Earl H. from Studio City, CA at South Coast Speakers Meeting 1998

(0:00 – 0:04)
Hi, my name’s Earl. I’m an alcoholic. For a second there, I thought I blacked out.
(0:07 – 0:23)
It was over. Thank you very much for asking me to come share here at Sun. It’s a real
honor and a privilege.
(0:24 – 0:32)
Equally as terrifying. Congratulations to the birthday cake takers. Wow.
(0:33 – 0:46)
That was amazing. What’s amazing, I mean, when you speak here, somebody comes and
says, how about you come to Laguna and speak on Wednesday night? And you say, sure.
Take down the person’s name, report in the book, and that’s it.
(0:46 – 0:52)
They say, can we have your address? And you say, sure, give me the address. And then
they send you a letter. It’s kind of imposing.
(0:53 – 1:11)
This meeting has been here, how long has this meeting been here? 52 years? It’s like,
wow. And then these guys get up and take cakes for 20s, 30s, and 40s. 48 years of
sobriety.
(1:11 – 1:27)
It’s just amazing to me. And you walk in and you got your little, I got my tie on. You like
it? Thank you.
(1:28 – 1:44)
I was sitting there going, every time I heard that, I was thinking, thank God. Just crawl
out of here if you don’t have a tie on. And some of my heroes are here.
(1:44 – 1:50)
When I got sober, I didn’t have any heroes. None. And I have heroes today.
(1:51 – 2:16)
There’s a couple of guys sitting in this room that don’t know it, but on several different
occasions have saved my life, sometimes with their words and sometimes with their
actions, watching them be the way they are. When I was new for a long time, it was up
for grabs every day in the beginning. It was like flipping a coin.
(2:17 – 2:25)
Heads I’ll make it, tails I won’t. I had no tools for living that worked. I had no idea what I
was up against.
(2:26 – 2:42)
What I knew when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous was that I had no idea what I
was up against. I had known I was an alcoholic for years, but I had no idea what that
meant. And I knew that every attempt I had made to try to deal with that had failed
miserably.
(2:43 – 2:54)
I knew that. I knew that I had no idea how to be in the world, but I didn’t know what
alcoholism was. So as I was sober in the beginning trying to find out, I was pretty much
up for grabs.
(2:54 – 3:10)
And if it hadn’t been for the guys who had gone before me who were in those meetings,
who had 10 years, 12 years, 15 years of sobriety, who grabbed me and told me the
truth, I’d have died. I’d have died. I’d have never made it.
(3:11 – 3:30)
And those were the guys that, they wanted me to know the truth about alcoholism and
the truth about a program of recovery more than they wanted me to like them or think
they were good guys or respect them or look up to them. They didn’t care if I hated
them. They didn’t care if I hated every word they had to say.
(3:30 – 3:47)
They were much more interested in carrying the message Alcoholics Anonymous to me.
So when I see those guys, I always cry at this meeting. I don’t know why.
It’s pathetic. I get up here and turn into a blubbering idiot. So I’m going to knock it off.
(3:48 – 4:02)
I started drinking when I was 12 years old. I don’t know why I didn’t start before then. I
had been restless, irritable, and discontented for some time.
(4:03 – 4:09)
Prior to that. I started at 12 because when I was 12 years old, somebody offered me a
drink. It was the first time I got offered a drink.
(4:10 – 4:19)
I had been shipped off to boarding school. They had given me a bunch of tests and they
discovered that I had this very high IQ. I don’t have it anymore, so I’m not bragging.
(4:21 – 4:34)
It’s gone. That didn’t last very long. One day my father just said, Get in the car.
(4:37 – 4:46)
We drove and drove and pulled up in front of this place. I got out of the car and my
father got out of the car and nobody else got out of the car. He put a suitcase down next
to me and shook my hand.
(4:46 – 4:52)
He said, This will make a man out of you. He got back in the car and they all drove off. I
was in boarding school.
(4:54 – 4:58)
I was 12 years old. I was 5 feet tall. I was 104 pounds.
(4:58 – 5:26)
I had no tools for living. I wasn’t really getting a good grip on this idea of I was suddenly
supposed to become a man. I had no tools for living.
I didn’t need any. I got told what to do from the second I woke up until I went to bed at
night. Everybody was telling you what to do.
I didn’t need to figure anything out. It turns out I was the youngest of 250 boys from all
over the world. 249 of them were 13 to 18 and I was 12.
(5:26 – 5:33)
I was the youngest and the smallest kid in the whole school. I was the only non-teenager.
That’s not particularly upsetting to anybody except a 12-year-old.
(5:34 – 5:47)
That was a brutal realization for me. I knew right there, this is a huge mistake. I don’t
belong here.
Something’s gone terribly wrong. What needs to happen is that I need to call my mother
and I need to get picked up and go home. We can try this again when I’m 13, maybe.
(5:49 – 6:11)
I called home for three days crying, saying, Mommy, get me out of here. I’d hear my
father in the background, Hang up. She said, I’m sorry, dear.
Hang up. In the three days something broke inside me. I just said, You know what? You
don’t want me.
I don’t want you. I turned my back on my family and I pretty much never went back. I
spent four and a half years in that school and I learned my tools for living there.
(6:12 – 6:20)
I was afraid of everything and everybody, scared of my own shadow, had no idea what
was going on. I’m taking Latin. There were no electives in this place.
(6:22 – 6:29)
In the first week there, I ran into Tiny. Every high school’s got a guy named Tiny. He’s
6’4″, 240, plays guard on the football team.
(6:29 – 6:32)
He found me. I did not find him. I wasn’t making eye contact with anybody.
(6:33 – 6:44)
I was walking around with my head down, trying to, you know, don’t notice me. I’m not
supposed to be here. He came up and said, How you doing, punk? He slapped me in the
back of the head and sent me and my books flying.
(6:45 – 7:05)
I had this out-of-body experience where you’re watching yourself doing something,
moving towards this very large person and your brain is saying, This is a very bad idea.
As you walk up and hit him as hard as you can. I hit Tiny, which had no effect on Tiny.
(7:05 – 7:14)
I stood there looking up at this guy thinking, I wonder what we do now. He looked down
at me and said, You’ve got a lot of guts, kid. He beat the crap out of me right on the
spot.
(7:17 – 7:33)
And I remember thinking as I’m taking the beating, this is going pretty well. Because
what’s most important to me, the budding little alcoholic-to-be that I am, is that I’m
absolutely terrified of this guy. And he had just said, You’ve got a lot of guts.
(7:34 – 7:46)
My violence, my willingness to go up and hit this big guy had masked my fear. So my
first tool for living was, when frightened, attack. Nobody knows you’re afraid if you’re
crawling across tables at them.
(7:47 – 7:57)
So I went back to my room and I’m just sitting there thinking, This is a great life. My
family threw me away. They knew me better than anybody in the world and they threw
me away.
(7:57 – 8:03)
That was the feeling. The fact was, I was being given an opportunity for a wonderful
education. But I’ve never really functioned based on the facts.
(8:06 – 8:14)
It was the feeling. And the word spread across this campus like wildfire. Watch out for
this little Hightower kid.
(8:14 – 8:22)
He’s a maniac. He attacked Tiny. So now I’ve got this reputation that has absolutely
nothing to do with who I am.
(8:23 – 8:30)
Nothing. I’m a frightened child with a lot of lumps on his head. Sitting in his room
wondering what’s going to happen next.
(8:30 – 8:35)
And the cool guys came around. Matt came into my room. He stuck his head in and he
said, Hey Matt.
(8:35 – 8:46)
And I looked up and said, Hey man. He said, Do you want to smoke a joint? And I said,
Well, yeah. And I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
(8:47 – 8:56)
I had no idea what that meant. What I heard was, Do you want to hook up with us? Do
you want to come with us? And as far as I could tell, I was alone in the universe. So the
answer was just, Yeah.
(8:56 – 9:03)
I mean, they could have said, We’re going to go kill a Spanish teacher. Do you want to
come? Yeah, I’m with you, man. Let’s go.
(9:05 – 9:24)
I hate right here right now. I’ll go anywhere. And we went and we picked up Steve.
And Steve had a Tupperware container wrapped in aluminum foil. I didn’t know what it
was. And we went out behind the dorm.
We’re standing by a tree. It’s a 12-year-old kid, two 13-year-olds, total strangers, me,
Matt, and Steve. And Matt fired up the joint and took a hit and he handed it to me.
(9:24 – 9:34)
And I just did what he did and I handed it to Steve, who had very carefully unwrapped
the Tupperware container. And it was a container full of cheap red wine. Very cheap red
wine.
(9:34 – 9:40)
No grapes involved. No, you know. That fortified stuff, you know.
(9:40 – 9:52)
And that came around and I took a pull on that and that went around and I don’t get it. I
don’t get it. What are we doing? And I’m looking at these two total strangers and I mean,
it happened.
(9:53 – 10:02)
That thing that makes me bodily different from my fellows occurred right there. And this
feeling kind of went up over me. And I got kind of tingly and warm, you know.
(10:02 – 10:15)
I was smacking my lips and I looked at these two guys and I just thought, Hey. I feel
pretty good. As a matter of fact, I believe I feel better than I have ever felt in my life.
(10:16 – 10:20)
It was the fear killer. And I didn’t know what had happened. I don’t know.
(10:20 – 10:38)
Is it this pot thing? Is it this wine? Is it this place? Is it the fact that I’m standing here with
my two closest friends, Matt and Steve? Because I’m feeling a connection with these
guys. You know, but I mean, the lumps went away on my head. I felt good.
(10:38 – 10:53)
For the first time in my life, I was comfortable standing where I was standing and doing
what I was doing with the people I was doing it with. And I had never felt that way before
in my life. And all those things that they had warned me about, all the taboos, all the
terrible things that are going to happen if I did this, didn’t happen.
(10:54 – 11:04)
Nobody died. Nobody went to jail. Nobody went to a mental institution.
No blood was drawn. Nothing bad happened. I just felt better than I had ever felt in my
life.
(11:04 – 11:13)
And the price I paid for that was the next morning I woke up, took a couple aspirin, went
to class, and I was fine. And I said, you know what? I’m no idiot. I’m doing this as often as
I possibly can.
(11:14 – 11:27)
And I did every day for the next 16 years, no matter what. I drank. I’m a child of the 60s,
and I mention drugs in my story, and I mean absolutely no disrespect by that.
(11:28 – 11:36)
Drugs, we were children of the 60s. We were going to take drugs. Our parents were the
alcoholics, and we were going to drink ourselves to death like our parents were.
(11:36 – 11:52)
We were going to kill ourselves in a whole new way. We were going to carve out our own
identity. So we were very focused on the drugs, but I’ve got to tell you, having done my
inventory work and looked back in my life in retrospect, the drugs would come and go.
(11:52 – 12:04)
I’m not a specialist. I did not do one thing and come here. If that’s your story, God bless
you.
Have a seat. I’m glad you’re here. But my drug of choice was, what do you got? Because
it was all anti-oral medication.
(12:04 – 12:16)
If I could get enough of what you had in my body, it would kill the fear for me. I mean,
the drugs would come and go. There was only one thing that was on the table every
single day, and that was a bottle of booze.
(12:16 – 12:28)
Alcohol was on the table every day, and I think there’s a very, in my opinion, there’s a
very, very good reason for that. The reason is that drugs are completely unreliable.
There’s no quality control going on out there.
(12:28 – 12:44)
You have no idea what you’re getting. I mean, you don’t go to go buy an ounce of
cocaine, and the dealer says to you, you know what? It’s not very good this week. Come
back next week.
We’ll have something a little better for you. That never happens. It’s always the best.
It’s the greatest. Be careful. You’re probably going to have to cut that again.
(12:45 – 12:51)
You never know what you’ve got until you’ve got it in your body. You go get yourself a
fifth of gin. You go get yourself a quart of Jack Daniels.
(12:51 – 12:56)
You know what you’ve got. You can count on this. This is reliable stuff.
(12:56 – 13:04)
When all else fails, man, that’ll kill the fear. That’ll get you the rest of the way right
there. You do so much cocaine, you can’t get your mouth open anymore.
(13:08 – 13:23)
You’re just… And the party just started. And you have way overshot the mark. This is not
a problem if you’re familiar with alcohol, because you suck a little gin through your
teeth.
(13:23 – 13:41)
That’ll loosen you right back up, and you can go on with the party. You do so much acid,
if you get a little spooky, Jack Daniels will get you back in the comfort zone. Just start
sucking on that bottle, man.
You’ll be all right. Not enough heroin to get you to that cool, quiet, dark, just heart and
lungs working place. That’s my favorite place.
(13:42 – 13:47)
You don’t got enough heroin to get you there, don’t worry about it. Jack will get you the
rest of the way. Jack will take care of it for you.
(13:49 – 14:00)
That’s what’s… I mean, you can count on alcohol. Alcohol was my best friend from the
time I was 12 until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. But I never thought of myself as an
alcoholic.
I was a drug addict. A drug addict. I was cool.
(14:01 – 14:12)
I was cool over there on the floor. What an idiot. You know, I didn’t take… 12 was pills,
any kind of pills.
(14:12 – 14:29)
A guy came up to me and said, would you like a couple of these pills? And I said, well,
yeah. I took them and 20 minutes later, I was laying on the floor. And that’s how… I
mean, 2-and-all, Placidil, 2nd-all, Placidil, all that stuff.
14, 14, I started taking psychedelics. Did about 650 acid trips. Got classified legally
insane.
(14:30 – 14:35)
That’s another story. 15, I started shooting dope. 16, I started going to the mental
institutions.
(14:35 – 14:45)
Dropped out of high school and went to my first mental institution for three months of
observation, a year of rehabilitation. 16 years old, life’s not working out. I didn’t notice.
(14:49 – 15:01)
It’s just living my life. And I remember being in that place, taking 3 cups of pills a day
and getting a shot if you acted out. So my treatment plan was to act out every day so I
could get the shot.
(15:02 – 15:10)
I wasn’t interested in getting well. I didn’t see myself as being sick. I knew what made
me comfortable and allowed me to be in the world.
(15:10 – 15:25)
I knew what made it possible for me to feel on the inside how you looked on the outside.
Because I would walk in anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances and if I wasn’t
drunk or loaded, I would walk in and I would look at you and you looked fine. And I never
felt fine.
(15:25 – 15:46)
And I knew something was terribly wrong. But if I got drunk and walked in the room, you
looked fine. And I felt fine.
It was the missing piece for me that made me measure up and allowed me to be in the
world. I was too afraid to talk to anybody ever if I wasn’t under the influence. So I was in
the nut house and all I wanted to do was escape.
(15:47 – 16:00)
That’s all I thought about. And I used to have all my meals with this woman named
Kilday who was really nuts. And all you had to do to get Kilday spinning was you’d sit at
lunch with Kilday and you’d just look at her and say, Kilday, how you doing? And Kilday
just, whoa, man.
(16:01 – 16:09)
And off she’d go. So I used Kilday as my diversion as I was going to escape. And I got
Kilday spinning off in that direction.
(16:09 – 16:32)
I was at the table, ready, ready, ready, go. And I’m looking down, I don’t know what’s the
matter because I’m hauling ass and that’s all I got. And you hear from the nurse’s
station, over the loudspeaker, you hear, Ed, when you got a minute, you want to grab
Earl? He’s making a break for the door.
(16:34 – 16:42)
And Ed’s in there having a sandwich going, yeah, yeah, I’ll get him in a minute. And I’m
working, man, I’m working. Tools for living, at this point in my life, I’m 16 years old.
(16:43 – 16:57)
My tools for living are drugs, alcohol, violence, and run. And now I’ve got to have a new
tool because if you’re going to get thrown in the nuthouse, you’ve got to get out before
they get the Thorazine in you. Because if you don’t, you’re leaving when they say
because you’ve got no fast moves left.
(16:58 – 17:09)
You’re a shuffler. So the next time I got thrown in the nuthouse, I escaped the first day
before they got the pills in me. Sitting in the intake process, they’re signing me up, going
to lock me down again.
(17:09 – 17:13)
And I just said, you know, I’m very, very sorry. It’s just really, really rough out there. I’m
really glad you got your hands on me.
(17:13 – 17:30)
Hey, look at that. And I took off, right? And the whistles go and everything, and I hit the
backyard, and I’m running across this grass lawn. It’s a place called the Westwood.
It’s not there anymore. And there’s a 12-foot, ivy-covered, chain-link fence. I can see it
like it was yesterday, and I’m moving, man, for that fence.
(17:31 – 17:49)
And I got a guy right on my tail. I’m like 16 1⁄2, 17 years old at the time. I’m an alcoholic.
I’m a drug addict. I’m at any moment, hopefully, an escaped mental patient. It’s like my
resume.
That’s all I have to say for myself. And I’m thinking, if I make that fence, I don’t have a
problem. I don’t have any problems if I make that fence, because I drink no matter what.
(17:50 – 17:56)
No matter what. You give me a good reason, I don’t stop. That’s the difference between
me and a problem drinker.
(17:56 – 18:16)
You give a problem drinker a reason to stop, a good reason to stop, he actually will. A
problem drinker goes up before a judge, got another 5.02. Judge says, you know what,
I’m sick of looking at you. I’ll see you one more time, you’re doing a year.
We’re not talking about it. Problem drinker thinks, I don’t want to go to jail. Actually stops
drinking and driving.
(18:16 – 18:26)
Me, I just start wondering what it’s going to be like in jail, because I’m going. I know I’m
going, because I’m not going to stop drinking, and I’m not going to stop driving. That’s
not what I do.
(18:27 – 18:38)
I got so many good reasons along the way to stop, and it never slowed me down.
Because you couldn’t, it was the only thing that made it possible for me to be in the
world. I hit the streets at 16, I stayed out on the streets until I was 19.
(18:39 – 18:48)
I got accepted to, I went on an interview to a business college, just to see what would
happen. My high school dropout. What am I going to do? I can’t go to college.
(18:48 – 18:55)
I go on the interview, I get accepted. I just walked in, the guy started talking to this guy,
he was a musician. I’m a musician.
(18:56 – 19:06)
He said, you know, talk a little further, your favorite color is blue? It’s amazing, my
favorite. I just lined up with this guy. It was all crap, but I just lined up with him, and he
said, you’ll be a fine addition to our campus in the fall.
(19:06 – 19:13)
Went back and saw my father and said, you know, I got accepted to business college,
don’t ask. If you write me a year’s tuition, I’ll leave town. He said, beautiful.
(19:14 – 19:27)
Wrote a check, handed it to me, me and the woman I was seeing at the time piled all our
belongings in the back of this truck along with eight pounds of hash and drove to
Northern California to higher learning. I gave him a year’s tuition up front, told him the
transcripts were in the mail. They said, fine.
(19:28 – 19:43)
I went down to the local high school, picked up a GED program, was getting my high
school diploma, going to college and became a drug dealer. I was studying marketing
and production and distribution. You know, and I was applying for my business and
business was booming.
(19:44 – 19:51)
I thought college was great, right? And I didn’t have any problem with being a drug
dealer. I mean, I had no morals. I had no ethics.
(19:52 – 19:58)
I had no sense of family. I had no sense of community. I wasn’t interested in right or
wrong.
(19:58 – 20:03)
You know, I didn’t care about you. I didn’t have friends. I had people that I ran with.
(20:04 – 20:14)
That was it. I mean, I’d been thrown away by people who knew me better than anybody
in the world. Why the hell would I want to get to know you? What for? I’m not interested
in your day.
(20:15 – 20:20)
I don’t care how you are. I don’t. I never did.
(20:20 – 20:23)
I can’t chitchat with you. I can’t get along. I don’t know how to do it.
(20:23 – 20:32)
Y’all, when I’m not wrecked, you scare me anyway. I don’t know how to do any of that
stuff, and I’m not going to learn. I’ll live my life this way, and this is my life, and this is
how it will be.
(20:32 – 20:50)
The girl that I was living with kept saying things like I’m too high or maybe we shouldn’t
use today, and I thought that was absurd, so I moved her back to L.A. and just went on
about my business. When I was 20, I got diagnosed with malignant cancer. So I flew back
to L.A., had major surgery on my back.
(20:50 – 21:01)
They put me in the nuclear medicine program, they called it back then. They told me I
was going to die, and they prepared my family for me to die. And I remember as they
were telling me this, you guys don’t even know who you’re talking to, because I’m using
like a beast at this point.
(21:01 – 21:17)
I’m 20 years old. A year earlier, I’d been dating a girl in L.A., this little girl named Brooke,
and I was in her house, and I was walking up towards her bedroom, and I overheard her
mother having a talk with her. And her mother sang to her, I don’t want you getting this
involved with Earl, he’s not going to be with us much longer.
(21:17 – 21:24)
And I was 19 at the time. And I just remember thinking, it’s good advice. It’s good advice,
because I didn’t care.
(21:24 – 21:36)
I wasn’t connected to anything. All I was interested in doing was killing the fear and
making it possible for me to be in the world. And that’s why I drank alcoholically from the
very beginning.
(21:36 – 21:43)
I drank to get drunk. I drank for the effect produced by alcohol. The effect it produced for
me was it killed the fear.
(21:43 – 21:54)
The only problem there is, is that fear is the last thing I’ll feel. I’ve got this emotional
barrel of all these emotions swimming around in there. And up on the surface, I’ve got all
kinds of feelings.
(21:54 – 22:10)
Since I’ve been in this room, I’ve been grateful, I’ve been happy, I’ve felt a part of, I’ve
been frightened, I’ve been anxious. Well, that’s just a feeling, it’s just moving through
me. Way down at the bottom of that barrel, that deep undercurrent of my emotional life
is fear.
(22:10 – 22:20)
It’s the thing that always ran me from the moment I came to until I passed out at night.
And I drink to kill the fear. So I’ve got to drink all the way to the bottom of that barrel.
(22:20 – 22:25)
I’ve got to get drunk to kill the fear. It’s the last thing I’ll feel. I don’t know anything about
social drinking.
(22:25 – 22:31)
I’ve never done it. I don’t know anything about it. I’ve seen it being done, and I find it
bizarre.
(22:31 – 22:39)
I don’t understand why you would just sip a little before dinner. I don’t get it. That’s, you
know, either do it or go do something else.
(22:41 – 22:45)
Anyway, I had the surgery thing. They had me in the nuclear mess. They’re shooting me
full of all kinds of stuff.
(22:45 – 22:53)
And I didn’t like the drugs they were giving me, so I quit. And I just went home and got
high the way I get high, and I beat the cancer thing. I’m a long-term cancer survivor.
(22:54 – 23:05)
It’s very funny that that got pointed out to me a couple of years ago. And I was really
kind of shocked to hear it because cancer was nothing. The whole cancer thing was
nothing compared to dealing with alcoholism.
(23:06 – 23:17)
I never even think of myself as that way. I mean, the miracle of my life is that I’m sober,
not that I survived cancer, that I’m sober. So I just went sailing along with my life.
(23:18 – 23:22)
I was 21. I had a high school diploma. I’m a junior in college.
(23:22 – 23:30)
I’m editor-in-chief of my college newspaper. I’m a very successful drug dealer. I got an
early acceptance to go to USC Law School.
(23:30 – 23:43)
Thank God I never got there. Me as an attorney, man, I’d be in prison for sure. And my
mother called me up and said, look, we haven’t been anywhere as a family in 10 years.
(23:43 – 23:46)
We’ll go anywhere you want to go. Let’s just go as a family somewhere for your birthday.
And I said, fine.
(23:47 – 24:01)
So I came back to L.A., and on my 22nd birthday, we got on my father’s plane to fly to
Guadalajara, and on the way there, the plane crashed. And my mother, my father, and
my little sister were all killed, and I wasn’t. And I woke up on this mountain in Mexico,
and my skull was fractured.
(24:01 – 24:05)
My back was broken in three places. My leg was crushed. My arm was mangled.
(24:06 – 24:19)
The only thing I could move, I was paralyzed from the waist down, and the only thing I
could move was my right arm, and I was awake. I was laying in the mud, and my mother
was laying over there, and my little sister was laying right over there, and my father was
laying right over there, and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t move.
(24:19 – 24:40)
I couldn’t get to Kimberly, my little sister, to try to help her, and they all bled to death
right in front of me. And I had a little talk with God, and I said I have no interest in a God
that would take a kind, gentle, sweet little girl like my little sister Kimberly and leave a
lying, cheating, thieving alcoholic like me on the planet. I’m not interested in a God of
this type, and I renounced God.
(24:41 – 24:53)
A little while later, some guys came up on the plane wreck, and I took my wallet out of
my pocket. Thanks, man. I took my wallet out of my pocket because I thought I was
dying, and I thought this is my name, my license.
(24:54 – 25:07)
I just wanted them to know my name when I died. And the guy took the wallet out of my
hand, and he took the money out of the wallet and put the wallet back on my chest, and
they went and scavenged the rest of the plane wreck, and then they left the mountain
and left me up there to die. So I had no more use for you either.
(25:08 – 25:16)
I was out of the game. I had no more use for the facade of my life. I didn’t need to get
along with you anymore.
(25:16 – 25:23)
I didn’t need to be social to the best of my ability at all. I was out of the game. I had no
love of God.
(25:23 – 25:31)
I had no love of you. I’d never been any good at it anyway. I just was going to make sure
I got down off that mountain, and I was going to do it the way I wanted to do it.
(25:32 – 25:52)
And I just kept banging myself in the side with my arm because it hurt me so bad when I
did it that it kept pulling me up out of the shock because I’d been hurt bad before, and I
knew if I shocked out, I was a dead man. And so eventually some guys came up, and
they took me down, and they took me to a local medical aid station. And they tagged my
right big toe, and they sat there smoking cigarettes waiting for me to die.
(25:54 – 25:58)
And I didn’t. So they finally took me to a hospital. They found out who I was.
(25:58 – 26:10)
They called in the federales. It’s another story. But when they found out who I was, the
federales came in, and they interrogated me through an interpreter for the next three
and a half days wanting to know what I was doing back in Mexico.
(26:10 – 26:30)
And they wouldn’t give me anything for paying, and they wouldn’t let me go. And I finally
called a friend of mine in Northern California whose family was out of Mexico City, and
they got their plane and flew it into where we were, Los Mochis, Mexico, and paid off a
bunch of people and smuggled me out of Mexico and got me back to the States. And I
spent a long time in a hospital in Santa Monica, California.
(26:31 – 26:38)
They told me I may or may not walk again. I’d have a withered left hand, and I’d be blind
in my left eye. And I worked my ass off.
(26:38 – 26:57)
I was getting maximum shots of Demerol every three hours around the clock. And I
worked really hard to come out of that hospital so that when I walked out of there, you
wouldn’t think anything was wrong with me. You would know that when I get tired, my
hand curls in a little bit and that I have a limp to this day.
(26:57 – 27:11)
And I tell this stuff from the podium because it’s still a piece of me that doesn’t want
anybody to know. You can’t tell when I walk unless I’ve got on hard-soled shoes, and
when I’m tired and you listen to my gait, you can hear my limp. And I spent a long time
in that hospital.
(27:11 – 27:34)
I got out, and I had a lot of money from the airplane insurance, and I had a big house in
Bel Air, and I had a bunch of cars and a lot of cash and a basement full of alcohol and a
living room full of drugs, and I went for it. And I went on my last run, and it lasted almost
six years. And I was not sober at all under any circumstances except on three different
occasions, and they were for 72 hours each.
(27:34 – 27:52)
And that was when I would get so sick, I couldn’t function at all. And I would go to this
little bootleg sanitarium in Hollywood, California, give them $150 cash, and they would
take you in, strap you to a table, shoot you full of anticonvulsants, and they’d let you up
72 hours later. And they’d either send you home or to the morgue, and they didn’t care
which.
(27:52 – 28:08)
And I’d lay in there kicking like a dog, like a dog, and reintroducing myself to God,
saying, God, if you just get me through this sane and alive, I will never, ever, ever drink
again. I can’t live like this anymore. I’m living like an animal.
(28:08 – 28:30)
The things that I’m doing are things that I never thought anybody like me would ever do.
I can’t believe the things that are happening in my life. The violence was so extreme.
I mean, it was crazy. And I would come out, and I’d stagger out of there, and they’d give
me back my stuff, and I’d go get in my car. And on the way to the car, I’d take 30 or 40
milligrams of Valium because I was shaking, and I was going to drive just to cool me
down.
(28:30 – 28:50)
And I’d come two, three, four days later in another city, having no idea what happened.
What happened? I got drunk again. In the end, drugs, I was overdosing so much, I
stopped taking drugs, and I’d use three or four grams of cocaine a day just to keep me
on my feet so that I could drink the way I wanted to drink, which was obscene, the way I
drank.
(28:50 – 29:00)
And when I’d get so sick I couldn’t drink anymore, I’d eat about 150 milligrams of Valium
a day, and that was about getting well. That was to get well enough to go back to
drinking. It was never about getting sober for me.
(29:00 – 29:10)
In the end for me, I was 28 years old. I was 215 pounds. I was yellow.
I had hair out like this. I had a beard out like this. I was psychotic.
(29:10 – 29:22)
And I do not use that term loosely. I could not distinguish between fantasy or reality. It
was just this big, mad blur.
I’d broken 74 bones. I had over 600 stitches in me. I’d been stabbed twice, shot at.
(29:22 – 29:30)
I’d come to blackouts with a normal fare. My family was dead. I had no friends.
I had no place to live. It was over. I burned my life to the ground.
(29:31 – 29:46)
I burned it to the ground. And I came out of my last blackout, and both my hands were
broken, and they were trying to decide whether or not to charge me with attempted
murder, which I had no idea what I’d done. And I had what we talk about as a moment of
clarity.
(29:48 – 29:55)
My sponsor told me years later that the bottom for a guy like you is dead. That’s the
bottom. What you hit was an emotional and a spiritual bottom.
(29:56 – 30:02)
And he was right. That’s what it was. I had known I was alone in the world for a lot of
years.
(30:02 – 30:11)
I had known that, and that was not a problem for me. But for some reason, I came out of
that blackout on that day, and I felt it. I felt the aloneness of my life.
(30:11 – 30:17)
And I knew that God wasn’t responsible for that feeling. The police hadn’t done this to
me. My father hadn’t done this to me.
(30:17 – 30:33)
This was the direct result of my actions and my behavior, and I was going to have to take
responsibility for it. I threw up two busted hands, and I said, Help me. I pumped my
stomach, and they said, Get him out of here.
He’s going to die. Because they’d seen me so many times before. I had my stomach
pumped so many times, I could talk to you while you did it.
(30:33 – 30:43)
They’d run the tubes, and I’d just, You know, it was a bad day. Bad day. And they took
me to another hospital and kept me for five days, and I was getting worse.
(30:43 – 30:51)
And they took me to another place, Long Beach General Hospital, under the care of a
woman by the name of Dr. Vicki Fox. May she rest in peace. She was a remarkable lady.
(30:52 – 30:59)
And I did 12 more days of detox. And back then, there was no comfortable detox. They
kept you just this side of seizures.
(31:01 – 31:09)
And say things to you like, Pay attention to how you’re feeling, brother. That’s the direct
result of your best thinking. And you’re sitting in a chair, trying not to throw a seizure.
(31:09 – 31:17)
And there were 42 of us living in one big room, in this old hangar, with sheets between
the beds. So you’d get maybe an hour’s sleep a night. And kick like a dog in there.
(31:17 – 31:33)
And every once in a while, Dr. Fox would come walking in, and she had her hair up in a
thing, and she had a pencil stuck in it, a sweater, and files under her arm, glasses on a
chain hanging down, and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, and she’d
light it and just leave it there. She never took it out. Ashes down on the sweater.
(31:33 – 31:51)
But she had this presence. She was just one of those people that had such a presence.
She’d come powering into detox, the detox wing, and she’d come walking in, and
everybody in there just… I mean, she scanned the room, and she looked right at me, and
I thought my heart was going to stop.
(31:52 – 32:09)
I thought, Oh my God, what’s this? I’m holding on to my little wooden chair. And she
walked over to me, and she leaned over, and she patted my cheek. She was from
Georgia, and she patted my cheek, and she said, Baby, you really do need to be here.
(32:10 – 32:16)
And then turned around and walked out, and I just went, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I do.
(32:17 – 32:24)
And that was my first direction that I got. She was talking to me like an animal. Just stay.
(32:27 – 32:48)
You know? And that registered. And I did the 12 days of detox in there, and then I did
another 30 days in a free bed, and I came out of there as crazy as I’ve ever been in my
life. 28 years old, scared to death, no tools for living that worked at all, no idea how to be
in the world, knew I was an alcoholic, had no idea what alcoholism was, but had heard
one thing.
(32:48 – 32:59)
You don’t want to die, you better go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Because you’re going to
drink if you don’t, and if you drink, you’re dead. Your thyroid’s not functioning, you can’t
touch your liver, you’ve got the kidneys of an 85-year-old man.
(32:59 – 33:04)
And that’s just the beginning. Those are just a couple of the highlights. Your body’s
shutting down.
(33:04 – 33:10)
Your brain is in bad, bad shape. Your nervous system is shot. Go to Alcoholics
Anonymous.
(33:11 – 33:18)
Here’s six months’ worth of anti-abuse. Good luck. And I took that anti-abuse every day,
man, because I didn’t trust myself.
(33:18 – 33:27)
And I ended up in the back of a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, scared to death. I
didn’t want what you had, I didn’t know what you had. I didn’t know anything about you.
(33:27 – 33:37)
I just knew that I couldn’t live with what I had anymore. I couldn’t trust myself, and I
hadn’t trusted anybody else in years. So I was crazy, like a dry sponge.
(33:37 – 33:48)
And I sat in the back of the room, and this guy got up, and he shared his experience,
strength, and home. And he was like 65 years old, he was a Skid Row bum, he was a
wino and an X-Boxer. Never seen the guy since.
(33:50 – 34:02)
Never seen him since. And I’m thinking, Skid Row bum, wino, X-Boxer, I’m none of these
things, because I can spot the differences like that. But luckily for me, I didn’t have any
place else left to go.
(34:02 – 34:15)
When I came to AA, if they’d have said, we have meetings, you’ve got to go every day,
and they’re from noon to midnight, I would have said, all right. There’s no conflict in my
schedule. If they’re 12 hours a day, I’ve got nothing to do.
(34:15 – 34:21)
Nobody to talk to, nowhere to go. Don’t know what to do. My goal every day is simply to
get up and just wear my ass out.
(34:21 – 34:35)
Get tired enough to get a couple hours of sleep and get up and have one more
frightening, horrifying day on this planet. Because I’ve got pictures in my head that you
can’t live with. Along the way, I had a therapist tell me that I was damaged beyond
repair.
(34:36 – 34:47)
She told me, people don’t recover from where you come from. I’m sorry to tell you,
you’re damaged beyond repair. And I remember thinking, good call.
(34:50 – 34:55)
Good call. And I sat in the back of that meeting thinking, I don’t know why I’m here. I’m
here because I’ve got no place else to go.
(34:55 – 35:03)
And this guy got up and he shared his experience, strength, and hope. And he shared it
with a grace and a dignity and a calmness about him. And it wasn’t like a false pride.
(35:04 – 35:17)
You could tell that there was something about the dignity about this man that was
something earned, something that he’d incorporated into his life. And he was very
connected to his words. He wasn’t just spouting a bunch of slogans and sitting down.
(35:18 – 35:30)
He was connected to the words. And I could see that. I was an ex-drug dealer, man.
I knew how to read rooms and people. And I sat with my back up against the wall and I
thought, wow, this guy is something. I don’t get it, but he’s something.
(35:30 – 35:40)
It was like he looked right at me and he said, I don’t care whether you like what I got to
say or not. You don’t like what I got to say? Go to another meeting. And I thought, that’s
great.
(35:41 – 35:51)
Because this guy was so clear to me, he wasn’t selling me anything. He wasn’t recruiting
me into this little band of madmen. What he was doing was sharing something with me.
(35:51 – 35:57)
And if I wanted it, I could have it. It was for free. If I didn’t have anything there I could
identify with, go to another meeting.
(35:58 – 36:07)
Maybe you can hear something there you can identify with. And I got to sit back there
with a look of disdain on my face. My arms folded, my best tough guy look, get away
from me look on my face.
(36:07 – 36:14)
Mad-dogging anybody who tried to come near me. Because I was scared to death of you.
I was scared to death you were going to find out the things that I had done.
(36:15 – 36:21)
And that you were going to tell me I couldn’t be here either. And I didn’t have any place
else left to go. So I just was one of those ones that sat in the back, not trusting anybody.
(36:21 – 36:26)
Didn’t say a word. Never took a chip. I didn’t take a cake until I was three years sober.
(36:26 – 36:34)
I didn’t open my mouth until I was two and a half. The only reason I did that is my
sponsor said, it’s time. And he was the only human being I trusted up to that point.
(36:34 – 36:38)
First two and a half years he was it. Late great Donald Madden. Donald Madden saved
my life.
(36:39 – 36:52)
Donald Madden, I remember him saying, I had met him out in the world. And I had his
business card and I couldn’t find a sponsor and I called him up. And I said, hi Donald, you
probably don’t remember me, my name is Earl Hightower.
(36:53 – 37:14)
And he said, oh yes I do. And I said, well I’m going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous
and I wonder if I could talk to you. And he said, be at my office tomorrow morning at nine
o’clock.
Click. So I went. And I said to him, I went up to him and I said, do you need a sponsor?
And he said, what? I said, will you sponsor me? And he said, yes.
(37:15 – 37:26)
And you don’t have to like what I tell you and you don’t have to think it’s a good idea.
You just have to do it. And I put my head down and just started crying like a baby.
(37:26 – 37:34)
Because I hadn’t realized, I hadn’t asked anybody for anything in years. And I had gone
to this man and I had asked him for help and he had said yes. And I had connected to
another human being.
(37:35 – 37:42)
And I just sat there and cried like a baby. And he sat there looking at me crying. And I’d
look up every once in a while with tears running down my face and snot running down
my nose.
(37:42 – 38:00)
And the lip thing going, you know what I mean? And I just put my head back down. And
there was another guy who worked for him, sitting in the back just smiling and working
away. And Donald looked over at me and he goes, oh look, he’s destroyed.
Wonderful. Donald thought it was great, man. This guy’s a shell.
(38:00 – 38:10)
There is nothing going on in there. So we don’t have to un-teach this poor bastard
anything. We just start laying it on him and see what he’ll do.
(38:10 – 38:30)
He loved it like that, man. Just get a real low bottom, down in the dirt, hope to die drunk.
Grab him by the neck and say, come on, baby.
And off we’d go. And I thought, that’s my link to life. That’s not my sponsor.
That’s my link to life. I’ve got to do what this guy says. And he would tell me to do all
kinds of strange things.
(38:30 – 38:41)
And I’d look at him and say, that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my life. And I
think it’s very clear that you do not understand the depth of my difficulty over here. I’m
about to kill myself or several other people at any moment.
(38:42 – 38:53)
I mean, I’m like right there. I’m losing it. I get no sleep.
I can’t eat. I can’t focus. I can’t hear anything anybody’s saying.
(38:53 – 38:58)
I can’t follow the thoughts of these people. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m in pain all
the time.
(38:58 – 39:09)
And your response to me is, make the coffee at this meeting for a year. What the hell are
you talking about? I’m ready to kill somebody and your answer is, make a little coffee. I
don’t think you understand the depth of my problem.
(39:12 – 39:15)
That’s right. I told him. And did this guy back off a little bit here.
(39:16 – 39:26)
And he looked at me and he said, fine, then drink. I said, you know, there’s no talking to
you people. I’m trying to have a conversation and you get back to the drink thing.
(39:26 – 39:28)
Fine. Fine. I’ll make the damn coffee.
(39:29 – 39:34)
Now, he could have said to me, Earl, here’s the deal. Up until now, you have never
thought about anybody but yourself. Ever.
(39:35 – 39:41)
If you ask somebody how they’re doing, they’re telling you, you’re thinking about how
this is reflecting on your life. It’s always about you. You are self-centered and frightened.
(39:42 – 39:49)
That’s how you are. That’s how you have always lived. What we’re going to do is we’re
going to give you an opportunity to engage in an incredible spiritual principle.
(39:49 – 40:03)
It’s called service. We’re going to give you an opportunity to get out of yourself. You’re
going to show up every Friday night.
They make 550 cups of coffee here every Friday night. You’re going to make all of them
for the next year. You’re going to show up at 6 o’clock and you’re going to have all the
supplies that you’ve gathered during the day.
(40:03 – 40:10)
And you’re going to make sure you’ve got them all with your little checklist. And you’re
going to plug in and fill all the coffee pots up with water. And you’re going to plug them
in and make sure you don’t blow a fuse.
(40:10 – 40:16)
And you’re going to fill the pots just right. And you’re going to do everything the way it’s
supposed to be done. And then you’re going to have to wait for the coffee to brew.
(40:16 – 40:27)
And while you’re doing that you’re going to go help them set up the meeting. And when
they’re done with that you’re going to come back and you’re going to put the coffee pots
out. And you’re going to make sure everything’s right.
And they have cups here. So you’re going to get the cups out and line them up so all the
handles are just right. So somebody can walk up, hook a cup, get a cup of coffee and
move on.
(40:27 – 40:37)
And you’re going to keep an eye on all this stuff. And during the break you’re going to
shift the pots so they’ve got fresh coffee for the break. And after the meeting you’re
going to take it all and you’re going to break it down and clean it up and get it all nice
and make it look like it is new.
(40:38 – 40:41)
New. I don’t want to see one grain of coffee in there. Nothing.
(40:42 – 40:49)
And you’re going to pack it all up and you’re going to go home. It’s going to take you
about four and a half hours, your commitment on Friday night. You’re going to feel better
afterwards because you’re going to be of service.
(40:49 – 40:52)
You’re going to be out of self. Out of self. Not thinking about yourself.
(40:52 – 41:08)
Thinking about them and their coffee. Just their coffee. Chop wood and carry water, Earl.
And I go, huh? Chop wood and carry water. Boy, that’s how we do it here. You get out of
yourself.
Less you, more God. Less you, more God. Every night, Friday night, when you come back
to yourself, you’re going to have a little bit different perspective.
(41:08 – 41:12)
Just a shred. Just a hair. But it’s always been just seconds and inches, Earl.
(41:12 – 41:22)
The only difference between you having a shot in here and that guy dying tonight out on
Skid Row is seconds and inches. So you’re going to do this thing. And you’re going to feel
better.
(41:22 – 41:30)
And you’re probably not going to know why. But it’s going to work for you because it’s a
universal spiritual law and it works. So just do it.
(41:30 – 41:40)
He could have said that to me and I would have gone, what? So what he said to me was,
do it or drink. This I understood. So I made the coffee.
(41:40 – 41:58)
And every Friday night, I’d go home feeling a little better. I didn’t know why. About six
months of that, I connected it to, maybe it’s making the coffee.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll try some more of these commitments. I got a cleanup
commitment. I got this.
And I did everything he told me to do. I did everything he told me to do. And all of a
sudden, I had six and a half years of sobriety.
(41:58 – 42:02)
And I was going to seven to nine meetings a week. And I was sponsoring guys. And I was
speaking in Alcoholics Anonymous.
(42:03 – 42:08)
And I had two commitments. And I was taking out two panels. One to the San Fernando
Juvenile Hall, the beginning of the disease.
(42:08 – 42:19)
And every month, I would then go to county general. And I would go to the alcoholism
unit there and I’d see the end of the disease. And I’d have meetings around beds with
guys who were dying, who weren’t going to get out of the hospital.
(42:19 – 42:32)
Their liver was gone. They were going to die. There was no saving them.
And they were trying to get 30 days or 60 days before they died. So we would have a
meeting with them around their bed. And I would remember, each direction I would go,
that I have the same disease as that guy.
(42:32 – 42:41)
And the same disease as that guy. And the same disease as that woman. Yeah, I mean,
we’re not all the same.
We’re very different. I’m looking at all of you. You don’t all look the same.
You don’t sound the same. You don’t act the same. You don’t do the same things.
(42:42 – 43:05)
But I know that there is a common problem, alcoholism. And that there is a common
solution. And Donald’s the one who brought that to me.
Donald’s the guy that brought that to me. I didn’t know about… Alcoholics Anonymous
was an idea until Donald Madden stood in front of me and said, Come this way. I’m not
going to tell you what to do.
I’m going to show you. So when he would tell me to go down to the corner of 6th and
Santa Monica and pick up Ed, the newcomer. And I would go pick up that little snot.
(43:06 – 43:27)
And he would get in my car. I’d have 18 months and he’d have 6 days. And he’d get in
the car and say, Hey, I’m Ed.
How are you doing? I just got my wife back. And the kids and I and the wife are fine. And
I got the job back.
And the car looks good. And the house… It’s like, Shut up, Ed! He’s got 6 days. I’ve got
18 months.
He’s doing better than me already. I hate this guy. I’d say, Look, my sponsor said to pick
you up, take you to the meeting.
(43:27 – 43:32)
That’s what I’m doing. And when the meeting’s over, if you want a ride, I’ll take you
anywhere you want to go. But then I’ve got to talk to you, so knock it off.
(43:33 – 43:42)
Because I was still a scared person. But Ed was on the pink cloud. And Ed was just like,
OK.
Go to the meeting. Go to the meeting. And I’d get there and Donald would be there with
two newcomers setting up the chairs.
(43:43 – 44:09)
Look up at me and go, You’re late. Oh, sorry, man. Look, he’s here.
He’s got two. I only got one. He was doing it.
He was showing me. He showed me. He was my sponsor.
And Donald Madden was the most important person in my life. He was my sponsor for 14
years, up until the day he died. Until the day he died.
It broke my heart when he died, because I thought Donald Madden was dead. And I
missed him every day. When something bad would happen, I’d want to call Donald, and
he wasn’t there.
(44:10 – 44:15)
When something good would happen, I would want to call Donald, and he wasn’t there.
Sometimes I just wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to hear his laugh.
(44:15 – 44:29)
I didn’t know what to do. I felt lost. I had a sponsor within three hours.
We were still waiting for them to come pick up his body. And I got on the phone and
called up another gentleman at Alcoholics Anonymous and asked him to be my sponsor.
And the only reason I asked him was because I knew Donald loved and respected him.
(44:30 – 44:37)
And that was enough for me. And he’s been my sponsor from that point on. But what I’ve
learned in here is that Donald Madden is not dead.
(44:38 – 44:49)
Because everything I’ve got to give, everything I’m sharing, tonight is a result of him
sharing it with me. Because everything I’ve got to give, everything I’m sharing, tonight is
a result of him sharing it with me. See, that’s my family.
I was with him longer than I was with my parents. That’s my family. That’s my lineage.
(44:50 – 45:05)
I’m a product of Donald Madden, who’s a product of his sponsor, who’s a product of his
sponsor, who’s a product of his sponsor. I mean, Norm Alpey’s in there. I mean, there’s
some guys in there.
You know what I mean? And those are my guys. And they gave it freely to me. And the
only thing that Donald Madden ever asked of me in return was one thing.
(45:05 – 45:14)
He said to me, you’re going to go through this process and you’re going to work these
steps and you’re going to have a spiritual awakening as a result of doing this. He said to
me, you’re going to go through this process and you’re going to work these steps and
you’re going to have a spiritual awakening as a result of doing this. And your life is going
to change dramatically.
(45:14 – 45:20)
This goes so far past not drinking and using, you’d be amazed. But what I’m going to ask
you is this. One thing you’re going to have to do for me.
(45:20 – 45:42)
And I said, what is it, Donald? And he said, when you go into a meeting and you see a
new guy walk through that door and he’s got tombstones in his eyes just like you did
when you got here, you go get him. I can never get through this meeting without crying.
I don’t know what it is.
(45:43 – 45:48)
So I did it. So that’s what I do. I mean, I learned, you know, it’s an ancient spiritual
symbol.
(45:48 – 45:59)
Mind, body and spirit brought together as a whole human being. And therein lies the
balance as a human being I had never had in my life. Alcoholics Anonymous adopted the
symbol and it’s unity, recovery and service.
(45:59 – 46:03)
Unity is the body. I must bring it here. I cannot get sober, but we can.
(46:03 – 46:13)
I must be with my fellows. I can sit there going out of my mind and I see a gentleman get
up and take a kick for 48 years. This man has been sober longer than I’ve been on the
planet.
(46:14 – 46:30)
And I am in awe. And I feel respect for my elders. And I feel a tremendous amount of
gratitude.
(46:31 – 46:40)
Because if they hadn’t been here, there’d have been no place for me to come. And I’d
have died. And I never would have seen the things that I’ve seen in life.
(46:40 – 47:00)
I never would have done the things that I’ve been able to do. I never would have had the
opportunity and the honor and the privilege of working with other alcoholics and
watching a dead man come back to life. Watching some kid who’s so crazy he can’t even
make it all the way home after a meeting and pages me from a phone booth saying to
me, this is as far as I can get.
(47:01 – 47:11)
And me being able to say, stay right there, I’m on my way. And go get him out of the
phone booth and take him the rest of the way. We’ll figure out how to get your car later.
(47:11 – 47:18)
We’ll just get you in the house. Not because I’m a good guy. Because I want to stay
sober.
(47:18 – 47:31)
Because Donald Madden told me the truth, that the unity was the body and I must bring
it here. That the recovery is of the mind and I must work the steps. Because if this was
just a physical thing, if it was just about stopping, detox centers would be kicking out
winners, man.
(47:31 – 47:40)
I could kick and I’d be free. But I get an obsession in the mind, the greater aspect of my
disease, and it tells me that I can drink like a normal man. Which I’ve never done in my
life.
(47:41 – 47:53)
And the persistence of this illusion, this belief in a lie that I can do that is astonishing.
And many of us pursue it to the gates of insanity and death. So I’ve got to have the
recoveries of the mind, I work the steps.
(47:53 – 47:57)
Step one is what’s the problem? Lack of power. My dilemma. Powerless over this thing.
(47:57 – 48:15)
If that’s my problem, what’s my solution? Step two, a power greater than me that could
restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink and use. I
believe them, because I’ve seen it. Step three, I better make a decision to do something
about that information so I get down on my knees, I say the third step prayer and I get
back up.
(48:16 – 48:28)
And unless I embark upon a plan of rigorous action right there, there’s absolutely no
point in having done that. So I do four and five, me. Six and seven, I hook it back up with
God.
(48:28 – 48:37)
And eight and nine, I hook it back up with you. I do my inventory, I read it before God to
another human being. I ask God to remove my defects of character, because I’ll remove
the wrong stuff.
(48:40 – 48:48)
Eight and nine, I make my amends. And I go out and I say, I’m very, very sorry, and
here’s your money. And I go back in the house, and I don’t get into it at all.
(48:49 – 48:59)
I clean up my side of the street. The magic of those steps of eight and nine for me have
absolutely nothing to do with the reaction or the response of the individual I’m making
the amends to. Nothing.
(49:00 – 49:10)
I’m not there for their forgiveness. I’m not there for their respect. I’m not there for their
good wishes.
I’m not there for them to think, wow, isn’t it great that Earl’s on this spiritual path now.
It’s not why I’m there. I’m there to clean up my side of the street.
(49:10 – 49:43)
And the fact that I show up and make the amends, the victory’s there for me, no matter
what they think about it. As long as I’m honest and forthright in the way that I conduct
that business. Ten, eleven, and twelve is the same thing.
It’s me, God, and you. It keeps me in the game. Ten is me.
I continue to keep that street clean because I’m screwing up all the time. I screw up all
the time. Because I’m in the game.
I’m not playing it safe. I’m out there in the world anonymously pushing it, going after
stuff, living my life, experiencing things that are the result of my being restored as a
human being in Alcoholics Anonymous. Eleven, I seek God.
(49:43 – 49:52)
I seek him through prayer and meditation. I pray for knowledge of his will for me and the
power to carry that out and that’s it. And I meditate to quiet the mind so that when the
answers come I can hear them.
(49:52 – 49:59)
So that I can rely upon the intuition that the book tells me that I’ll be able to. That that
will happen for me. That I can rely on that.
(49:59 – 50:02)
And twelve is the third side of the triangle. Unity is the body. I bring it here.
(50:02 – 50:08)
Recovery is the mind. I work those steps as outlined in the big book of Alcoholics
Anonymous. First hundred and sixty-four pages.
(50:08 – 50:21)
And having had a spiritual awakening as a result of that, having the obsession to drink
removed, I can practice the principles and carry the message to the alcoholic who suffers
I can be of service. Unity, come here. Go to meetings.
(50:21 – 50:42)
Engage in the spiritual examples which are commitments and service and doing the
things that we learn to do around here. Looking into the eyes of other alcoholics.
Recovery is of the mind.
Work the steps. Having done that, I can come back to the meeting and I can do what
Donald Madden asked me to do. I can go to a meeting because I know that the purpose
of a meeting is to have a place where a newcomer can come and hear a message of
recovery and a message of hope.
(50:42 – 51:02)
That’s the point of a meeting. So when I see the guys in here that raise their hands
tonight, I say welcome to you. Welcome to you.
Come on in. Bring what you got. Bring what you got.
You crazy? You feel like you’re going to kill somebody in any moment? Perfect. You don’t
get it? Don’t worry about it. You don’t understand? Don’t worry about it.
(51:02 – 51:07)
Doesn’t make any sense to you? Don’t worry about it. Just do it. Just do these things that
make no sense.
(51:07 – 51:26)
Do them and do them and do them and it will change you. You will get the experience of
what’s here by doing it. That’s the only way.
You can’t sit there, listen to it and have it affect your life like what can happen if you do
the things that are available to you in here. Find the people with the lights in their eyes
and take your turn. You get to be new.
(51:27 – 51:36)
I remember me new man. My head was insane. I remember going to a meeting in Ohio
Street on a Saturday night and I would show up at a meeting and I would be thinking
okay, okay, I found the meeting, I found the meeting, it’s good, I found the meeting, it’s
good.
(51:36 – 51:49)
You park the car, go in. They put the keys in the chair, they put the keys in the chair, put
the key on the chair and that’s your chair. Find the guy with the red coat, because you
have to sit next to the guy with the red coat and you don’t know what your seat is.
Just sit next to the guy with the red coat. Ring the bell, ring the bell, good, good. Sit
down, sit down, sit down.
(51:49 – 52:10)
How are you doing? Fine. How are you doing? Fine. I’m fine.
How are you doing? Fine. Just spinning inside. Guy get up and he’d read the portion of
chapter 5. Good, good.
Good chapters. Book, book, book, book. Rarely seen something.
I don’t know what he’s seen. Really seen something. Kind of missed that.
I don’t know. I’m having a little trouble here. Okay, good, good, good.
Just breathe, just breathe. Just sit in the seat. Guy with the red coat.
(52:10 – 52:20)
Whoop! 12 things. There’s 12 things. There’s 12 things in alcoholics.
I’m going to remember that. 12 things in alcoholics. Good.
That’s good. 12 things, 12 things. ABC, ABC.
12 things, ABC. 12 things, ABC. Got that, got that.
Okay, he’s down, he’s down. I missed a lot of that. I missed a lot of that.
(52:20 – 52:24)
But that’s all right. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. There’s a guy.
He’s up, he’s up, he’s up. What’s he doing? He’s an alcoholic. He drank, he drank.
(52:24 – 52:28)
I did that. I did that. I did that.
That’s good. I did that. I did that.
That’s good. That’s good. He’s down.
(52:28 – 52:39)
It wasn’t a lot, but that was good. All right, that was right. Now there’s another guy.
They’re passing a basket. They’re passing a basket. What’s in the basket? The basket,
the basket.
Don’t take the money. Don’t take the money. Don’t take the money.
(52:39 – 52:43)
The basket’s by, the basket’s by. Good, good. The basket’s by, the basket’s by.
(52:43 – 52:47)
Okay, they’re ringing a bell. We’re getting out. We’re getting out.
Where are we going? We’re going out. We’re going to go out. We’re smoking.
We’re smoking. I smoke. I smoke.
(52:47 – 52:49)
We smoke. We smoke. We smoke.
(52:49 – 53:00)
Smoke. Okay, there’s another bell. Bell.
We’re going back in. We’re going back in. Where’s the guy with the red coat? Red coat.
Red coat. Where’s the guy with the red coat? Red coat. Fine, fine.
Guy with the red coat. Okay, sit, sit, sit, sit. Okay, they’re reading 12 things.
They’re reading 12 things. These aren’t the same 12 things. There’s 24 things on
Alcoholics Anonymous and on ABC.
(53:00 – 53:06)
24 things, ABC. 24 things, ABC. That’s good.
That’s good. Okay, I got it. I got it.
I got it. I’m going to remember this. I know I’m going to remember this.
(53:06 – 53:09)
Here’s another guy. He drank. He drank.
He drank. He drank. He drank.
(53:09 – 53:10)
I did that. I did that. I did that.
(53:10 – 53:14)
I felt like that. I felt like that. I felt like that.
(53:14 – 53:21)
That guy knows how I feel. How does that guy know how I feel? We are the same, aren’t
we? We’re the same. Me and that guy are the same.
(53:21 – 53:24)
He’s 70 years old. We’re the same. This is amazing.
(53:24 – 53:30)
I’m going to have to come back. I’m going to have to come back and do this some more.
This is good.
This is good. He’s down. He’s down.
(53:30 – 53:31)
All right. It was good. It was good.
(53:31 – 53:33)
Now we’re up. They got me by the hands. They got me by the hands.
(53:33 – 53:34)
They got me by the hands. It was the prayer. I know the prayer.
(53:35 – 53:36)
I know the prayer. Say the prayer. Say the prayer.
(53:36 – 53:43)
Say the prayer. I would get up and I would go to leave out and somebody would say to
me because they knew I was new and they would come by and they would say, How was
the meeting? I would say, It was great. It was great.
(53:44 – 53:54)
I didn’t get anything. The miracle was is that I was sober and I was in a meeting of
Alcoholics Anonymous and I was doing the best I could. So if you’re new, take your turn.
(53:54 – 54:00)
Take your turn. Bring it in here and take from the people in here. What we’ll give you is
we’ll give you all the tools you need.
(54:00 – 54:05)
We’ll give you external contrary action. We’ll give you a fellowship to involve yourself in.
Commitments.
(54:06 – 54:18)
Give you a chance to earn your seat and feel like you’ve got a right to be here and that
you belong and that this is your meeting as much as it is any other person in this room.
And then we’ll give you a big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and you’ll take the inner
journey. And you can have an awakening.
(54:18 – 54:26)
It’s designed to bring about an experience. And you can have an amazing life that goes
so far past not drinking and using. You won’t believe it.
(54:28 – 54:33)
I am really honored to be here. To be in a room with a guy like John. To be in a room with
Paul.
(54:34 – 54:40)
I mean, I constantly owe Paul amends. Always. And I owe you another amends.
(54:40 – 54:52)
I have a tendency, I speak at a lot of conventions around the country. And I go to these
conventions and occasionally they will come up and they will ask you to sign their big
books for them. And I just feel creepy signing the big book.
(54:52 – 54:57)
You know what I mean? I got 17 years. I’ll be 18 in November. And, you know, I’m a
punk.
(54:58 – 55:03)
NAA. I’ve got 17 years. I mean, there’s like 30 people in this room just come up and pat
me on the head.
(55:03 – 55:09)
You know, he’s like, keep coming back, kid. You’ll get it one of these days. You know?
And they ask me to do that and I don’t feel like saying anything to them.
(55:09 – 55:14)
So I always turn to page 449 and I write, Keep coming back. Love, Dr. Paul. And I give
them back the book.
(55:20 – 55:28)
Because I just can’t sign my name in the book. It’s too weird. And I know he signs them
Paul O. So you know what the forgeries are.
(55:28 – 55:42)
So again, I’m really sorry, Paul. So be careful when you go to Albuquerque because when
you identify as Paul there’s going to be people there that are going to be a bit confused.
Because they think you’re a short guy with a beard.
(55:44 – 55:48)
And I love Paul to death. He’s one of my heroes. I mean, because Paul is one of the
kindest men I know.
(55:49 – 55:57)
And Paul’s not kind based on what anybody else does. Paul is kind because he’s made a
decision to be a kind man. And I think that’s the greatest compliment you can pay
anybody in this world is that they’re kind.
(55:58 – 56:02)
You’re kind when people are rude to you. You’re kind when people are nice to you. It
doesn’t matter.
(56:02 – 56:07)
Live like a kind human being. I’m very grateful to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous
and thanks a lot for letting me share.