Earl H. from Scottsdale, AZ at Rule 62, Hebron, KY 8/4/2018

(0:10 – 1:38)
Hi everybody, my name is Earl. I’m an alcoholic. Hi, thank you for having me here.
It’s always an honor and a privilege to do this. Thank you to the committee for asking me
to come. Thank you, Pat, for picking me up at the airport and getting me here.
It’s always nice to get off a plane. You know, you feel like you just got launched into
space. I do, because I never pay attention to anything.
I just, you know, I look at the calendar and it just says Kentucky. All right, get on a plane,
fly here. This trip was a little weird, because I was in L.A. on Thursday and I had to get
from L.A. back to Scottsdale to catch a flight the following morning to fly out here to be
with you guys.
And those of you who know me know that flying is not my favorite thing. And so my flight
kept getting delayed out of Burbank to fly on Thursday, right? This plane’s got to go. It’s
got to go.
I’ve got to be there. It’s going to be a quick turnaround. I’ve got to unpack one bag, pack
another, and off I go again, right? Say hi to the wife, say hi to the dog, go.
And so we take off and they come right on and they go, well, there’s a sandstorm in
Phoenix. And I’m thinking, well, the place we just were is fine. Why don’t you just turn
this thing around and just go back to where we were? Because, I mean, I do want to get
to Kentucky, but not through a sandstorm.
(1:38 – 6:16)
I don’t want to go through a sandstorm. So they took off. So the hour flight turned out to
be two hours and 40 minutes long as we’re flying over and we’re getting diverted to
Tucson.
But that’s not going to work. So we’re flying around up there and there’s an electrical
storm hits. And so there’s lightning that doesn’t go down.
It just kind of goes sideways through the, you know what I mean? And everybody’s got
their windows open. I mean, it got, and it’s the turbulence hits and it gets so bad. The
girl behind me, and she was in the middle seat in the row behind me, right? I know
because I did the big head swivel right in the middle of it.
And she called her mother to kind of say, you know, might not be coming home. I’m like,
hey, hey, hey, you should keep that to yourself. So I was a wreck when I got, I finally,
we’re going in.
It’s like terrific. That sounds very appropriate. We’re going in.
It’s like, you know what I mean? Are we at war suddenly? What are we doing? You know?
So we went in and we’re getting off and the flight attendant said, I think you should all
thank the pilot for navigating us through that storm effectively. And I got to tell you, I
understand her thinking, but I wasn’t having it, that thinking. I was thinking about who’s
in charge of this? This is ridiculous.
You don’t fly people. They knew that that was happening when we took off. I’m certain of
it.
And they just said, they’ll figure it out on the way. So I got home and just sort of like, you
know, stared at the ceiling, you know, with my dog looking at me like, what’s wrong with
you, man? You don’t look right. Unpacked the bag, packed the bag, flew here.
And everybody has been really nice to me since I’ve been here. You guys have been
great. And I’ve gone, I’ve been in AA since then.
Since then, I just came to AA. And I heard a lot of wonderful talks and I’ve met a lot of
wonderful people. And my talk is superfluous.
I mean, this talk is completely unnecessary after hearing Carla up here at 7. She was
awesome, man. That was just a great talk. Yeah.
But schedule says we got to do this, so buckle up. Here we go. This one’s going to have a
sandstorm and an electrical storm in it.
Had a little coffee. Probably shouldn’t be allowed. I didn’t start drinking until I was 12.
I waited. I waited. That was as long as I could hold off, was 12.
Four, it made sense at four. I remember walking down a hallway. You know, you have
little snapshots of your, if you have a tortured childhood and you live in a house with an
extremely violent individual, what you have is you have pictures.
You have little snapshots that you remember, that you kind of cling to. Those are kind of
your anchors where you climbed your way out of this vicious childhood, if you want to
call it that. And I remember walking down a hallway and my father put his arm on my
shoulder, which was unusual.
Because even by four, we shook hands and we fought. That’s it. There wasn’t any, there
was no friendly stuff, you know.
And he had his arm around me and I was four, count them, four. And he said, you know,
you’re going to be a man soon. And I remember thinking, at four, I remember thinking, I
don’t think that’s right.
I’m pretty sure that’s incorrect. I am not going to be a man soon. I’ve been looking
around.
I mean, I’m not even up to people’s belts yet. You know what I mean? I got a long way to
go. So I mean, I was troubled and it was confusing and I’m getting mixed messages and
I’m getting beat on.
And I mean, by the time I’m 12, they do a bunch of tests on me, right, and I get into this
boarding school. So how I find out I’m going to boarding school is they, my dad comes in
my room and says, get in the car. All right, we got in the car and we, it was a caravan of
family members and we drove and drove and drove and got to this place and I got out of
the car and he got out of the car and nobody else got out of the car.
They just kept the engines running. You know what I mean? And he got up, he came out
and he put a suitcase down next to me and he shook my hand and he said, this will
make a man out of you and got back in the car and drove off. Now, the feeling was I just
got thrown away by the people who knew me best in the world and I didn’t know what I’d
done wrong to get thrown out like that, right? It was devastating to me emotionally.
(6:17 – 7:59)
The fact is, was that I was being given an opportunity for a wonderful education, held me
in good stead to this very day. But I’m not a facts guy. I’m a feelings guy.
And if it feels bad, it is bad. And this was bad. It turns out I’m the youngest and smallest
kid in a school of 250 boys.
They’d scoured the earth to find 250 of the brightest, most disturbed young men they
could find, like Lord of the Flies in this joint, right? And they had us all in this, and there
were 249 teenagers and me. That doesn’t mean anything to anybody but a 12-year-old,
right? They’re teenagers. I’m not.
I don’t belong here. Called home for three days, talking to my mother going, look, you
got to come get me. This is all wrong.
Just come get me. There’s nothing else to talk about. Just come get me.
And I hear my father in the background, hang up. You know, my mother’s like, oh, got to
go. And after three days, it was like something broke inside me and I decided, you know
what? You don’t want me.
I don’t want you. Screw you. You know what I mean? And I just turned my back on my
family and pretty much never went back.
A few days later, I met Tiny. Every high school’s got a guy named Tiny, right? He’s like
6’4″, 240, you know, plays guard on the football team. I’m this little, you know, five-foot-
tall, 103-pound, you know, frightened child.
Actually, he found me in the quad, right, trying to make my way from one class to the
next. And I was on my way to Latin, you know, and moved across. And he looked at me.
He said, how you doing, punk? And he slapped me in the back of the head and just
sprawled, you know, just sent me flying out in the quad. And my books went flying, all
that. And all the other kids standing around.
And, yeah, kids are, you know, we’re a cruel bunch, you know what I mean? They’re all
like, yeah, look at the little guy. He just got flattened by, you know, Tiny. Yeah, yeah,
good move, guy, yeah.
(8:00 – 8:27)
But Tiny thought he just smacked the little guy, you know? He didn’t realize he had
smacked somebody that was willing to die over this, right? You know? I just got out of a
place where that went on all the time. I ain’t starting up now. So I got up and walked
over and I belted Tiny as hard as I possibly could and just stood there looking at him,
right? Now, the punch I threw, which was a very good one, I might add, had no effect on
Tiny whatsoever.
(8:28 – 8:55)
Tiny just looked down at me and he said, you got a lot of guts, kid. And then he beat the
crap out of me, right? And as I’m taking the beating, I’m thinking, this is going pretty
good. And I thought it was going good because he had said, you got a lot of guts.
My violence had masked my fear, right? So my first tool for living was, when frightened,
attack. If you’re attacking people, they’re not worried about how scared you are. They
don’t see that.
(8:55 – 12:03)
You know, you can mask it with the violence. So that became, you know, you looked at
me sideways and I just came at you, you know? And I went back to my dorm room,
sitting there waiting for the bleeding to stop. I mean, he beat me, right? Because I just
kept popping back up, right? I mean, it was bad.
I mean, dudes were sitting down around going, bro, just stay down, man. It ain’t like
you’re going to change the outcome, man. And I couldn’t do it, you know what I mean?
You know what I mean.
If I could get up, I got up. And you know, I said, you know, I may lose, but I’m going to
make you look bad for beating up this little guy right over here. So fire away, big man.
Bam! Right back on the ground. Until finally I couldn’t get up, right? And after a while, I
went back to my room, you know, sitting there on the edge of my bed. I got knots, you
know what I mean? Eyes were closing, you know, waiting for the bleeding to stop.
And the word spread across this campus like wildfire. Watch out for this little eye tower
kid. He’s a maniac.
He attacked Tiny. You lose the conversation quickly. So the cool guys came around.
A guy stuck his head in my room and he goes, bro, you don’t smoke a joint? And I said,
yes, I do. And I didn’t even know what that meant. I didn’t know what he was talking
about.
All I knew was this guy was saying, do you want to come with us? The answer was, yeah,
man, I’m alone in the universe, man. My family threw me away. Giant people are trying
to kill me.
You know, you want to go smoke this joint thing? You know, I’m down. Let’s go. So we
went and picked up Steve on the way.
And Steve had a Tupperware container full of cheap red wine. I mean, you know, no
grapes involved red wine. The Fortified, the Mad Dog, you know what I mean? I heard
mention of it earlier, right? Yeah.
And so we went back, two 13-year-olds and a 12-year-old. Babies, babies, right? And he
fired up the joint. And I don’t know, you know that, I’m sure none of you have grabbed a
joint from somebody else and passed it on to someone.
I’m sure none of you have been involved in that kind of behavior. But you know that
technique of where you reach for it, and you stick that one finger out, and you just, you
know, the guy’s got the joint, and you just slap it with that finger, and you pin it with the
thumb, and it’s just sort of a one-slick move. It’s just kapow, you got it, right? I do not
know how I knew to do that.
I think it’s a DNA thing. I don’t know. Like, somebody was hitting the weed, and, you
know, my Civil War folk or something, I don’t know.
But that joint came around, and I just quack, you know? Took a hit off of that, and it
burned my lungs. I’m like, uh-uh. That is uncomfortable.
Give me the wine. So the wine came around. I took a pull on that wine, and you know
how it goes down and hits your stomach, and that wafting action, you know what I
mean? It just kind of bounces back up.
It’s like, oh. That was nasty, right? Give me that joint back. Let’s try that again.
(12:05 – 17:06)
Pop that joint back, you know? So the wine, I’m looking at these two guys, Matt and
Steve, and I’m like, yeah, all right, you know? I’m like this, you know? And, I mean, it
happened. That thing that makes me bodily and mentally different from my fellows
occurred. And suddenly I was comfortable standing where I was standing, doing what I
was doing with the people I was doing it with.
And I never felt like that before in my life. That was the first time in my life I ever
remember completely exhaling. Just that.
I was home, man. I don’t know, is it the pot? Is it the wine? Is it the fact that I’m standing
here with my two very close personal friends, Matt and Steve? Because these are my
boys now. I don’t know, and I don’t care.
How we got here is irrelevant to me. It’s just, we got here. And I need to do this every
day.
This needs to be a part of every day. Because the fact is, in the beginning, it worked
perfectly. Right? I mean, it worked perfectly.
Nobody died. Nobody went to jail. No blood was drawn.
Nobody went to the nut house. Nobody went to prison. All those things were going to
happen.
But they didn’t happen that night. That night, feel better than you’ve ever felt before.
Nothing bad happens.
Dude, I’m in. Right? Woke up the next morning, first thought, where’s Matt and Steve? I
got to track those boys down. And if I see, and if Tony gets between me and them, we’re
going to take another run at it.
At some point, that man’s fists are just going to give in. So, I mean, that was humble
beginnings for me. You know, a little pot, a little wine.
Thirteen was pills. The only reason I took a pill was a guy, I was on a 10-hour pass at this
party. I don’t know where I was.
It was just some party some people took me to. And they said, you want, a guy took out
his hand, would you like a couple of pills? And I said, yes, I would. I threw them in my
mouth and swallowed them and said, what were those? Because that’s how we do.
Right? Normal folk go, well, what do we got here? Prior to consumption. I just need to
know, should I lay down or are we going to paint the house? What are we doing? I just
want to get ready. That’s all.
I don’t care. And you know what? And I think that right in that moment tells you pretty
much all you need to know about the rest of my drinking and using history, right? Was
I’m not a specialist. I didn’t get one thing rolling and just ride it into the dirt and crawl on
in here, man.
My drug of choice is what do you got? It’s all anti-roll medication. Because I learned to
say, look, if I get to choose, I mean, I like alcohol, heroin, barbiturates. These are a few of
my favorite things.
I like all these things. I like right in here, right? I like right in here, man. I do have a good
night sitting around checking my pulse.
I don’t need a window. I don’t need a woman. I don’t need a TV.
Only people need TVs are speed freaks. I love you guys. I love you spinners, man.
I love the way you tweakers will walk. You’re the only people in the world who will walk
into a room and go, I believe I need to take that television apart. I love you for that.
I don’t get it, but I respect it. But if you don’t have any of those other things, I’ll take a
big bag of the cocaine. Can’t go down, let’s go up.
I’m happy driving the freeways decoding license plates. Let’s go. Just instant psychosis.
Come on, man. Come on. Sure.
I’ve done it. Anybody remember Black Beauties? There you go. Three of those and all of
a sudden you look at a friend and go, we need to go to Seattle.
Everybody just gets in the car and you don’t stop until you get there. Because you don’t
need to. It wasn’t about down or up.
It was about I got to get out of right here, right now. Because right here, right now, I’m
restless, irritable, and discontented. Right here, right now, I’m comparing my insides to
your outsides and I’m losing every time.
That’s what’s up. I can’t be in this moment. And if I’m not mistaken, the only place life
exists for us is now.
(17:08 – 18:52)
We got to get between those. That’s what’s up. Just get in there.
There isn’t life anywhere else so just follow along now. Get in there. All you speed freaks
jump the gun.
Just a half a beat early. But that’s it. If life is right here, right now, if this is all there is,
right, because that’s the power of life is in this moment.
It’s not in the moments to come. It’s not in the moments past. It’s right now.
This is where it’s at now. Right? That’s what we have, this together. Right? It’s an
amazing thing to know that.
It’s also an amazing thing to recognize that you’re so terrified of right here, right now,
that you will surrender your life one day at a time to drinking and using to avoid the
living of life in this moment. And that’s what I did. I surrendered my life.
I let it kill me one day at a time. Let it take my life one day at a time. I let it remove me
from the only place I could live one day at a time.
I let it take me willingly, gladly. Yes, I’ll do whatever is necessary to get whatever I need
into my body to remove me from this moment so that I am not present. I am not in life.
I am not in the world. I am absent. And that’s the way I roll.
That was a humble beginning still. Still, you know, 14 was psychedelics. The only reason
I took a psychedelic is I was on a 10-hour pass again with this girl named Debbie.
Very bad girl. I will love her till the day I die. Right? That girl was mad.
(18:53 – 19:39)
You know? I mean, and she said, would you like to drop some acid? And I said, well, yes,
I would, Debbie. Again, I have no idea what we’re talking about, but if Debbie wants to
do it, I’m in. So she took out a lipstick tube and spun it up, and on the end of it was a
little pill, which I thought was kind of clever.
You could seal it like that, right? Took the pill off, threw it in my mouth, swallowed it, and
she looked at me and said, did you take that whole thing? And I said, well, yes, I did,
Debbie. It was a very tiny pill. And she said, well, that was three hits of white lightning.
I always love the one person, right, that I know knows. It just goes, oh, that’s incorrect,
man. Three hits of white lightning.
(19:39 – 23:03)
That’s not the right thing to do. Right? And I was like, well, all right. Next two days were
very interesting.
About 600, 650 hits later, I got classified legally insane by the military, but that’s a whole
other story we haven’t got time for. But I went to enlist, and the army went, no. Wow.
I’m being rejected from places I’m not really that interested in going. At 15, I started
shooting dope. The only reason I shot dope was a girl on a boat in Marina del Rey named
Cammy.
Delightful girl. Said, would you like me to stick this in your body? And I said, Cammy, I
am certain of it. I was catching on, you know what I mean? So she hit me up, and it was
one of those shots where you just go.
Right? And on the way down, all you’re thinking is, if I’m not dead, I’m doing that again.
Because that was right to the point, man. There was no mistake in what was going on
here.
That just lights out, brother. I thought, that works really well. Taking you out of the
moment, man.
Is it still Thursday? Oh. And I thought I was winning, man. I was winning.
I was catching, I mean, just my bag of tricks was growing and growing and growing. I
thought this was all working out fantastic, right? It wasn’t starting to slip sideways yet.
Immediately following that, I’m drinking the whole time.
I identify as an alcoholic, all right? But I talk about drugs. I’m a child of the 60s. We were
focused on the drugs.
Our parents were the alcoholics. We were carving out our own identity here. We weren’t
going to drink ourselves to death like them.
We were going to kill ourselves in a whole new way. We were focused on the drugs. But
the fact of the matter is, no matter what else was going on, there was always a fifth on
the table.
The booze was there every day. And the reason for that is simple, in my opinion. Which,
by the way, all of this is my opinion.
In my opinion, drugs are completely unreliable. There’s no quality control going on out
there. You don’t know what you got until you get it in your body.
I never went to the connection and had the guy say, you know, the cocaine’s a little
weak this week. I really think you come back next week, we’ll have something a little bit
better for you. Never said that.
Every time I went, oh, it’s good, it’s great, you’re probably going to have to step on this
another couple times each. And he’s selling you, you know, salt. Right? But you get a
fifth of Jack Daniels.
You get a quarter good gin. You know you’ve got something reliable on that table. So you
get so much cocaine, and you can’t get your mouth open anymore.
You know? And it’s 7 p.m., and the party just started, and you’ve completely overshot
the mark again. You don’t worry about it. You suck a little Jack through your teeth.
Jack will get you back in that zone, man. You can party on. You can keep going.
Right? Acid a little too spooky this evening? Don’t worry about it. Good gin will get you
right back in that smooth area, right where you need to be. Booze is reliable, man.
(23:03 – 24:02)
And I was relying on booze in my early teens. At 16 years old, I had a guy say to me, you
know what? You’re an alcoholic. And my response was basically, what’s your point? If
you think calling me that’s going to change the way I behave, the way I act, you are
sadly mistaken, my friend.
The only reason we’re talking is that I’ve had a few belts here. That’s how I breathe at
this point. This is how I get out of the house.
This is how I do what I call socializing. You probably refer to it as anti-social psychotic
behavior. I refer to it as socializing.
Not really sure what’s going to happen from one day to the next. I could say, wasn’t it
nice to see you early yesterday? He was just lovely at the party, right? Or you wake up to
the phone call. He was like, dude, what is the matter with you? I don’t know.
I do. I do know what’s the matter with me. Already at 16, I knew.
(24:02 – 26:43)
I’m a drug addict. I’ll own that. But everybody I knew was.
So that was no big deal. But I was an alcoholic, too. That separated me.
It was me and one other guy, Dar. We were the guys that you could tell. We’d play with
everybody else.
But we were the guys that always had the fifth in the back seat of the car. We were
always the guys that always had the glass on the table. We were those guys.
We were drinking through everything, right? So I dropped out of high school at 16. I got
put in my first nut house for three months of observation and a year of rehabilitation.
Talked my way out of there.
Got thrown into the nut house again. Escaped the first day because I got my bearings
with the nut house. You got to get out before they get the Thorazine in you or you’re
leaving when they say.
So I learned. You get in the intake process and you act all ashamed. I’m ashamed.
I’m ashamed. Hey, look at that. And you’re out.
Three years on the street, doing what we do. End up in business college. Long story.
End up in business college. And I’m a drug dealer now because I have no sense of family,
have no sense of community, have no morals, have no ethics. I’m just loose.
And I’m in business college. I’m studying marketing, production, distribution. I’m
applying it to my business.
Business is booming. I think college rocks. They have a health fair.
So my buddies go, let’s get high and go to the health fair. I was like, yeah. So we all get
high, go to the health fair.
And this doctor goes, I think you need to go in and get some blood work done. So I said,
OK. All my friends are like, maybe they’re going to find out what’s wrong with you.
I don’t know if it’s in my blood, but OK, I’ll go. So we went and they said, you have
malignant cancer. I was like, great.
So I flew back to LA and hooked up with this doc at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica,
California. And they set us this up. They prepared me to die.
They told my family the odds were not in my favor. And I just remember my mother, it
looked like she shrunk, the way she just slumped over, hearing that her firstborn, her
son, was probably wasn’t going to make it. And I just remember thinking, you know, it’s
just the way I live.
You know, it’s just another day. You know what I mean? You know, just an opportunity for
she and I to talk a little bit because I don’t see her much, right? And because I’m steering
clear of my father. So they take me and they do upper surgery on my, they do surgery
on my upper back.
And surgeons saved my life. And they put me in nuclear medicine, they called it back
then. It’s chemo now.
And I went in and got a couple of shots. And I just went, you know, you guys’ drugs suck.
You should see what I got back at my house.
(26:44 – 37:07)
So I didn’t do the chemo. I went back to my, I get loaded the way I get loaded. And I’m a
long term cancer survivor, right? So well, I appreciate the applause, but I seriously had
absolutely nothing to do with that working out.
Anyway, went back up to school, doing my thing. My mother calls me crying and says,
look, we haven’t been, you know, your 22nd birthday is coming. We haven’t been
anywhere as a family for 10 years.
We’ll go anywhere you want to go, but we’re going as a family. We’re putting this family
back together. And I said, fine.
Well, you know, crying mother, what do you do, right? So I flew back to LA. And on my
birthday, my 22nd birthday, we took off to fly to Guadalajara. And on the way there, the
plane crashed.
And my mother, my father, my little sister all died in a crash. And I survived. I woke up in
the crash.
And my skull was fractured. My back was broken in three places, crushed my leg and my
arm. I was paralyzed in the waist down.
I had a lot of internal injuries, just broken from head to toe, broke all my ribs. I was just
in bad, bad shape. And my mother was laying right over there.
My little sister Kimberly was right over there. And my father was right over there. And I
couldn’t get to any of them to help them.
All I could move was my right arm. And I laid there and I watched them all bleed to
death. And it was like flipping a switch in my head.
I thought, you know, I have no interest in a God like this. Take a kind, gentle, loving,
poetic creature like my little sister Kimberly, and leave a lying, cheating, thieving, dopefiend alcoholic like me on the planet. There’s nothing right about this.
There’s no justice or mercy in this. This is, I’m out, man. I renounced God.
Then some guys came up and they scavenged the plane wreck, took what they could
find of value, and they left me up there to die. So I had no more love for you either. I had
no love of God.
I had no love of my fellow man. I was just angrily enraged, broken to pieces, little drug
addict, alcoholic, dying on them in the dirt in Mexico. Some other guys finally came up
and they threw me in the back of a flatbed truck next to my mother.
And I held my dead mother’s hand. And they drove us to an aid station. They tagged her
dead.
They tagged me dead. And they sat there smoking cigarettes. And I just watched the
fleas in the light.
It was in the afternoon light. And so there were these shadows, and there were fleas
jumping in this flatbed truck they had me in. And I was just looking at the rhythm of the
fleas.
I was just watching that. I thought of it as like the rhythm of death. This is the day where
everybody dies.
And I was tagged dead, and I wouldn’t die. So they finally took me to a place called
Hospital Fatima in Los Mochis, Mexico, right? And they took me in there and got my ID,
and they started trying to put me back together. And then the federales showed up
because they got my name.
The federales showed up, and they wanted to know what I was doing back in Mexico.
That’s another story we don’t need to get into here. Let’s just say that the Mexican
authorities were not thrilled to see me.
So they interrogated me through an interpreter for three and a half days, which means
nothing for paying. They tortured me for three and a half days. And I wouldn’t give them
what they wanted.
And that’ll change a fellow, though, I’ll tell you. And I finally got ahold of a phone. I called
up some guys I knew up in Northern California.
One of them was the nephew of the president of Nicaragua, this guy Alvaro Somoza, this
big Latin thug man. And he flew a plane in and paying guys off. And they got me and
plastered me from the neck down and put me in a plane and smuggled me out of
Mexico.
Ended up back at that same hospital where I’d had the cancer surgery, St. John’s in
Santa Monica. And I was in there for a long time. And I came out of there as crazy as I’ve
ever been in my life.
I had pictures in my head I knew I couldn’t live with. I was strung out on Demerol.
Because I don’t know how to work a nurse, man.
You know, when you got the story I had, man, I worked that story. And I got those
maximum shots of Demerol every three hours around the clock. So I knew when I left, I
had to hook it up.
Because, I mean, I figured, you check out this hospital, you got three hours to connect,
man. Or it’s going to get bad fast, right? So I had the right voice pick me up. I mean, I
was high before I got out of the parking lot.
And I was high for the next six years. Next six years, I used like a madman. As the book
talks about, I tried to try to blot out the intolerable nature of my existence.
And I failed. I was not successful in doing that. I was running around like a mad,
wounded animal.
Trying, just exposing the nature of my pain to the world around me. I came out of my
last, I’m going to shorten this up, I came out of my last blackout, I was 215 pounds. I had
hair down to my elbows.
I was yellow. My thyroid had shut down. My heart was swollen.
You couldn’t touch my liver. My kidneys were pissed. You know, I was, I had no place to
live.
I had no friends. My family was dead. There was an ambulance and a police car outside,
because they were deciding whether or not to charge me with the attempted murder of
David Luboff.
And I’m the most peaceful boy you will ever meet, sober. But there’s this little Dr. Jekyll,
Mr. Hyde thing that goes on with me. You know, I go into a blackout and it’s up for grabs.
I’ve been stabbed twice, shot at. The violence has been completely nuts. And I’m just not
a violent man, but I wasn’t a man anymore.
I was an animal. And I came out of this last blackout, I’ve had hundreds of blackouts. You
know, I’m comfortable with that moment, that bing.
Oh, what are we doing? Who are you and what are we doing? I’m good with that. That
doesn’t shock me. It didn’t shock me anymore.
What shocked me was I came out of that blackout and I said, please help me. I don’t
know what happened, but I came out of that blackout and it was, it was over. I couldn’t
do it anymore.
It’s just, I’d been beaten, just beaten. And I said, please help me. And somebody knew
the game.
Somebody knew what was up far better than I did. And they said, he said the magic
words and they threw me in the ambulance and got me out of there before the cops
knew what was happening. And I ended up at UCLA.
They pumped my stomach and they said, get him out of here. He’s going to die. They
took me to all of you medical center and they kept me there for five days.
And I just kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker. And they took me by
ambulance down to a place called Long Beach General Hospital under the care of Dr.
Vicki Fox, the Georgia peach, man. I mean, and she saved so many miserable, useless
souls like me, you couldn’t count them.
And she had that magic, man. She had the hair up, the big beehive do, you know, with
the pencil stuck in it, you know, and the glasses on a chain and always wore a sweater
and she had a cigarette. She put a cigarette in a corner of her mouth like that and light it
and just leave it there.
Right. So just ashes all down this side of the sweater. She always had these manila
folders like, it was us on paper, you know what I mean, on her arm.
And she just had, she walked, if she walked through that back door right now, you’d all
turn and look. You could feel her, you know what I mean? And I’m in there kicking like a
dog. Where I kicked, it was Long Beach General Hospital.
It was one room with 42 army cots in it. There was 21 army cots on each side of the
room with sheets drawn between it. And how you kicked is called riding the cot.
There were no meds. There was nobody coming around at night going, you’re a little
anxious. Are you anxious? Can I get you a little something for that? Help you sleep.
I’ll help you sleep. That guy never showed. It was just 42 guys flipping out and kicking it.
Right. I mean, oh, it was Dante’s Inferno in this place. If I could paint it, I’d just go, no, I
don’t need to.
That one right there of the Inferno, that’s it. Just screaming people falling off cliffs. That’s
what it looked like.
That’s what it felt like in this joint. He didn’t sleep a wink. I spent 47 days riding that cot.
Right. Kicked up a couple seizures where you just bucked up out of the cot. You know,
like, oh, I’m on the floor.
What happened? Made me throw you on a gurney and wheel you into the hospital, shoot
you full of anticonvulsants or something. You know what I mean? Check your blood
pressure. 178 over 90.
He’s okay. Send him back. Wait a minute.
I don’t think that’s good. And then I remember just sick. So sick.
And I just didn’t seem to be getting any better. Ray W., my guy, said to me, Earl, you got
to go to the A&A, buddy. I said, and I remember, I mean, if you looked at my life, the last
10 years of my life, right, and he said, really? There’s some place for me to go?
Awesome.
Give me the address. Not my reaction. He said, you’re going to have to go to A&A.
And I was like, really? Really? Come to that, has it? You got to go to the A&A, huh? I
never been there, but I know all about it. It’s a terrible place. But you guys sitting around
putting the plug in the jug.
Walk in, they go, how you doing, Bob? Bob says, I’m all right. What are you doing, Bob?
Well, not drinking. Okay.
Well, what do you got planned for later? What are we doing later, Bob? Well, probably
not going to drink. Well, I’m new, Bob. I could use a little help here.
You got a little something for, I’m begging you, Bob. You got something for me? I mean, I
don’t get it. I don’t understand.
A little nutty, Bob. What do you think? I don’t think you should drink either, Earl. That’s
A&A.
That’s what I thought. I thought, really? I got to go to that place? Great. Glad I just went
through that 52 days of hell to feel like this, so I could go there.
Really? Looking up. Thanks, Ray. I don’t remember you.
Ended up on a Friday night in the basement of a church, mad-dogging everybody, man.
Just mad. No, no.
You’re thinking of coming over here, aren’t you? No. No. That will not go well.
No. No. Are you crazy? I don’t know you.
Don’t confuse me with somebody who wants to hear about your day. I don’t give a shit
about your day. I got some serious issues cooking over here.
(37:10 – 39:20)
Asking me questions. I don’t have the answers to. How are you doing? What’s going on?
Why are you doing this? Why are you here? What’s my name? You don’t know my name.
Get away from me. Just get away. But every meeting, he’s got a guy with nine months
who’s on fire with alcoholics anonymous.
All he sees is the new guy, and he’s giving it away tonight. My guy was a guy named
Vegas. That was his name.
He was named after a city. His name was Vegas, N, his last initial. And he saw me, and
he was like, new guy.
And he was coming, and I was just everything I had. No effect. Just walked right up, and
he goes, hi, I’m Vegas.
I’m an alcoholic. And I said, yeah, me too, man. Not exactly the highlight of my life.
What are you so thrilled about? Get away from me. And he looked, he kind of like leaned
in a little bit, and he went, keep coming back, buddy. And like five guys standing over
there were like, wow, did you see that? Vegas told a new crazy guy to keep coming back.
Like it was like a big deal. And I’m looking, I’m watching all this just going, what is, what
is this? I don’t get it, right? So I’m sitting in the back of my arms folded, you know what I
mean? Just, you’re not getting in. Just not get, just talk, do your thing.
And I’m like sliding, I’m trying to read the room, who’s got the power, you know what I
mean? Slide up on the guys that seem to be running the show, burglarize the
conversation, you know, just kind of pick up, they’re going to give me the lowdown
without me having to actually get into it with them. Slide off, and I got, oh, they got 12
steps and 12 traditions. Traditions are for the group, not a group.
Screw those. Steps. Read the 12 steps and thought, okay, I get it.
What else you got? I thought, I read them, I get it, right? What else would you do with
those, right? Sat in the back, arms folded, and the guy got up and he shared his
experience, strength, and hope. I didn’t know that’s what he was doing, but that’s what
he did. And it was like that guy reached right in me and got me.
Turned on the flashlight, you know, because I was just dead inside. I drank like that guy,
you know what I mean? And there was no denying. That guy knows how I drank.
(39:20 – 42:05)
That guy knows how I feel. It’s like that guy’s been reading my mail. I don’t get it.
I don’t get how that guy could be talking that way in front of people and getting the
reaction that he’s getting. He’s saying stuff you don’t tell people. He’ll tell people that
stuff.
And he’s just up there smiling and telling them, you know, yeah, then I ran over this dog.
And then we, you know, everybody’s like, yeah, me too. I ran over a dog.
You guys are pretty loose with your info around here, man. You know, but, but there it
was, you know what I mean? It was like, you could tell it was real. It was something
going on.
And I knew it was better than anything that was going on inside me. You know what I
mean? It was like the barometric pressure wasn’t leveling out. What you got, where you
guys were operating and what, how I was operating was like this, and I could feel it.
It wasn’t so much the words as the vibe, the energy, the way of being that was going on
in a meeting that I just, it was like completely unfamiliar to me. And I knew I couldn’t live
with what I had anymore. I knew that.
And so I thought, I left with the one thing I hope everybody that goes to an AA meeting
leaves with, the feeling that they want to come back. And that’s what I left with. I left
thinking, I got to come back.
And I left thinking that I knew so little about this. I thought that was the meeting where
that guy spoke. So I was going to come back next week and hear Bob talk some more,
you know, whatever the hell the guy’s name was.
Let’s call him Bob, right? You know? And I, and I came back the next week, you know,
and I, and I know how to do the meeting. You know, you sit down, put your keys on the
seat. Yeah.
How you doing? Fine. How you doing? Fine. I had my, had my newcomer mantra down.
You know what I mean? Just when everybody said anything, I just went, fine, fine. Don’t
go past fine. Just as far as we’re going.
Fine. And I sat and then they did the, a little guy and he talked a little bit and he sat
down and then a guy talked and he drank and that was good. And he drank and then he
sat down.
Then they passed a basket and you’re like, don’t take the money. Don’t take the money.
Let the basket go.
Basket go. And then they went out. We smoked.
I smoked. Can we go back? And then a guy said, I’m waiting for it. And I’m ready.
It’s like, they read the 12 traditions, 24 things, ABC, 24 things, ABC. I knew that that’s
what you’re meaning, right? I got that far. And then they said, and all the while Betty’s
heading like 75 years old.
She’s making a move for that podium, man. She’s got the arms working. She’s got the
whole head.
(42:35 – 44:18)
We’re back on. Thanks, man. Hey man, is it Dicobe tapes or Dicobe? Dicobe tapes.
Did you hear that everybody? Dicobe. I was just confused for a minute. That’s all.
Anyway, it’s the coffee, man. I can’t drink this thing. Take this away from me.
All right. Where the hell was I? Betty. So Betty gets up and Betty goes, I’m Betty.
I’m an alcoholic and just, you know, I’m just, oh my God, how am I getting this out of my
life back? Right. And Betty, all of a sudden Betty goes, you know, in my day, if you were
a reasonably good looking woman, you could take 50 cents, walk into a bar and drink for
two weeks and then broke down how you go about doing that. Right.
And when she sat down, I looked at the dude next to me and I went, bro, Betty’s a
badass. I would so roll with that lady, man. And I left kind of freaking out.
I’m like, now I’m identifying with a 75 year old woman. What the hell is happening? I’m in
my twenties. What the hell’s going on? But there was just something about it.
Those just what the nature of a meeting. It was never that speaker was so awesome,
man, I’m coming back or boy, that’s the best coffee I’ve ever had. It wasn’t a thing or a
piece.
It was the combined effort. It was the atmosphere. It was the vibe that was coming off a
room full of dead people who’d come back to life.
It was the energy of the people that didn’t run up to the cliff and step back. It was a
room full of people that had run up to the cliff and just leapt into the abyss, man. That
these were my people.
(44:19 – 45:51)
These were the people that understood when I said to them, look, I’m not suicidal. I
never have been. But death became an acceptable consequence for the way I used.
If this shot’s going to kill me, then it’s going to kill me. It’s not going to stop me from
taking the shot. Just the way it goes.
Because I got to numb it up. And if numbing up is an overdose, then numbing up is an
overdose. If we got to go back to the hospital and go to the bootleg sanitarium one more
time to kick, then let’s go.
Throw the cash on the table and strap me to the gurney. I’m down with the five-point
restraints. I know all about them, man.
I know all about them. How you doing, Earl? Fine. Can’t really look at you, but I’m fine
because they got the band on and I can’t turn the head.
You talk to voices in the periphery. This is what you get. You got that.
And I just stayed. And you know what I found here, if you’re new, this is what I found that
I think is the foundational elements of why I got 37 years clean and sober and I couldn’t
stay sober for a day on my own. Alcoholics Anonymous got put that time together for me
by me staying connected to Alcoholics Anonymous.
There’s two things that happen in here, the fellowship and the program. The program,
there’s this triangle with a circle around it. It’s an ancient spiritual symbol.
It stands for mind, body, and spirit brought together as a whole human being. They’re in
lines of balance I saw my whole life and I never had drunk or sober. AA adopted that
symbol.
It’s the same thing. Mind, body, and spirit. Unity, service, and recovery.
(45:51 – 47:52)
Unity is the body I bring in here. I can’t get sober, but we seem to be able to. I mean, I
walk in a room and I see Doug, my blood pressure goes down.
Just a sight of him. It’s all it takes. Right? And I know people all over the world in AA.
I walked into a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, thinking, man, if you go any further than
this, you’re on your way home again. That’s as far as you can get. You just go right past
that neighborhood and you’re on your way back.
You’re coming home. It’s as far as you can get. I walked in and a dude from Colorado was
sitting in the room.
First thing I heard in a meeting in Bangkok was, hey, Earl, how you doing? That’s us,
man. We are everywhere. So if you’re thinking about going out and doing a little bit on
the slide, nobody will find out.
All the best to you. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, unity is the body, I bring it here. I
can’t get sober, but we seem to be able to.
It’s the first word in the steps. We. I can see the change.
I can see it happening there. I can’t. I’m too busy.
It’s too crazy over here. I can’t wake up in the morning and go, you know, I’m fractionally
better today. I don’t notice.
I’m just, it’s just, you know, wake up like every morning, wake up. Oh, you know, and
then do everything in my power to combat the thoughts that come racing in. You know
what I mean? Call the sponsor and go, check it in.
That sounded a little tense. You’re going to a morning meeting. On my way.
Because I mean, for the first few, I woke up terrified. I’m 37 years sober and I wake up
mildly concerned. It’s gotten way better, but I’m wired the way I’m wired, man.
You know, it’s just never going to be. I’m not, I’m not a smooth dude. I’m in it.
(47:53 – 49:41)
You know, that’s the way I like it. I like it intense. That’s what I like.
I’m, I’m all in. You want to do it? Yeah. All in.
It’s like, you want to go skydiving? How high you want to go? How high does this plane
go? Actually, I don’t want to go skydiving. It’s crazy people. Anyway, unity is the body.
I bring it here. Recoveries of the mind. I worked the 12 steps because this isn’t about
stopping drinking, man.
This is about how do I stay stopped? And the only way I’m going to stay stopped is if I
can get comfortable, clean and sober. And I’ve never, the only way I know to get is you
got to address the whole disease, not just the physical phenomenon of craving. I mean, if
that was all this was about, man, detox centers would be kicking out winners.
72 hours in free, man. What are you doing? I’m not drinking. How are you doing that?
Just don’t do it.
I got no physical phenomenon of craving. I got nothing pulling me in that direction. I’ve
seen the results.
Any man in his right mind, which I am, would look at that and say, that’s a bad idea, so I
no longer imbibe. But we know that’s not what happens, right? We stop, but we always
start again. And that’s the part we got to focus on.
It’s not, hey, look, I stopped. Yeah, but you can start again, right? Because none of the
thinking has changed. The obsession of the mind is still there.
The beast is whispering in your ear, like Carla was talking about, telling you, yeah, I got a
great idea. Anything that starts with, you know what, I got a great idea, run. Not a great
idea.
Great idea stands on its own. You go, check this out. There’s a great idea.
You start with, I got a great idea. No, you don’t. No, you don’t.
(49:43 – 51:02)
Work the steps. That’s the only thing I’ve ever seen that stops the obsession of the mind,
relieves me of that madness. Step one is, what’s the problem? Lack of power is my
dilemma.
I may be good at a bunch of other stuff, but when it comes to this, I’m crazy. If that’s my
problem, what’s my solution? Step two, that a power greater than myself could restore
me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink. I’m down for that,
man.
That’s the best deal I’ve ever heard of. What do I do? Step three, get down on your knees
and turn your will and your life over to the care of a God you may or may not
understand. I turn my will and my life over to the care of a God I don’t understand.
I don’t understand God. I tried. Never got there.
I see evidence of God on a daily basis. That woman getting up with one day and taking a
book, that’s a power greater than me right there. I couldn’t take a chip.
I never took a chip. I didn’t take a cake until I was three years sober. The only reason I
did it was when I was two and a half, my sponsor asked me to give him a cake, which
was like the greatest honor of my life.
So we went to the Wednesday night wrist slashers meeting of alcoholics and nonalcoholics. I loved that meeting. I was very comfortable in there because you looked
down and you went, crazy people, crazy people, this is good.
(51:02 – 51:33)
I don’t stick out in here. He got up and I gave him a cake and he walked up to the
microphone and he said, my name is Donald Madden and I’m an alcoholic. The miracle of
my life is that I’m sober and who needs to know that is me and sat down.
It was like he branded that on my head. I waited six months to my birthday and I said,
will you give me a cake? And he said, yes. We went back to Wednesday night wrist
slashers meeting and I got up and he gave me a cake and I went up to the podium and I
said, my name is Earl Hightower and I’m an alcoholic and the miracle of my life is that
I’m sober and who needs to know that is me.
(51:33 – 51:47)
And I sat down next to him and he looked at me and went, oh, that was wonderful. I said,
you said it six months ago. He said, well, of course I did.
(51:49 – 52:21)
So anyway, evidence of God. I see evidence of a power greater than myself. I know it’s
there.
Consciousness beyond my own is out there. I believe it. I believe that there’s a
consciousness beyond my own that is in play.
It’s in play. It’s happening around me. Four and five is me.
Six and seven is God. Eight and nine is you and that’s the whole team. There’s nobody
else to play with.
That’s it. So I swallow large chunks of truth about myself, square it away over here. I get
right with this power greater than myself and then I go out in the world and I make
amends with you and to make amends means to change.
(52:21 – 53:59)
So I walk out in the world and I set things right with you with the promise of change, that
I’m going to change this behavior, that I’m not going to speak to anybody like I spoke to
you. I apologize for being disrespectful to you and I’m not going to do that anymore. And
I go back in the house, man.
Ten, eleven, and twelve are me, God, and you. Me, God, and you. Keep me in the game.
Ten, I continue to take personal inventory when wrong promptly admitted. Eleven, I seek
God. How? Through prayer and meditation.
I pray for knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry that out and I meditate to
quiet the mind so that when the answers come I can hear them. With me? All right. Third
side of the triangle.
Unity is the body, everything in the air. Recovery is in the mind. I work those steps.
I’m now for the first time in my life having had a spiritual awakening as the result of
working these steps. That was the whole point, to relieve me of the obsession of the
mind so that I can walk the earth free, no longer enslaved by alcohol or drugs for the first
time since I’m twelve years old, since I’m a baby. I can walk the earth free and I can
practice these principles and carry the message.
Unity, service, and recovery. Service, how can I help? Service, spiritual, what can I help?
Get out of self, be there for you. Get out of me, be there for you.
I can’t heal in here focused inward. I heal when I focus on you. I connect when I focus on
you.
I grow, I become exposed to that which I need to flourish and grow when focused on you.
It’s a pretty good deal, right? It’s so far past not drinking and using. It’s like my life is an
etch-a-sketch and I go, okay, here’s the steps.
Now take your life and just shake it. You got a blank canvas. Paint your life.
(54:01 – 54:32)
Now when I came out of that plane crash, I came out swearing I’d never love another
human being again as long as I lived and there’s no way I’d ever tell you who I am.
There’s no way you’re going to love me. I’m out of that loving and being loved stuff.
I’m not doing it. I’d been a pretty creative guy. I’d been a child prodigy as a musician.
I’d painted. I had a lot of creativity going in my life and I shut it all down because I had
what they call survivor’s guilt and I had no right to any pleasure or any joy is how I felt.
Plus I had PTSD to the roof and I was a real trick bag.
(54:34 – 54:51)
They sobered me up and it got worse. Plus I was physically sick for the first two years
that I was sober. I’d just wake up every morning and go, really? My sponsor was just a
beautiful man and he just kept saying, keep coming this way, man.
It’s the only way for you. You got to just keep coming. You got to keep coming.
(54:51 – 55:34)
You come over and lay the madness on me. You come over, shed the tears on my
shoulder. You just keep coming.
The late, great Donald Madden saved my life. He was the only person in the world I
trusted. I didn’t trust anybody.
I didn’t know how. I went to Christopher Pitney and I said to him, please tell me how to
trust somebody. He knew me just well enough to know that I was asking a serious
question, that I didn’t know how to do it.
I didn’t know how to be with you. I didn’t know how to be in the world. I’ve been
underground my whole life.
I’ve been a criminal. I didn’t know how to balance a checkbook. I didn’t know how to go
to the market and get food.
You go home and you make meals out of that. I didn’t know how to be a friend or have a
friend. I didn’t know how to do any of this stuff that you guys are doing.
(55:34 – 57:43)
So I sat and I watched you and you let me be with you and watch you be human beings.
And you slowly made it possible for me to be a human being. You made it possible for
me to tell you how broken I was.
You made it possible for me to tell you the truth about how damaged I was inside. And
you didn’t act surprised. You just took me with you.
Donald Madden was your emissary to me. And he didn’t tell me about Alcoholics
Anonymous. He showed me.
He would tell me with the meetings at 7.30 you get there at 7.00. I’d say why the hell
would I do that? He said because there’s somebody that’s going to show up that doesn’t
know how to do this and they’re going to need you. And I remember being stunned.
What do you mean somebody’s going to need me? Nobody needs me.
I don’t have anything for anybody. He said yes you do. You’re sober.
You’re proof. You’re proof that those damaged beyond repair are in fact salvageable.
That you can return from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body and be restored.
And that’s what happened. So I have this huge life now. It’s huge.
I look around all the time. I walk through my living room and I look at the whole back of
my house is glass. And I look down this valley at this desert sunset and I walk by and out
of my mouth audibly you will hear me go God damn I live here.
And I come and go as I please. I’m all over the world. I fly into cities and I get welcomed
by brothers and sisters of mine.
Members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I’m free. I walk the earth free.
And I have a code I live by. I live the life of a much better man than I actually am. You
take me out of this in a very short period of time I’m not a very nice person because I get
self-centered and I get busy and you get in my way.
(57:44 – 58:05)
I’m not having that. In here I live the life that Donald Madden gave to me and told me.
This is your path.
Chop the wood and carry the water of Alcoholics Anonymous and you’re going to be
okay. But stick to the basics. You go to regular meetings regularly.
You have a sponsor. You work the steps and you get out of yourself and you be a service
to other men. You help them through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(58:05 – 1:02:07)
That way you’ll always be in them. So I’ve always done that. Every day.
Since the day he died to now I’ve honored him through all of this. If you’re new I’m telling
you. I took it back.
I am loving and being loved. That plane crash became something of value when I sat in a
meeting on a Monday night swearing that there was one line in the book that would
never be true for me. That I would not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it.
I always knew that that would never be true. That there was no value that could come
from that plane crash. Until I was sitting in a meeting on a Monday night.
You know where that meeting was? It was in the church where my family’s funeral was.
And I had been afraid to go in that building for years. And one night I made the decision.
I was going to the Monday night meeting in that building because I couldn’t stand that
there was a place I was afraid to go in. So I walked in and I sat down and the guy who
was running the meeting knew me. He gave me the head nod and I gave him the nod
and I sat in the back and he said, Earl, you want to share? And this woman stood up and
she screamed and she stood up and she said, just stop the meeting.
She said, are you Earl Hightower? And I said, uh, yeah. And she came over to me. And
what I love about Alcoholics Anonymous is there weren’t a bunch of bleeding deacons
sitting around going, well, God damn it.
We’re having an AA meeting here. Get that woman back in her seat. We’re going to go
away.
We’ve got a farm out here for Christ’s sake. They didn’t do that. Everybody there just
kind of went, well, I guess we’re going this way now.
Let’s find out what she wants to talk to him about. This ought to be good. And so she
came over and she sat down in my lap and she sat down and she was crying and I just
kind of held her.
I was looking at this guy with my shoulder like, I don’t know. I’m as lost as everybody
else. And she looked at me and she said, I’ve been looking for you for two years.
I was in a plane crash and I lost people I loved and I got hurt real bad and I need you to
tell me, can I make it? And then I was crying and she’s crying and the whole meeting’s
crying. And she sat patiently till I could compose myself and I said, yeah, darling, we’re
going to make it. And she said, okay.
She got up and kind of straightened herself up and went back to her seat and sat down
and kind of went like, go. And we went back to our meeting, right? If you don’t stay with
us, you’re going to miss those. You’re going to miss those moments that just can’t
happen to you.
And I had to go back to my book and read the promises one more time because for the
first time in my sobriety, I had to read them all. I had to own them all. I had to accept
them all as being true and valid in my life.
So if you knew, stop worrying about, are you maybe going to drink tonight? How about
no? And we’re not going to drink with you. We’re all not going to drink tonight and we’re
going to do what all of us do one day at a time. We’re going to stay sober.
So the victory here is that we’re all going to go to bed sober tonight. We’re just going to
go to bed sober tonight and we’re going to live to fight tomorrow together. And if you
need us, we will be here.
We will be here to love you until you can stand on your own. We will always be here for
you. Understand this about the fellowship.
The fellowship is real life. We’re no different than the rest of the world. If you stick your
head up around here, people will try to knock you down sometimes.
Most of the people in here are kind, loving, gentle people that are on your side from the
gate. Sometimes you get well-known around here. People say, recently I’ve heard some
horrible things about me.
Seriously. I’ve been sober 37 years. I’m talking to a girl one day.
In 37 years, they’ve had me drunk five times. Yeah. Oh, he’s drunk.
(1:02:07 – 1:03:13)
I said, well, nobody called me. I didn’t know. I was not informed.
They said I was drunk. That’s happened a few times. It’s floating around right now that
I’m actually drunk.
So, fooled you. Drunk, ill, HIV positive, moved to New York, moved to Chicago. Those
five, basically.
And I remember I went to this meeting, which was like the hub of the gossip in LA. And I
got up and I spoke and I said, look, I’ve heard these five things about me recently and
I’m here to tell all of you three of those are lies. Couldn’t help it.
I had to mess with them a little bit. But Dr. Bob, in his last talk, talked about three things.
And one of the things he talked about is he said, you know, we’ve got to get out of this
rumor mill.
This gossip. Oh, I know. I heard about you.
(1:03:13 – 1:03:31)
You know, I know what you did. You know what I mean? You know, Tony, it’s awful. I’ll
tell you after the meeting.
Which one’s Tony? I don’t know what he looks like. I don’t know him, but I heard. I heard.
(1:03:34 – 1:04:32)
So, if you’re new, don’t worry about all that bullshit. And if you’re back again, and I’ll
close with this. If you’re back again, if you have relapsed and you have come back, boy
do I love you and welcome.
I love you and welcome. I don’t care if you’ve been out 45 times in the last 52 months. I
don’t care if you were the secretary of the meeting and took off with all the money.
I don’t, you know, just somebody, just write it down on a piece of paper and we’ll get to it
later. You know what I mean? Just glad you’re back. And I don’t curse much from the
podium, but I’m going to tell you this.
If you’re returning people, if anybody gives you a hard time, looks down their nose at
you, acts like you don’t have the same right they do to a seat in Alcoholics Anonymous
where we tell people to keep coming back. This works. You got to work it.
(1:04:32 – 1:05:24)
We tell people that and somebody gives you any attitude about coming back, you tell
them that you met this guy named Earl Hightower and he said you should go fuck
yourself. And I would now like to make amends for that. When we’re wrong we promptly
admit it.
So there’s a little step demonstration there for you. That’s how they work. If that burned
some mirrors or offended you, I apologize.
That was not my intention to be disrespectful in any way. It was just the only way I could
express the heartfelt feeling that I was having right there. So you all have been beautiful
and thank you for being so good to me and I wish you all peace.