Speaker: Paul W.Recording details: Not provided with sourceDuration: 51 Minutes

The long and short of the story is- We're gonna make a new movie,

Yeah, that was- Oh, that was done.

I'm a very grateful recovering alcoholic.

You can actually tell the people who went to Dr.

There's a little glowing light above them, you know?

I came here a, a couple years, almost two years ago.

And, and, uh, I was actually here doing a, a project.

I, I'd written a, a musical for kids called Bugsy Malone, and, and, uh, I said that it was so that I d- wrote a musical for kids so I could get the clothes when they were done, you know?

If you could tell, Bob, Bob and I are-- Bob is really tall,

but I'm like 5'2" if you're sitting in the back.

I'm the only guy here whose, whose Founder's Day ribbon is longer than his tie.

But while I was here, of course, I had to find an AA meeting because it's

I, I got to find an AA meeting, you know.

You know, I was standing next to a fellow from London this morning, and somebody said to him, "You're a long way from home." And he said, "No, I'm not." Boy,

that pretty much describes my life for the last 13 years.

I've been sober since March, March 15th, 1990.

The world's a safer place, believe me, you know.

But I was here, here doing Bugsy Malone and, and, uh, had to find a meeting, and I met Paul G., who is the gentleman you were talking,

And, and, uh, Paul took me to a meeting and, and, and he, he did the, the Akron tour.

We went to the Mayflower and, and, you know, talked our way into the Mayflower.

And it was a wonderful moment where I went over to the phone where, you know, the, the phone in the Mayflower where that phone call was made.

And I picked it up very lovingly, and I could almost feel Bill W.'s vibe in it when somebody said, " Excuse me, that's a replacement phone." I

I said, "Oh, that's embarrassing." You know?

Because I was having my moment with Bill.

But then of course we went to, went to Dr.

Bob's grave, and I had that amazing experience of standing out there in the snow and getting, digging out my cell phone and calling my sponsor and going, "Do, do you know where

Five years before I was born, two men got together and, and discovered that by one alcoholic working with another, I could have a life today, you know.

I was 49 years old when I got sober.

I, I didn't have the best childhood, but I had the longest, you know.

I was raised in a household where alcohol was the reward for doing a good day's work.

My dad would come home, and he'd pour that 7 and 7, and, and Mom would have one with him.

And his buddies from work would come over, and the kids would be ushered outside to get them out of the way.

And they would sit down, and my...

My dad always had a speech he'd give.

As he's pouring drinks and his buddies would come in the door, he'd say, "You know what?

We're gonna have a few drinks, and we're not gonna talk about politics or religion or the goddamn job because if we do, we'll argue." Then they'd have a couple drinks,

and they'd talk about three things: politics, religion, and the goddamn job, you know.

It's what alcohol did to the household.

My dad was a wonderful, loving man.

He, I can believe that he suffered from alcoholism.

I have the disease of alcoholism.

And sometimes we're lucky enough to pass on our recovery.

My dad never found the room, the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I wanna say something very quickly at the beginning of this.

I appreciate what you said, Bob, about anonymity.

You know, my name is Paul Williams, and I'm a recovering alcoholic.

You can print that till the day I die and, and keep on printing it, you know.

What I would ask is that you allow me to continue a record that I w-

For 13 years, you've never seen my name printed next to the words Alcoholics Anonymous.

So what I would ask of anybody listening to the tape, anybody in the

audience who's with the press, please, feel free to talk about my recovery.

You know, the, I think anytime anybody talks openly about their recovery, we take a little bit of the stigma of alcoholism off the disease.

But please honor our tradition, you know, because...

And let me explain to you very simply why we have that tradition.

If Pauly Williams goes out and gets drunk Wednesday, and you, you printed that I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, somebody's gonna go, "Well, I thought he's in that AA.

That AA must not work." That AA works just fine, you know?

drunk, it's because Pauly Williams did not work a perfect first step, you know?

And I hope if Pauly Williams ever does that and he lives through it, that he is enough of a

man to come back in the rooms and say, "I'm back.

Please help me," because that's what I had to do.

You know, I was raised an alcoholic with the twin towers of fear and grandiosity, you know?

And, and, uh, it's, alcohol was the perfect treatment and the perfect, you know, the, probably the best food for those people who lived in those, with those twin towers

Booze, it started for me with the little slits when I was a little guy, you know?

And, uh and by God it cured that little guy thing, too, you know?

I'd go into the bar a, a Shetland pony and come out a, a mustang, you know?

A, you know, a, a stud muffin, you know?

But I'm an alcoholic, and I treated my alcoholism with booze, and now I treat it with meetings.

I, I, I came here for my drinking.

And my, my thinking is just, good Lord, I wake up in the middle of the night, and the rats are chewing on the wires, you know?

I could have come from finding out that my book had sold 200 million copies and I've been awarded the Nobel Prize, gone to sleep, and get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night,

and by the time I've hit the toilet, I've got myself pushing the shopping cart, you know?

It's just it's an alcoholic, and it's, and it's alcoholism, and it's fear-based thinking.

And the great gift of this program for me has been that I've been able to trust my God to give me what I need when I need it, and that's the program in a nutshell for me.

I am, as the man said, not far from home anytime I'm with you, you know?

I will separate myself from people.

I'll look at people, and I will, i- inside my head, I will, I will cast the people as, as bad guys.

I will go, "Oh, she's not gonna like me.

He's not gonna like me." Last Monday, I was in, in Lexington, Kentucky.

I went to speak at a, or, or to, to play golf at a, at a, uh, a celebrity golf thing, you know, to raise some money for cancer.

And I went to sit down at the, the table, the, you know, the dinner the night before.

I sat down with a bunch of people, sat next to a very thin, well-dressed woman wearing earrings that cost more than my car, you know?

And, and I looked at her and I went, "Well, she looks like she's not gonna like me.

I bet she..." And I looked at the rest of these people at this table, and I thought, you know, "My hair's too long, and I'm fatter than I should be," blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm sitting next to this woman, and I wear an earring which has got the symbol of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And she looked at me and she said, "I like your earring." I said, "Thank you.

It's the symbol of Alcoholics Anonymous." And she said, "I know.

And she said, "The guy sitting on the other side of me is my husband.

She's got..." And it went around the table.

And it's amazing how their faces changed.

I thought, "Well, these people have really changed." Bull, you know?

Immediately I felt like I was with you, and I was, you know?

But it's an interesting thing for me to take a look at that moment right before when I sat down and I looked at these people, and I had them cast as villains.

That's a little extreme, but I just, I had, I had a them and us, a me and a y- It's, it's me-against-the-world kind of mentality

And it's my disease, and it's alive and well, and I have to treat it with spirituality.

I have to treat it with love and service, as the man said, you know?

They were really nice people, too.

I told them the long version of all my stories.

My dad never found the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Uh, he was, he was, he was a good man and a sweet man, and every now and then, in the mid- you know, he'd, he'd put us kids to bed while he was still drinking.

He always said he never missed a day's work because of drinking.

It's a, it's a methinks he doth protest too much, you know?

But every now and then my dad would, would, uh, would have an attack of the fatherhoods, and, uh, he used to get me up about 4:00 in the morning to have me sing, you know?

Well, one time he got me up, it was almost daylight.

It was actually still dark outside.

We were living in, in, uh, Portsmouth, Ohio.

Actually, Lucasville, Ohio, which is a charming little spot south of here.

My dad was in construction, so we moved every year.

Now, incidentally, that meant every year I was the new kid in school, and I was the littlest kid in school, you know?

And, and nobody ever in my family ever said...

I could run under coffee tables, you know?

And, and nobody ever said to me, "How does it feel to be the new kid in school?

What does it feel like to say goodbye to the friends you made and say..." No one ever talked about feelings.

Now, as a gift of this program, my daughter, when she was five years old, was saying things like, "I think my brother's really getting in touch with his anger," you know?

My daughter was sounding like John Bradshaw at five, you know?

That's because you taught me that it was okay to talk about my feelings.

Share what you're feeling with another human being.

There's an immediate gift in it.

In early recovery, I turned to absolute strangers at parties, and I'd go, "I have no social skills," you know?

They'd say, "What?" I'd say, "I've got no social skills.

I, I'm, you know, really uncomfortable here." And they'd go, "Well, you look like you're having a good time." And I'd go, "I do?

Well, I, well, I am." And you know what?

By God, I would start to have a good time.

As soon as I got rid of the secret, I began to experience what was going on around me.

The big lesson for me is I cannot manage a secret and my life at the same time.

You know, my windshield gets dirty on the inside.

I have to keep it clean on the inside.

My dad got me up at 4:00 in the morning, 5:00 in the morning, and said we were gonna have a, a father and son bonding experience.

I don't think he said bonding, but that's what it was all about.

He was gonna take me to see the Cleveland Indians play baseball.

And so it was in 1952, I think.

He put me in the backseat of his '51 Mercury, and he and his friend Ike McShane was passing a bottle back and forth, driving through a horrible rainstorm.

"See the Cleveland Indians play baseball." "Don't look at me, Dad.

I can see, I can close my eyes.

I can close my eyes, and I can still see the car going back and forth around that r- while he's drank and driving through that.

I felt like it was my concentration that was keeping the car on the road, you know?

That stays with you, that experience.

That's what we do as alcoholics.

A special welcome to all of you Al-Anons.

God bless you for staying with us, you know?

We drove through this incredible rainstorm.

My, my dad was, and he kept looking back at me.

"You're gonna see the Cleveland Indians play baseball," you know?

Drove through that rainstorm to Cincinnati.

Cleveland Indians don't play in Cincinnati.

We sat in the c- you know, the car.

The, the parking lot was empty.

My dad went, "Well, we're gonna get great seats.

I'll tell you that, boy." We sat there for a while, and the rain cleared up, and he finally walked over.

And my dad was wearing, was wearing brown suit pants, a sleeveless T-shirt, sometimes referred to these days as a wife-beater, and slippers.

He walked over there, and he looks at the, looks at the, uh, the schedule at the box office window, and he realized what he'd done.

And I saw something that I call the alcoholic slump, the, "Oh, God, I did it again," you know?

And the shoulders went down, and he-

Got that look of shame and he...

I mean, I know it because I did it.

I did that dance as a, as a father just as he did.

He walked back to the car and he said something that was probably one of the most important senten- sentences of my life.

He looked at me and he said, "Well, kid, there ain't gonna be a ballgame today, but it's the thought that counts." And I went, "Oh,

Yeah, I can do that," you know?

And for 49 years I was one of the thoughtiest creatures you ever- You know?

I thought about being generous.

I thought about- I thought about keeping promises.

I thought about earning a living h- honestly.

I thought about giving to charity.

I thought about being a faithful husband.

I thought about voting, but I didn't do a lot of those things.

Most of those things I didn't do.

Then I found the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you gave me a great gift.

You said, "It doesn't matter what you think.

It almost doesn't matter what you feel.

What is important is how you act." You gave me an amazing gift.

You said, "This is how to turn your life around.

You monitor how you act, and it will change the way you feel." The

spiritual life is not a theory.

Incidentally, it says that, you know, that's one that'll drop you to your knees right away.

You go, "God, what's a spiritual life?" I called my sponsor.

He said, "Well..." Let me back up.

My sponsor called me when I was newly sober, and he said, "How you treating the world today?" And I went, "Wait a minute.

You've had a slip of the tongue.

Um, uh, don't be embarrassed." "You," I said, "How, how am I treating the world?

Don't you mean, how's the world treating me?" And he said, "I don't give a rat's butt how the, the world's treating you." You know?

He said, "You, we, I can't do anything about it, and you probably can't either." He said, "I asked how you were treating the world today," he said, "because that's what has to be your, your point of, of

That's what you have to take care of.

You have to treat the world differently than you did before you got here, and that's how you get to stay." His name is Jerry, and he's 37 years sober and

going through some health things right now, but it's an endless gift that he...

This is a man in 37 years who's given life to somebody to give life to somebody to give life to somebody.

We can be proud to be members of Alcoholics Anonymous because we give life away by coming here.

We find life, and we give it away.

My, uh, my father was killed in an alcohol-related accident when he was,

when, uh, when I was 13 years old, and I was shipped off to live with an aunt and uncle in Long Beach, California, where everybody is six feet tall and beautiful, tanned,

What color I have I got from the light in my refrigerator, you know?

Everybody hits puberty out there at 9, you know?

I had the world's slowest body clock.

My first actual prayer was me in the shower going, "God, I don't care how big you make me.

Just cover me with fur," you know?

I got hair places I don't need hair at, you know, now.

Um, the tops of my ears don't get cold, you know?

Part of my program of recovery and in presenting a nice face to the world is to every now and then stop and let my girlfriend do a serious pluck, you know?

Like, "There's a little, little something on the side of your nose there that looks like an antenna.

Uh, welcome to your 60s, Wally.

The only time I ever felt like I fit in out there is when I drank, you know?

Joseph Campbell says we need rites of passage.

You know, we need, we need to, to experience certain, certain rituals in our life, and evidently the...

I'm not sure that alcohol gave me comfort at that point in my life, but I know that the ritual of participating with other teenagers gave me comfort, you know?

And, and, and I drank, and I drank.

I don't know when I crossed the line from use to abuse to addiction, but I did.

I, I was, like, about 15 years old, and I swam across a, uh, a, this little body of water on an inland beach in, in Long Beach, California.

I remember about 2:00 in the morning or, it wasn't that late, probably midnight, looking at the boats across this little thing, about 150 yards, 200 yards across the, this little body of water

And I swam across with my buddies, climbed up on there, and stole alcohol.

Found an absolute treasure chest of a bar.

Put two bottles down my swimming trunks, a bottle in each hand, dove back in the water, and swim back.

And all of a sudden I was doing a scene out of Jaws.

You know, I was underwater, you know?

I actually opened up a bottle and tried to pour a little booze out to get some air in, you know?

I never pretended to be brilliant, you know?

But it's interesting, because what I was getting was a billboard.

I was 15 years old, and alcohol was drowning me.

Somebody told me in early recovery, "Look for billboards." You know?

We're not that subtle, you know?

God was giving me a billboard that alcohol was gonna, was gonna drown me.

Incidentally, if you had run into Paul Williams in those days in school, and you wanted to talk to me, I would've tapped my watch and gone like that, like I was busy.

I would've kept moving because I didn't know how to...

I just didn't know how to talk to you.

People scared the hell out of me.

So I would keep moving, and it's what I did.

I didn't know how to have a relationship with a human being.

You know, I liked girls better than boys as soon as I found out there was a difference.

And I was at the perfect height to discover the difference right away, I mean.

Them are, them are breasts, aren't they?

That incidentally is a physical preference, not a moral judgment.

You know, love whoever you want to love, you know?

Um, but I didn't know how to have a relationship.

Girls scared me, and especially...

So what does somebody that doesn't know anything about relationships do with their life?

I became a writer of love songs.

And, uh, and thank you very much.

I wrote some real codependent anthems in the '70s.

You get sober, and all of a sudden you start looking at what you've done.

You realize, yeah, I Won't Last a Day Without You isn't really a healthy thought, you know?

talking about your higher power or another alcoholic.

I finally found a way to make it work, you know?

I won't last a day without you, you know?

Uh, I started using a variety...

I'm one of those, one of those strange alcoholics who used a lot of drugs, you know?

And, and, uh, then I found amphetamines, and I went down the line, you know, like we all do.

You know, my gateway drug was slits.

And then I moved forward to, to the rest of it.

And, and if, if alcohol made me feel big enough to deal with the rest of the world, cocaine made me feel like I could shoot basketball for money.

It just, you know, I was good-looking and

full of ideas and, by God, you know?

In the '70s, I had great success, and that's about the time that my, that, that, that my drinking and using was really beginning to roll.

And if I had great success at my career at that time, it's because I had blinders on.

And you can measure that success as about 5% of my...

And if I had great success in five degrees of my life, it means I had three- 360 degrees that were either failure or just ignored parts of my life, parts that needed attention.

Uh, I watched my kids grow up out the window and, uh, raised by nannies.

I didn't know, I didn't know crap about how to, how to live.

Had no idea how to live, you know?

When I did get out and hit the road, you know, I hit the road under the same conditions my dad did, and I caused damage.

I injured a young lady's face in an accident 20 years before I got sober, you know?

I did the exact same thing my dad did, you know?

I, when I le- I eventually left my wife and kids for a 22 a 22-year-old psych major, you know?

You know, the two of us may have were really...

The two of us were one really healthy person, you know?

Actually, that was her, you know?

And she was honest enough, and brave enough, and caring enough, and elegant enough, and eloquent enough to share the truth with me.

She looked at me and she said, "You know what?

I love you, but you're an alcoholic and you're an addict, and you're gonna die, and you've gotta get help or I'm not gonna stay with you." And so I did, you know, what, you know, a lot of us do.

I went to treatment the first time to try...

I said, "Okay, I don't think I've really got a problem, but I'll go for you." I went to a place called Schick Shadel 1986 for aversion therapy.

Now, if you're not familiar with aversion therapy, what it is is they give you a shot to make you sick.

And when you're really sick, then they give you booze.

And you drink booze and throw up.

And then, then ev- they do that every other day.

And then the second day they take you in and they give you a shot of sodium pentothal, which is the truth serum, knocks you out.

And then while you're under, they ask you if you want a drink.

If you say, "Yes, I want a drink," you go back and throw up some more the next day, you know?

They said, "Paul, we're really worried about you." I said, "Why is that?" They said, "You're the only person that's ever been consistently early for the sodium pentothal," you know?

Give me some of that, you know?

Like Art Carney in that old Honeymooners.

You know, you just, you fall into yourself.

In, in defense of Schick Shadel, I have to tell you, they probably talked to me about AA.

I probably learned something about...

I don't just, I wasn't ready, so I didn't pay attention.

I, on my own, with willpower, for seven months did not drink alcohol, and I was a joy to be around, I'll tell you.

Seven months without a drink when I went to Jamaica to work on a project.

And at 2:00 in the afternoon at Ocho Rios, uh, Jamaica, at a beautiful home, I was out by the pool writing.

And the gentleman in a white coat with a silver tray, uh, came out and he said, "Mr.

Williams, uh, maybe you'd like to have something to drink." And I went, "Well, I am the Paul Williams." It's been seven months.

I'm just getting, like, showing the world, you know?

So at 2:00 in the afternoon, I had one rum and Coke.

At 2:00 in the morning, I was at Bob Marley's grave- ...

explaining reggae to a lot of Black people I didn't know, you know?

'Cause with the n- right amount of alcohol in me, I'm, you know, I'm the same race you are.

I'm a, you know, I'm a, a chronic and habitual liar.

Because I have to keep reinventing myself to be the person I think you want me to be.

You know, I don't mean anything by it.

I don't even want applause for it.

That's a real gift of this program.

It's the first real gift of it to me, is that I felt safe.

And you know, it's, it's at the bottom of Maslow's needs.

Before we can do any of the other thing in life or come up to self-actualization, we have to feel safe.

I was off and running, and the 22-year-old psy- psych major suggested, suggested to me that maybe I wasn't still sober.

And I went, "What's wrong with you?

Why can't you trust me," you know?

You've got a lot of issues with men, don't you, you know?

And this poor little girl would cry.

She would doubt herself, and she'd go to bed.

And after I knew she was in bed, I'd sneak out the puppy door and score more drugs, you know?

We laugh at the most awful things and...

There's, there's a reason for this.

We had a really squeaky front door, you know?

And when you've been up two days and nights and sounds are amplified, it's like the sound of the door was like, aah.

A normie would've oiled the front door, you know?

That would've been constructive and intelligent and helpful to the general house-

And if I had done that, they would've known something was wrong.

Eventually, the young lady was gone.

Eventually, I wound up where most alcoholics and addicts wind up: by myself, 4:00 in the morning, peeking out the venetian blinds at the tree police.

I knew they were out there, and they were coming for me, you know?

So what did my drugs and alcohol give me eventually?

What they gave me was absolute terror.

They had failed to work, and I was stuck in that place in my mind where I thought I could be, if I got the right combination going again, the magic juggling act, trying to get the combination going

where finally it would work again.

Eventually, I had a full-blown psychotic episode before going on stage in Oklahoma at a university show.

It was promoted by a really nice guy down there that, that, that, um, was standing next to me as we walked out of the, the hotel room.

I was on my way to do the concert, and all of a sudden I was thrown higher than my own head against the wall.

I was thrown down escalator stairs.

I was tortured by an invisible monster that, uh, nobody could see, including me, but I could feel him twist my ears.

I was, for 45 minutes, I was tortured, you know?

Needless to say, and this guy, I can close my eyes and see his face like, "Hello, what's going on here?" You know?

It's not often you see somebody thr- that's thrown down stairs, you know, or escalators, stairs by an invisible monster.

But obviously I could not do the show that day.

Two months later, in a blackout, I called a doctor and said, "I need help.

I need to go to treatment." He called me the next day and he said, "I found a place for you." I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "You called me last night,

and you said you wanted to get sober." And I said, "Somebody's been using my body again," you know?

But I had that moment of clarity

that I knew that that's what I needed, and I went into treatment, and I haven't had a drink since.

was given amazing gifts, and I, I, for the first time in my life, I felt that beginning of safety.

Just raising my hand at an AA meeting, it does something for me.

It pulls the ribs away from my lungs.

It lets me take that deep God breath and know that I'm safe, know that I'm with my family, and know that I'm gonna be all right, that I don't have to hide things from you.

I can tell you who I am, you know?

And I sat down to write my first step, and I grabbed a piece of paper that I thought was blank, and I said, "God, I don't know, I don't know how to do this.

There's something that everybody else knows that I don't know, and you have to tell me what it is, because I don't wanna crawl out the puppy door anymore.

I don't want, I don't wanna drive with my kids in the car loaded like I did." And I did, you know?

I couldn't make it from my home in Santa Barbara to LA with the kids in the car without having to toot.

I'd go, "Hey, is that cow on fire?" You know?

Couldn't make it on a, on an hour drive

The bottle of vodka under the seat or the little two-gram bottle in my pocket.

So I did exactly the same things to my kids that my dad did to me, you know?

So in treatment, I said, "God, what I, there's something I haven't seen in you." I didn't know the expression "I want what you've got," but that's what I was asking for.

"Let me see what I need to see to do this, 'cause I don't wanna do this anymore." And I grabbed this piece of paper to start my first step, and I noticed something was printed on the other side.

And I turned it over and, for the first time in my life, I read the word, "God, I offer myself to thee, to build with me and to do with me as thou will.

Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do thy will.

Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help with thy power, thy love, and thy way of life.

May I do thy will always." And when I read those words, I read the third step prayer, and I was able to forgive myself the bondage of self.

I went, "Oh my God, you've been taken prisoner." You were taken prisoner at 13.

And it's judge-judgmental thinking.

I mean, it's, it's way more than, than, than, than substance abuse.

It's a darkness of the spirit, you know, that I can jump right back into in a heartbeat.

You know, there's a, there's a great...

Hyde when I was about a year sober, and, and there's a scene in Dr.

Hyde where the doctor has been playing with the drugs and turning into the monster, and he's sitting on a park bench in the middle of the day, and a beautiful woman walks by, and he thinks about controlling that woman.

He thinks about having his way with her, and ugly thoughts, and mean thoughts.

And all of a sudden, he notices that the change is coming over him, the metamorphosis.

He's turning into the monster, and he realizes, "I no longer need the, the drugs to turn into the monster." And I thought, "Welcome to recovery." You know, it's like...

The spiritual life is not a theory.

That was the message that leaped off the pages of the book for me.

The spiritual life is not a theory.

How do I live a spiritual life?

Well, I gotta have a higher power in my life.

Excuse me for mentioning drugs at, at this amazing convention, but, but I have to tell you something that occurred to me in treatment.

You know, I've been up two days and nights.

When I got sober, I weighed 187.

I weighed 50 pounds more than I do now, you know?

It looked like one of those little dolls you push over, and they come back up, you know?

Only with really bad breath, you know?

But I've been up two days and nights, and, you know, and I'm, I've been up so long doorknobs are scaring me, you know?

It's like, "Oh, God, get it off me." You know.

I'm calling the dealer, and I'm calling the dealer, and the dealer's not home.

And all of a sudden, the dealer's home, and I, and I can tell by her voice that she's got something.

She says she'll be right over, and I immediately feel better.

I make my little run to her or her to me.

All of a sudden, I've got my bottle of Stoli, and I've got my eight ball, and I open it up, and it's dancing white and crystal clear, and I'm...

I'm look-- glancing at myself in the mirror going, "You know what?

You should be doing Guess Jeans ads," you know?

I haven't had a drink or a toot, but I feel fabulous.

Now, as soon as I begin to use this stuff, I'm back doing the juggling act.

I'm, now I'm running out of toot, too much booze.

I better, uh, you know, emergency dental work again was my excuse, you know?

But before I used it, before I used anything, I felt amazing.

And it occurs to me that what I was experiencing was faith.

I had faith in the bottle, that I could get through the, the day.

Little Paulie had what he needed to get through the day.

And obviously, if faith in, in something that is as impotent as this crap is gonna work for me, imagine what a faith in a

true loving God is gonna do, you know?

has sustained me to a life I could not imagine.

My name has not been on the cover of Variety since I got sober, but it has not been in the obituaries, which is where it was, it was headed, and that's all the gift of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Restraint of, of pen and tongue, uh, the ability

to walk into a room and be honest with people about what's going on with me.

The gifts that I've been given have been endless.

I'll tell you, when I was newly sober, I was gonna save the world.

I, I, I spent my 60th birthday in Ireland, and I was like I was dragging people off of barstools.

It was just, you know, "Oh, my God," you know?

In Ireland, people kept grabbing me, going, "Where'd you hide the gold, you little bastard?" Yeah.

I've discovered golf and sobriety.

I f- I, I've-- Anywhere that I go, I can be at home.

I can-- I have an absolute complete life.

I felt very disconnected from my music when I got sober.

And, uh, you know, one of the things I've-

I've found through the last 13 years is that inevitably no is a gift.

I was supposed to go do a movie in, in New Zealand about five years ago, and, uh, the whole thing fell through.

Well, the whole thing didn't fall through.

They got the guy they really wanted, you know?

And so I, they, they told me they wouldn't need my services after all, and somebody c- had called and said, "Would you like to come to this thing called Tin Pan South in Nashville?" So I headed down to Nashville,

the only city in the world incidentally where you can go into a French restaurant and order escargot and gravy, you know?

But I went to Nashville, and there's something in the...

Yeah, I'll have the Crepe Velveeta, thank you.

Uh- I went to Nashville, and there's something in the water there where I knew I wanted to write again.

I wanted to get back in touch with my music.

You know, I had been, I had been dealing with, you know, I, I mean, I, I, every now and then I slip into my Jiminy Cricket/Gandhi mode where I think I'm gonna save the world, and

And I had, had picked up my certificate as a drug and alcohol counselor when I was about a year sober and was gonna do that, and, and went, "Wait a minute.

It's time to get back and write some music." So I went to Nashville, and I had my first writing appointment of the day.

Now understand I had not in sobriety sat down with another human being and let, and tried to write with them in the room.

That requires a certain, certain courage to share your bad ideas with somebody, you know?

And walk through that thing of them becoming good ideas.

So I w- I hit my knees in the bathroom of the hotel suite, and I said, "God, we're gonna try to write a song today, and, uh, if you're in the mood, I'd really appreciate

it if you'd show up, 'cause I'm really scared, you know?

And I, I don't know that I can do this." So I headed out to write with this guy.

I had picked out a guy that, that I wanted to write with who was just an amazingly talented guy.

He'd written some wonderful songs that I admired.

He's from Minnesota, so he only smiles when he has to.

And I went, "Oh my God, this was an awful mistake." I just, I looked at him, and I knew he didn't like me, and I didn't like him, and I was like...

I went into his ba- I said, I said, "Can I use your bathroom?" I needed to pray some more.

Went, went into his bathroom to hit my knees, and I noticed on his wall reflected backward in his mirror, I saw directly over my head the Serenity Prayer.

And I went, "Oh my God." And I went running out.

I went, "Wait, are you...?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, me too.

I'm a..." He said, "I know, I know." And

it was just, it, it's what I'm experiencing right now.

It's what the gentleman from, from London was saying.

"Pick me up and love me," you know?

We sat down and, and wrote a song for Diamond Rio that day, a song called You're Gone, and it was about our mutual experience of what it is like when, when somebody helps

you and then moves on in your life, you know?

The good news is I'm better for the time we spent together.

And it's, it's, that's been what it's like.

I went back to Nashville a c- a couple years ago.

I had just turned 10 at the time, or 11 maybe.

Uh, yeah, I was 10, so it was three years ago.

And I went, went to Nashville, and I had been out to speak at the prison, and I was having one of my Gandhi moments.

I had left the prison having saved souls left and right, you know?

Had this little light that emanated from behind my eyes, you know?

And, uh, went up to my, went up to my hotel room, and my hotel key wouldn't work.

And it's a quick trip from Gandhi to Himmler for me.

I just, you know, "Ach, sonnenarsch," you know?

"Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da." So my hotel key doesn't work.

"It's not hotel..." And the lobby is full of guys with these things on, the little name things and all.

And it's a convention of talent buyers.

And I'm walking through this lobby, and this one guy comes up to me and he said, "I just wanted to say hello to you." And he, "My name's Gary, and I noticed on thing it says Oklahoma City." And he said, "I booked you one

Are you the guy that booked me when I, bleh," you know?

When I did my Linda Blair, my bleh.

And he said, he said, "Yeah, that was me." And I went, "Oh my God." I said, "Well, it, it must have just scared you to death." And he said, "It sure did." I said, "Well,

I'm 10 years sober, and I just was at, uh, the prison, and blah, blah, blah."

blah, blah." He said, "Yeah, I heard in the rooms you were sober." And I went, "Oh my God." I said, "Well,

I'm 10 years sober." I said, "You found it too, huh?" And he reached in his pocket and he pulled out a chip for 17 years.

the story where you find out that we're not always the star of our own recovery.

Because I said to him, "My God, you were-- I did the math." I said, "You were seven years sober when this happened.

What did you do?" He said, "I called my sponsor." I

And what did your sponsor tell you to do?" He said, "I'll tell you exactly what we did, my friend." He said, "We called a bunch of other alcoholics, and that afternoon we started a prayer circle

that you would find recovery." "That,

And two months later, in a blackout, I called a doctor and said I wanted to go to the hospital, and I found the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous." It was the most amazing...

Well, right up to that moment, I was just absolutely, it was the Paul

Williams Show, and look at me sober.

And all of a sudden I realized, my God, it's an absolute gift.

It's a gift from other alcoholics, and your only hope is to pass it on.

I've been given amazing tools to live my life.

I don't know how much recovery there is in this pitch.

I don't know if you can hear a lot about how to stay sober.

That's pretty much spelled out for in the book.

You know, that, that Big Book has got what we need.

You know, the, between the Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve, you know.

But what I hope you hear is my absolute gratitude for the fact that at 49 years old, I wa- I was able to, in my 50s, be a newcomer at life, a beginner

at life, and I was given an enthusiasm and a joy that I had never experienced before.

Just a little over two years ago, my son called me.

And he said, "Dad, I haven't had a drink in 22 days." I went, "Wow, congratulations.

Uh, how do you feel?" He said, "Awful." He said, "I keep buying drinks from my friends and watch them drink it," you know.

I said, "Would you like to go to a meeting?" This little, this little atheist or agnostic buddy of the kid says to me over the telephone, "Yes, Dad, I'd like

to go to a meeting." So as it turned out, we went to the Log Cabin in Los Angeles, which is the room I got sober in, and the speaker at the Log Cabin was a guy named Wes

that I sponsored, who was visiting from Denver that day.

We heard Wes speak, and for the first time in my life, I saw my son Cole raise his hand and say, "My name is Cole, and I'm an alcoholic," and stood up, you know?

So we went to breakfast, and I slowly

but surely backed out of his recovery, backed out of his program, you know.

He, I went to breakfast with my sponsee and a sponsee of his and, and just kind of backed away, and he started going to the cabin, you know.

Got a phone call about a month later, and he said, "Dad, guess what?

you could ever want in your life was in that sentence, you know.

"Dad, you're my great-grand sponsor.

Isn't God amazing?" Everything I need, everything I need to live my life is in that statement, because it says that if I'm his great-grand sponsor, I'm

a recovering alcoholic and, and a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

He says, "Dad, you're my great-grand sponsor." It means that he's also working a program, a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And then the magical statement, "Isn't God amazing?" If we can live our lives in that moment of absolute thunderous joy, realizing

that God is amazing, doing for us things we cannot do for ourselves, we have nothing to fear.