An Afternoon With Gary K

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Thank you.

(00:02):
Thank
wow.
I'm in a chicken chili coma.
My name is Gary K and I am a grateful,recovered drug addict and alcoholic Gary.

(00:27):
I am a recovered piss pants, fall downdrunk savage junkie and douche canoe.
And if you don't know what a douchecanoe is, that's a level of douchie
that cannot be contained in just a bag.

(00:47):
I'm so grateful.
Oh, I'm clicking this thingwithout realizing I'm doing it.
Wait a minute.
Oh no.
I go the wrong way.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
There it is.
Oh, look at that.
12 steps.
So I'm really thrilled to be here.
Um, I'm very proud to be aperson in long-term recovery.
It was an arduous journey to get thereand, uh, a painful one and a lonely one.

(01:16):
And I consider an honor anytimeI'm asked to speak anywhere.
Mm-hmm.
I travel all over the country inthe United States and Canada, and
uh, I guess that's missionary work.
Mm-hmm.
I'm honored to do it because thestakes are, have never been higher.

(01:37):
Addiction and alcoholism havebecome a global pandemic.
There is a plague on planet Earth.
It has become America's number onepublic health crisis every year.
Now in the United States for thelast several years, over 250,000

(02:02):
young Americans die from drug overdose.
250,000. That is double the number of allAmerican military casualties since World
War ii, and that's happening every year.
In the last 12 months in the UnitedStates, in our 50 states, over 22,000 10

(02:29):
to 15 year olds have died from opiates.
Oh,
when I was 10 years old, we were playingarmy out in the field and, and riding our
banana bikes and playing hide and seek.
Our kids are dying.
My son died from fentanyl overdose,my only child in, uh, 2018.

(02:54):
That happened.
In any event, uh, I'm honoredto be able to carry a message of
hope and recovery and solutionto as many people as possible.
That is my mission, to carry thatmessage to as many people as possible.
So I'd like to tell my storyhow this started, if I've

(03:15):
got this button figured out.
Oh, look at that little fat baby.
Oh, so cute.
Boy.
Thank you.
That's me In 1960, no mustache.
No mustache, no beard yet.
Just a happy, fat little baby.

(03:35):
My birth mother was a heroinaddict and a prostitute.
She had seven children and shesold her babies for $5,000 a piece.
I was sold to an adoption agency and Iwas adopted by these two amazing people.
Bruce and Mary Evelyn Bruceand Mary Evelyn met when they

(03:58):
were freshmen in high school.
That was prior to World War ii.
Um, I'm quite certain theynever cheated on each other.
They both swore that never happened.
And, uh,
my father went off toserve in the military

(04:20):
during World War ii and after the warended, uh, when the bomb dropped, he,
he was in the Midway Islands at thetime and he managed to find, uh, a
copy of a record of Don't Sit underthe Apple Tree by the Andrews sisters.
That was a favorite song of theirs.
Don't sit under the apple tree with anyoneelse but me until the war's over with

(04:41):
a box of chocolates, which completelymelted by the time it reached her and
a ring and they got married and theynever spent a night apart for 69 years.
I never heard them argue, except onetime one of my uncles and my father
and I went up to Canada and we shota bear and brought the bear back

(05:02):
and tried to get her to cook it.
That was the only time I everheard them yell at each other.
And she was yelling, getthat bear out of my house.
That was the only time,and I, I'll give her that.
And, uh, they were amazing people.
They went to church.

(05:23):
They were kind, they livedalong spiritual lines.
They were good and decent peopleand contributed to their community.
That's who raised me.
And the other little child inthat picture is my sister Kathy.
She was also adopted from adifferent birth family, and

(05:49):
she raised two wonderful kids,
has a lovely home, a stable marriage,and had a career, a good indecent person.
She didn't have the diseaseof addiction that I got.
That was, that was, thatwas the hand I was dealt.

(06:10):
I'm clear today that what I sufferedfrom was not a moral failing.
It is not a weakness.
It is not a choice.
It is a chronic, progressive,fatal brain disease.
And if you're alcoholic, it'saccompanied by a physical allergic
reaction to the ethanol molecule.

(06:34):
And being a drug addict, Ihad a second condition on top
of the disease of addiction.
It's called hyperalgesia.
And that's why when I take one hit ofcrack, I have to have another and another,
and another, and another, and another.
And I can't stop.
So

(06:56):
I had a very normal childhooduntil 1968 and I was abused
sexually by an older relative.
That did not cause my alcoholism, thatdid not cause my addiction, that did
accelerate the progression of the disease.

(07:17):
I'm very clear about that today.
And I went through that sexual abuse,didn't know how to ask for help.
Oh shoot, for, I gotta watch this thing.
Uh, from 1968 to 1971,
and when I was 12 years old, I hada growth spurt and my voice changed.

(07:39):
My parents used to take me downto a farm in southern Ohio.
That's where the abuse happened.
And they went off to, uh, sea race horses,which my father had an interest in.
And they would leave me at this farm.
And when I was 12, Isaid, I'm not going there.
I'm never going there again.
I'm not the farm type.

(08:01):
I'm not going there.
And they talked about it at great lengthand said, alright, you're a good kid.
We'll leave you at home.
Um.
I think these slideswere in the wrong order.
My father, um, was a great footballfan and he used to help line up the,

(08:22):
uh, convertible automobiles for thefootball Hall of Fame parade every year.
I'm from Akron, Ohio, by the way,which is the birthplace of 12 Step
Recovery, uh, is also two blocksfrom AA co-founder Dr. Bob's home.
It was two blocks from his home, was thefirst time I was arrested for drunk and
disorderly, and I'm very proud of that.

(08:47):
And I didn't know Dr. Bob at the time.
I wish I had.
Um, in any event, my, uh, fatherhelped line up the convertible
automobiles for the football Hall ofFame parade every year, which is held
in Canton, Ohio, where the footballHall of Fame is just south of Akron.
Just 10, 15 minutes, uh,from where I grew up.
And one year the board of Trustees,the football Hall of fame, gave this

(09:11):
decanter to my father as a gift.
Inside of it is 80-year-old Jim Beamwhiskey, and it looks like the actual
building of the football hall of Fame.
And of course the cork, youcan see is the football.
That was the roof of the building was agiant football, and that was the cork.
My father had no interest in whatwas on the inside of that bottle.

(09:33):
He never drank alcohol ever in his life.
Neither did, my mothernever touched their lips.
And I always heard growing up alcohol bad.
My grandfather, my father's fatherwas a Pentecostal minister and a faith
healer, and they were very strictabout many things, very conservative
and alcohol was on the no-fly list.

(09:56):
And from the time I was eight yearsold when this bottle arrived in the
house, I wanted it, I knew somehowin the deepest part of my soul that I
was born to have a relationship withwhat was on the inside of that bottle.
My father was so proud of this bottle.
He had a shadow box built in the denand he put this bottle in it and it had

(10:21):
one track light with a light shiningon this bottle as if it were a shrine
of the Virgin Mary at Shard Cathedral.
And, uh, he was so proud of this bottleand I used to go in there and play with
it all the time, and I'd pick it up andshake it and listen to that liquid and
I would put it back wrong or there'dbe, you know, a footprint from dust.

(10:44):
Um, and he knew that I wasscrewing around with it.
And he caught me withit a couple of times.
And he said, if you ever open that bottle,
you're gonna be in deep trouble.
And he was underwater demolitionduring World War ii, and a bomb
went off at one point and blew off.
One of his hands was all mangled.

(11:05):
And when I would act likean ass, he would say.
Do you want hospital or sudden death?
And, and he was a gentle man,actually never laid a hand on him.
He was the sweetest guy, but thatwould scare the hell outta me.
And on, uh, and he told me if Iever touched that bottle, I was
gonna get hospital and sudden death.

(11:27):
So one weekend they weregonna drop me off at the farm.
I was 12 years old, had a growthspurt and my voice changed.
I said, I'm not going.
He said, okay.
You're a good kid, Mary Evan.
Let's leave him home alone.
See how he does.
I think he'll be fine.
And he said, if you touch that bottle,hospital, sudden death, and I'm gonna

(11:49):
take my belt off and whip your buttuntil it looks like peppermint candy.
You know, a big white butt in the,anyway, I thought that was funny.
I laughed at the time.
I said, oh no, dad.
I swear, no, of course.
No, of course not.
Of course not.
Well, as soon as the car disappeareddown the road, this was my moment.

(12:10):
I've been waiting for thissince I was eight years old.
I ran into the den, I grabbed thebottle, I took it to the kitchen.
I. I got a a, a tea kettle out, filledup with water, got a real nice head
of steam going, and I spent over anhour very carefully, meticulously
steaming the seal off of that bottle.

(12:32):
I saw that on.
I Love Lucy.
She steamed a letter open.
Yeah.
Remember that?
So Ricky, well, that workedand I steamed that seal off
and I drank for the first time.
And as soon as that alcohol hit mymouth, I'll tell you what it didn't do.
It did not relax me.

(12:52):
It made me wanna rob a bank.
It went through my body and said,let's get up and go somewhere.
The wall went down that separatedme from every other human being.
The wall went down.
There was a kid in the neighborhoodnamed Philip Paxton, and he was a bully.

(13:13):
And I was a scrawny littlekid for most of my childhood.
I was tall and thin and heused to beat the crap outta me.
Well, I drank probably half of thatbottle and went over to his house
and I knocked on the screen door.
I coaxed him outside and I made abowl of spaghetti out of his face.

(13:34):
I beat the hell outta that kid,and I felt like a superhero.
I beat the bully.
I have arrived.
I finally felt safe in the world.
So from that point on, well, firstthing I did, I filled that bottle up
with water, put the cork back in, gluedthe seal back on very carefully and

(13:57):
put it back in the shadow box whereit remained until Bruce passed away.
When I was in active addiction, onceI had been in a coma for a while, I
had that happen a couple of times,and I woke up and it was in New York.

(14:17):
I had moved to New York City and uh,I was in New York when I woke up, my
father's face was right here and mymother was out in the hallway in the
hospital and he says, Mary Evelyn,the son of a bitch is still alive.
And he said, you know what, kid?
If you had died, no one would've come toyour funeral, not even your mother and I

(14:39):
because you're a disgusting human being.
Hmm.
He said that to me.
And in recovery, he became my best friend.
We talked several times a day.
We went hunting, fishing,went to the races, and um,

(15:02):
so he was dying from cancer andhe'd been sick for a very long time.
And I got the call from my mother,you should come home right away.
I hopped on a plane.
I was there in about three hours.
I. And I went home and my motherwas there, uh, with my sister and
an aunt of mine, my, a great aunt.
And they were packing up some of my dad'sthings as my mother did not want to,

(15:25):
but people had guided her to do that.
You need to pack his stuff upand get rid of his clothes.
He's not coming back.
You know, he's gonna die andyou need to prepare for this.
And, uh, we were in the den and therewas that bottle, and I went over
and shook it and still had waterin it from all those years ago.

(15:46):
It occurred to me I never made amendsfor what I did to that file that
was not on my eight step list andmy ninth step, it did not happen.
Wow.
I said, mom, I'm going tothe hospital right away.
I went to the hospital as fast as I could.
When I got there, my father,there were tubes in his nose.

(16:07):
And uh, you know, he was, he was inthat state where they're only awake
few minutes out of an hour, andthey only breathe every 60 seconds.
And I just sat there and lookedat him and he opened his eyes and
when he saw me, he went like this.

(16:28):
Holy shit.
I said, Bruce, there's something I haveto confess and amends I've never made.
And he said.
Oh God Almighty.
Like enough of this AA stuff,selfish addict that I am, I
want to get this off my mind.

(16:48):
The poor guy's dying in all kinds of pain.
I said, Bruce, it's aboutthat whiskey decanter
full of water
I said, what the hell,Bruce seals on upside down.

(17:10):
Oh no, you're an ass.
And we both laughed.
And then he closed his eyes.
And that was the last conversationI ever had with my dad.
And, and shortly afterthat, he passed away.
And I share this with you because ifyou're working the steps and you're

(17:30):
new at this thing, the ninth step isnot a punishment, it's for our comfort.
It's to give us relief fromguilt and shame and remorse.
That's what that Ninth step's for.
So get it done.
So yeah, I put it back in the shadowbox and there it stayed all those years.

(17:54):
So, whoop, that was my first drink.
There I am at age 12 with a bottle inmy hand, and after that it was game on.
There I am with another bottle in my hand.
I drank every day.
We had a lot of Italian neighbors andthey made their own wine and grappa.
I didn't like those kids.

(18:15):
I didn't like any of 'em.
I thought they were illiterate.
I thought I was smarterthem anyway, I'd go rope.
My mother used ivory dish soap,um, in those white plastic bottles,
and I'd rinse 'em out real goodwhen she threw 'em in the trash.
And this was the 1970s, and I carried abig leather shoulder bag everywhere I went

(18:39):
and people teased me, called it a person.
I didn't give a damn what you called it.
That was my bar on the go.
I kept my marijuana in there, my rollingpapers, a blow dryer, some Joon Musk case.
I got lucky.
And, uh, you know, I was on the go and Iwould go to the neighbors and fill these

(18:59):
plastic bottles up with wine and grappa.
And then I knocked holes in the paneling.
My room was down in a finished basement.
It had its own entrance fromoutside my parents' bedroom, two
floors above me, and they couldn'thear what I was doing at night.
I punched holes in the paneling and Iput a little fishing nail with some,

(19:20):
uh, uh, fishing line, and I'd drop thesebottles of booze down inside the walls.
And then I'd cover the holes.
With posters of Ted Nugent andGrateful Dead and so forth.
And, uh,
yeah.
And that was my bar man.
I had a bar down there and I'd likeHomer Simpson, I'd lay in my bed and

(19:41):
go, ar, you know, and drink that wine.
And I did that every dayand somehow managed to go to
school when I was 16 years old.
I got my driver's license.
I had had two bottles of winethat morning and a bottle of
grappa, because it was game on.
The allergy kicked in immediately.

(20:02):
And what that means by the allergy,my, my ab when they told me I had an
allergy to alcohol, I said, how thehell could I have an allergy to alcohol?
I drink a gallon every day.
That is the allergy.
The more I drink, the harder Icrave it demands the second drink.
Demands a third drink because our liverenzymes and amino acids take a nap.

(20:27):
Uh, while they're convertingthe alcohol into carbohydrate.
It gets stuck on the level of acetone.
The brain detects that and says,we need more acetone to get rid of
the acetone that's already there.
That's a defect in the brain.
That's why it's a disease,which is a defect in an organ.
There are many diseases, many defects,which I covered yesterday in my talk.

(20:50):
I got my driver's license.
I, so I went into a blackout.
I drank so much that morning.
That's why I was drinkingso much because the allergy.
That was my point.
Thank you.
I'm so glad somebody was paying attention.
And, uh,
I went into my, had my first blackout.
I just got my driver's license andI got in the car and I went out

(21:12):
and killed two people in an, in adrunk driving automobile accident.
And I didn't go to jail because the familyconnections, uh, the form of the grand
jury was my father's business partner.
And, uh, the judge was a familyfriend and some money was exchanged.
And I did not go to jail for that.

(21:33):
I had four other accidents that maimedpeople while I was in high school.
And I totaled 11 automobileswhile I was in high school.
And I blew a kid's hand off with ashotgun, a boy named David Gooding.
I've searched high and low for that guyto make amends to him, but I'm willing,

(21:55):
maybe one day God will put him on my path.
Uh hmm.
Yeah.
So
it got really ugly.
I also had this strange habit of everytime I drank, I would take my clothes off.
I. In public.
Aren't you glad I'm sober?

(22:18):
What?
There's a line in the big bookthat says, A fat naked 64-year-old
crack who is an unlovely creature,
I guess.
I guess that's true.
So yeah.
And when I did drugs, Iwould tear my clothes off.

(22:39):
In fact, it got to a point, I'd go outto CVS and buy a stack of t-shirts and
underwear to tear off when I smoked crack.
And I would tear, tear themoff, run to the window, shake
it, then it would occur to me.
The ninja police were coming.
I pull the curtains, drop the floor,army, crawl to the bed, crawl under

(22:59):
the bed, lay there for an hour untilit passed, put on another t-shirt,
underwear, take another hit of crack,rip 'em off, run to the window, shake it.
And I lived in Times Square for years.
That was a very bad place to tweak 'causethe whole world was right outside the
window and there really were Ninja Police.

(23:22):
So when I was 17 years old, Iwanted to be an actor and I got
a $5,000 cash scholarship to gostudy acting in New York City.
I was accepted at the AmericanAcademy of Dramatic Arts, and I
took the Amtrak to New York City.
I had a cardboard suitcase.
I had a blue, much like I'm dressed now.
I had a blue shirt and jeans anda pair of boots and a blue blazer

(23:45):
and some ray bands, a littletypewriter, a cart and a camel.
No filters.
Two bottles of teacher's scotchand a pound of marijuana in
two cardboard suitcase off.
I went to New York City, uh, my first,uh, my first morning in New York.
Now I had $5,000.
And, and this is 1976.

(24:05):
And in 19 76, 5 grand is like having50 grand, little 17-year-old, half
naked, running around, you know,taking my clothes off in public.
Um, and there was anightclub I wanted to go to.
I'd heard about it, read aboutit in magazine, saw about on
television, and I wanted to go.

(24:26):
And I was walking around in Chelsea, anarea of New York, in the west twenties.
And I saw this storecalled ADTs, still there.
They, uh, have, um, costumes and, andHalloween supplies, party supplies.
And I went in and I bought a giantstraw farmer hat like you'd win at
the county fair and a, a six footlong red ostrich feather boa, a big

(24:54):
pair of sunglasses and a pair of verythin, very short, extremely tight.
Gold lame Daisy Duke shorts.
And to get in this club, youeither had to be extremely
famous, mad, sexy, or a freak.
So I dressed like I wason, uh, let's make a deal.

(25:18):
I didn't realize that a half naked,17-year-old would get the job done.
I wouldn't have need that costume.
But I went to Studio 54 that night,that was the name of the club.
And uh, the doorman saw me coming and hepulled back the rope and let me on the
red carpet with all those celebrities.

(25:39):
And as it says in Bill's storyin the big book, I had arrived.
And that night I had sex witha bunch of famous people.
I met cocaine for the first time.
And um, by the end of the evening I dancednaked, except for that red ostrich feather
boa in the middle of the dance floor.
It's Studio 54.

(26:00):
And Ian Schrager, one of theowners, offered me a job and I
became a go-go boy and a stripper.
While I went to school studyingacting, I started stripping at other
clubs like Gigi Knickerbockers.
He did that on a trapeze,wearing a little thong.
Anyway, it was crazy.
And uh, honestly, I was having a ball.

(26:22):
I was 17, 18 years old.
Oh, there I am at Studio 54 withthe famous lawyer, Roy Cone.
Who was not a nice guy.
I mean, that guy was pure evil.
There I am dancing at Studio 54.
That's actually a screenshot from adocumentary, which is on Amazon right now.
If you watch it, you'llsee that scene go by.

(26:42):
That's me shaking my butt as Studio 54.
Things got really crazy and Istarted meeting a lot of drugs.
What's the next one?
Oh yeah, uh, money.
Money was going throughmy fingers like water.
And someone suggested thatI become a male prostitute.
And I said, well, thatsounds like a good idea.

(27:03):
My alcoholic thinking, you know?
So I became a sex workerthere with the mustache.
It was the seventies and theMarlboro man was a big thing.
So that was, that was me,uh, being a male prostitute.
And again, things startedgetting really twisted.
And then I saw, after about two yearsof this nonsense, I saw an advertisement

(27:26):
in a magazine called Backstage, whichis, um, audition notices for actors.
And they were looking for tall, athletic,uh, trained male dancers who were
willing to dance in their jockstrap ina locker room scene playing a Texas Aggy
football player in the Broadway musical,the best little whore house in Texas.

(27:48):
And I thought, well, I'm a whore.
And I danced naked, sothis is a no brainer.
And I auditioned.
That was my first Broadway show.
And uh, I'm now drinking around the clock.
There's my drunk self.
I had fun searching for these pictures.
Yeah, boy.
Oh boy.

(28:09):
There it is.
There it is.
Dancing around the clock.
Uh, I ended up having a career in theNew York Theater, and, uh, I did, I
understudied a lot of famous actors.
I sold drugs to a lot of famous people.
Um,
and I had a career in show business.

(28:30):
That's me as Captain Hook.
That's me with Carol Channing fromLorelei and, uh, as Daddy Warbucks
and, uh, the Broadway musical Annie.
I keep having to search ahead tosee what the, what the slides are.
I became addicted to alcohol, marijuana,opium hash morphine, ketamine, Percocet

(28:51):
Percodan, Vicodin, rest real LSD, blackbeauties, Quaaludes Whippets whip it
good ivy heroin and crack cocaine.
During that period, I went to 47 detoxes,11 trips to jail, caught two felonies,

(29:16):
had seven suicide attempts.
Was subjected to Gestalt Therapy,union Therapy, Freudian Therapy,
psychodynamics ElectroshockTherapy in the early eighties.
I tried Rational Recovery when thatfirst started, and in the early
nineties, my family flew me back toOhio to work with Albert Ellis, who

(29:37):
founded Smart Recovery and CBT anddid the, did all of those things.
Um, end of my theater career, Iwas hired to play Daddy Warbucks
in the Broadway musical ante.
And in those days before you opened onBroadway, you did what was called an out
of town trial, and you would take the showto a half a dozen cities and perform to

(30:00):
get your timing down, get all the techworking before you opened on Broadway.
And we were in Albany, New York at theState Theater holds about 4,000 people.
They call it the Egg, A big,great big egg shape theater.
Um, the particular performanceI'm gonna tell you about it was a
thousand dollars a ticket for anAIDS benefit in the early 1990s.

(30:22):
And that night, the governor would bethere, the mayor of New York City would
be there, the entire New York PressCorps, the New York Times, the Daily
News, the Post New York magazine, allof them, lots of celebrities coming.
And at that point in mycareer, what my day was like,
I would wake up in the morning.
First thing I would do beforegetting out of bed was smoke a
joint and knock back two scotches.

(30:44):
Then I would go to the bathroom.
Then it's two morescotches and another joint.
I was very ritualistic.
I know today what that was all about.
In order to have a spiritualexperience, you participate in a ritual.
And I was looking fora spiritual experience.
So I was very, um, ritualistic.

(31:06):
Then I would get in bed, I would takesome pills, rest, real Valium, something
like that, and spend the day in bed.
And then my dresser, Jennifer would comein the late afternoon and knock me, slap
me awake, and drag me into the bathroom.
And off we'd go to the theaterand I'd lay off the drugs and
alcohol until intermission.
Then intermission was two linesof Coke and a Jack Daniels neat.

(31:29):
And, um, then after the show I wouldbe out, whatever city we were in.
I, or if it was Broadway in New York,uh, I would just go out to clubs and
it was coke, hookers, and booze coke,hookers and booze all night long.
And before going to bed, I would eatcopious amounts of eggs, pancakes and
orange juice to soak up the booze.

(31:50):
Then I would inject heroin intomy jugular to put myself to sleep.
And that was your grandfather's heroin.
That wasn't Fentanyl with Nestle's quick.
It was real heroin, real heroinopiates, your digestive track,
and whatever you've eaten.
When it opiates, all of that istrapped in your lower intestine,

(32:13):
your stomach, and it's trapped.
And at some point itrelaxes and you ninja vomit.
And I could hit your glasses, I couldpuke your glasses right off the top of
your hat from here with that ninja puke.
So that's what was going on in my life.
So this particular performance,all the celebrities are there.
We've got 65 adult actors,30 little orphan girls.

(32:36):
Uh, the, the, uh, chaperones, the mothers,the sandy, the dog, the dog trainer, the
dogs under study, 30 piece orchestra,the conductor, the tech staff, uh, the
administrative staff was this huge, huge,expensive thing going down the road, uh,
preparing to go to Broadway and you doyour out town trial, then you shut down

(33:00):
for 30 days while you rehearse on theNew York set and then open on Broadway.
So the evening has arrived,a thousand dollars a ticket.
All the celebrities are there.
There's the governorsitting in the front row.
There's David Dinkins, themayor of New York City.
There's Liz Smith and Cindy Adamsfrom The Daily News and The Post and
Frank Rich from the New York Times.

(33:21):
They're all sittingthere in the front row.
And I'm the male star of the show.
And, uh, Joanne Worley from atelevision show called Laughing.
Played, uh, you remember?
Yeah, I'm glad I'm here with some peers.
And, uh, Joanne Worleywas playing Miss Hannigan.
Remember she going, I,I, I don't like that.

(33:41):
And, and I was the crazyperson playing Daddy Warbucks.
And, uh,
it's the second act.
And Daddy Warbucks tellsAnnie he's gonna adopt her.
And the audience is thrilled.
And the Warbuck set disappears.
The stage is flooded with dryice, so it looks like a cloud.

(34:02):
And then what's calleda twinkle drop appears.
And this is a piece ofequipment that costs $200,000.
It's the night sky, the moon and stars.
It's very elaborate every night whenthat thing lights up on cue, the
audience would go, oh, like this.
So I've told her I'mgonna adopt her dry ice.

(34:22):
We're on a cloud.
Oh, twinkle drop appears,the orchestra starts to play.
I put little Orphan Annie'sfeet on my big feet, and I
start to teach her how to waltz.
And we start waltzing around thestage and it's absolutely beautiful.
And the, the French horns are playingand the cellos and the violins, and
it's all very lush and beautiful.

(34:45):
And, uh, I'm choreographed at the endof the num at the end of the dance.
I'm gonna hit the last number of the song.
Pick up the little girl.
Hold her right here.
Hit the last note of thenumber, opened my arms.
She falls into my chest.
Our faces come together.
We look out at the audience as theorchestra plays the last notes.

(35:10):
And the Tiffany goes, boom, boom.
And the follow spot goes, theblack and the audience jumps to
their feet on cue every night.
It's called putting a buttonon the 11 o'clock number.
That's a theater trick.
And, um, so it's time we're waltzing.
I pick up the kid, I hit thelast number of the song, no one,

(35:38):
and I ninja vomited.
Point blank right inLittle Orphan Annie's face.
Funny to you.
Well, the audience screamed.
A lot of people walked out.
Little Orphan Annie screamed.
I dropped her in the puke.
I kept puking.
I started laughing like it wasthe funniest thing I'd ever

(35:58):
seen that made all the papers.
And, uh, they brought thecurtain down, said There'll now
be a 45 minute intermission.
And the producer came out and hepunched me in the face and I punched
him and he punched me and I punched him.
And so the producer and Iare having a fist fight.
And then I picked the chair up andstarted beating him, beating him with it.

(36:21):
And that's when the police arrived.
And I went to jail for avery long time for that.
And that was the endof my Broadway career.
And, uh, I didn't knowwhat to do with myself.
So I decided to become a drug dealer.
There I am as a drug dealer,and I didn't do very well.
I smoked up most of my profits.
Uh, I was trying to sell crack,and then I was doing massive

(36:43):
amounts of crack cocaine.
I wasn't eating, drink, drinkinga ton and shooting up heroin.
And in order to get the money todo it, uh, breaking, entering armed
robbery, I would go out to Queens,New York and hide in the alleys.
There were nightclubs out there.

(37:03):
And drunken partygoers would encounterme and I would frighten them, beat 'em
in the head with a pipe, lead pipe, and,uh, take all their stuff and pawn it.
And I was passing bad checks,getting friends to cash checks,
doing whatever sketchy thing I could.
And the reason I did that is becausein the brain, the brain has been

(37:25):
wired to believe the drug is moreimportant than air, food, or water.
That's neurological.
What would you do if somebodytried to stop you from breathing?
If you couldn't get food,what would you do to get food?
You'd do anything.
And that's what we addicts do.
And that's what I, that'swhat this addict did.
And, um, by the end I looked like thatI looked like a combination of Mel

(37:50):
Gibson, Gary Busey, Nick Nolte, andCharles Manson, all on a very bad day.
Uh, that was me on one of mysuicide attempts that last time.
You can see the track marks all upand down my, from my neck to my groin
and all over the legs and the feet.
It's all black and blue.
And, uh, that was me.

(38:12):
I got the idea to murder a drug dealer.
I thought he was no good son of abitch, so nobody's gonna miss him.
And, um, I carried a gun at thattime, I was so paranoid and I
used it to beat people in the headand I used it to rob people, and
I decided to blow his head off.
And who's gonna miss this guy?
And he always had a lot of crack,cocaine and heroin in the inside,

(38:36):
the panels of the doors of his truck.
And I arranged to meet him ina park in Forest Hills, Queens,
in the middle of the night.
And we met.
I pulled the gun, I put it in his face.
I pulled the trigger, intendingto blow his head off, and the gun
jammed and the trajectory of my lifeentirely changed at that moment.

(38:57):
His friend showed up andthey beat the hell outta me.
I had a broken sternum, four brokenribs, broken jaw, two stab wounds
right up here in my shoulder.
They cut the top of my head with a knife.
They cut my face from thenostril across this eye.
They stuffed my mouth with crack pipes andbeat me in the face with a baseball bat.

(39:19):
And that's when I lost consciousness.
And when I regained consciousness,I was covered with blood and
discovered that they had shit on me.
I'll just say it.
They had shit on me from head to toe.
If that hasn't happenedto you yet, that's a yet.

(39:41):
Who said that?
Who said that yet?
That's right.
Who said that's a yet?
And you don't have to do that.
I already did it for you.
That was research I already didfor You don't have to do that.
I somehow crawled out to the street.
A cab driver stopped for me.
There were no other cars around.

(40:03):
I, from my mouth to God's ear, as I sithere in the sanctuary of this church, that
man had an na basic text on the dashboard.
He tried to get, was talking aboutthis book and I'm bleeding and, you
know, he tore some rags up and, andmade a tourniquet, uh, helped pull

(40:25):
glass out of my mouth and talked to me.
But he said, you're an addict.
And I said, I, yeah, yeah.
Do you have anything?
And uh, he got a blanketout of the back of his.
Cab.
I did ask him that, doyou have any, any drugs?
I wanted the pain to go away and hegot a blanket out of the trunk and
wrapped me up and let me get in his cab.

(40:47):
And uh, he tried to talk me into goinginto the hospital and I talked him out
of it and pull, we pulled glass, mymouth was so cut up and uh, he took
me back to my Times Square apartment.
I went up the fire escape, had tobreak in through the bathroom window
because I didn't have keys or anything.

(41:08):
And my clothes were shredded.
And I went up the fire escape, brokenthrough the bathroom window, cracked
my head open on the tub, fallingin the window, and I'm starving.
I haven't eaten in a long time.
I used to hang out with this doctornamed Sandra, and she was an infectious
disease doctor at Beth Israel Hospital.

(41:29):
She had helped me steal my own IV dripmachine from Beth Israel and would
give me morphine in saline, in thosebig bags, morphine to put on the iv.
And she died from this diseasea long time ago from addiction.
And, um, I kept thosebags in the vegetable bin.
I crawled into the kitchen thinkingI, maybe I have one of those bags.

(41:50):
And there was nothing in the refrigerator,but a carton of milk and I was starving.
And I grabbed it and downed it.
It had been spoiled for a very long time.
Right.
And I started to vomit.
And I run to the sink and the vomitfills up with amber liquid, which was
Jack Daniels and little white lumpsof curdled milk, which in my psychotic

(42:13):
state looked like crack cocaine.
Yes, yes, yes.
I stuck my face in the sink and I lappedup the puke and spit out those little
white lumps on a paper towel, tried to drythem off, found a broken crack pipe behind
the stove, looked everywhere for thatsucker, and, uh, tried to smoke my vomit.

(42:41):
That's where this took me.
And, and when it didn't work, thiswas gonna be my final suicide.
I had one more fifth of JackDaniels in the hall closet.
I knew that I went and got it.
And in the closet was alsoa mason jar of Vicodin.
I saved that.
There were a few hundredVicodin in that jar.
I saved that for a suicide kit'cause I knew I'd need it someday.

(43:05):
Maybe the ninja police are comingin and I'm not going to prison.
So I took every one of those pills,drank the entire fifth of Jack Daniels.
If you were sitting closer to me,you could see, uh, I sliced my
wrists under my arms and my elbowsso that I would bleed out fast.
And I laid down in that pool ofblood hoping to leave this planet.

(43:30):
And then the mostastonishing thing happened.
It was the first time in my lifeI heard my higher power, which
I choose to call the voice.
I heard the voice and thevoice was loud and clear.
I didn't hear it with my ears.
I heard it inside my head.
And the voice said, you don't want death.

(43:51):
You want more life anddon't know how to get it.
I'm going to show you.
And suddenly my mind was floodedwith thoughts about an actor I had
worked with named Richard Springle.
He played Colonel Pickering.
Does that thing work?
No, he's over there on the left.
He played Colonel Pickering tomy Henry Higgins in the World

(44:11):
tour of the Broadway musical.
My Fair Lady, he wasalways very kind to me.
And um, I had never beento his home in New York.
I knew he lived in New York City,but I'd never been to his home.
Hadn't spoken to him on thephone in three or four years.
And I remembered his phone number.
I crawled to the landline, I called it.

(44:34):
He answered yellow.
And I said, Colonel, I'm dying.
Help.
And I went unconscious, onlybecause I called him Colonel.
Did he know who I was?
'cause that was a nickname thatI gave him when we were working
together in my Fair Lady.

(44:55):
Well, he called 4 1 1.
Used to be able to do that.
They called it information.
You'd get anybody's phone number whenwe used to have phone books and he had
golfed with my father when we were ontour and went through Ohio and he asked
information, Bruce Kimball, Akron, Ohio,and uh, got my mother on the phone.
Hadn't talked to themin a couple of years.

(45:16):
They didn't want to haveanything to do with me.
I didn't wanna have anything todo with them deep in addiction.
And they'd had enoughof me terrorizing them.
And I had a resentment about that.
Isn't that the most astonishing thing?
They tried and tried and tried to love meand I terrorized them over and over again.

(45:36):
And when they finally said Enough,we're not gonna allow you to harm us.
I was mad at them 'cause they wouldn'tco-sign my bullshit in trying to
rob them and, and, you know, dothe terrible things I did to them.
In any event, he said, what's his address?
She gave him my address.
It was directly across Times Squarefrom the building that he lived in.

(46:01):
Is it odd or is it God?
He ran across Times Square.
The doorman didn't wanna let him in,so he punched the guy out, screamed
at him to call an ambulance, andhe came up and broke my front door
apart and carried me outta thebuilding into a waiting ambulance.

(46:23):
I was unconscious for almost two weeks.
And I regained consciousness.
I regained consciousness in this treatmentfacility, the Carrier Institute in
Belmead, New Jersey, and I knew that I hadhit my bottom because I was in New Jersey.

(46:47):
Then I was in and outta treatment 19times over a period of four years.
I would walk outta treatment.
I'd go and get high.
I'd go right back.
I'd walk outta treatment.
I'd go and get high.
I'd go right back.
That happened over a period of four years.
In and out, in and out, in and out.

(47:07):
Each time I gained some recovery capital.
I didn't realize that was happening.
I was gaining knowledge each time,and they kept telling me that I
was gonna die if I didn't stop.
I met these two men.
They brought AA meetings into thetreatment center together over a period

(47:29):
of four years, and I got to know them
all this time, I thoughtI was a piece of shit.
My family thought I was a piece of shit.
No one told me I had a diseaseuntil I met Mel and Edgar.
And they're the ones thattold me I had a disease.

(47:50):
Edgar's father was one of the first87 members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
He was an illustrator and a calligrapher.
If you've ever seen these signs in aclubhouse, they were created by Edgar.
Well, Sr. Who was Edgar,my Edgar's father.
Uh, Edgar did his steps the first timewith a man named Bill W, who founded

(48:12):
Alcoholics Anonymous and wrote thebig book of Alcoholics Synonymous.
And he did his steps with Bill andthis man, Hank Parkers, who was Bill
Wilson's first Sponsee in New York.
He wrote two of the chapters in thebig book he wrote to, uh, the employer.
And though there is much debate aboutthis, he wrote to wives, and I'm a

(48:35):
hundred percent certain about that.
That was, that was whoop, that was Edgar.
I keep going the wrong way.
And the other man, Mel b. Mel b did hisstep work the first time in California
with four men from Akron Group number one,who were sponsored by AA co-founder Dr.
Bob Smith.
And as, as Mel used to tell the story,he said, I then drank periodically

(48:59):
for two years while I learned how toincorporate the steps into my life.
Then he decided to take a job with theWall Street Journal, and he had to take
a train across the country from New York.
Or from California to New York.
And he drank so much on that train trip.
He had to be hospitalizedfor almost two months.

(49:20):
And when he got outta the hospital,he had a copy of the first edition,
the big book, and inside of it had theaddress for AAA's office in New York.
And, um, he went to that office and hemet Bill W and he did step work again.
He became the editor of theAA International Grapevine
Magazine for the next 60 years.

(49:42):
Uh, whoop, I'm going the wrong way again.
This is, uh, a page from thebig book next to the title page.
It's on the left hand side,right next to the title page.
The ones that are checkmarkedwere either written by Mel or
co-authored by Mel, or edited by Mel.
Uh, so he was very deepin this thing and, uh,

(50:08):
Mel and Edgar said, here's the deal.
Do you wanna live or do you wanna die?
I said, I'm so tired.
And will you go to any length?
Will you do everything we ask you to do?
That's the only way we'regonna work with you.
They had me discharged thatday, my 19th trip to treatment.

(50:30):
They rode the train withme back to New York City.
And, uh, held my hand.
We went to my apartment.
They took my keys.
They had me pack a couple of bags.
They stripped searched me and I mean,jiggle it and you know, the whole thing.
And, uh,

(50:50):
they had me sign durable power ofattorney to Father Edgar, and he became
my legal guardian, and I moved inwith him, slept on his pullout couch
for the next two and a half years.
We did the steps quickly and often the waythey were designed to be done, according
to this precise, clear cut specificdirections on the first 164 pages of

(51:15):
the Big Book of Alcoholics synonymous.
We did the steps quickly and often.
My first pass through the steps wasone week from one to 12, one week.
Then we did it again second week,then we did it again third week,
then we did it again the fourth week.
My favorite quote from Dr. Bob Smith, the12 steps are not spiritual philosophies

(51:37):
to be studied, understood, and then taken.
They are survival actions to be carriedout immediately, to provide instant
hope and relief and save our lives.
They are a tourniquet to stop thebleeding now, it is battlefield triage.
That's the 12 steps.

(51:58):
So we went through them quickly and often.
I was commanded to go tosix to eight meetings a day.
I was not allowed out of Edgar'sapartment unless Edgar or Mel
or some man from AA was with me.
They said, whatever happens in New YorkCity is none of your damn business.
Whatever happens when the sun goesdown is none of your damn business.

(52:21):
You are not allowed outside,alone without adult supervision.
I was 35 years old, had traveledthe world and been on Broadway.
They treated me like a5-year-old on a mommy leash.
They did not coddle my feelings.
They told me what time it was, andthey cleaned my clock and they taught
me how to become a man of integrity.

(52:42):
They said, are you done?
Do you wanna continue being a cartoon?
I remember Edgar asking me that oneday, do you wanna continue being a
characterization of a man or do youwanna become a man of character?
And they taught me the spiritualprinciples and everything changed.

(53:05):
Uh, yes.
Then they introduced me to this man, Wallyp Wally P did his, uh, did his steps with
James Houck and Dr. Bob's living room.
James Houck was the last livingfounder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
He was the third founder.
He never wanted credit, kept his nameout of everything, extremely humble.

(53:28):
I had the opportunity of working with himfor one year in my first year of recovery.
He was 100 years old and stilltaking people through the
steps and conducting seminars.
And then he died peacefully in his sleep.
James Huck, that's what Wally did.
Um, Wally has since taken over500,000 people through the 12 steps.

(53:51):
He wrote this book called Back toBasics, which teaches people how to
do the steps in four one hour sessionsthe way Bill w and Dr. Bob took people
through the steps during a period inhistory where, uh, the 12 step movement
had a 50 to 75% permanent sobrietyrate as opposed to three to 5% today.

(54:14):
'cause we're taking so long to takepeople through the steps and we're
killing people as a result of doing that.
They did them quicklyand they did them often.
That's how they did it thoroughly.
They did it often.
That was the thorough part.
So these were the influences that I hadin my recovery and under the direction

(54:35):
of Melon Edgar, I worked in, uh, the NewYork General Service Office archives,
went back home and worked in the AkronArchives, whoop, and up at Stepping
Stones in Bedford Hills, New York, whichis the Wilson Home in New York City.
And I became a 12 step historian.
I. I had the opportunity ofworking with this man, Joe McQuay,

(54:58):
who was Joe of Joe and Charlie.
If any of you have ever heard of Joe andCharlie, the famous big book study team.
He was, um, an early pioneer.
It was because of Joe that,uh, the program was opened
up for blacks and women.
He was because of Joe McQuay and,um, he founded the Wolf Street

(55:20):
Foundation, little Rock, Arkansas.
And I had an opportunity to work onbuilding the second largest, a archive
and the largest Alanon archive, uh, inthe world, which led to an appointment.
Um, I'm now one of three menwho helped take care of Dr.
Bob Memorabilia collection, uh, curatingthat collection at Rockefeller Library

(55:40):
at Brown University under the Mel,uh, direction of, uh, father Edgar.
Uh, he got me a scholarship to UnionTheological and I went to seminary
and, uh, became an ordained priest.
Now that is proof right there, that god'sa thing, because the fact that they let
me become a priest, that's unbelievable.

(56:02):
But they did.
So yeah, there it is.
Um, I got a job through somebodyin AA working, uh, for a brokerage
firm, and I became a licensedstockbroker for Waterhouse Securities.
I had, this is what putme through seminary.
I also went back to school and studiedaddiction medicine and neurobiology.

(56:25):
I wanted to understand whythe 12 steps worked for people
who didn't believe in God.
And I found the answer to that.
I talked about that yesterday in my talk.
And, um,
I had an office on the, uh, 58th floor ofthe South Tower of the World Trade Center.
I was there on nine 11when the planes hit.

(56:45):
I was there listening to a fifth step.
I was about to listen to a fifth step.
We were eating oatmeal and fine Shapiro'sDeli in the Grand Concourse when
the first plane hit the North Tower.
We were in the South Tower.
And, uh, I had shingles.
I had just been diagnosed withAddison's disease and my immune
system was practically gone.

(57:07):
I was extremely sick.
They expected to call hospiceand I chose to go down to World
Trade Center to meet a sponsee.
I called my sponsee and I said, I've beendiagnosed with another deadly illness.
They don't expect me to survive.
And, uh, I'm extremely sick.
I, my body is covered with shingles.

(57:28):
I'm in a lot of pain.
I can't be your s sponsor anymore.
And he said, what about my fifth step up?
Selfish, alcoholic?
He didn't, here's what he didn't say.
Oh my God, can I help you?
This is terrible.
What about my footstep?

(57:49):
We still talk.
He's not my sponsee anymore,but we still talk frequently.
And, uh, I tell him all the time, ifyou die before me, I'm telling you
I'm getting a Sharpie and I'm gonnawrite, what about my fifth step?
I'm gonna write that on your forehead.
In any event, um, because wewere together as sick as I was,

(58:09):
he helped me escape the tower.
And we made it, uh, on the lasttrain out of the towers, uh, over
to New Jersey, um, to exchangeplace, watch the second plane hit.
We were trapped in that gray cloud.
And, um, we were almost run over by anSUV in the midst of that gray cloud of
debris that, that, uh, SUV was driven by.

(58:32):
The Reverend Cannon, John Luce, whoI used to call Loose Cannon, who was
a friend of my sponsor, father Edgar,who was also a Cannon priest at the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
And he counseled me in early sobrietyand was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And he's the personthat almost ran us over.
And he got us in that SUV andoutta that cloud brought us to

(58:56):
downtown Hoboken, uh, where themilitary was setting up a triage.
And, um, we were taken to abar called God Save Our Planet.
I swear to you, I swearI I'm not making this up.
God save our planet.
And, uh, that's where we werefitted into hazmat suits.
Now, mind you, no immune system, I'mallergic to Zithromax, which you take.

(59:19):
For the shingles.
I've got shingles all overmy body and no immune system.
It's almost my collapse.
My CD four cells are almostgone and I'm in terrible pain.
They put me in a hazmat suit and tell meto go to the green tent, where I'm gonna
listen to people who suffer from fearand confusion just like we do in aa who

(59:39):
are being evacuated from lower Manhattan.
And for the next three days, uh,500,000 people came through that triage.
I probably hugged 30,000people and prayed with them.
And as I prayed with peopleand I listened and I hugged, I
started feeling better and better.
I started having morestrength, the more energy.

(01:00:00):
Pretty soon I was standing up straight.
I wasn't all bent overthe end of the third day.
I don't normally tell this as part ofmy story, but it just sort of came out.
Uh, at the end of the third day, um, themilitary opened up one of the path trains.
Trained to go back to Manhattan, said thatfirst responders and clergy could go back.

(01:00:22):
I said, I'm tired.
I want to go.
I'm a priest in a hazmat suit now.
I got the shingles.
I'm dying.
I'm a priest in a hazmat suit,life beyond my wildest dreams.
Uh, so I went back to Manhattan and um,
on that train, three, fouro'clock in the morning.

(01:00:44):
Black Hawk helicopters, hoveringoverhead, military with assault rifles in
formation, running through Times Square.
I'm walking down 42ndStreet to my apartment.
I take the hood off from the hazmatsuit and I'm breathing fresh air and I'm
standing upright and I'm not in pain.
I'm tired, but I'm not in pain.

(01:01:05):
I walked over to Father Edgar's apartment.
I rang the buzzer.
He says hello.
I said to Gary, he said,Jesus, Joseph and Mary.
And he buzzed me upstairs.
He said, we all thought you weredead except for your mother.
She kept saying, no.
He's down there pulling childrenand dogs outta the wreckage.
I'm glad that that's what my motherthought of me as a man in sobriety.

(01:01:28):
And that is where I was.
She was right and, uh, wentdown to listen to a fifth step.
I wanted to die sober.
I was gonna quit my job that dayand we were gonna call hospice.
So Father Edgar said, go intothe bathroom, take off that
hazmat suit, take a shower.
I'll make something for you to eatand you can come out and tell us.
There were two other friends there.

(01:01:50):
Uh, bill Ood, Nathan Gilbert,and you can come out and tell
us what you saw at Ground zero.
And as I'm washing in thebathroom, I looked down.
All of these shingles have scabbed up.
The scabs are washing off my body andthey're uncovered with little pink dots.
No medication, no immune system.

(01:02:12):
I run out butt naked in the livingroom and I said, father Edgar look.
And he said, Jesus Christ.
Well you've just said the secret word.
And he said, you know what, Gary?
You've had a miracle.
Don't think it happened becauseyou're better than anybody.

(01:02:33):
'cause you're not.
You're better than some,not as good as others.
But you gave love away to a lot of people.
And you became a vessel.
And as you gave that loveaway, you received the healing.
This is what we do inrecovery for one another.
Well, that changed my life.

(01:02:54):
I stayed in New York until thatApril and um, I had PTSD clearly.
And um, I spent, uh, those monthsrunning food down into ground zero
with other priests from the cathedral.
And then I left New York andI checked into the Abbey of
Gethsemane in Bardstown, Kentucky.

(01:03:14):
Um, it is an order of Benedictineand Suter and Trappist monks boy.
And, um, you have to take a valve ofsilence, which I didn't do very well.
I went over the wall, I put on my.
A Wagner College sweatshirt and myjeans took my cassock off and uh,

(01:03:37):
went over the wall a few times andI would hitchhike down to Bardstown.
It was up on top of the mountain.
I would hitchhike down to Bardstown orLouisville so I could chain smoke and
talk to people at, uh, at AA meetings.
And then I would get caughtevery time coming back.
And after about three years of this, thefather Abbott called me in and he said,

(01:03:59):
you know, you're not the silent type.
That was his kind way ofsaying, it's time for you to go.
You're not the silent type, you're nota contemplative, you're a rams horn.
God gave you a big mouth.
That's your gift.
So go up on top of the mountain.
Shout the good news.
So I left the monastery.

(01:04:20):
Before I left.
I took a vow before God renewingmy vows, that I would spend the
rest of my life, the service ofsick and suffering alcoholics for
all my waking hours until I die.
I've tried to do that.
I left the monastery and uh, Ipracticed something called two-way

(01:04:40):
Prayer, which is an ancient techniquethat started in the first century.
It was revived by the Oxford Group,which many of the Oxford tenants
became alcoholics Synonymouswas an early influence on aa.
And they practiced two-way prayer.
And I was taught that by Father Edgar.
And what it is in two-way prayer.
You sit in silence.

(01:05:02):
Listening for the voice to hear thevoice, to learn how to hear the voice.
And the voice said, write a playabout Bill W And Dr. Bob and I said,
my goodness, how am I gonna do that?
Well, somehow God guided methrough that and I wrote the play.
That's me as Bill W on the left,and the man who carried me outta

(01:05:22):
the building, Richard Springle,who had played Colonel Pickering.
I hired to play Dr. Bob.
And the two of us traveled allover planet Earth, uh, 34 countries
in over 200 cities, playing theco-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And you don't believe inmiracles, you gotta be kidding me.
And had that experience.
And from that, um,

(01:05:49):
a man came into my life who was aBroadway producer, who became my sponsee,
and I helped him get sober, taking himthrough the steps and sponsoring him.
And we formed a touring companycalled One Show at a Time, and we
produced the, uh, national Tour ofthe off-Broadway play, bill W and Dr.

(01:06:09):
Bob, which is also about Bill and Bob.
And we took that around the United States.
We took that play to the 75thInternational AA Convention
in San Antonio, and tens ofthousands of people saw the show.
And I became the Bill W guy andstarted getting invitations to
speak all over planet Earth.

(01:06:31):
My vow, part of my vow, when I leftthe, the, uh, seminar or left the,
um, monastery, was also to carrythe message of hope and recovery
to as many people as possible.
So the voice guided me to write a play,which reached tens of thousands of people.
Then it guided me to this convention,which reached tens of thousands of people.

(01:06:54):
And from the work at this convention,uh, that led to invitations, I went
on Ellen once, Dr. Phil twice theToday Show, four times, um, and Dr.
Drew's program intervention, andwas seen by millions of people and
carried the message of hope andrecovery, um, which I had vowed to do.

(01:07:19):
God made these things possible,opened the doors, I just had
to walk through the door.
I had to suit up and show up.
And, uh, that led to that, uh,all of that television work.
It led to, uh, meeting some folks fromHazel and Betty Ford Publishing, and I
became a Hazelden author, and that reacheda few more, tens of thousands of people.

(01:07:42):
The book is called Walk to Talkwith step 12, staying Sober Through
Service, carrying The Message ofHope to as many people as Possible.
The book is about how to overcomeobstacles to doing 12 step service
work in the 21st century and how toreach more people using technology.
What Bill Wilson called theGargantuan of Technology said, we

(01:08:06):
need to learn how to harness that.
He was all about it.
Bill Wilson was that led to a manymeeting, a Sponsee who had been in a
documentary called American Relapseand I was his sponsor and that American
Relapse was well, well received and aand e television decided to do a reality
TV program called Dope Designation.

(01:08:28):
And because I'm that guy's sponsor,I was on the program because it's a
reality TV show and I'm on five episodesof that and that reached millions more
carrying the message of hope and recovery.
Uh, back at the convention in, uh,2010 when we took the play there,

(01:08:48):
I met some filmmakers from PBS.
They followed me around for 10years and made a documentary called
Gary Kay, one Step at a Time.
Uh, this is currently DO designationis on Amazon Prime and this is on
Apple TV right now on Amazon Prime.
And if you rent it, I get 10 cents.

(01:09:09):
So please write it becauseI need those dimes.
I really do put 'em inmy shoe for good luck.
So, um, today I'm working withWally P who I met 30 years ago
when I was trying to get sober.
Uh, he became a mentor and uh, two yearsago in September, 2022, I was diagnosed

(01:09:36):
with stage four cancer and they told meI'd be dead, uh, by Christmas of that year
unless I underwent a radical treatment.
Now I don't know how to cure cancer.
Do you?
I don't know how to do that.
And it scared the hell outtame 'cause I understood it was a
disease that was gonna kill me.
So I went to people who knew howto cure cancer, who said they did.

(01:10:00):
And they said, here's whatwe're gonna have to do.
Seven months of chemo, seven monthsof chemo and radiation, and guess
where the cancer was in my ass.
Funny God in my ass.
I said to the doctor, no way inhell I'm dying from as cancer.

(01:10:22):
Mm-hmm.
See?
'cause y'all laugh and they, they'llsay, that's what finally took this
son of a bitch out was ass cancer.
Not gonna happen.
So.
They said, if you can getthrough the treatment now, the
treatment's gonna be so brutal.
You're gonna be screaming in painfor the next year and a half.

(01:10:43):
You're not gonna be ableto walk on your own.
People are gonna have to carryyou from one room to another.
You won't be able to liftyour head off the pillow.
You're gonna be outta your mindfrom what they call chemo brain.
You're not gonna be able toremember a lot of things.
It's gonna be hard to havea conversation on the phone.
That's what's gonna happenbecause of the treatment.
Many people commit suicidegoing through the treatment.

(01:11:04):
I attempted to do that and the dayI tried to kill myself because of
that treatment, three men from aa,my front door was unlocked, came
walking into my condo at that moment.
Is it odd or is it god?
And they talked me off the ledge.
And uh, I got through the treatment.
I got through the treatment.

(01:11:25):
Which way?
Yeah, I got through the treatment.
Uh, then they said, now the chemoand radiation didn't do it all.
So we're gonna have to remove youranus, your rectum, and your large
intestine, and you're gonna be strappedin a bed with your feet and stirrups.
Unable to turn left, unable to turnright flat on your back for four months.

(01:11:47):
I had to lay in a bed flat onmy back for four months with
my feet strapped up in the air.
That was two Decembers ago.
And uh, they told me I'dprobably never walk again.
Wow.
And could have an open woundfor the rest of my life.
I had so many visitors when I was in thehospital and they were all AA people.

(01:12:11):
The first day I was in the hospital,I had 68 visitors and the head nurse
came and said, could you, you're,where are these people coming from?
Can you please tell notso many people to come?
And I said, no, it's alcoholic synonymous.
There's, there's announcement outthere that I'm in the hospital and
they're just gonna keep showing up.
And people came every day and theyheld my hands and they smuggled me

(01:12:33):
milkshakes and they prayed with meand they sat around my bed and we had
meetings and they loved me through that.
And I got up.
And five days after being in thehospital, they told me I couldn't walk.
I got on a walker and I flew toTexas to give a lecture about the
brain disease because I told thosepeople in Texas, I'll be there.

(01:12:53):
And I want to be a man ofintegrity and keep my word.
It's been a wild ride.
So back to this thing about cancer.
I didn't know how to cure cancer,so I went to people who did.
Now, addiction and alcoholism killmore people than cancer, heart
disease, diabetes, and AIDS combined.

(01:13:15):
It is the number onekiller of human beings.
Will you go to the people thatknow how to solve the problem,
and will you go to any length?
To do the things they ask youto do so that you can get sober.
And here's the great thing about this, um,in order to recover, it involves donuts.

(01:13:37):
Yes.
You don't have to have your ass removed.
You just need Dunking Donuts.
Yeah.
And coffee in a big book andsome love and hugging people.
Stop being a piece of shit.
Prayer and meditation.
Change the neurons inyour brain, help people.
And you don't have to die from the diseasethat kills more people than cancer.

(01:14:00):
Just follow those directions.
So I got through it.
Um, I was kind of spiritually stuck.
I was angry after coming through thatand my body had been deformed and cut up.
And, uh, I reached out to my old friend,Wally p, who wrote back the basics.
And, uh, he's taken over 500,000people through the steps.

(01:14:26):
And I asked him for help.
I said, you hear the voice always, andhe has more contentment and more peace.
He has what I want.
So I said, would you help me?
I need to go through the steps again.
And I, I need somedeliverance from this anger.
And, uh, he said, yes, I will.

(01:14:47):
Out of that, a projecthas started and, uh.
We're writing his autobiography.
We've actually retitled itsince this slide was made.
It's called Divine Appointments, howto Listen to the Voice, the Life and
Recovery of Wally p as Told to Gary Kay.
Now, again, if you don't believe inmiracles, this man was a mentor 30 years

(01:15:10):
ago, was one of the first people I metin recovery, and all these years later,
I'm helping him write his autobiography.
I mean, it just blows my mind.
The stuff that's happened.
I, I probably talked for two hours.
The point is, get apon, dowhat they tell you to do.
Get a sponsor, go to a lot of meetings.

(01:15:30):
What does my recovery look like today?
Every morning, I'll tellyou something about me.
When I, what are the, oh, there you go.
If I can do it, you can do it.
That's the last slide.
Thank God for that.
So, um, every morning when I wake up, soonas my eyes open, I'm filled with anxiety.

(01:15:50):
I do not wake up filledwith contentment and peace.
I wake up and I go, oh shit.
Another day I pullmyself up onto one elbow.
My phone is always right here.
I go onto an app calledMy Spiritual Toolkit.
I go to Gratitude List and I writedown 10 things I'm grateful for.

(01:16:11):
Then you click save and send.
And I send it out individuallyto all of my sponsees.
I send it out to somegratitude threads that I'm on.
Then they start sending me theirs.
Then I do some more praying tofind the courage to put my feet
on the ground and sit up in bedand put my feet on the ground.

(01:16:31):
Then I roll out of bed, and this is a realproject for me to get my tired old ass.
Well, I actually don'thave an ass anymore.
Just a phrase.
That's just a, that's just a phrase.
So I get on the floor andI say some set prayers.
Usually the third step andthe seventh step prayer.

(01:16:54):
I go to my Keurig, I make a cup of coffee.
Then there's a table and achair at the foot of my bed.
I sit in that chair butt assnaked with my cup of coffee.
I have a couple of books.
The, uh, um,
uh, the Daily Office, uh, um,well, I can't think of it.

(01:17:16):
I'm an Episcopal priest.
The, the, the Book of CommonPrayer and the Daily Office, uh,
for the epi for Episcopal Priest.
I read that.
Some spiritual literature.
I usually read the 24 hours a daybook, some, something like that.
And then I begin my 11th step two-wayprayer, and I do my two-way prayer.
I sit for about a half an hour in silence.

(01:17:38):
I also do that later in the day.
Couple of days, I sit for anhour or two and just listen.
And, uh, you write down theguidance that you receive.
So I do that.
Then I take my shower, thenI go to a 6:30 AM meeting.
Some of my friends go to that meeting.
That meeting meets Monday through Friday.

(01:18:00):
Monday through Friday.
We go out for eggs after that meetingand we have fellowship and I laugh.
Then I go to work and I work withmy patients and I take the patients
through the 12 steps and I counsel them.
Then after work, I go to another meeting.
I've been doing that for 28and a half years, two meetings

(01:18:23):
a day, seven days a week.
I see my sponsor or talk tomy sponsor every single day.
Talk to my grand sponsor once a week.
I have a shit ton of sponseesand, uh, I do service work.
I've been a GSR, I've been a delegate.
I've been a trustee.
I've chaired meetings to do all of it.
The whole McGill.

(01:18:43):
I figured as sick as I was, theonly way I was gonna stay alive
and have some contentment was todive in and take a bath in it.
And, uh, I figured I'mhere now, I'm gonna stay.
So that's what I've done.
It's given me a really good lifeand I'm grateful for all of it.
Even the cancer.

(01:19:04):
When I got the cancer, Icalled my current sponsor.
I said I was diagnosed with cancer.
And he said, well, congratulations.
Congratulations.
I wanted to slap him through the wall.
He said, you're gonnalearn more about healing.

(01:19:26):
And that's what happened.
And here I sit with you today,content full of, uh, chicken chili
and, um, laughing and having love.
Anyway, I know I've talked way too long.
So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Thank you.
God bless you.
Thank you.

(01:19:56):
You down for a question or two?
Yeah, let's do it.
I, I'll sit here all day long.
Oh, I already know untilthe cows come home.
You have cows?
Yeah.
Where are they?
Quaker's, cows.
I didn't, cows
back.
Hello, my name's Zach.
Uh, hello.
The camps or man?
Uh, I suffer through alcohol and, uh,addicted to Coke, you know, cocaine.

(01:20:25):
But, uh, I ended up gettingdiagnosed with testicular cancer.
Mm-hmm.
And I did that last, uh.
This winter that, not thiswinter, but last winter.
And the chemo brain man, that's somethinglike, oh my God, it still affects me.
I got a couple, the chemo brain,how it is still affecting you.
Mm-hmm.
I've been waiting for that to go away.

(01:20:46):
I'll stumble on names,words, all sorts of shit.
It, it is horrible.
But then, uh, after the chemo, Iturned back to the bottle, man.
And then I got myself in trouble.
And that's why, how I'm herenow is it's great to see you.
You know the joke about the asshole, youknow, and I'm like, I'm thinking about
all the things that I've done in my life.

(01:21:07):
And I'm like, man, it is a testiclethat's gonna fucking kill me.
Well, you're still hereand I'm glad you're here.
Yes.
And keep fighting.
You know, I say this all thetime and I hope you'll take this
in the way that it's intended.
I often hear, my patients willsay, or friends and recovery
newcomers, people that relapse.

(01:21:32):
I relapsed because mycat died, my mother died.
I had surgery.
There's all kinds of things I hear and Ihave to say, there's only one reason we
relapse and that's untreated alcoholism,
it's not properly treated in, in recovery.
I had a very bad accident that wewere in a truck going a hundred

(01:21:52):
miles an hour, and it crashed.
I went face first through the windshield,Addison's disease, south Tower on 9
11 1 year, my father died followingmonth, my mother died five months later.
Mel died the following month.
Edgar died the following month.
My son died.
Then Covid hit and I had covid twice.

(01:22:16):
Uh, I've had bankruptcy, cancer hadmy rectum removed, my anus removed.
They gave me pain medication,and it hasn't been necessary for
me to take a drink or a drug.
Now here's what, what,what I don't understand.
For some reason, through all of it,I've been willing to continue even

(01:22:38):
during that terrible pain, painfulperiod with cancer and the weakness, I
allowed people to come into my house withbig books, and I, I, I wanted to die.
I'm in so much pain.
But they sat and had a meeting andthey said, oh, stop complaining.
Sit up and join the meeting.
You know, how they, how weare, you know what I mean?
And I'd be like, you know, and I,but I was willing, I don't know why

(01:23:04):
I was willing to keep doing that.
I was willing to continueapplying the steps.
I was willing to continuewith step 10, 11, and 12.
And I've continued therapy for 28 years.
I believe in that too.
Um.
You can do this and youdon't ever have to use again.
You don't have to use againno matter what happens to you.

(01:23:25):
Yeah.
Fellowship, that was really important.
All the support from people.
Yes.
I'm so glad that you're back.
And I didn't mean that as any kind ofsnide remark, but now you can get back in
it and work the hell outta your programand you'll never have to go out again.
You don't have to do that again.
But it's gonna take work.

(01:23:45):
It's gonna take a lot of, whatever you'redoing before, it's gonna take more.
So what the hell dive into it, right?
Yes, sir. It's worth the investment.
Yes.
Um, uh, how I'm an, you know, we, with myfamily, we, we've dealt with alcoholism

(01:24:06):
and drug addiction, so I praise God.
'cause I really, really wanted to behere to hear what you have to say, but
on a personal level, you know, um, Iam a cancer survivor, but the point
being is you, you keep on keeping onbecause you, it is not your time yet.
It's not your time yet.
And the Lord's gonna abuse you.
And he, I, I think aboutwhat you're saying.

(01:24:29):
I can't even compare towhat you had to go through.
Okay, well, oh, I have thosebattles we have to walk through
and it's kind of like, well,you know, Lord, I'm still here.
I'm still here.
You're still here.
And he, he's not done with you.
And, and it just encourages me to go, wow,you know, guess what, Patricia, somebody

(01:24:50):
had a worse than you, but I'm not doneyet, so just keep right what you're doing.
Right.
Okay.
Thank you for saying that.
Yes, sir. Robert, you need tobuy this man a t-shirt that
says bigger asshole than them.
Actually, they plugged it up andit looks like a 90-year-old Barbie.

(01:25:12):
Do.
They, they took a muscle out of myabdomen, sewed up my ass crack, and
then where they sewed it up, split openrecently, I'm wearing a girdle right now.
I have like two eggplants thatstick out really literally to here.
And I'm having that surgery in twoweeks to have that put back in.

(01:25:36):
And the chemo gave me severe neuropathyand Wally and his wife both have an
implant, it's an electronic devicethat they put next to the spine.
They run a couple of wiresinto the epidural and it
interrupts the pain signal.
I'm having that also, I'm havingthat on the 24th of this month.
I'm getting that to deal with that issue.

(01:25:56):
So, you know, yeah, you, you spring aleak, you plug it up and you keep going.
You get your ass out of bed.
They, they told me.
Six more months of laying in bedafter I got outta the hospital
last time and we'll come over andthey'll do physical therapy with you.
And I said, oh hell no.
I'm going to Texas.
I got a bunch of recovery people to talkto and people to take through the steps.

(01:26:19):
So I got out of bed not for me.
Getting up and moving a muscle iswhat keeps me in the game and keeps
me alive and keeps helping me to heal.
Get up and move a muscle.
Yes.
Um, d different subject.
Yesterday you were talking, um, about um,well the relationship with your ex-wife,

(01:26:42):
which I don't really mentioned today, butjust about Oh, you talking about Marsha?
Yes, Marsha.
Oh yeah.
We should call her up and plantprank her or something, you know?
I think you said you were gonna do that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You sort of mentioned that.
I don't remember what you said.
I just thought maybe you could,could repeat it for everyone else.

(01:27:03):
Um, about how, you know, addictionlies, you know, one of those is
sort of going towards toxic people.
So how does that correlation, say thatagain, goes to toxic people, relates
to um, you know, your brain goingtowards toxic people or relationship?
Oh, sure.
Um.
Yeah, with that brain functionality,

(01:27:26):
I can show you Marsha again.
Let's see, where's she at?
She's on here.
Here we go.
Marsha, where you at?
Come on.
Watch, watch.
She'll pop on the screen here in a second.
There she is.
Well, you recognized her.
Yes.
I can't forget her name.
That's crazy.
You, you recognized her.

(01:27:50):
That was my first wife,so, um, yeah, yeah.
Boy, she was a big girl.
And, um, I'll tell that storyto answer your question.
Okay.
When I was using, I lived in Times Square.
I love the Yankees and I, and Iwould, I'm a huge Yankees fan.
What time is it's G 10 to four.

(01:28:12):
When, how long have I talked?
Three hours?
I don't know.
It's been that long.
Hour and a half.
And you're still sitting here?
Yes, sir. That's, that'snearest it Otters the God.
Wow.
So, yeah, so I, I'm a huge Yankeesfan, so I used to go to Merchant Cigar
Bar on Second Avenue in New York Citybecause all the Yankees hang out there.

(01:28:36):
A lot of them live in thatneighborhood and merchants
had lots of Unblended scotch.
I was all about that.
And they had Kobe beef and they had.
Uh, secret smuggled, uh, Cuban cigars.
And I knew one of the bartendersand, um, so I used to go there a lot.
So one night I walk in right away.
As soon as I look ather, I say, bat it crazy.

(01:29:00):
Let me go sit next to her,
because Zach gets me going.
And here's why.
My hippocampus has learnedtoxic equals drugs.
First of all, my brain has been wiredto believe that the drug is more
important than air, food, or water.

(01:29:21):
So let's start with that.
I, I'm in that condition.
My brain thinks the drug is more importantthan air, food, water, sleeping, sex,
or protecting myself in fight or flight.
It is the number one survival need.
My hippocampus has learned.

(01:29:42):
I have to have food, I haveto eat, stay alive, right?
So the hippocampus has its associatedmemory associated with survival.
So the hippocampus has collectedinformation, how to get food, where to
find food, how to cook food, how to tellif it's spoiled, it's learned all that.
So it can keep me eating 'causeI gotta eat to stay alive.

(01:30:04):
Well, it now thinks the drug is moreimportant than air, food, or water.
So it's collected information.
Pertinent to what condition needsto be, what, what the conditions
need to be that help Gary get high.
One of those things is I have to havea high level of cortisol corticotropin,

(01:30:25):
uh, being output by my hypothalamus.
It's a stress hormone that causesthe amygdala to be in pain.
The amygdala swells up insize, it demands relief.
And the go-to is the drug.
The part of my brainthat demands that I eat
now demands the drug whenI'm under emotional stress.

(01:30:48):
So it's gathered information to informmy decision making below conscious
thought without my permissionto inform my decision making.
Um, what conditions need to bemet to make sure I stay high?
Well, one of those things isgonna be emotional stress.
Toxic relationships comewith emotional stress.

(01:31:10):
So I've already learned that.
So I walk into merchants, Itake one look at her and I
say, oh baby, let's make love.
So, so I go right up to her and sitdown and start schmoozing, you know?
And, uh, we have a couple of drinks andI say, Hey, listen, I've got IV morphine.

(01:31:32):
Trying to impress her.
She told me she was an addict,so I tried to impress her.
I've got crack new stems, Ivy, more.
I'm, I'm ready to go.
I got a full bar at myapartment, let's go.
And she says, great.
So we go back to my apartmentand we get really super high
and do a lot of twisted things.

(01:31:52):
So we decided to get married.
And we got married the next day
and she became my first wife.
She thought, we boththought it was a good idea.
We also did it 'cause it would kind ofscrew with our friends and family, you
know, just kind of mess with their heads.
And we laughed and get an evil kindof way and thought that'd be fun.

(01:32:14):
So, um, so we got married andGod bless her, and, uh, she
moved a bunch of her stuff in.
And that night we had afight, knocked down, drag out.
And, um,
I'll be honest, I, Ishared this yesterday.

(01:32:35):
She punched me, I punched her.
She was a big girl.
Okay.
Fair game.
She's bigger than me.
Okay.
Scary.
Big, big hands, knuckles, you know, scary.
And, uh, yeah, we beat on eachother and it was pretty ugly.
And, uh, I left and, and I,I ended up going to jail that

(01:32:56):
night when that happened.
My hippocampus recordedall this information.
In association with, I'll throw acouple other big words out there.
Uh, basal ganglia and, uh,
my parietal lobe all have to do withmemory associated with survival.

(01:33:17):
So together they collect all thisinformation, um, that I had a fight
with Marsha and I got really high, andmy brain thinks the drug is survival.
So it collected information and itcreated this neuro pathway in the brain.
And the neuro pathway says,Marsha plus Gary equals fight

(01:33:40):
equals drugs and alcohol equals survival.
So now Marsha is thedelivery system for the drug.
She's not a sex partner.
She's not my wife.
She's a delivery system for the drug.
And we form a trauma bond.
I hate you.
I love you.

(01:34:00):
I hate you.
I love you.
I hate you.
I love you.
And it creates this flood of oxytocin,then corticotropin, then oxytocin,
then corticotropin, and it creates astorm in the brain and we get locked
together and you can't break it.
It's very tough to break.
That's crazy.
And it is crazy.
The very definition of crazy.
So we stayed togetherfor seven years of this.

(01:34:22):
She would routinely break porcelainclay dinner plates over my head.
And I would punch her.
I mean we just did horrible things.
We always both had black and wewere black and blue and our friends
were like, what are you doing?
Why are you doing this?
The reason we were doing it isbecause we were both a delivery

(01:34:45):
system for the drug for each otherto keep us in active addiction.
'cause our brain thinks we needto stay high in order to survive.
That is not a choice.
And I don't even realizethis is happening.
This below conscious thought, right?
Yeah.
Childhood.
Okay.
That's right.
So now I'm stuck in thistoxic relationship and I'm

(01:35:05):
drawn to toxic relationships.
And until I learn this lesson,I will continue to be drawn
to toxic relationships.
Even in sobriety.
I will be drawn to these relationshipsuntil I heal spiritually.
I've gotta develop the prefrontal cortexwhere spirituality is experienced,
that part of the brain's gottabecome strong so that it can control

(01:35:29):
what's happening in the midbrain.
Yeah.
Perfect explanation.
So there's Marsha for you.
We got to see Marsha again.
What about who said, say it again.
What about, I said follow up question.
What about alcoholics beingtogether as a partner?
So how do you, like prior,how have you seen that?
That is, uh, prior to, yeah, like prior.

(01:35:52):
Alcoholics not currently drinking alcohol.
Silver Alcoholics Recovery,you talking about two,
two people in recovery being together.
Like does that work or not work?
Oh, sure.
It could work.
Okay.
Yeah.
I wouldn't recommend it in earlyrecovery because until you've done
some healing, it's like two garbagetrucks having a head on collision,

(01:36:16):
you know what I mean?
I wouldn't recommend it.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Stay away from that in early.
You know what, early recoveryis three to five years.
Guess what?
Yeah.
In terms of brain function,in the brain healing.
So be very careful with that.
Be very careful with that.

(01:36:37):
Right.
18 to three minimum.
Yeah.
You know, stay the hell away from that.
Let them recover.
Take care of yourself, let you recoverbefore you start distracting yourself
with major distractions like that.
Right.
And triggers.
That's what killed my son.
Yeah.
He got involved in relationshiptoo soon and he had three years

(01:37:00):
sober, but it was too soon.
Anybody that knew him, knew that said no.
You got more work to, you know,sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
Well, it was slowly with him 'causethere was slow investment in the recovery
work, so there was a lot more work tobe done before he was ready for that.

(01:37:21):
And, uh, she was a greatgirl, but a huge distraction.
And then he let go of his recovery.
So be very careful.
We're, we're, these are our lives.
We're trying to stay alive.
Now, if, let's say, okay, they removedmy anus, my rectum, my large intestine,
maybe they took out a couple otherorgans and I had a tumor up here and they

(01:37:43):
cut out a muscle in my arm and I, I'mlike this in the hospital and somebody
says, well, what would you like to do?
And I say, I wanna go on a date.
That would sound pretty nuts, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
They say, sorry buddy pal yougot a couple of years of healing
to do before you can even walk.
Oh no, I'm gonna marry that.

(01:38:04):
I wanna marry that.
I'm gonna get married to thatgirl from the mental institution.
You know,
that's slap ass crazy where I come from.
That's just, you know, avoidit and take care of yourself.
But there's alwaysexceptions to every rule.
But in my years of recovery, Ihaven't seen it happen too many times

(01:38:26):
where people in early recovery gettogether and end up staying sober
and, uh, having a good relationship.
But I know plenty of people that have metin recovery who also had profound healing
had already occurred, and they were ableto have good, successful relationships.
So.
I'm letting mine go.
So that's why.
Okay, good.
Be careful of that.

(01:38:47):
Somebody said something about Al-Anonwho said something about Al-Anon.
Oh, she's gone.
I was gonna tell a story aboutMarsha and Al-Anon, but anyway,
I, yes, something real quick.
I am fascinated about like,like, you know, the voice.
I remember the first time itwas the voice, as I understand
it, as you understand it.

(01:39:08):
Yeah.
And I recognized it as such.
And it's saying, you're going to seminary.
I have a calling on your life.
And I'm like, I've beendrinking for 40 years.
I have a hot mess of a story to tell.
I haven't been there and done it.
And what, like, what would like I did it.
I did it and walked into the greatestblessing ever in my entire life.

(01:39:30):
But I'm fascinated on what that wasfor you, if it was a surprise to
you or what your relationship orthat was with your higher power.
Mine it God and Jesus.
And I know that it is for youalso, but um, my before it was
just like, God was this idea.
I had some fear of it.
There's this hell thing, Idon't really want to go there.

(01:39:51):
But then I went off the railsand didn't recognize guilt in the
weight of that, that I'm carrying.
'cause I just drank thataway until I didn't hear it.
But then getting that calling andthat meeting your higher power and
having an understanding like, oh.
This is the real deal.
This is what it is.
And I'm just fascinated bythat part of your story.

(01:40:13):
So I thought I would ask, sowhat exactly is the question?
The calling, what the calling for you,when that was put on your life and
you're like, I'm going to seminary.
Mm-hmm.
I'm gonna be a priest.
Was that a surprise to you?
'cause you could have knocked me over.
Like I argued with that voice over that.
I'm like, this can't possibly be right.
Me, because I could think of a millionother people that are equipped as

(01:40:34):
I saw it, or more capable, but, ordid you always have an interest?
Here's how it happened.
For the, with the seminary part?
Uh, no, I did not have an interest.
Mm-hmm.
I did not want to be a priest.
Mm. I didn't wanna be a priest.
That was not of any interest that I had.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, I did wanna, I found in earlyrecovery, I loved helping people.

(01:40:57):
Yes.
That I loved.
And, and Edgar helped so many people.
And I said to him one day, you know, whenI grow up, I want to be just like you.
And the next day he said, I have madearrangements for a scholarship for you
to attend Union Theological Seminary.

(01:41:18):
I said, what?
What?
And I'm practicing two-way prayer andI'm learning to listen to the voice.
And I'm like, you want me to do what?
And he said, well, you said you wantedto be just like me when you grew up.
So it's already been ranged.
I. I said, okay, I guessthat means I'm going.

(01:41:40):
He said, Hey, listen, if nothingelse, you'll learn some stuff.
You're a smart guy.
You need to keep your brain active.
So go study.
If I, if I could have got you ascholarship to Columbia, I would've
done that studying, whatever, youknow, world history or something.
But I didn't, I had access toscholarship at Union Theological.

(01:42:02):
Mm-hmm.
So I said, okay.
'cause I made a vow to followmy sponsor's suggestions.
So in that case, for me, he was the voice.
Got it.
Speaking through him.
Yeah.
Then as soon as I started, I knewthat I was meant to be there and
I said, oh, I see how this goes.
So often the things the voiceasks me to do are always a shock.

(01:42:27):
And I always say, whatyou want me to what?
When Hazelden, I got a call from Hazelden.
One day they wanted me to write a book.
I said, what?
I didn't know what to say.
So I prayed and meditated and itwas clear, I'm supposed to do this.
I call my sponsor Mel in apanic, and I say, how in the
world am I gonna write a book?

(01:42:47):
And he said, one word at a time,
you'll ask God for the words.
So I did.
I followed directions, I didthat and the book appeared and
everything has been like that.
It's always been me saying,what do you want me to what?
Not so much now.
I don't, don't question it anymore.
Yeah.
I just go, okay, that'scrazy, but I'll do it.

(01:43:10):
You know, I knew when I got to seminarythat it was my calling saying I
thought I was gonna be a chaplain.
No.
God's like, oh no, you're going further.
You're gonna be organized.
And then I said, I'm notgonna pastor at church.
And God's like, you're so funny.
Haven't you figured out yet thatI'll put you where I need you?
So I was ordained on nine 11.

(01:43:32):
Wow.
Father Lu, who picked me up inthe street and out of the, out
of that cloud ordained me then.
Beautiful.
My ordination was scheduled for twoweeks ahead and I said, is this valid?
Is this gonna stick?
And, and he said, yeah, I'm a Canonpriest and there are loopholes in the
canonical law that allows a canon priestto ordain a priest without the bishop

(01:43:54):
being present in an emergency situation.
He said, I think thiscounts as an emergency.
So that's when I was ordained.
And um, the Sunday after nine11, I was at the cathedral.
6,000 people were there morning.
Uh, it was at Vesper Services.
Normally there are 40 people there.
The whole cathedral was filled.

(01:44:16):
And, um, I'm wearing my robes, I've gotmy vests on, and from a, from a side
door income, maybe 20 New York City cops.
And they say, father, excuse me.
Um.
We have a favor.
We would like a number ofpriests to come with us.
We're going down into thepit and we're scared and we'd

(01:44:37):
like to have priests with us.
It feels evil and we want tohave the equipment blessed.
We want to be blessed, andwe want, we want priests.
We want clergy with us.
We want priests with us.
And a lot of these guys were Irish cops,so they were, you know, they, they wanted
priests, uh, Episcopal or Roman Catholic.
And I don't think they knew the differencebetween the St. John and St. Patrick's.

(01:44:58):
You know, the, they didn'tknow it wasn't Roman Catholic.
Anyway, they said we'd like, uh,to have priests come and, uh,
vesper service about to happen.
And normally at Vest for service, Icarry one of the crosses and assist
the priest who is gonna give thehomily and read the gospel lessons.
And, uh, father Lu was the priestthat night, and he comes by and I

(01:45:22):
say, Hey, father Luce, these guys wantpriests to come down to ground zero.
He said, okay, I'll run over to, uh,cathedral House and round everybody up.
And he said, that meansyou're the priest on deck.
Um, here's my homily if you wanna readit, or you can make up one of your own.
The gospel lessons are, uh, markedin the, in the Bible up by the altar.

(01:45:46):
You walk up these steps and there's likean eagle going like this, and you walk up
and you're kind of above the congregates,the biggest cathedral in the world.
And there are 6,000 people.
The Sunday after nine 11, andnow I'm the priest in charge.
I didn't ask to be that.
It just happened.
And as I got up to that, uh, pulpitwith where the Bible was, and I

(01:46:08):
opened it up and, and the firstgospel lesson was a gold ribbon and
the second one was a white ribbon.
And I open up the first gospellesson, his second Timothy.
And, um, I'll loosely translate.
I, first of all, I look down and I seemy hands and the robe and I look out and

(01:46:29):
there's 6,000 people in New York City,in the largest cathedral in the world.
And I'm standing, how did that happen?
And I just kind of froze andI'm like, this is me, Gary, the
little fat baby from Akron andall the shit that I went through.
And now I'm, how didI, why, why am I here?

(01:46:53):
And then I start reading from twoTimothy and it says, I am, I am called
to this service on this night becauseI was a blasphemer and I lived as a
drunk and a murderer and, and a violentman and had been transformed because
of God's grace and through Christ.
And, uh, so that you would look upon meand know that you can also be transformed.

(01:47:14):
And it was like a page outta my diary.
Yeah.
And the gospel came alive for me.
'cause it was my diary.
Anyway, shit like that kept happening,you know, and it would just, I
would go, what is happening here?
And it took a while for me toreally accept that to go, okay,

(01:47:35):
alright, well this is my life nowand, and it's pretty good life and
I'm sleeping okay at night and I'mstaying sober and I'm having laughter
again, so I'm gonna run with this.
Yeah.
I'm gonna go ahead and go with it.
And then I went deep, you know?
Yeah.
It took a while for meto get to that point.
Mm-hmm.
I didn't accept it at first.

(01:47:55):
Thank you.
Yeah, you're welcome.
And you had your hand up?
Uh, yeah, I was just gonna ask, you hadmentioned something about Al-Anon and it
kind of sparked a question like, so whatwould be your suggestion as far as, so

(01:48:17):
people kind of pushed us to, or madesuggestions as far as trying to get
us to go to meetings and who, whois US program people in recovery.
Oh, okay.
Um, what would be your suggestion, um,or what would be your approach to maybe

(01:48:42):
suggesting to somebody to go to Alana?
I am a little confused.
So, um, turn the, when yousay us, did you member, huh?
Turn the table Like a family member.
How would you encourage a family member?
Oh, is that the, so right.
Turn the tables.

(01:49:02):
Turn the tables kind of deal.
I gotcha.
Well,
the same, the same kind of the same way.
How they kind of suggested we go tomeeting like we addicts go to meetings.

(01:49:22):
That's what you mean.
They told we addicts go to meetings.
What do you tell the family?
Is that what you're asking?
Right.
Well, what would be yoursuggestion as far as trying to
suggest that they go to Alanon?
Oh.
How to approach that, right.
Ooh, that's a tough one.
Yeah.

(01:49:43):
I definitely, I suggestedall the time to people.
As a counselor, I suggestthat and try to explain it.
Now, here's the tough part.
If an addict in early recovery,sitting down with a family saying, by
the way, you're half of the disease
after all the shit we put 'em through,that might not go over too well.

(01:50:06):
You know what I mean?
But that's, that's a fact.
They're, they've, okay.
My mother love her to death.
Her name was Mary Evelyn.
Her initials were ME And in earlyrecovery, father Edgar called her Mary
Enabler instead of Mary Evelyn, andhelped me understand that she was as

(01:50:30):
addicted to me as I was addicted to crack.
She was addicted to fixing me,therefore she had to keep me sick
in order to have something to fixand not realizing that she's doing
this and she's suffering over it.
'cause she thinks, you know, something'swrong, she should be able to control it.

(01:50:50):
And um, so he suggested to her, notme, uh, another party, a third party
who was my sponsor, who she respected.
'cause he was a, this eminent priest.
And, uh, spoke to her and said,the family is often part of
the dynamic and, and have you.

(01:51:11):
And he asked her questions, haveyou done this, this, and this?
And she said, yes.
And he said, can you see howthat's helped him stay sick?
And, uh, and that meansthat you're sick also.
And, and you're, are you suffering?
And she said, yes.
And he said, well, there's a programyou can go to, um, Al-Anon so that you
can find relief and learn how to detachfrom the alcoholic, but detach with

(01:51:36):
love and, uh, no longer be a victim.
And stop thinking that way.
And you also don't have to fix them.
Yeah, that's a really tough question.
I'd have somebody else carry that news.
I really, I really would.
As I think more and more of it inearly recovery, that could be a

(01:51:59):
disastrous conversation, you know?
But yeah, if there's somebody thatcounsels you that might speak to
the family and say, you know, thefamilies get a lot of comfort.
Tell them, if you're suffering, don'ttell 'em what they're suffering from.
If you're suffering, you couldgo to Al-Anon, you'll, you'll get
relief that might appeal to themor you in early recoveries, I now

(01:52:22):
think of, it might say that to them.
Say, you know, it, someone has, peoplethat have a lot of experience with
this have told me that if the familyis suffering, they could get relief
by going to Al-Anon and leave it thereand not get into any more detail about
what their part in it is or, you know,or calling them sick or, you know, just

(01:52:44):
say if you're suffering, it's been,it's been told to me that I'm getting
so much relief out of this program.
And you can see that hopefully ifyou're suffering, you could get relief
by going to this other program, ifyou're gonna talk to them about it.
I wouldn't say any more than that.
I don't know if that's helpful.
Well, I just, I be really careful.

(01:53:05):
Thought it would ask the voice thoughta good question because I mean, I
don't have, it's a great questionto go to Aon, but I just thought,
oh, might be able to help somebody.
It's a great question.
Right.
And a really delicate situation.
You had your hand up.
Yeah, I was just gonna answer that.
Um, please do.
And that a third party went to mywife and informed her what she was

(01:53:28):
doing and that it was hurting her justas much as it was hurting me by an,
and that there was this program thatshe could go to to understand that.
And then I made the stupidmistake of encouraging her to go
through would no longer enable,

(01:53:49):
but a third party always helps.
Yeah.
And I would say, yeah, I thinkthat's a good idea that I would say
that I learned a lot from Alana.
Mm-hmm.
It was the 12 steps can be applied toso many different situations in your
life inside and outside of recovery.
Yes.
But the first couple, yeah.

(01:54:09):
First three or four first month ofmeetings, I'd listen around the table
and somebody would say somethingand some people would laugh and
thinking, what are you laughing at?
That's what I do.
What are you laughing at?
And pretty soon I got it thatI was doing things wrong.
When you're in the program for a while,you changed your ways of thinking, right?

(01:54:34):
Mm-hmm.
And you know, now I knew what they werelaughing at, you know, my enabling.
So it was, it was all good.
I think the third partything's a great idea.
Yes.
My first Al-Anon meeting, Ithink I shared yesterday, um,
I tried to find Marsha tomake amends and she had moved.

(01:54:58):
I didn't know where she was,didn't know how to find her.
And um, some years went by andI went to hear a friend preach
at Unity Church of New York.
His name is Reverend Sean Monier.
And I sat down for the serviceand this guy came in and sat down.
He was looking at me, I was looking athim and I said, are you Bill McKinley?
And he said, yes.

(01:55:18):
I said, oh my God.
He was her college roommate,Marsh's college roommate.
And he said, Gary Kimball,you look so different.
And I said, probably, 'causeI've been sober a few years.
And he goes, yeah, there'ssomething different about your eyes.
You don't look like the same guy.
Your whole vibe is different.
Well, we get restored to sanity, right?
To our authentic selves.

(01:55:39):
That false self is gone.
So anyway, that was a great experience.
I remember.
But anyway, I said, my God, I triedto, Marsha, do you ever talk to her?
He said, talk to her last night.
Oh my God.
So you know how to find her.
And I said, I, I'm in a 12 step programand I need to make amends to her.
And I never could find her.
And here you are.
Would you please givemy phone number to her?

(01:56:01):
He said, well, I think she'dbe glad to talk to you.
She's in recovery also.
Wow.
How amazing that's gonna be.
So next day I'm talking toMarcia after all those years
and conversation went great.
I said, I've been, I'vebeen trying to find you.
Where are you?
She said, well, I had a job opportunityin Akron, Ohio in your hometown.

(01:56:25):
And I left New York and I'm in Akron.
I said, I'm going to Akronnext week to see my family.
She said, well, we've got to gettogether and make amends to each other.
She says, I said, oh, it's a great idea.
So we arranged to meet at Taggart'sIce Cream Shop on Fulton Avenue in
Canton, Ohio, just south of Akron.

(01:56:48):
And I walk in and she's got a bigbox of Kle out box of Kleenex, and
she starts pulling 'em out and shehands some to me and, uh, she, I,
I thought we'd hug or something.
She just sat down immediatelyand started pulling the Kleenex
out and handed me the Kleenex.
She said, do you wannago first or shall I?
So we had our men's conversationtalked for a long time.

(01:57:09):
We both got very emotional andcried and it was a beautiful thing.
And she looks at her watch, shesays, oh, there's a meeting I go to.
It's just around the corner.
It starts in about 20 minutes.
Would you like to go with me?
And I think, what an amazing thing.
Marsh and Gary are goingto an AA meeting together.
I. So, so I follow her to the meetingspace and uh, my first clue should have

(01:57:33):
been there was one man, a whole, like ahundred women and a lot of baked goods.
That should have been my clue.
And they, they start the meetingand they, and they say, is there
anyone here for their new, theirfirst time, me, UPCO Marsh's hand?
And she said, I would like tointroduce my qualifier, Gary.

(01:57:58):
Every woman in that room went like this.
And they all looked at meand gave me the whale eye.
You know, I was terrified.
And apparently she had never, she wouldn'treally know a step of a bid in the ass.
She did make amends to me, and I think,well, anyway, I'm judging her here.
Um, forgive me.
And, and in a sanctuary no less, um,this is what I heard later from friends.

(01:58:22):
Really.
She'd just been sitting in thatmeeting for like eight years,
bitching about what a monster I was.
So that's all these women have heard.
And then here he is, she,she set me up for that.
Would you like, would youlike to go to a meeting?

(01:58:42):
It starts in 20 minutes.
So we were in an Al-Anon meeting.
I didn't go back to Al-Anon for years,but I do go to Al-Anon now where
they have, in Florida, they have whatare called double winter meetings.
That are for people inAA who also need Al-Anon.
We're surrounded by alcoholicand addicts and I need to learn

(01:59:04):
how to not be a codependent.
I have issues with codependencybig time and it's, and Al-Anon
has helped me enormously.
So that was gonna be my next question'cause I heard somebody else talking
earlier about people being in arelationship in recovery and would that
be suggested for them to attend Al-Anon?

(01:59:29):
Yeah.
Separately, separate aseparate Al-Anon meeting.
Not the same meeting,not the same AA meetings.
Go to separate meetings.
It's your own recovery.
Go to your own recovery and her ownrecovery, or do you mean like an alcoholic
like us, we go to AA and go to an LAmeeting, is that what you were saying?

(01:59:54):
Yeah, right.
I think it would be great if you're, ifyou're in recovery in a relationship now,
if also if you've been married a longtime, maybe that's a different story.
But even then I think it would be mosthelpful to go to separate, separate
meetings so you can really be free totalk about what you need to talk about.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
You know, one more over here.

(02:00:15):
Yes.
Okay.
Firstly, to piggyback that just alittle bit, uh, rusty and I used
together, we, he got in trouble.
I went to rehab.
We.
Since months and months and months apart.
But we did almost immediately whenwe got outta jail, we got married.
That was probably notthe smartest thing to do.
And it's been real rough, but it can work.
Yes.
Statistically it's rough, butit can work if you really work.

(02:00:38):
I, and I said right off the top, it couldwork, but complacency, you have to be
able to know how to see that right away.
Um, you have to know your others.
You have to know your other person.
Mm-hmm.
If he was to go grab a bag of soof Sour Patch kids and just come
home and start mom on, I like,ah, show me your arms buddy.

(02:00:58):
Ah, right, right.
Because that's all he would ever eat.
And the same, he would noticethings with me and be like, I I,
I don't think something's right.
So it is possible.
Um, no doubt it's not also I'mtrying to, it's just risky.
Yes, yes.
And, and the question I always haveis, are you willing to take the risk
when you consider it, it is your life.

(02:01:18):
Right.
And this is from a man who just hadas cancer and as soon as we're done
here, I'm gonna go smoke cigarette.
One last question, one last question.
Go figure.
Uh, but Gary, go smoke and Iknow some other people got some
schedule stuff, but Gary will behere, so Yeah, I'll hang around.

(02:01:38):
Anybody, hang on.
Anybody.
Cool.
I don't want to change the topic, but,uh, you talked about, uh, two way prayer.
And you're real good friends withWally, and he, he wrote about it
in his book, how To Listen to God.
Pardon me?
Yeah.
The book, how to Listen to God, uh,which is about his work with James Houk.

(02:02:00):
Yeah.
Could you go through a, a littlescenario about what we, how we do
that, and what we're looking for?
Okay.
Um, first suggestion I would have is togo to a website, www.twowayprayer.org.

(02:02:21):
That website is operated by FatherBill Wigmore, W-I-G-M-O-R-E.
Um,
Bill's an amazing man.
He's the world's leading authorityin the history of the Oxford Group,
and he lectures and teaches abouttwo-way prayer all over the planet.
And, uh, he's an amazing man.

(02:02:44):
So on that website area couple of printouts.
One of them is the original pamphletwritten by Chaplain John Batterson
in the 1930s, uh, which explains howthe Oxfords did two-way prayer, which
was then adopted by early AA becausethe first 100 members who created the

(02:03:06):
big book were all members of Oxford.
They all practiced two-way prayer.
Ann Smith, Dr. Bob's wife, two-way prayer.
Um, Einstein practiced two-way prayer.
He was a member of Oxford and creditedtwo-way prayer for his discovery
of, um, the theory of relativity.

(02:03:26):
Uh, by listening, sittingin silence, and listening.
Pope John Paul was a great proponent ofit and would sit for hours in silence.
Just listen, just sit stilland listen, be still, and know.
So there are directions on that website.
There are little videos that explainhow to do it, and there's a printout

(02:03:49):
of John Batterson's original pamphletthat was circulated amongst the
early aas that gives step-by-stepdirections on how to do two-way prayer.
Um,
the nuts and bolts of it are,it describes it in the big book.
The step Step 11 in the big bookis a description of two-way prayer.

(02:04:14):
Uh, on awakening, we thinkabout the 24 hours ahead.
We relax, we take it easy.
That's part of two-way prayer.
Shake it out, get the stress out.
Uh, ask God to divorce yourthinking from doubt, self pity.
That's what I do when I wake up andI open my eyes and say, oh shit.

(02:04:34):
I have to pray and ask God, pleasedirect, get rid of these thoughts for me.
Divorce.
My thinking from this self-pity and thisanxiety, any God contemplation moves my
thoughts from my midbrain to my cortex.
So you start with that into a prayer.
Um, you have a pad of paper withyou and a pen, pen or pencil.

(02:04:58):
Uh, you read some spiritualliterature, get on a spiritual beam.
And then, uh, the big book says, um, wemay not know which course to take here.
We ask God for direction.
An intuitive thought or a decision.
If you're asking for a decision,you're asking to have a conversation.

(02:05:22):
Hence the term two-way prayer.
I'm gonna talk to God,God's gonna talk to me.
Prayer sought through prayerand meditation to improve
our conscious contact.
That means prayer.
That's when I talk to God.
Meditation is when I listen toGod, what a lot of people do.
I think they pray, here'smy, a lot of my sponsees.

(02:05:43):
Do they pray?
They ask for all the things they want.
You know, get me this, get me that.
Use God like an errand boy.
And then they go to Starbucks and theythink they've done their 11th step.
Um, maybe they read daily reflections.
Two-way prayer is you ask for direction.
You say, what do you want me to do today?
Or I, I've got these threedifferent job offers.

(02:06:06):
I dunno which one to take.
Is one of them ordained byyou and then you get quiet
and you listen for the answer.
That's the meditationpart is the listening.
And then you write down all the thoughtsthat come into your mind as fast as you.
You can only write so many of them down,and the thoughts come and go so quickly.
But it's a practice.

(02:06:27):
And the big book says this willhappen gradually over time.
As we practice this, wewill come to rely on it.
It's going to take time.
It's a practice.
So it's going to take practice, um,sitting every day and you take a half

(02:06:50):
an hour in the morning on awakening sothat you set your brain in the right
direction, getting ready for the day.
Now you're treating youralcoholism as soon as you wake up.
Now you're starting to treat yourdisease as soon as you wake up.
What happened?
I shut the thing off.
It finally went away.
Okay, I can let go of that.

(02:07:13):
So, yeah.
Um, I've read you write down all thethoughts that come into your mind.
I've read page 86, 87, 88 fora long time and never put two
and two together like that.
That's, that's what it is.
So we're asking God for, Isay, I don't know what to do.
You do guide me.

(02:07:35):
And then listen.
And over time you'll come tounderstand what the voice sounds like.
And eventually, as you obey it,a great quote from Reverend Frank
Bookman, who founded Oxford.
When man listens, God speaks.
When man obeys God acts,

(02:07:59):
I have to listen first, thenI have to obey and trust.
Then God's gonna pull strings for me.
You know, but I gotta trust.
I gotta do my part.
Listen and obey.
So after in time, you knowwhat the voice sounds like.
Then as you obey a numberof times, you develop faith.

(02:08:21):
Faith is belief with a track record.
Carl Jung was once asked, it'son YouTube, you can look this up.
Carl Jung, uh, who passed themessage of Suse Contra spirit to
him onto Roland Hazzard, who passedit to Seber grave, Shep Cornell.
James Houk, Eby Thatcher, whothen took it to Bill Wilson, um,

(02:08:43):
about the spiritual solution.
Uh, the interviewer asks Carl Young,he says, after all these years, you're
so spiritual and this spiritual teacherand this great spiritual healer.
Do you believe in God?
And right away Carl Jung goes,huh, no, I don't believe in God.

(02:09:08):
I know, I know.
I don't believe
I know.
So yeah, practice two-way prayer.
Over time, you'll know and you'llcome to trust it and it, you'll
receive the guidance that youneed and, but directions for it.

(02:09:29):
You write down as manythoughts as you can.
All crazy thoughts, holythoughts on holy thoughts.
Just write it all down.
Then you test your guidanceby using the four absolutes.
Um, this thing that I think I'm guide,wrote down here, ask the girl from

(02:09:49):
the mental institution on a date.
Now is this God's will or is this me?
So then I tested for God's willby using the four absolutes
of the Oxford Group, the fourabsolutes is what I'm about to do.
Is it absolutely honest?

(02:10:11):
No.
Is it absolutely unselfish?
No.
Are my motives pure?
No.
Is it absolute love?
No.
Damn.

(02:10:32):
So it's not God's will, it's my will.
So you test it for God's will isare these spots that I've had?
And in time you'll know it rightaway you'll recognize and you'll just
know, you know, um, it is suggestedto bounce your guidance off other
people who practice two-way prayer.
Um, it used to be easy thing todo 'cause everybody in AA did it.

(02:10:57):
That was a part of theprogram and something was lost
when we stopped doing that.
But, uh, there's a movement to try tobring that back into our, uh, program.
That was, that was our original 11 step.
And Bill, that's what Billdescribes on 86, he describes
two way prayer on awakening.
Think about 24 hours ahead.

(02:11:20):
Ask God to direct your thinking.
Divorce it from thoughtsof self-pity and doubt.
Shake it off.
Get ready.
Read some spiritual literature.
Get on the beam.
Now.
Sit with God.
Ask God for direction.
What do you want me to do?
Which of these three jobs should I take?
I had a situation whereI was offered to play.

(02:11:43):
The sheriff and the best littlewhorehouse in a dinner theater.
This was in sobriety afterI came outta the monastery.
Look at that right now.
What's that?
I'm looking at that right now on Google.
He found you, he really?
Yeah.
The one with the, uh, sheriff outfit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And and the headline says fromthe whore house to the monastery

(02:12:04):
and back again, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Anyway, yeah.
So, uh, I was offered thatit was like $400 a week.
I talked him up to eight.
I said, I'll get back to you in a week.
I gotta meditate on this.
I would practice two way prayer.
I would see my feet in flopswalking through sand and
say, what is that all about?
Hmm.

(02:12:24):
I call Wally.
I call Mel.
I don't know what, what this is all about.
I call Father Edgar.
I don't understand.
Well, keep meditating, keep doing thetwo-way prayer until it gets clear.
Take no action until it becomes clear.
Don't just do something, sit there insteadof, don't just sit there, do something.
Just sit still.
So then I get a call from the producerwho I'd punched in the face from.

(02:12:47):
Little Orphan Annie.
I had made amends to him and um, hecalled and he had just gotten the
Broadway rights to Footloose, andhe wants me to play Reverend Shaw.
And it's like five granda week for the tour.
10 grand a week on Broadway.
Wow.
I'd be back on Broadway.
Lots of money.
I say, I gotta get back to you.
I gotta meditate on this for a week.
So I practice my two-way prayer and I say,God, I don't know which course to take.

(02:13:10):
That's the big book says, we maynot know which course to take.
So we ask God for direction, anintuitive thought or a decision.
So I'm stuck.
Which of these two thingsdo you want me to do?
Either one of these, andI see my feet in flip.
Flip flops walking through sand.
I don't know what the hell to do.

(02:13:31):
So then I talked to the theatermanager down in Florida.
He calls me up and he says, we, we've gotpermission to give you 800 a week instead
of 400, which I barely pay my bills.
I say, by the way, wheredoes this tour start?
He says, south Florida.
South Florida.
You have a lot of beachesin Florida, don't you?
I'd probably be wearing flipflops walking through sand.

(02:13:54):
Okay, so I'm going toFlorida door number two.
Ah, consolation prize.
That's what I'm thinking.
I don't know why, but God wantsme to go to Florida, not Broadway.
So I pass the broad passdown the Broadway show.
I say no, and that guy thinks I'm nuts.
My friends thinks I'm nuts.
I arrive in Floridafirst morning in Florida.

(02:14:14):
The theater manager says, um,Florida Weekly Magazine, which on
every news stand in South Florida,they wanna do just a small article.
And we arrange this because theshow's called Bele Whore House.
And a lot of the old folks in thecommunity are angry that we're doing
a show with that dirty word in there.
So is there some way you couldtell a little story, something

(02:14:35):
you know, you're a priest?
Uh, I said, well, how about this?
I'll tell her, I justgot outta the monastery.
And you need to see this theway you see a gospel lesson.
Jesus hung out with a lot of unsavorypeople, and you're supposed to
love your neighbor as yourself.
And after all, the theater is built, uh,like a church, and the priest is telling

(02:14:56):
a parable about the human condition,uh, which is what the actor does.
And the congregation is the audienceand the, uh, the, the, the dancing
chorus or whatever, that's the choir.
And we're all telling a storyabout the human condition.
And together we become one body,one mind, the body of Christ.

(02:15:17):
And, uh, by watching this show, you'llcome to understand the plight of these
women who are in the whore house,and you'll come to have compassion
for them, and you'll be able to seeyour neighbor as you see yourself.
It's a gospel lesson.
He said, oh my God, you're a genius.
So the reporter shows up, sheputs a little recorder, went a
little digital recorder down.
She says, tell me your story.

(02:15:38):
So I tell her my whole story,and I talk for two hours like I
did today about puking on Annie.
And they shit all over me.
I tell her the whole story andshe just sits there staring at me.
And then I, I'm done with my story.
And she says, can I print any of that?
I said, print the whole thing if you want.
And she says, well, I'vebeen in Al-Anon 40 years.

(02:15:58):
My husband died from alcoholism.
My son is lost right now.
We don't know where he is.
We just go out to dinner.
So the reporter and I go outto dinner, we become friends.
The article comes out, it's whatyou saw, it's the cover story.
There's me as the sheriff, andit says, from the who house,
the monastery and back again.
He's got on his phone right there.
Can't believe it.
That's on one of my slides in here too.

(02:16:19):
Um, yeah.
So it comes out and I get an angryphone call from this old man.
He says, my name is Tom Prather andI own Prather Entertainment Group.
You're working for me.
And I, and how dare you say you'rea crack whore in this magazine
and you're working for me.
But he said, but I wasstrangely inspired by it.
I see that you're an Episcopal priest.

(02:16:39):
My family tells me I'm an alcoholic.
And I said, now I know why.
I'm in Florida.
And they've thrown meout of my own theater.
My wife got thrown out.
They say she's an alcoholic.
She's a deacon at IonaHope Episcopal Church.
And I see that you're an Episcopal priest.
Why don't you come tochurch with me on Sunday?

(02:16:59):
Sunday I show up in full regalia.
I've got my crucifixon, my bishop's purple.
I got the the white collar priest collarand the jacket and the whole thing.
And I say to an usher,where's Tom Prather?
And he points to this little oldman who's like this on the edge
of the pew and he's drooling.
I walk up and I go.

(02:17:19):
Tom, it's Father Gary, and he goes likethis and he falls outta the po onto the
floor and he starts cussing his head off.
Everybody ignores him and I think,oh, they've seen this before.
And he says, life.
He goes, fuck this place.
Let's go to Denny's.
And I said, um, Mr. Prather, I don'tspend any time, any currency of

(02:17:41):
my life talking to a drunken mess.
If you ever want help, youcall me before you drink.
I'm not wasting my timetalking to alcohol.
Alright, so you have a nice day.
I'll fire you, blah.
I say, as you can see, I worked,I don't really don't work for you.
So, um,

(02:18:05):
I went to another part of thechurch, watched the service.
After the service, I got outthere as fast as I could.
And Tuesday morning I get a phone callfrom Tom Prather and he says to me, uh,
father Gary, I apologized for Sunday.
Uh, it's 1130 now.
I haven't had a drink yet.
I don't know how long Ican hold on for drinking.

(02:18:27):
Can you meet me at theEdison Country Club?
I'd like to talk to you andI know why I'm in Florida.
So I get a big book and I go to theEdison Country Club and he sits down.
He says, how do I knowif I'm an alcoholic?
I said, Tom, you fellout of the pew on Sunday.
You, you were the only onedrunk playing on the floor.
And I understand you've had like 17automobile accidents and whatever.

(02:18:48):
I've been doing somelittle research into you.
And, um, we start talking about alcoholismand I ask him to tell me his story.
And, and while he's telling me hisstory, I kind of, I'm drifting and out
and I close my eyes occasionally and Igo into my two-way prayer muscle and the
poster for the off-Broadway play Build.
Every Dr. Bob flashes into my headand I, 'cause he tells me There's

(02:19:11):
no way I'm going to an AA meeting.
Now I say, Tom, I know what to do.
I noticed you have the big 600seat theater and you got the
little 200 seat theater andthere's nothing booked in there.
This summer, you and I aregonna produce Bill W and Dr.
Bob about the co-founders of aa and youwill co-direct it and co-produce it.

(02:19:32):
But I'm in charge of the production.
We'll put it in the contract.
If you ever show up drunk, I get topick your bony little body up and
throw you out in the parking lot.
And, um, we're gonna hire a cast.
There are 10 actors in theshow, all people in recovery.
And every day before rehearsal, we'regonna have a one hour a meaning.
That's gonna be your home group.
And I am now your sponsor and I'mgonna take you through the 12 steps.

(02:19:57):
And I know why I'm in Florida.
And he agrees to this andthat, that's what happened.
And we started, the wife came to a coupleof rehearsals, went right out to aa, got
a sponsor, started working the steps.
Um, she's still sober.
Tom just passed away last year,uh, with 15 years of sobriety.
He was 70 when I met him, andhe got sober at the age of 70.

(02:20:21):
Well, because of meeting Tom, becauseof two-way prayer feet and flip flops,
walking through sand and having come totrust the voice and obey that guidance,
he and I started, the productioncompany, produced the Off Broadway show.
Bill w Dr. Bob took it to the75th International Convention.

(02:20:42):
We did it around the world.
That led to Dr. Phil, to Ellen,to death, to Hazelden, to why I'm
sitting here talking to you, becauseof listening to two-way prayer feet
and flip-flops walking through sand.
I can trace that obedience to sitting heretoday because I followed that guidance.
And that's what's in the big book.

(02:21:03):
That's what Step 11 is, is two-way prayer.
Learn about it, go on thewebsite two way prayer.org.
It'll be one of the listen.
Step 11 and 12 is our solution.
So learn all you can about the solution.
The first, the first nine steps.
The first three steps aredecisions, not working steps.

(02:21:24):
We just make intellectualdecisions, right?
Then four through nine removes allthe garbage that's accumulated,
that's blocking us from God.
It's blocking me from loving me,loving you, blocking me from God.
So we gotta remove the blockage.
Let's, you know how a car batterygets that crap all over it.
You gotta clean out We, well, we gottaclean out the inside, all that garbage.

(02:21:49):
'cause God is in here, not out there.
So, so to be able to communicate,I've gotta clean out the vessel.
So once it's clean my, now I'm atmy solution 11 and 12, helping other
people change their brain, spiritualaction, and med prayer and meditation.

(02:22:10):
That's the solution.
And we use the techniquecalled two-way prayer.
And it's profound and it's powerfuland it's largely forgotten.
And if you're interested in your solution,learn everything you can about it.
Go on two way prayer.org.
Watch the films that Father Bill made.
Father Bill Wigmore, read the pamphletsthat are on there called How to Listen to

(02:22:34):
God and How to Practice Two-Way Prayer.
And it's on that website, the originalpamphlets that were written in the
1930s, which is what Bill Wilson used.
He was a, a night school dropout,invented insider trading, sketchy ass
guy, um, you know, worked on Wall Street.
What did he know about Neuroscienceand Steve Spirituality?

(02:22:57):
And with three years sober, hewrote that book and he used two-way
prayer to receive the words.
That's where he cameup with the whole idea.
That's where he came up with the,he created the world's only pure
democracy by creating the 12 traditions.
And he got the guidance todo that from two-way prayer.
Einstein used it, FDR used it,you know, Stephen Hawking used it.

(02:23:23):
Powerful tool.
And it's available to youand I doesn't cost anything.
It's our real original 11 step.
So if you're new, get in man.
Learn about two-way prayerand start to practice it.
And it's a daily practiceand as you practice, like
anything, you get good at it.
You know, I was walking through, this isall close with this, I was walking through

(02:23:45):
Midtown Manhattan one day and this elderlyGerman couple came up to me and said,
excuse me, how do we get to Carnegie Hall?
I started to laugh.
I said, but I've been waiting my wholelife for somebody to ask me that question.

(02:24:05):
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice?
And I'll close with that.
Thank you very much.
I just want to close witha quick moment of silence.
I just want to reflect on why,why we're here today and what

(02:24:29):
we're taking from this place.
You can close your eyes and justsend out some good vibes to somebody
that you'd maybe like to see sittingnext to you at another meeting.
And lastly, send out some love to, uh,families and anybody else that's been
affected by overdose or addiction.

(02:25:00):
Happy Sunday y'all.
Thank you for being happy.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I hope that was useful.
Thank you.

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