August 5, 2025 • 38 mins
"At M2 The Rock, we fully respect the anonymity of all 12-step fellowships. In alignment with their traditions, we do not represent or speak on behalf of any of these groups. Our mission is to share hope, not affiliation."
About M2 THE ROCK - MICHAEL MOLTHAN:
I’m Michael Molthan, host of The M2 The Rock Show—one of the fastest-growing podcasts and shows on self-improvement, mental health, addiction recovery, and spiritual transformation. I’m so grateful you’re here.I started M2 The Rock in 2017 to bring you conversations designed to make you happier, healthier, and more healed. Through raw and unfiltered discussions with experts, celebrities, thought leaders, and athletes, we uncover new perspectives on personal growth, recovery, and overcoming life’s toughest challenges.
My Story:
What sets my journey apart is that there wasn’t just one rock bottom—there were many. From being a successful luxury homebuilder to falling into addiction, homelessness, crime, and eventually 27 mugshots and prison, my life was in absolute chaos.Addiction was my temporary escape from childhood trauma, but it only led to destruction.
It wasn’t until I hit the lowest point imaginable that I finally found true freedom, redemption, and purpose. After an unexpected early release from prison in 2017, I walked 300 miles back to Dallas to turn myself in—only to be miraculously pardoned and told to “pay it forward.”And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing ever since.My MissionI believe that rock bottom is not the end—it’s a stepping stone to something greater.
My goal is to redefine what "rock bottom" means by helping others rebuild their Spirit, Mind, and Body. On M2 The Rock, I speak openly about trauma, addiction, recovery, and the power of transformation. I don’t shy away from topics like:
✅ Trauma & Addiction – Understanding the root causes
✅ Self-Sabotage & Mental Health – Breaking negative cycles
✅ Codependency & Enabling – How relationships impact recovery
✅ 12-Step Programs & Spiritual Healing – Finding true freedom
✅ Religious Trauma & Personal Growth – Healing from past wounds
"Everyone Is An Addict."
Whether it’s substances, work, validation, or negative thinking, we all have something we struggle with.
But recovery is possible, and transformation is real.
📺 Watch my story on I AM SECOND (9-Minute Film): Watch Here
📩 To book me for speaking engagements or collaborations: Email m2@m2therock.com
🔔 Join the Movement. Subscribe to M2 The Rock and start your journey of self-improvement, healing, and purpose.
🔔 Don’t forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for more powerful faith-based content!
🌎 Website: https://m2therock.com/
▶️ YouTube: @MICHAELMOLTHANM2
📸 Instagram: @m2therockshow
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-m2-the-rock-show-michael-molthan--3443849/support.
About M2 THE ROCK - MICHAEL MOLTHAN:
I’m Michael Molthan, host of The M2 The Rock Show—one of the fastest-growing podcasts and shows on self-improvement, mental health, addiction recovery, and spiritual transformation. I’m so grateful you’re here.I started M2 The Rock in 2017 to bring you conversations designed to make you happier, healthier, and more healed. Through raw and unfiltered discussions with experts, celebrities, thought leaders, and athletes, we uncover new perspectives on personal growth, recovery, and overcoming life’s toughest challenges.
My Story:
What sets my journey apart is that there wasn’t just one rock bottom—there were many. From being a successful luxury homebuilder to falling into addiction, homelessness, crime, and eventually 27 mugshots and prison, my life was in absolute chaos.Addiction was my temporary escape from childhood trauma, but it only led to destruction.
It wasn’t until I hit the lowest point imaginable that I finally found true freedom, redemption, and purpose. After an unexpected early release from prison in 2017, I walked 300 miles back to Dallas to turn myself in—only to be miraculously pardoned and told to “pay it forward.”And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing ever since.My MissionI believe that rock bottom is not the end—it’s a stepping stone to something greater.
My goal is to redefine what "rock bottom" means by helping others rebuild their Spirit, Mind, and Body. On M2 The Rock, I speak openly about trauma, addiction, recovery, and the power of transformation. I don’t shy away from topics like:
✅ Trauma & Addiction – Understanding the root causes
✅ Self-Sabotage & Mental Health – Breaking negative cycles
✅ Codependency & Enabling – How relationships impact recovery
✅ 12-Step Programs & Spiritual Healing – Finding true freedom
✅ Religious Trauma & Personal Growth – Healing from past wounds
"Everyone Is An Addict."
Whether it’s substances, work, validation, or negative thinking, we all have something we struggle with.
But recovery is possible, and transformation is real.
📺 Watch my story on I AM SECOND (9-Minute Film): Watch Here
📩 To book me for speaking engagements or collaborations: Email m2@m2therock.com
🔔 Join the Movement. Subscribe to M2 The Rock and start your journey of self-improvement, healing, and purpose.
🔔 Don’t forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for more powerful faith-based content!
🌎 Website: https://m2therock.com/
▶️ YouTube: @MICHAELMOLTHANM2
📸 Instagram: @m2therockshow
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-m2-the-rock-show-michael-molthan--3443849/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
My name was Clancy Simless Lund, and I'm an alcoholic,
as who wouldn't be.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I think.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Before I say anything more stupid, I'd like to start
off with something that happened to me a week and
a half ago or so, as you might get a
kick out of. About all ten years ago, I was
in school and the boy and I I had come
back to the Navy after the war and gone back
to school, and.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
He was fresh out of high school.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
But we were the same grade, quite an age difference,
and he was one of these cream cut all American
types that repel me on site, and you, I'm sure,
but he and I banded together.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
And pulled our nugular resources, and he won.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
The national Intercollegiate championship in nineteen forty nine, and uh,
he and I had made up the team. And even
at that time, people were saying, why can't you be
like Dick, good old Dick, clean cut all American boy?
You rotten gotten bum, you know. And my wife used
to tell me about why couldn't be like Dick, and
my parents and the president of this college and my friends.
(01:10):
And in the end, seeing years things got worse, we
pulled farther and father apart.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I kept thinking deeper into the mire, and each time.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I get in jail, I wonder what's words Old Dick tonight,
old get kept rising and I kept thinking. Eventually I
committed to the Nut House and Dick was elected.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
President of the Junior Chamber of Commage, and uh well,
it's all I'd left with God's from fire behind. I
wanted to be as fire aways and this election as
I could be all. And I got shown into jail.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
With a new and different states and cities and under
new and varying conditions, and Dick, with perseverance and pluck,
rose to the top.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Last year, I think we achieved our widest division.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I'm sure everyone that I know said why can't well,
we know, why can't plan to be like that person?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
And uh so last year I finally wound up in
a new area.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
In the Phoenix drunk tank, and I was some guys
giving me the boots cause I vomited on his bed,
and uh.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Old Dick cls elected president of the State Junior Chamber
of Comments and then made the executive of the Bank
of my hometown.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
That a typical success story that just makes your heart
warm for America.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
But by filister.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I got a letter from my mother and had a
clipping in it, and I pulled it out, and I
opened the page, the front page of.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
My hometown papers.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And whose picture was on the front page Dick And
the headline was Buster Beck arrested in Los Angeles. Buster
Beck had embezzled him his bank and all they said
that I went down to say when I found out
they'd run away, a lot of thanks ned one of
us knew we were here. I was uh out here,
and he was living down to Albarado or someplace, and
(03:11):
uh he was extradded back to Wisconsin. And there's some
sentenced to do one to five when the state prison
at while pond now.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
And I and I.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Hear, I am clean cut solder in the lake, and
I feel that there's any justice.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Anywhere in this world. Someone will write to him and say, there,
why can't you be like twin.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
As long as I put a laugh out of that clipping, well,
I said with everyone that could stand.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Still long enough to look at it, if it did give.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Me a laugh, but it did call back that perhaps
my past year could have been a little better expense
than they were.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Last late last summer, early last fall, I guess I
I spoke here.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I think it was the first talk I alway gave
him Los Angeles to any length. And I remember coming
in and uh and thinking, well, I don't have much
to say. I haven't been sober very long, but I
can tell them what's happened to me to a pretty
flamboyance to the areas I'd operated in in my drinking.
Remember when I got done, how good I felt that I'd.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Gotten so much of that conceptional phase out of my system.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And tonight, I as I was driving down here, I
was thinking, well, it it's a little.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Different situation now.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Then I I didn't even know if I could stay sober,
but I remembered so much that had happened.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Now I I.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Think maybe I can stay sober a little bit, maybe tomorrow.
I at least sent sober today, and things are a
little bit better, and perhaps.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I had progressed a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I have, uh, nothing exceptional in my life, I don't suppose,
except that it happened in a in a shorter period
time than some others.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It happened maybe in a twelve year.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Period in which I achieved various heights and various depths.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
That I wouldn't care to go through again. There was
a I can.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Think with joy of the days that I was a
brilliant young newspaper reporter, was a great future. And then
I they decided I wasn't very brilliant anymore, and so
I no longer was, and I was. I tried to
become a brilliant young advertising man. I was successful for
a while, and I was a brilliant young engraving production manager.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
And I was a brilliant young fishwasher, when.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I was a brilliant young janitor. And I was a
brilliant young piano player on skid row. And I was
a brilliant young many many occupations. And now I not
only a no longer brilliant, but I see it, I'm
no longer young.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But the pains for me, I am sure, are no
different in in effect when the pain were for each
of you.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I think we're all here because the pain became intolerable
and we re reached to certain limits which we could
no longer cope with.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
We had to do something.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
The the anesthetics was no longer doing the job. The
anesthetics we counted on as I as I stand here,
and and I was joking about Dick and I mentioned
the nuthout, and I remember that very clearly. Two years
and a half ago, I was committed to the Texas
State Hospital for the Insane for the rest of my
life because I was hopeless. I'd done for every private
(06:33):
means known to sell me up or to.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Get me to act decently. Well, he says, and it's
nothing could do it.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And I thought at that time, if this is if
there ever was a bottom, this must be the bottom.
But it wasn't the bottom, because I still felt that
Clancy could control his own life.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
He's learning from these experiences and can learn to control.
I remember it was a great deal of pain the.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Day that I was babysitting for my daughter and son
at that time, and I went down to get a
beer and got back three days later and my son
had died from pneumonia in my absence because the furnace
had gone off the cold Wisconsin dating Daddy was drunk
and no one knew about it. And I thought, this
must be the bottom for anyone, I thought at that time,
and it was.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
But I thought, well, it was an accident. I can
I can drink. It wasn't a drinking It was something else,
and I I think.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Of the time that in a more humorous vein that
I lay on the second floor of the hospital with
tubes in my arms and up my nose and being
pumped out as we all have one time another, one
way or another. And on the fourth floor my wife
was also in the hospital, giving birth to a baby.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And I remember how badly.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I felt that the nurses would come to the door
and scowl at me and talk to one another.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
And point upstairs, and then that's me.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
And I used to lie there and rise and cringe
and think how how bad these girls are. They should
be sympathizing with me, and said, they're sympathizing with my wife.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Anybody has children, But I am sick and I and
I thought this should be a bottom, But it wasn't
the bottom.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
There were no bottoms because I am cursed, as many
people are, I suppose, in varying degrees, with a complete
self indulgence. As long as there's anybody that listened to me,
and as long as there's anybody I can work on
who sympathy I can utilize for my own ends.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
As long as I can go a little further, I
will go.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I remember the time that I'm a drunk, I killed
my best friend.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I thought this was the bottom. What can I do?
I could think?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I thought maybe I could stop drinking. All that that
didn't come to me. I thought I have to run away,
as I have done so many times in my life.
I ran away from the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I played the piano on skid.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Row in San Francisco for four months until a friend
foundly pulled me off. These things are not important in themselves,
except that what if my bottom evidently is maybe worse
than someone else's bottom and better than another person's bottom.
Bottoms are strictly relative. It's how much I could force on.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Myself, how stupid I was, how self willed I was
before something got through to me. And I don't know
why the difference comes.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I wish there was a line or a marster or
a flag with a g up and say you've now
had enough.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You're never going to drink again. This is it. But
you don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
This afternoon at the sixty three Hunt time, I was sitting
there after the meeting, and I Fella come up and
he said, plancy. He said, I hate to confess this
to you. He says, but I'm just coming off a drunk.
And I've seen him several times he had, he said,
I've been to ninety straight.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Meeting, ninety meetings.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
And ninety days every night, he said, And I was
feeling still good. I felt that I couldn't be an alcoholic.
So he's been drunk away and he lost his job
and he's starting over again. But for him, he had
to find out again. I hope he doesn't have to
find out anymore. I hope I don't have to find
out anymore. Whatever my difficulties are, I I've almost to
(10:03):
the conclusion that buildings then will not help them. Uh.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
As the book says, and as the.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Grapevine says, there's months, and as everybody says, no one
ever came off a drinks richer or healthier, healthier or
in presents some more material benefits than they started. Uh.
You may wind up with some things. I came back
and wound up with a big lump.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
On my nag. In here you can still see when
I challenged the city of Juarez one evening to uh
and it only took one and it didn't take him
very long.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
That hurts my pride deeply. And you uh wind up
with some new some new charges being priced against you.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Or you wind up with a new sense of remorse.
You've added to the remorse that already was intolerable, and
here you've.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Added to it. So there's nothing you could do now
except drinks.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
The more you forget it, so I eventually I think
we all get to the point where it the pain
gets so intense.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
At least it did for me that I could do nothing.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And very strong graphic things that they happened to me
because I I must have gone out of my way
to make them happen. Everything had to be good. But
they say we're perfectionist. I guess I wanted to be
the biggest bump.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
But interest first.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
In between I I would have these moments I'm still
I am still good.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I I can't seem to handle my liquor sometimes, but
I am good. Not put out a sustain rally, which
I'm sure much much of it is done. Uh. But
I came out of the nuthouse.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I finally got strung because I had brought culture to
the state of Texas. I started a newspaper in their
net house and and earlier in my career there they
had UH. I had broken out, and being Texas is
what it is. A driver was flash and once you
break out, they can see you running for about four
days in any direction.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So it was no problem to get your back. But
it was squat it receiat to break out.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
But they got me back, and they they gave me
a special treatment they reserved for people like me. They
they massaged my head with electrodes, uh shock treatments. They
put me on the two of days, which is the
maximum for wild people, and uh they slowed me down considerably.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Uh I, uh I very well.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Remember the day I woke up after coming off the
shock therapy they had me on I don't know, twenty
four jokes or something, uh, two a day for six
days and then three a week for four weeks.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Or something like. I don't know, but anyway, what had
happened to you? You lose your senses, You're gone.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
You have no conception of who you are, where you've been,
or what happened to you or why you're there. And
then it just starts commutable eventually after one of these stages.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
You uh I.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Remember sitting I woke up and I looked around the
I remember I I.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Get time count in Francisco two years ago.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I looked around and there were bars on the windows,
and I always turned out I was in I didn't
know at the time, but I was in a violent
end of the lock ward in the little room, and
everybody in here is that in the same shape. And
I said, my goodness, who are these streams looking people?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
You know? M I wonder to know who?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Who are these folks? What am I here?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Who?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And I uh, I.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Couldn't make out who I was, didn't quite know my
name exactly or why I was there, certainly, cause all
these two years had been wiped out in my memory.
And I thought that for a while that I'd died
and gone to Hell.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I I really did.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I thought I was in Hell briefly until someone christening uh.
One of the attendants christen me, and then I knew
that they didn't even talk like that in Hell. I
but I uh, I became a very model patient.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I didn't know why I.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Was there for a long time, but I knew I
didn't wanna stay there, so I did everything they said,
and I started a newspaper, and I directed.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The Christmas camp Cantata of patients. I was a circus.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Uh, I had the UH I became the campus mailman's
had been mailed.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
I had a pretty good deal. I let one of
good preachers came up convert me. UH. I got out
of there in short.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
This and I UH I went back to well Pasto
for I for my wife and daughters were living, and
I thought, certainly I had learned a lesson from this,
and so I went to AA that I'd had cournesses
with off and on during the past five years. They
used to come and visit me, and then I'd visit them,
and then i'd did and I UH in nineteen fifty
(14:14):
three years so I'd written an article for the grape Fie.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I thought that was my contribution that time, and I
got drunk.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I had a kind of very high.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Opinion of AA, I mean, because it was always Goden
crafted and I didn't believe in that content. And so
I went to AA and I UH practiced the first
and twelve steps religiously. I announced that my life wasn't manageable,
and I.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Told other people all about it that I carry the message.
I was my AA.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And I made UH or maybe four months after I
got out til I got to my birthday, my first birthday,
I counted all the time time to God treatments.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I worded, that's only fair. I hadn't drunk oh oh
there on my first birthday.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I I thought to myself, well, I'd given them a chance.
Doesn't make it.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I'm not happy.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
My wife is still mean, I still not a loud
My boss is cantankerous. I uh uh A a tensative
flower like me needs a little stimulation. Wall Doctor Navarre
hasn't had little vodka in my way to get my
birthday cakes?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
What I holding that?
Speaker 1 (15:16):
What leaves me breathless, as mister Smyrnock says, and thought
I would like to get my cake, And I guess
there still sitting there waiting, and when we were always
hired by Now this is a couple of years ago,
but I uh, i'd learned a lesson. I had learned
how to drink sociably. I drank a few drinks and
I went home. And the next time I drank a
few drinks and I went home.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And this continued for a week. I was still afraid
of shop sequence. But I something must have stopped me.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
When I decided to take money, and I was about
ready to write my article for a ghost brine. How
I returned to social drinking, the first in history, and
I got a very excellent job in Dallas. I went
over there and worked on such great podcasts, to the
conversations between Elsie and Elmer, the boards and cows and
uh hadris flax and what kind of blacks the people
(16:02):
are wearing? And Fredo the commercials for Friedos that you
see on television. That makes me feel thirsty that you
get drunken into Fredo's bringing out of it. Evidently, what's
the theory you work one?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I believe U.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And I socially drank, and I went to all the
advertising parties and I drank my teens and UH, every
once in a while, I get into work. And I
was there at Christmas time and got a lot of
bottles and it was fine.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I brought my wife and she came to Dallas, and
UH had another daughter. I had four daughters now, and I.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Was UH expansive and wealthy and nice home in the car.
But of course it's inevitable. My drinking was catching up
and pree soom bang I was in the sanitarium.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
I got the job, took me back to Bang. I
was fired.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Then I went to work at another job equally good,
because they thought I I I still had places to
go in conn people, and I said, now give me
one more chance, because I've seen my mistake. Now, I
I think what's wrong is I've been drinking too many
my teens.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Uh. I'll just drink beer and I'll drink it at home.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And I got a job as a manager of a
very large plant in the uh graphic arts field.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
And I did a very fine job.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
And I went back to the sanitarium for a week
this time, and finally my wife and children left me
for the final times, and I lost my job, and
everything came to an end. Every chance I've had finally ended.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And I thought, boy, I'm really being persecuted. This is
too much. So I rented a car.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
My car was gone, my house was gone, my family
was gone. I ranted a car, flipped off the winchitar
falls and wrote a newspaper for some critical campaign or
the sateury type writer and a hotel room and drank
and rode a hole newspapers, flipped off, drove across the states,
kareem that should sail awaycross Texas and it's rant his
car while Passo, got drunk up thrown out of the bullfight,
(17:50):
which is.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
A very hard thing to do.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Tomorrow, oh weenated every friend I had in El Paso
and careened off to the states, hapening father s north
in Oklahoma, and I'd say I finally wound up in
the Phoenix tank alone, sick, broke, rotten, filthy, and I,
(18:12):
since I couldn't drink, I had.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
To face the reality that I was there and there
was no place for me to go.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I had just enough within a dollar so of paying
my fine, so I got out. I remember very clearly
standing in that hot summer's day in downtown scenic, sick,
as I say, in rock and unshaven, no place to go,
and thought, what's do in the world do I do now?
Who can I contact that will help me out of
this mess?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
And I had a dime.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I didn't have enough to place any prepaid calls, but
I'd called collect. I'd called to all my relatives in
Wisconsin and in Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
And I called all the places I'd worked for the
last eight years or nine years.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I called the college i'd attended, I called everyone in
short that I could constantly think out that I knew incidentally,
I called Vick can he but.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Not a person and all that's probably except even accept
a phone call from me. They wouldn't accept a collect
phone call.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
And I have no concept for my wife was and
see uh instituting divorce.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
So there was nothing. I have no light to go.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I I have my choice right then, and I this
It is true. You may have we laugh at it now,
but just how we feel, at least how I felt
the time. I thought, now, how can I commit suicide?
I can eet it commit suicide or I can There's
nothing else to do. And even suicide is not allotted
to you at that time.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Because it's for we people, I think, to commit suicide,
we have to envision ourselves lying in the casket.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And there are many people are passing by and saying, see,
I'm sorry, I was so mean. World plans, Oh, I
know why suicide is pointless?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And uh, there wasn't anybody that do well.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I didn't think so, But I can't even know myself.
I'm denying such small privileges as this. So I walked
twelve or fourteen blocks through Phoenix, dodging police and.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Terribly alone, and walked to the Arab Club.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
At Phoenix, and I walked in and I sat there
for three days and shook and shook and shook with.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Very sick and uh.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I finally got due to an editor that I once
knew in Texas and the guy who's the being the
scene's court finement calling in to a cut to the charge,
and he I laid my story on him. He wired
me twenty dollars on the basis that I would not
use it to come back to Texas.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So therefore Los Angeles held fourth at times to me.
So I came here and I went back to Waya, and.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I I thought, I'll I have to give AA one
more chance. I it's funny now, and it's funny and
retrospect these things, but we all have been there in
various ways ourselves, and we know.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The terrible feeling of this is the end. And I
think this was the end. I I had never much
more important, said things had happened.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
To me, but nothing that left me so such a
feeling of alone. There's nobody now except you that gives
the damn whether you live or die. So if you
don't care, you're done.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
And I I thought, what is it?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I knew the book I think one of the greatest
drawbacks of that the slipper has in coming back, where
a person was played around in the.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Program for length of time, is that you know all
the phrases. You know the book.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I read the book twice and I didn't even didn't
pay attention to it. I read the book, I knew
the steps, I could recite them.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
I when I came back.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
To AA, I knew all these cliches. I knew all
the type phrases. I'd ridiculed, all the spiritual boushois that
people have been pushing out, and all of a sudden,
I find myself a position I had to go back
and start all over again and.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Listen to the same things and try to believe them.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Things that I've spent years ridiculing. I had to I
knew them and that they didn't apply to me. Now
I have to believe that they apply to me. And
for any slip or any person coming back. I think
that that problem is there. There's no longer any golden,
wonderful honeymoon period, at least not like I've heard it described.
There's no longer any magic, and coming into an AA meeting,
(22:07):
there's no there's not gonna be a mantle of fire
descending on you that's going to relieve all your pains forever.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
And I again, as long as you live, you're.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Going in there, you know, because this is the only
damned place you can go to keep sobering. If you
can't get it here, you might you're done because you've
tried everything else. And so I threw myself into it,
and I I didn't do a very good job. I
I was pretty sick mentally.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I know that alcohol is our problem.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
But I'm sure that I was squirreled up thinking compounds
it grievously.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And one of my fears had always been that I
was going insane.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And and I I thought I couldn't say sober and
remain sane because I had so many remorses, so many
things that I've done in my life, so many opportunities.
I'd lost, so many people I'd alienated and hurt, and
I thought, how can I possibly stay so free? I
this pain is so intense, I have to anesthetize it.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Uh. And it wasn't very easy at first. UH wasn't easy,
I'm sure for any of us at first. And I'm
just saying this to confirm my own opinion. I'm like
everybody else.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Wasn't easy for me, and I was terribly sick cause
I went to meetings, every meeting I could find in
the book. I wanted nights, and I wasn't the daytime.
I went at nights and I was. I didn't have
any money. I had weeks of just the first four months.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I was a lot of times if my clothes were
locked up more than.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
I had them, I mean, landlords were locking them up
more than I was using them.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Uh So they still retained some semblance of use because
I didn't use them much when I was in here.
But I didn't much care.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Really, because my thought was I have to get sober.
What can I learn them as alcoholic exnonomous programs? And
I thought of one thing, if there's anything I must learn,
I must learn something about this God nonsense.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I had God pounded interven my little boy. I raised
in the Lutheran family.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Where God sat in the cloud and seemed to me
as a little boy, he sat.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Up there somewhere, and you have a mean, scowling old thinking.
He waited for.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
People to make mistakes and sins. They made a mistake,
you look, they look around and if.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I didn't want him to know.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
With people like that, I wouldn't bring cause the guy,
or I wouldn't say an the covid, as the phrase goes.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
And so I had to find something that I could.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Understand, and I I thought higher power. And I talked
to many friends and they.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Helped them a great deal in formulating and opinions. And
if I kN now m if I.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Understand, this is very brief, and I won't bore you
with it, but my God, to me, my higher power
is certainly not your higher power.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
I'm sure you all have yours. I have mine, but
this was how I found mine.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
I think this is the one significant thing I have found,
an AA that.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Has helped me more than any other single thing.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
With this concept of God, and I thought, now, how
can I approach to God? I I have no use for.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Any god I've ever heard about. Where where is God?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
And I I've had done this higher power business? I thought, well,
what what do I respect? What is the single factor
in the world that I respect? I don't respect money.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I know people money that I taste I don't respect.
I don't respect physical things. I respect. I guess intelligence.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
I have a great deal of respect for people that
I have an infinite amount of intelligence that can think
I in a.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Small degree, I have to respect for the for the
man who could lift.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The hood of my car and I say, do as
the big hunker iron and he said, no, that's your car,
and he, uh, there is a carburetor.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
There must be something.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
That I can evolve for me that I can believe
more that will fit what I can understand. I'm I
don't understand very well, and eventually, through months of grasping
and probing, it may change tomorrow. But I came up
with something that's helping me a great deal recently. And
the thought for me, my personal god, uh, my personal put.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
That I pray to is just like I think it was,
this intelligence or something.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Maybe like a uh television antenna and are sending out
a picture of good or a picture of what is right,
a serenity.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Piece understanding whatever you may call it. Everybody, no more
to me than to you, or no more to you
than the me, cause we're all getting it.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
And I feel if I'm not utilizing it, if I'm
not getting any serenity of your piece.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I've been monking around with.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
These dials on my sets, and there's something wrong with
the receiver, there's nothing wrong with the antennas sending it out.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And so if I am not, if I'm not terrible,
I get nothing.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
And if I work very hard, I I keep doing
the things that I'm told to do, and then I
can understand then I I am, in effect, uh working
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
With the dial. So maybe all this snow and fuzzle
slow down after a while, and there'll be a.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Little line, or there'll be a very doubtline or a
vague picture.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
As we all have done their seas. Sets can keep
playing around and hoping this is an OB. Well, this
is the nob. This is an OB.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And so in every way I I have to try
to monk you these sets myself. I have to try
to become less less than powers.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I must become less resentful. I must work on the
resentful noob. I must work on all the knobs of
my personal feelings that have made this picture completely undecanstible
to me.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
And I think that if I am doing this, if
I am working, I will get some serenity.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
If I do not, I can't say God is persecuting me.
God was making it tough on me. God has forgotten me.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
He's not entering my prayers for kind of a God
who change God's again. If when I'm getting my messages
and I do think Plancy is here screwing up again,
Plancy better get on the stick. Plancy couldn't sleep last night.
Plancy's doing something wrong. And this way I've been able
to understand it. As I say, this means nothing. I'm
sure that your content of God is much better than mine.
(27:48):
But to me, I've been able to live with this,
and I've been able to understand the twelve steps of
this program in life of that as a God who
don't love me, but he doesn't love me better than
anyverybody else, and he does love me less than it
everybody else.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
He loves me, and he loves you, and he loves them.
And if we wish to return the floves, we'll be
thereene or if monsterine and more happy. If we do not,
then we were just mounting with.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
The dials and playing with the rabbity ears and pretty
soon the dolls and they're all snow up there again.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And we're gonna be drunk. And I had a little
trouble with humility.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
I Uh, I feel that I don't know about you
for it, but to me, the one reason I could
never achieve any humility was because I always press so
insecure and inadequate that I had to keep the front
up constantly.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I could never let down the front and even pretend
to be humble because people.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Might see how really humble I really was. What a
wating them? I was always all of them smart, all
those flight of my cos ha.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Nothing only gets sur to me because if you keep
the wall up, ticking up, there no one find out
that the sons that you are. Nobody can ever hurt
your You're never happy, but nobody can ever hit you.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Huh. And you have a new life on your So think, ah,
I got it made.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Kept the times anywhere, cause member night and you think
they're going insane and at the times you can't eat.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
And you have to stay drunk to maintain the front.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
But outside that's so misus. Defense against the words, and
I think in a area one of the great concepts
for me, but the but the idea that everybody here
see as inadequate.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
As I do.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Everyone here, in one way or another stills to say
they'll sell they have committed discillans to ice committed, not
the same one but I but they feel theere as
black as the ones ice committed.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
And everyone here is here for one use, and they're
not here for price.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
They to go to the Elks Club uh to to
sell merchan dice for the guy that they next to,
whereas here for one reason to get ice panity back,
and certainly everywhere.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Must do at the end, because nobody comes in here
after two beers when they don't like the beiers, so
they come to AAA.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
We don't get to do spend their length or as
much as we carry with them of trying every method
of of shooting and robbing and lying and using every
method no 'em to stay away from facing reality. And
so the still humility to me is that tremendous food.
Why I I don't understand humility. You don't mean when
I can humility? I'm sorry, but all my life has
(30:09):
conditioned me.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
From many months.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I got humility with the uh the the little humble
hugging on the polochtype that smile of everything and never
answered back and never did thing.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
And I'm an kicks like that. Four or five days
to adopting humility, and at that about five days i'd
be thought upset of first settle while I at all
all my humility pick with like I very constantly look clan.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
The erevent of insecurity and if trying to do humblever
didn't fool anybody myself, and I thought, I'll never looked
at humility now on them, and I I'm too stupid.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I I I can't like it.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And then I for me, and I list may not
be for anyone else, but for me. I it certainly
came to me that maybe humility for me, I could
think of as teachability, because part of my friends was
all the time, you can't tell me anything. I know it,
and I know at first, I know it's better and
the idea that maybe somebody else could teach me something.
Maybe I could listen to someone else. Maybe I could
(31:06):
sit the night after a night at the night in
the AA meeting, not just to coming out of the clothes,
but to listen and try to apply that I do
what I'm hearing t I just tac my own life
to my problem, and.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Somehow or I do.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
By giving teachability for humility, I I found a little peace.
The problem is not the correct the way it wouldn't
work there, and I wouldn't suggest as anyone else personally.
But for me, this is what I found in the
past month that I can maybe a little bit be talket.
Maybe I can be talking more next week to maybe
I hope much more next year. But at least I've
been able to listen a little bit. I've been able
(31:39):
to get enough security so I can take down the
front enough so I can.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Let people know that I'm listening.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
And that is a to me, a a mirdlous thing,
because it the pressure is off. You don't have to
impress so many people anymore. You don't have to keep calming.
You could kind of sit back and say, well, if
you don't like me, you don't know what you're missing,
cause I'm alright. M to my I was selling, but
i'd had some so soason away, I mean no material things,
(32:07):
especially I During the time I've been here, I've been
one of the outstanding janitors on Coals Liberia were a perfectionists,
and I have tried to get to clean this windows
and our shopping center. I have washed dishes up on
the sunset strips, and I'll never cleared another dishwash here
again because I couldn't even cut it these guys that
were waiting for me, and I was slow, and I thought,
(32:29):
this is pretty sad. He just all my life making
fun of dishwashes and I can't even do it.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
But it had a good experience because I was doing
something on my own that No, I wasn't conning anybody.
I wasn't treating anybody. I was.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
I worked in my thing this to the phone for
a twelve and thirteen hour shift at night that I
felt good in the morning.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I felt off, the tired, and I felt crossed, but
I felt well.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
At least I made these bucksimes. I didn't conn anybody
out of this, uh, and I have done various things now.
Next week, I if things go well or maybe not
things go well, I'll be writing again, maybe for NBC teleery.
I think I don't work.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Out that way. I hope that they're going to work out.
I may be backwashing.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Misuse on sunsets, but it really doesn't make me difference
because I can keep at night and there it's a
different That's what sobriety brings. Sobriety doesn't guarantee.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Me if you've heard any jobs or any anything. It
gives me ability to culture the problems I've got to.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Then me I'm sober enough now if I can culture
the problem, I can go to if as far as
I can get these knobs going, and if I can't
close to the problems, then.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
I least i'll be clean, and i'll be office coops
and I won't be bothering people. But if a sobriety
THO that is given to me, it's but only a.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Chance can utilize without God. If I haven't gotten anything,
I can't utilize this.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But I'm a beast. Then sober so it to me
has given me one other thing that I thought i'd lost.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
I guess the last time I cried was about when
I was nine years old and some of my dad
beat the hell out of me for something, and I uh,
I tried to do the campus.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
No they will ever make me cry. I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
I uh I had curised my eye sometimes, but I
didn't cry because by God, nobody ever sees where.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I was stopped. Again, I would keep that starting to
go tightly. I've never seen the start. Last Christmas Eve.
This last Christmas Eve, I was seeing little story for myself.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I was about seven o'clock at night, and everyone else's
going home and blasting presents, so living it up. And
I was sweeping out the story, and then the janitory
was finishing up, and I thought.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Gracious, this is kind of a fetal what sense of
keeping so great? Or else? It got? Something? I got.
I got this broom though my Christmas Eve present. I
don't like this.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And the phone rang and and my four daughters called
me up and they were on the telephone from Gallants
and he couldn't spoke to me.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
In turn.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
They could bat you were just going to bed now,
and me, we called you to tell you that we
love you very much and we're glad that you're getting better,
and we have to go now.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And we talked a minute more than they hung up.
And as I say, I probably you won't see him
for a long time, but I I, uh.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
I went into the wash room there, yeah, And I
didn't anybody know about it, but I locked the door
and I sat down and I cried and cried and cried.
And I think that was the nicest Christmas Eve I've
ever spent in my life. I felt much closer to
my children than I did last year when I was
in the room with him, cause last year I was drunk,
and each year before that, there's always some next Christmas
(35:20):
going to be better.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
But this Christmas I was torturer.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Although separated about thousands of miles. I thought, if it
gives me nothing else, this has given me something. That
my daughter liked me and call me, and that they're
also have all minds, has inherited something from me.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
They they called collect, so I know, I to my
daughter said the litle call TF. But that was a
wonderful Christmas.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And this when I side Christmas in the life and
all that Christmas smiling among my alia friends studying sunshine,
this was the nicest Christmas. And that's I have right
to my daughter each week now and she writes back.
And we have my oldest daughter. She's about ten. She
writes very well, and she's smarter than I am already,
and she condy sending me passes along bits of information
(36:10):
and I utilize and I write with my questions and
she sends me answers.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
She's kind of my Dallas Norman Vincent Peale, but UH
look it along well, and I may tell me about
their trials and tribulations, and I feel this is for
the first time, I.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Like, I'm a father and I don't see them, I
don't uh talk to them or anything.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
And I, as I say, I probably one thing they
go up.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
I keep saying that I can get used to the idea,
but I I feel her that for the first time in.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Their lives, I'm their father.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Whether I'm married to their mother or not anymore, I
am their father. And I love the idea very much.
And then uh sitting there listening to marry Night and
a mouthless talk and a most sincere talk, and I
was thinking of all the things that I've read themselves
on AA and and the various things that I've tried
to teach myself. I've done a very poor job in
coming back compared to her, i'd like to but I
(37:00):
at least I'm not drunk tonight, and I'm feeling a
little bit better.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
And I know it's the Book of the Twelve Steps
and twelve Traditions.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I s Maryland to bring it over to me, because
there's something I read in here a few months together
that really jumped out and grabbed me every line of it.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And I if I could think of one prayer that
I could say to God, as I understand him.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
That could help me to convince myself that I must
look for if I'm going to find sobriety. I remember
reading here, and it really is very fine. I it's
very short. I just maybe you've read it, but it's wonderful. Lord,
make me a channel of thy peace. That's where there
is hatred, I may bring love that whether it's wrong,
(37:42):
I may bring the spirit or forgiveness.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
That's where there it's discord, I may bring harmony that
whether there is error, I may bring truth. That where
there is doubt, I may bring faith. If there were despair,
I may bring hope.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
That whether I shadows, I may bring light that further
is savage, I may bring joy. Lord grants that I
may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to
understand rather than to be understood, to love rather than
to be loved. For it is by self forgiving at
(38:21):
one time. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Thank you,
My name was Clancy Simless Lund, and I'm an alcoholic,
as who wouldn't be.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I think.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Before I say anything more stupid, I'd like to start
off with something that happened to me a week and
a half ago or so, as you might get a
kick out of. About all ten years ago, I was
in school and the boy and I I had come
back to the Navy after the war and gone back
to school, and.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
He was fresh out of high school.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
But we were the same grade, quite an age difference,
and he was one of these cream cut all American
types that repel me on site, and you, I'm sure,
but he and I banded together.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
And pulled our nugular resources, and he won.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
The national Intercollegiate championship in nineteen forty nine, and uh,
he and I had made up the team. And even
at that time, people were saying, why can't you be
like Dick, good old Dick, clean cut all American boy?
You rotten gotten bum, you know. And my wife used
to tell me about why couldn't be like Dick, and
my parents and the president of this college and my friends.
(01:10):
And in the end, seeing years things got worse, we
pulled farther and father apart.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I kept thinking deeper into the mire, and each time.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I get in jail, I wonder what's words Old Dick tonight,
old get kept rising and I kept thinking. Eventually I
committed to the Nut House and Dick was elected.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
President of the Junior Chamber of Commage, and uh well,
it's all I'd left with God's from fire behind. I
wanted to be as fire aways and this election as
I could be all. And I got shown into jail.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
With a new and different states and cities and under
new and varying conditions, and Dick, with perseverance and pluck,
rose to the top.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Last year, I think we achieved our widest division.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I'm sure everyone that I know said why can't well,
we know, why can't plan to be like that person?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
And uh so last year I finally wound up in
a new area.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
In the Phoenix drunk tank, and I was some guys
giving me the boots cause I vomited on his bed,
and uh.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Old Dick cls elected president of the State Junior Chamber
of Comments and then made the executive of the Bank
of my hometown.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
That a typical success story that just makes your heart
warm for America.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
But by filister.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I got a letter from my mother and had a
clipping in it, and I pulled it out, and I
opened the page, the front page of.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
My hometown papers.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And whose picture was on the front page Dick And
the headline was Buster Beck arrested in Los Angeles. Buster
Beck had embezzled him his bank and all they said
that I went down to say when I found out
they'd run away, a lot of thanks ned one of
us knew we were here. I was uh out here,
and he was living down to Albarado or someplace, and
(03:11):
uh he was extradded back to Wisconsin. And there's some
sentenced to do one to five when the state prison
at while pond now.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
And I and I.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Hear, I am clean cut solder in the lake, and
I feel that there's any justice.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Anywhere in this world. Someone will write to him and say, there,
why can't you be like twin.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
As long as I put a laugh out of that clipping, well,
I said with everyone that could stand.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Still long enough to look at it, if it did give.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Me a laugh, but it did call back that perhaps
my past year could have been a little better expense
than they were.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Last late last summer, early last fall, I guess I
I spoke here.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I think it was the first talk I alway gave
him Los Angeles to any length. And I remember coming
in and uh and thinking, well, I don't have much
to say. I haven't been sober very long, but I
can tell them what's happened to me to a pretty
flamboyance to the areas I'd operated in in my drinking.
Remember when I got done, how good I felt that I'd.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Gotten so much of that conceptional phase out of my system.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And tonight, I as I was driving down here, I
was thinking, well, it it's a little.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Different situation now.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Then I I didn't even know if I could stay sober,
but I remembered so much that had happened.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Now I I.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Think maybe I can stay sober a little bit, maybe tomorrow.
I at least sent sober today, and things are a
little bit better, and perhaps.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I had progressed a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I have, uh, nothing exceptional in my life, I don't suppose,
except that it happened in a in a shorter period
time than some others.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It happened maybe in a twelve year.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Period in which I achieved various heights and various depths.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
That I wouldn't care to go through again. There was
a I can.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Think with joy of the days that I was a
brilliant young newspaper reporter, was a great future. And then
I they decided I wasn't very brilliant anymore, and so
I no longer was, and I was. I tried to
become a brilliant young advertising man. I was successful for
a while, and I was a brilliant young engraving production manager.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
And I was a brilliant young fishwasher, when.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I was a brilliant young janitor. And I was a
brilliant young piano player on skid row. And I was
a brilliant young many many occupations. And now I not
only a no longer brilliant, but I see it, I'm
no longer young.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But the pains for me, I am sure, are no
different in in effect when the pain were for each
of you.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I think we're all here because the pain became intolerable
and we re reached to certain limits which we could
no longer cope with.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
We had to do something.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
The the anesthetics was no longer doing the job. The
anesthetics we counted on as I as I stand here,
and and I was joking about Dick and I mentioned
the nuthout, and I remember that very clearly. Two years
and a half ago, I was committed to the Texas
State Hospital for the Insane for the rest of my
life because I was hopeless. I'd done for every private
(06:33):
means known to sell me up or to.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Get me to act decently. Well, he says, and it's
nothing could do it.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And I thought at that time, if this is if
there ever was a bottom, this must be the bottom.
But it wasn't the bottom, because I still felt that
Clancy could control his own life.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
He's learning from these experiences and can learn to control.
I remember it was a great deal of pain the.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Day that I was babysitting for my daughter and son
at that time, and I went down to get a
beer and got back three days later and my son
had died from pneumonia in my absence because the furnace
had gone off the cold Wisconsin dating Daddy was drunk
and no one knew about it. And I thought, this
must be the bottom for anyone, I thought at that time,
and it was.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
But I thought, well, it was an accident. I can
I can drink. It wasn't a drinking It was something else,
and I I think.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Of the time that in a more humorous vein that
I lay on the second floor of the hospital with
tubes in my arms and up my nose and being
pumped out as we all have one time another, one
way or another. And on the fourth floor my wife
was also in the hospital, giving birth to a baby.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And I remember how badly.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I felt that the nurses would come to the door
and scowl at me and talk to one another.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
And point upstairs, and then that's me.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
And I used to lie there and rise and cringe
and think how how bad these girls are. They should
be sympathizing with me, and said, they're sympathizing with my wife.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Anybody has children, But I am sick and I and
I thought this should be a bottom, But it wasn't
the bottom.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
There were no bottoms because I am cursed, as many
people are, I suppose, in varying degrees, with a complete
self indulgence. As long as there's anybody that listened to me,
and as long as there's anybody I can work on
who sympathy I can utilize for my own ends.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
As long as I can go a little further, I
will go.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I remember the time that I'm a drunk, I killed
my best friend.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I thought this was the bottom. What can I do?
I could think?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I thought maybe I could stop drinking. All that that
didn't come to me. I thought I have to run away,
as I have done so many times in my life.
I ran away from the Midwest.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I played the piano on skid.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Row in San Francisco for four months until a friend
foundly pulled me off. These things are not important in themselves,
except that what if my bottom evidently is maybe worse
than someone else's bottom and better than another person's bottom.
Bottoms are strictly relative. It's how much I could force on.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Myself, how stupid I was, how self willed I was
before something got through to me. And I don't know
why the difference comes.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I wish there was a line or a marster or
a flag with a g up and say you've now
had enough.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You're never going to drink again. This is it. But
you don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
This afternoon at the sixty three Hunt time, I was sitting
there after the meeting, and I Fella come up and
he said, plancy. He said, I hate to confess this
to you. He says, but I'm just coming off a drunk.
And I've seen him several times he had, he said,
I've been to ninety straight.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Meeting, ninety meetings.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
And ninety days every night, he said, And I was
feeling still good. I felt that I couldn't be an alcoholic.
So he's been drunk away and he lost his job
and he's starting over again. But for him, he had
to find out again. I hope he doesn't have to
find out anymore. I hope I don't have to find
out anymore. Whatever my difficulties are, I I've almost to
(10:03):
the conclusion that buildings then will not help them. Uh.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
As the book says, and as the.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Grapevine says, there's months, and as everybody says, no one
ever came off a drinks richer or healthier, healthier or
in presents some more material benefits than they started. Uh.
You may wind up with some things. I came back
and wound up with a big lump.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
On my nag. In here you can still see when
I challenged the city of Juarez one evening to uh
and it only took one and it didn't take him
very long.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
That hurts my pride deeply. And you uh wind up
with some new some new charges being priced against you.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Or you wind up with a new sense of remorse.
You've added to the remorse that already was intolerable, and
here you've.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Added to it. So there's nothing you could do now
except drinks.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
The more you forget it, so I eventually I think
we all get to the point where it the pain
gets so intense.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
At least it did for me that I could do nothing.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And very strong graphic things that they happened to me
because I I must have gone out of my way
to make them happen. Everything had to be good. But
they say we're perfectionist. I guess I wanted to be
the biggest bump.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
But interest first.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
In between I I would have these moments I'm still
I am still good.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I I can't seem to handle my liquor sometimes, but
I am good. Not put out a sustain rally, which
I'm sure much much of it is done. Uh. But
I came out of the nuthouse.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I finally got strung because I had brought culture to
the state of Texas. I started a newspaper in their
net house and and earlier in my career there they
had UH. I had broken out, and being Texas is
what it is. A driver was flash and once you
break out, they can see you running for about four
days in any direction.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So it was no problem to get your back. But
it was squat it receiat to break out.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
But they got me back, and they they gave me
a special treatment they reserved for people like me. They
they massaged my head with electrodes, uh shock treatments. They
put me on the two of days, which is the
maximum for wild people, and uh they slowed me down considerably.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Uh I, uh I very well.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Remember the day I woke up after coming off the
shock therapy they had me on I don't know, twenty
four jokes or something, uh, two a day for six
days and then three a week for four weeks.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Or something like. I don't know, but anyway, what had
happened to you? You lose your senses, You're gone.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
You have no conception of who you are, where you've been,
or what happened to you or why you're there. And
then it just starts commutable eventually after one of these stages.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
You uh I.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Remember sitting I woke up and I looked around the
I remember I I.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Get time count in Francisco two years ago.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I looked around and there were bars on the windows,
and I always turned out I was in I didn't
know at the time, but I was in a violent
end of the lock ward in the little room, and
everybody in here is that in the same shape. And
I said, my goodness, who are these streams looking people?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
You know? M I wonder to know who?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Who are these folks? What am I here?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Who?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And I uh, I.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Couldn't make out who I was, didn't quite know my
name exactly or why I was there, certainly, cause all
these two years had been wiped out in my memory.
And I thought that for a while that I'd died
and gone to Hell.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
I I really did.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I thought I was in Hell briefly until someone christening uh.
One of the attendants christen me, and then I knew
that they didn't even talk like that in Hell. I
but I uh, I became a very model patient.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I didn't know why I.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Was there for a long time, but I knew I
didn't wanna stay there, so I did everything they said,
and I started a newspaper, and I directed.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The Christmas camp Cantata of patients. I was a circus.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Uh, I had the UH I became the campus mailman's
had been mailed.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
I had a pretty good deal. I let one of
good preachers came up convert me. UH. I got out
of there in short.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
This and I UH I went back to well Pasto
for I for my wife and daughters were living, and
I thought, certainly I had learned a lesson from this,
and so I went to AA that I'd had cournesses
with off and on during the past five years. They
used to come and visit me, and then I'd visit them,
and then i'd did and I UH in nineteen fifty
(14:14):
three years so I'd written an article for the grape Fie.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I thought that was my contribution that time, and I
got drunk.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I had a kind of very high.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Opinion of AA, I mean, because it was always Goden
crafted and I didn't believe in that content. And so
I went to AA and I UH practiced the first
and twelve steps religiously. I announced that my life wasn't manageable,
and I.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Told other people all about it that I carry the message.
I was my AA.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And I made UH or maybe four months after I
got out til I got to my birthday, my first birthday,
I counted all the time time to God treatments.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I worded, that's only fair. I hadn't drunk oh oh
there on my first birthday.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I I thought to myself, well, I'd given them a chance.
Doesn't make it.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I'm not happy.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
My wife is still mean, I still not a loud
My boss is cantankerous. I uh uh A a tensative
flower like me needs a little stimulation. Wall Doctor Navarre
hasn't had little vodka in my way to get my
birthday cakes?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
What I holding that?
Speaker 1 (15:16):
What leaves me breathless, as mister Smyrnock says, and thought
I would like to get my cake, And I guess
there still sitting there waiting, and when we were always
hired by Now this is a couple of years ago,
but I uh, i'd learned a lesson. I had learned
how to drink sociably. I drank a few drinks and
I went home. And the next time I drank a
few drinks and I went home.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And this continued for a week. I was still afraid
of shop sequence. But I something must have stopped me.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
When I decided to take money, and I was about
ready to write my article for a ghost brine. How
I returned to social drinking, the first in history, and
I got a very excellent job in Dallas. I went
over there and worked on such great podcasts, to the
conversations between Elsie and Elmer, the boards and cows and
uh hadris flax and what kind of blacks the people
(16:02):
are wearing? And Fredo the commercials for Friedos that you
see on television. That makes me feel thirsty that you
get drunken into Fredo's bringing out of it. Evidently, what's
the theory you work one?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I believe U.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And I socially drank, and I went to all the
advertising parties and I drank my teens and UH, every
once in a while, I get into work. And I
was there at Christmas time and got a lot of
bottles and it was fine.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I brought my wife and she came to Dallas, and
UH had another daughter. I had four daughters now, and I.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Was UH expansive and wealthy and nice home in the car.
But of course it's inevitable. My drinking was catching up
and pree soom bang I was in the sanitarium.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
I got the job, took me back to Bang. I
was fired.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Then I went to work at another job equally good,
because they thought I I I still had places to
go in conn people, and I said, now give me
one more chance, because I've seen my mistake. Now, I
I think what's wrong is I've been drinking too many
my teens.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Uh. I'll just drink beer and I'll drink it at home.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And I got a job as a manager of a
very large plant in the uh graphic arts field.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
And I did a very fine job.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
And I went back to the sanitarium for a week
this time, and finally my wife and children left me
for the final times, and I lost my job, and
everything came to an end. Every chance I've had finally ended.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And I thought, boy, I'm really being persecuted. This is
too much. So I rented a car.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
My car was gone, my house was gone, my family
was gone. I ranted a car, flipped off the winchitar
falls and wrote a newspaper for some critical campaign or
the sateury type writer and a hotel room and drank
and rode a hole newspapers, flipped off, drove across the states,
kareem that should sail awaycross Texas and it's rant his
car while Passo, got drunk up thrown out of the bullfight,
(17:50):
which is.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
A very hard thing to do.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Tomorrow, oh weenated every friend I had in El Paso
and careened off to the states, hapening father s north
in Oklahoma, and I'd say I finally wound up in
the Phoenix tank alone, sick, broke, rotten, filthy, and I,
(18:12):
since I couldn't drink, I had.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
To face the reality that I was there and there
was no place for me to go.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I had just enough within a dollar so of paying
my fine, so I got out. I remember very clearly
standing in that hot summer's day in downtown scenic, sick,
as I say, in rock and unshaven, no place to go,
and thought, what's do in the world do I do now?
Who can I contact that will help me out of
this mess?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
And I had a dime.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I didn't have enough to place any prepaid calls, but
I'd called collect. I'd called to all my relatives in
Wisconsin and in Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
And I called all the places I'd worked for the
last eight years or nine years.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I called the college i'd attended, I called everyone in
short that I could constantly think out that I knew incidentally,
I called Vick can he but.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Not a person and all that's probably except even accept
a phone call from me. They wouldn't accept a collect
phone call.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
And I have no concept for my wife was and
see uh instituting divorce.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
So there was nothing. I have no light to go.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I I have my choice right then, and I this
It is true. You may have we laugh at it now,
but just how we feel, at least how I felt
the time. I thought, now, how can I commit suicide?
I can eet it commit suicide or I can There's
nothing else to do. And even suicide is not allotted
to you at that time.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Because it's for we people, I think, to commit suicide,
we have to envision ourselves lying in the casket.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And there are many people are passing by and saying, see,
I'm sorry, I was so mean. World plans, Oh, I
know why suicide is pointless?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And uh, there wasn't anybody that do well.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I didn't think so, But I can't even know myself.
I'm denying such small privileges as this. So I walked
twelve or fourteen blocks through Phoenix, dodging police and.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Terribly alone, and walked to the Arab Club.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
At Phoenix, and I walked in and I sat there
for three days and shook and shook and shook with.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Very sick and uh.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I finally got due to an editor that I once
knew in Texas and the guy who's the being the
scene's court finement calling in to a cut to the charge,
and he I laid my story on him. He wired
me twenty dollars on the basis that I would not
use it to come back to Texas.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So therefore Los Angeles held fourth at times to me.
So I came here and I went back to Waya, and.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I I thought, I'll I have to give AA one
more chance. I it's funny now, and it's funny and
retrospect these things, but we all have been there in
various ways ourselves, and we know.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The terrible feeling of this is the end. And I
think this was the end. I I had never much
more important, said things had happened.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
To me, but nothing that left me so such a
feeling of alone. There's nobody now except you that gives
the damn whether you live or die. So if you
don't care, you're done.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
And I I thought, what is it?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I knew the book I think one of the greatest
drawbacks of that the slipper has in coming back, where
a person was played around in the.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Program for length of time, is that you know all
the phrases. You know the book.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I read the book twice and I didn't even didn't
pay attention to it. I read the book, I knew
the steps, I could recite them.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
I when I came back.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
To AA, I knew all these cliches. I knew all
the type phrases. I'd ridiculed, all the spiritual boushois that
people have been pushing out, and all of a sudden,
I find myself a position I had to go back
and start all over again and.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Listen to the same things and try to believe them.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Things that I've spent years ridiculing. I had to I
knew them and that they didn't apply to me. Now
I have to believe that they apply to me. And
for any slip or any person coming back. I think
that that problem is there. There's no longer any golden,
wonderful honeymoon period, at least not like I've heard it described.
There's no longer any magic, and coming into an AA meeting,
(22:07):
there's no there's not gonna be a mantle of fire
descending on you that's going to relieve all your pains forever.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
And I again, as long as you live, you're.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Going in there, you know, because this is the only
damned place you can go to keep sobering. If you
can't get it here, you might you're done because you've
tried everything else. And so I threw myself into it,
and I I didn't do a very good job. I
I was pretty sick mentally.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I know that alcohol is our problem.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
But I'm sure that I was squirreled up thinking compounds
it grievously.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And one of my fears had always been that I
was going insane.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And and I I thought I couldn't say sober and
remain sane because I had so many remorses, so many
things that I've done in my life, so many opportunities.
I'd lost, so many people I'd alienated and hurt, and
I thought, how can I possibly stay so free? I
this pain is so intense, I have to anesthetize it.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Uh. And it wasn't very easy at first. UH wasn't easy,
I'm sure for any of us at first. And I'm
just saying this to confirm my own opinion. I'm like
everybody else.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Wasn't easy for me, and I was terribly sick cause
I went to meetings, every meeting I could find in
the book. I wanted nights, and I wasn't the daytime.
I went at nights and I was. I didn't have
any money. I had weeks of just the first four months.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I was a lot of times if my clothes were
locked up more than.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
I had them, I mean, landlords were locking them up
more than I was using them.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Uh So they still retained some semblance of use because
I didn't use them much when I was in here.
But I didn't much care.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Really, because my thought was I have to get sober.
What can I learn them as alcoholic exnonomous programs? And
I thought of one thing, if there's anything I must learn,
I must learn something about this God nonsense.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I had God pounded interven my little boy. I raised
in the Lutheran family.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Where God sat in the cloud and seemed to me
as a little boy, he sat.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Up there somewhere, and you have a mean, scowling old thinking.
He waited for.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
People to make mistakes and sins. They made a mistake,
you look, they look around and if.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I didn't want him to know.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
With people like that, I wouldn't bring cause the guy,
or I wouldn't say an the covid, as the phrase goes.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
And so I had to find something that I could.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Understand, and I I thought higher power. And I talked
to many friends and they.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Helped them a great deal in formulating and opinions. And
if I kN now m if I.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Understand, this is very brief, and I won't bore you
with it, but my God, to me, my higher power
is certainly not your higher power.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
I'm sure you all have yours. I have mine, but
this was how I found mine.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
I think this is the one significant thing I have found,
an AA that.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Has helped me more than any other single thing.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
With this concept of God, and I thought, now, how
can I approach to God? I I have no use for.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Any god I've ever heard about. Where where is God?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
And I I've had done this higher power business? I thought, well,
what what do I respect? What is the single factor
in the world that I respect? I don't respect money.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I know people money that I taste I don't respect.
I don't respect physical things. I respect. I guess intelligence.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
I have a great deal of respect for people that
I have an infinite amount of intelligence that can think
I in a.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Small degree, I have to respect for the for the
man who could lift.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The hood of my car and I say, do as
the big hunker iron and he said, no, that's your car,
and he, uh, there is a carburetor.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
There must be something.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
That I can evolve for me that I can believe
more that will fit what I can understand. I'm I
don't understand very well, and eventually, through months of grasping
and probing, it may change tomorrow. But I came up
with something that's helping me a great deal recently. And
the thought for me, my personal god, uh, my personal put.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
That I pray to is just like I think it was,
this intelligence or something.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Maybe like a uh television antenna and are sending out
a picture of good or a picture of what is right,
a serenity.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Piece understanding whatever you may call it. Everybody, no more
to me than to you, or no more to you
than the me, cause we're all getting it.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
And I feel if I'm not utilizing it, if I'm
not getting any serenity of your piece.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I've been monking around with.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
These dials on my sets, and there's something wrong with
the receiver, there's nothing wrong with the antennas sending it out.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And so if I am not, if I'm not terrible,
I get nothing.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
And if I work very hard, I I keep doing
the things that I'm told to do, and then I
can understand then I I am, in effect, uh working
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
With the dial. So maybe all this snow and fuzzle
slow down after a while, and there'll be a.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Little line, or there'll be a very doubtline or a
vague picture.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
As we all have done their seas. Sets can keep
playing around and hoping this is an OB. Well, this
is the nob. This is an OB.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And so in every way I I have to try
to monk you these sets myself. I have to try
to become less less than powers.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I must become less resentful. I must work on the
resentful noob. I must work on all the knobs of
my personal feelings that have made this picture completely undecanstible
to me.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
And I think that if I am doing this, if
I am working, I will get some serenity.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
If I do not, I can't say God is persecuting me.
God was making it tough on me. God has forgotten me.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
He's not entering my prayers for kind of a God
who change God's again. If when I'm getting my messages
and I do think Plancy is here screwing up again,
Plancy better get on the stick. Plancy couldn't sleep last night.
Plancy's doing something wrong. And this way I've been able
to understand it. As I say, this means nothing. I'm
sure that your content of God is much better than mine.
(27:48):
But to me, I've been able to live with this,
and I've been able to understand the twelve steps of
this program in life of that as a God who
don't love me, but he doesn't love me better than
anyverybody else, and he does love me less than it
everybody else.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
He loves me, and he loves you, and he loves them.
And if we wish to return the floves, we'll be
thereene or if monsterine and more happy. If we do not,
then we were just mounting with.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
The dials and playing with the rabbity ears and pretty
soon the dolls and they're all snow up there again.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And we're gonna be drunk. And I had a little
trouble with humility.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
I Uh, I feel that I don't know about you
for it, but to me, the one reason I could
never achieve any humility was because I always press so
insecure and inadequate that I had to keep the front
up constantly.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I could never let down the front and even pretend
to be humble because people.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Might see how really humble I really was. What a
wating them? I was always all of them smart, all
those flight of my cos ha.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Nothing only gets sur to me because if you keep
the wall up, ticking up, there no one find out
that the sons that you are. Nobody can ever hurt
your You're never happy, but nobody can ever hit you.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Huh. And you have a new life on your So think, ah,
I got it made.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Kept the times anywhere, cause member night and you think
they're going insane and at the times you can't eat.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
And you have to stay drunk to maintain the front.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
But outside that's so misus. Defense against the words, and
I think in a area one of the great concepts
for me, but the but the idea that everybody here
see as inadequate.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
As I do.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Everyone here, in one way or another stills to say
they'll sell they have committed discillans to ice committed, not
the same one but I but they feel theere as
black as the ones ice committed.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
And everyone here is here for one use, and they're
not here for price.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
They to go to the Elks Club uh to to
sell merchan dice for the guy that they next to,
whereas here for one reason to get ice panity back,
and certainly everywhere.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Must do at the end, because nobody comes in here
after two beers when they don't like the beiers, so
they come to AAA.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
We don't get to do spend their length or as
much as we carry with them of trying every method
of of shooting and robbing and lying and using every
method no 'em to stay away from facing reality. And
so the still humility to me is that tremendous food.
Why I I don't understand humility. You don't mean when
I can humility? I'm sorry, but all my life has
(30:09):
conditioned me.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
From many months.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I got humility with the uh the the little humble
hugging on the polochtype that smile of everything and never
answered back and never did thing.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
And I'm an kicks like that. Four or five days
to adopting humility, and at that about five days i'd
be thought upset of first settle while I at all
all my humility pick with like I very constantly look clan.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
The erevent of insecurity and if trying to do humblever
didn't fool anybody myself, and I thought, I'll never looked
at humility now on them, and I I'm too stupid.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I I I can't like it.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And then I for me, and I list may not
be for anyone else, but for me. I it certainly
came to me that maybe humility for me, I could
think of as teachability, because part of my friends was
all the time, you can't tell me anything. I know it,
and I know at first, I know it's better and
the idea that maybe somebody else could teach me something.
Maybe I could listen to someone else. Maybe I could
(31:06):
sit the night after a night at the night in
the AA meeting, not just to coming out of the clothes,
but to listen and try to apply that I do
what I'm hearing t I just tac my own life
to my problem, and.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Somehow or I do.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
By giving teachability for humility, I I found a little peace.
The problem is not the correct the way it wouldn't
work there, and I wouldn't suggest as anyone else personally.
But for me, this is what I found in the
past month that I can maybe a little bit be talket.
Maybe I can be talking more next week to maybe
I hope much more next year. But at least I've
been able to listen a little bit. I've been able
(31:39):
to get enough security so I can take down the
front enough so I can.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Let people know that I'm listening.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
And that is a to me, a a mirdlous thing,
because it the pressure is off. You don't have to
impress so many people anymore. You don't have to keep calming.
You could kind of sit back and say, well, if
you don't like me, you don't know what you're missing,
cause I'm alright. M to my I was selling, but
i'd had some so soason away, I mean no material things,
(32:07):
especially I During the time I've been here, I've been
one of the outstanding janitors on Coals Liberia were a perfectionists,
and I have tried to get to clean this windows
and our shopping center. I have washed dishes up on
the sunset strips, and I'll never cleared another dishwash here
again because I couldn't even cut it these guys that
were waiting for me, and I was slow, and I thought,
(32:29):
this is pretty sad. He just all my life making
fun of dishwashes and I can't even do it.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
But it had a good experience because I was doing
something on my own that No, I wasn't conning anybody.
I wasn't treating anybody. I was.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
I worked in my thing this to the phone for
a twelve and thirteen hour shift at night that I
felt good in the morning.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I felt off, the tired, and I felt crossed, but
I felt well.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
At least I made these bucksimes. I didn't conn anybody
out of this, uh, and I have done various things now.
Next week, I if things go well or maybe not
things go well, I'll be writing again, maybe for NBC teleery.
I think I don't work.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Out that way. I hope that they're going to work out.
I may be backwashing.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Misuse on sunsets, but it really doesn't make me difference
because I can keep at night and there it's a
different That's what sobriety brings. Sobriety doesn't guarantee.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Me if you've heard any jobs or any anything. It
gives me ability to culture the problems I've got to.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Then me I'm sober enough now if I can culture
the problem, I can go to if as far as
I can get these knobs going, and if I can't
close to the problems, then.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
I least i'll be clean, and i'll be office coops
and I won't be bothering people. But if a sobriety
THO that is given to me, it's but only a.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Chance can utilize without God. If I haven't gotten anything,
I can't utilize this.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But I'm a beast. Then sober so it to me
has given me one other thing that I thought i'd lost.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
I guess the last time I cried was about when
I was nine years old and some of my dad
beat the hell out of me for something, and I uh,
I tried to do the campus.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
No they will ever make me cry. I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
I uh I had curised my eye sometimes, but I
didn't cry because by God, nobody ever sees where.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I was stopped. Again, I would keep that starting to
go tightly. I've never seen the start. Last Christmas Eve.
This last Christmas Eve, I was seeing little story for myself.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I was about seven o'clock at night, and everyone else's
going home and blasting presents, so living it up. And
I was sweeping out the story, and then the janitory
was finishing up, and I thought.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Gracious, this is kind of a fetal what sense of
keeping so great? Or else? It got? Something? I got.
I got this broom though my Christmas Eve present. I
don't like this.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And the phone rang and and my four daughters called
me up and they were on the telephone from Gallants
and he couldn't spoke to me.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
In turn.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
They could bat you were just going to bed now,
and me, we called you to tell you that we
love you very much and we're glad that you're getting better,
and we have to go now.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And we talked a minute more than they hung up.
And as I say, I probably you won't see him
for a long time, but I I, uh.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
I went into the wash room there, yeah, And I
didn't anybody know about it, but I locked the door
and I sat down and I cried and cried and cried.
And I think that was the nicest Christmas Eve I've
ever spent in my life. I felt much closer to
my children than I did last year when I was
in the room with him, cause last year I was drunk,
and each year before that, there's always some next Christmas
(35:20):
going to be better.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
But this Christmas I was torturer.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Although separated about thousands of miles. I thought, if it
gives me nothing else, this has given me something. That
my daughter liked me and call me, and that they're
also have all minds, has inherited something from me.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
They they called collect, so I know, I to my
daughter said the litle call TF. But that was a
wonderful Christmas.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And this when I side Christmas in the life and
all that Christmas smiling among my alia friends studying sunshine,
this was the nicest Christmas. And that's I have right
to my daughter each week now and she writes back.
And we have my oldest daughter. She's about ten. She
writes very well, and she's smarter than I am already,
and she condy sending me passes along bits of information
(36:10):
and I utilize and I write with my questions and
she sends me answers.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
She's kind of my Dallas Norman Vincent Peale, but UH
look it along well, and I may tell me about
their trials and tribulations, and I feel this is for
the first time, I.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Like, I'm a father and I don't see them, I
don't uh talk to them or anything.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
And I, as I say, I probably one thing they
go up.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
I keep saying that I can get used to the idea,
but I I feel her that for the first time in.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Their lives, I'm their father.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Whether I'm married to their mother or not anymore, I
am their father. And I love the idea very much.
And then uh sitting there listening to marry Night and
a mouthless talk and a most sincere talk, and I
was thinking of all the things that I've read themselves
on AA and and the various things that I've tried
to teach myself. I've done a very poor job in
coming back compared to her, i'd like to but I
(37:00):
at least I'm not drunk tonight, and I'm feeling a
little bit better.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
And I know it's the Book of the Twelve Steps
and twelve Traditions.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I s Maryland to bring it over to me, because
there's something I read in here a few months together
that really jumped out and grabbed me every line of it.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And I if I could think of one prayer that
I could say to God, as I understand him.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
That could help me to convince myself that I must
look for if I'm going to find sobriety. I remember
reading here, and it really is very fine. I it's
very short. I just maybe you've read it, but it's wonderful. Lord,
make me a channel of thy peace. That's where there
is hatred, I may bring love that whether it's wrong,
(37:42):
I may bring the spirit or forgiveness.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
That's where there it's discord, I may bring harmony that
whether there is error, I may bring truth. That where
there is doubt, I may bring faith. If there were despair,
I may bring hope.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
That whether I shadows, I may bring light that further
is savage, I may bring joy. Lord grants that I
may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to
understand rather than to be understood, to love rather than
to be loved. For it is by self forgiving at
(38:21):
one time. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Thank you,
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