with the people who are trying to find out what they have to do to get comfortable. Get to those meetings. Like an old guy told me in Chicago once, I thought he was crazy. You go to a lot of meetings, kid, you try to work down steps, and some days you hang on.
Nothing else. But if anybody in this hall today feels that I'm anything like them, and you want my advice after 11 years of success on AA, and it is much success, but for me it's a magic success, I'll give it to you in one sentence. You go to a lot of meetings, you try to work down steps, and some days you just hang on. I have in the past few years spoken at a lot of conventions in AA, I'm closing this sentence here.
I have one sentence left, I may have some commas in it. And then, in the last few years I've spoken at a lot of conventions, and I've been at Watts Convention, one of the finest AA conventions in the world, and many other conventions, so it isn't really a big ego trip to go speak at an AA convention. It isn't a big ego trip to be in front of people, I do that a lot in my job and everywhere else. I'll tell you the greatest thing that's ever happened to me in my life is me standing at this podium today.
However, that is the best thing that's ever happened to me in my life. Because it's as though, somewhere, in some abstraction, Alcoholics Anonymous, which has become my life, has reached out and said, even a nut like you belongs here, we're glad to have you. Thank you. Even a nut like you belongs here, we're glad to have you. Thank you.