August 5, 2025 • 61 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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I am chuck seeing and I'm an alcoholic. I before
I get going, I wanna do something that Clancy won't like.
(00:26):
I want my wife for fifty three years and Clancy's
wife popping on for about.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Half that time to stand out. And now I wanna
share a few personal thoughts with you.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
When I'm saving tonight getting ready.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
To come down here. I was.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Looking past.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
First, looking at Clancy's past because it's more recent than mine,
and I was remembering a few years before, twenty years ago,
(01:30):
when uh, I wouldn't have given you a plug nickel
for Clancy and all of his chances for the future
and the past. He was the saddest sact that I
(01:50):
have ever seen.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I think he didn't have his seat. He was ugly
as hell, he didn't have any.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Money, living in a back end of a wrecked car
and the sixty three hundred club parking lot, and he
was arrogant as hell. And there wasn't any way that
(02:29):
he could make Miss broke, no way at all. And
I wouldn't have given a plug nickel for it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Now I looked at me thirty three years ago, and.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I wouldn't have given a plug penny for me, I
was better looking than he was.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
But when that said, it's all said, and there's no way.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That he could be having a twentieth birthday tonight, and
no way that I could be having a thirty third
by the middle of January. If I don't drink or
peel or part or acid between now and then. This
(03:47):
lad had one hundred and forty babies shere for dinner.
To me, a hundred and forty, well, I could take
a sh got gone and I couldn't get together a
hundred and forty. I've been here almost twice as long
as he has, and I was looking at the mile age, eh,
(04:15):
just casually, And in these last thirty two years, I
have driven my car over a million miles.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
In AA just a A and the miles that I've flown,
I have no idea, no idea m.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And so that's uh something, And I suspect that uh
clancy might top that by the time he's thirty three. Really,
I suspect between the two of us, we've talked to
(05:01):
with maybe two and a half million people. Really, maybe
more than that, I don't know. And now isn't that
something for a couple of guys that came out from
under a rock like he did, and I did into
(05:24):
a life like this. There is only one thing I
can say to you. I'm so grateful.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I can't see.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I'm so grateful against see. I take credit for the
first forty three years.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Of my life, because.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
During that time I was the master of ceremonies and
star of the show and the draft old age of
forty three, I was a failures, a husband, a father,
a business man, a man, and a drunker.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
And that's all the departments I had.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I might have had any more departments, I'd have failed
in them too, but that was all. Now, maybe you
don't think that you'd be a failure of a drunk,
but I was because I got to the point where
I couldn't buy a liquor with money. And I think
(06:24):
when that happened, your fags a drunk. And I'll just
tell you a little about that. My favorite supplier was
a guy the named a Vic and he had a
liquor store just west of Beverly Drive. I lived in
Beverly Hills, Throws go all my bad drinking in the
(06:47):
first eleven years of my sobriety, and Beck was just
west of Beverly Drive.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
On Pico and during the.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I had uh paid off his mortgage, put his kids
through school, giving him giving him a pretty good bank account,
besides helping him open.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Up every morning.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
And the last time I was there to help him
open up, he finally got there. You know, the last
twenty minutes before he got there of a morning to
open that store was longer than my old thirty two
years and six months in alcoholics, anonymous.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
God, it was a long time. And he finally got
there that morning, and.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I helped him get in and get the door open,
walked in right behind him, and he walked around behind
the counter and instead of reaching for my bottle, he
uh crossed his arms like that, and he looked at
me and he says, Chuck, I have witnessed your demise.
(08:22):
As long as I'm going to I'll never sell you
another bottle.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Of whisky as long as you live.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
And I'm telling you how to get the hell out
of my store and stay out because I'm not gonna
watch you die. I left there thinking he was emotional,
ungrateful son of a bitch i've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
After all I had done for him.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
He won't tell me neck he and I've got the
money in my hand, but that was one of the
things that helped me get here. It was pretty tough
to take him because I'd known him for years, you know.
So I take credit for the first forty three years.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Of my life.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I take absolutely no credit for the last thirty two
years and a half, no credit at all. The first
weekend of this year, I talked to Torrance. There's this
l lady over there that has a birthday that I've
(09:34):
been talking at for years.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
When I was there and first, uh, they had a.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Speaker before me, and there was a scotchman and he
had a patch over his eye, and he got happ
and they made a awfully good talk, short talk. But
during this talk he said, not less than a half
a dozen times, I am sober today by choice. I
(10:04):
am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous by choice.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Half a dozen times you said that.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
When I got up, I said, I'm sure glad it's
Scottie is a member of this society by choice, because
I'm not. As long as I had the power of choice,
by choice was never to come here, and I never
gave until I ran out of everything, including the power
(10:34):
of choice. So I can take absolutely no credit for
anything that's happened in the last thirty two years and
a half. And as I told you, my gratitude rows
with the days, and my gratitude starts with people like you,
(10:56):
drunks who are not drunk, because you who were the
people that took me in and rocked me asleep thirty
two years ago. So my gratitude starts with you. Then
to the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, because that's the way
it came to me, and then to my very own God,
(11:21):
because that's the way it happened, and to you, and
to the program, and to my very own God. I'm
so grateful against see, because my life for thirty two
years now, or for such time as I can remember.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Of the thirty two years, because I.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Wasn't well when I came, my life has been fabulous.
I get empty the Colosseum in fifteen minutes by just
starting to talk about what's happened to me in thirty
two years, and they said they no use talk to
(12:08):
listen to this idiot, you know, and did get up
and go home. But that's the way it has been.
And I want to tell you how it happened.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Many I e've heard this, but My last drunk to date.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Started the Friday before Christmas nineteen forty five. My boss
man called me in and I knew it was curtains
because I had it coming, but he didn't can me.
He started talking, which was a good sign, and he
(12:52):
said to me, Charlie, I was charling business.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
He says, you've had a lot of trouble this year.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
He was a non alcoholic, and he says, I think
that I know what costs. I think it's because the
pressures you're under. Now, he says, here, I'm gonna take
a little of the pressure off of you, and maybe
next year you won't have so much pressure and you
(13:22):
won't have so much trouble. And instead of shooting me,
as he had every right to do, he gave me
three thousand dollars for Christmas present the Friday before Christmas
nineteen forty five to take the pressure off of me. Now,
(13:45):
if you don't think you took the pressure off of me,
you're nice. There's one thing that's worse for an alcoholic
than bad fortune, and that's good fortune. So I got
drunk on the way home, which is not like it
(14:09):
should have been because I was a periodic for the
last ten years, and periodics don't get drunk on the
way home. Periodics never taper off, They tape her on.
And it usually took me from thirty to sixty days
(14:31):
to get off my feet after a dry spell. From
the time I started neibberling until I got down, I
always made it, but.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
It it wasn't that quickly.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
But my last one, I remember nothing from the time
I left the office on the Friday before Christmas till
after the middle of January nineteen forty six. And I
came to some time after the middle of January nineteen
forty six with the clearest head I've ever known in
(15:07):
my life, which is another thing that's impossible, because I
never ate when I drank, and I had nothing in
my skin but whiskey. And yet I came to with
the clearest head I've ever known, and I saw me
(15:29):
for the first time in my life with nothing between
me and me. Sometime between the Friday before christ Christmas
and the middle of January, everything between me.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
And me had burned out.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
All the excuses were gone, including missus C's mother, and
now there was a king sized reason for getting drunk.
That old biddy had only one daughter and I was
(16:05):
married to her, and she was living with us, and
she had a grandstand seat watching me crucify her only daughter.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And she didn't like me very good. And I didn't
like her.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
That good because if she hadn't have been living with us,
I wouldn't have had.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
The crucifi her daughter. So it was all her fault.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
We had a mutual hating DECI society. That was a
beautiful thing to behold. I'll tell you she lasted five
years at least, after all the rest of my excuse
is gone. But this morning she was even gone, and
there were no excuses left. And I saw me as
(16:53):
I was now, lest I forget to do this, I'll
tell you what happened to her. She lived with us
five years after I sobered up, And it is absolutely
astounding what this program did for her.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
In the last year that she lived.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
If she'd come in and found me slapping that wife.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Of mine all over the house, she would have looked
at her and she'd say, why, Elsa, what have you done?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And because by then I couldn't do any wrong at all.
And the wonder of wonders is that she wouldn't believe
that anybody or anything had.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Helped me at all, not even God.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
She knew that I had done it. Now, mind you,
she hated me worse than poison. And by this time
she was certain that I had done all of this
by myself. And she'd come up and put her arms
around me, and she'd say, oh, son, I always knew
(18:06):
you had it. Indian, I'd start blasting at my shoe
tops and right out the top of my head that
she wouldn't even believe that God help me.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
You know, I'd done it by myself. So the excuses
were all gone, including.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Her, and I knew that I'd lost the battle of life.
Now that's the first time in my life, in forty
three forty three years, that I had ever admitted defeat
one time. Now, I don't think that I won all
my battles.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I got the health kicked out of him on many occasions,
but it was by accident. He hit me first. I'd
get him next time, m and sometimes I did, and
sometimes I got God again too. But nobody had ever
made me admit defeat. But that morning I knew had
(19:11):
lost the battle of life. I didn't know why, because
I knew nothing of alcoholism. The biggest majority of you
people in this room tonight. YE can't remember when there
wasn't an Alcoholics Anonymous. But I ran out of time
before Alcoholics Anonymous was born. Alcoholics Anonymous was forty three
(19:37):
years old the tenth day of last June, and I
had already run out of time before it was born.
I tried for another ten years to proof I hadn't.
But at the end of that ten years, I'd proven
that I had. So I knew nothing of alcoholism, but
(19:59):
I knew had lost about life, and I accepted it.
I knew why missus C was divorcing me after twenty years,
I might say to you without cause, I'd given her
twenty of the best years of my life, and she
(20:22):
divorced me, and I knew why, and I knew she
should have done it ten years before. And I knew
why our children wouldn't come home when I was around,
And I knew why that same boss man had given
me the three had sent word to the house that
have I ever stepped foot in the planet again? He
(20:42):
was gonna throw me through the window. And the window
but she had picked out don't open. I accepted the
fact that morning that everything geared to me in life
was gone and should be gone, and that I was
not in t I didn't have it back. Now I'm
(21:03):
gonna say that again because this is what my life
has been built on for the last thirty two years.
I totally and completely accepted the fact that morning that
everything dear to me in life was gone and should
be gone, and that I was not entitled to have
it back. I also accepted death because on the next
(21:29):
of the last trip out, I'd come as close to
dying as you can, and this was worse. I had
gone to the kitchen on my in my withdrawal period,
get a glass of buttermilk.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Let's you see, and Richard were sitting.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
In the living room there't me let out a beller
and heard me at the floor, and they came running out,
thinking that they would find me in an alcoholic convulture,
which was my wont.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
But I'd already used up.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
All my convulsions. I wasn't convulsion at all. I was
lying there on the kitchen floor as peaceful as anybody
you ever saw. I wasn't doing nothing. They tell me
I was a peculiar color. I was blue, and they
couldn't wake me up, so they got all exercised and
(22:28):
called the oxygen squad at the Beverly Hill Receiving Hospital
told him to send down a squad and see what
they could do with me. And as serious as this is,
it's the It's one of the funniest things that I
can think of, because that woman and those kids had
been praying for me to die for at least five years,
(22:51):
and they came to the kitchen and found me dead
and called.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
The oxygen squad. Didn't that something.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now to show you that is in the figment of
my imagination. You know, she's sitting right over there, but
it belongs to another society. I think they call it
Alan nanny. Nanny in a hot shot char.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
I han't see. There's a lot of talking on her own.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
As a matter of fact, she goes all over the
country yaking and leaves me home to cook my own breakfast.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
That's right, that's right, sure, thank you, and see.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
You get after here talking to there's many people if
she you can find them.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
And you know what she tells me.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
She said, I found myself on many occasions trying to
figure out how to do away with the son of
a bitch and not get caught now she was talking
about killing me, which I don't think is very nice.
(24:13):
And when she found me dead, she called the oxygen squad,
and I have reason to believe they brought me to.
I remember what happened after I came to. There's a
young doctor with him and uh, he told me, says
(24:35):
he to me. He says, to all intents and purposes,
you were dead. We've had a hell of time bringing
you to It's our opinion that nobody will ever bring
you to again under these circumstances. And then he gave
me the finest piece of counsel I'll ever hear in
my life, regardless of how long I live. He looked
(24:58):
me right in the eye and he said, if I
why were you, I wouldn't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
But I do it again.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
And the last time was worse than the next of
the last time. So I know it's gonna die. And
it was all right, But I didn't want to die
with the record.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I didn't want to die with the record.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And I remembered in the bottom of this snake bit
that Mississia had found and read Jack Alexander's article on
the Saturday didn't post four and a half years before this,
she had thought it might be of some value to me,
and had put it open at the right page on
(25:46):
the left arm of the chair I sit in right now.
And when I came in, I read it, and I
remembered it on this morning. I only remembered two things
things about it, because I was drunk when I read it.
But I remembered that drunks helped drunks and didn't drink,
(26:12):
and they.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Called it alcoholics anonymous.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
And I said to myself, if I ever lived to
get out of this bed, I will find ae.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
And instantly the curtain dropped. My sanity was gone.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And I was sicken to death, drunk and insane, and
I had a lot of dying to do. But from
the second of commitment until right now, I have never
had a sedating or tranquilizing pill, or a drink of
alcoholic beverage of any kind. Such is the great significance
(26:55):
of this thing called surrender.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Surrenders victory for the alcoholic.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
And the greatest single event that's ever happened in my
entire life was when.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
The bottle surrendered me.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Sometime between the Friday before Christmas and the end of
January nineteen forty six, and I got to this program surrendered.
I did not know it. Now, just for the fun
of it, I'll tell you a few things that have
happened since. Because these monkeys used all the time Friday,
(27:50):
they have six or eight speakers before I get it,
And you notice what they did. Nobody in this country
would have talked against me tonight. So they got one
from Memphis, Tennessee, and one from Oklahoma imported them just
(28:11):
to cut down my time.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I didn't know where to find you, folks.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
My keen alcoholic mind told me that you would not
be in the phone book.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
You were anonymous, weren't you.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
They don't anonymous in the phone book, So knowing you
wouldn't be there, I never.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Looked, which is the story of my life. I knew
so damn much. It wasn't true. I couldn't learn anything
it was.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
So I had to call people and ask him if
they knew anybody that knew anybody in alcoholics anonymous, And
it took a little while to find you. So I
went to the office before I'd ever been into an
AA meeting. The boss saw my old car and the
parking lot knew I was on the premises and knew
(29:24):
I wasn't gonna stay, and he came hunting for me,
and he busted into my office like a bullet in
the tide the closet. And I couldn't have defended myself
with a shotgun because.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
I wasn't well. I didn't have to, says, I had
to leap.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
And all I could do was sit there at the
desk and say, Victory, leave me alone. I don't work
for you anymore. I'm down here to clean up this desk.
I'm here to do the things you paid me for
last year that didn't do. And as soon as I
get even, whether he'll get the hell out of here
on my own power, and you'll never owe me a
penny as long as you live, and you don't have
(30:08):
to throw me out, but for God's sake, leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
I have to get even with you.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
And he stopped his tracks and he said, what the
else happened to you, Charlie, And I said, don't know,
and I didn't, but he knew something had happened, and
he didn't show me, says the Window. I talked to
one other person prior to that time, and I was
miss c I told you she was devotion me. So
(30:39):
what I'm about to tell you was no magnanimous move
on my part.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
It was something I had to say to her.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
I called her in and I says, Honey, it's no
longer of any consequence to me whether or not I
live under this roof, it is of absolutely.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
No importance to me at all.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
I'll never ask a thing of it as long as
the two of us live. But one if I ever
have anything that will lad your life, let me give
it to you. And we close the book, and it's
never been reopened.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
If she we're talking tonight, she would say that she
knew the first time that I talk with her that
something had happened, but I didn't. Two and a half
years or three years or something after that, I might
(31:43):
be talking.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
To a man at uh at lunch about business.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
And he stopped me in the middle of a sentence
and he said, Charlie, what the else happened to you?
I've been knowing you for twenty five year years and
I don't know you what's happened? And I'd say, I
don't know because I didn't. I didn't know anything that happened.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
But I started the day that I met you.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
People in my first meeting, and I went there by
myself alone. I have time to tell you why that
came about, but it didn't. And I liked what I
had felt in the room. I liked what I saw.
(32:39):
I saw your eyes and there was something. And I
came back every night. For six months, I was in
a meeting every night, knowing that I couldn't have this
thing because I didn't have enough physically or mentally to
get it, and I knew it. But after six months
(33:00):
to a meeting every night, I had my first great discovery, and.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
That was that I hadn't had a drink or pill
for six months.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Now, that was a tremendous discovery for me, because there
it was, and I was so pleased about that that
I got lost in trying to give this thing back.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
To the drunk who still suffered. And I was very
busy with that.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And another six months went by or thereabouts, and I
discovered I had a family, and that was a great discovery.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
And I'll just tell you one little thing about that.
I had met a girl in those first months from
Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
She was about twenty twenty five years my senior, and
said a little bitty thing. She walked like she was
walking on eggs. Shears from up in the big numbers,
and she had big numbers. She was very wealthy. I
lived between Wiltshire and Olympic, down on the flat lands
(34:12):
where the poor people lived, but she lived up yonder.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
And she was quite a gal.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
She dressed to the teeth for every a meeting that
I ever took her to, which was many.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And she always a wore a hat.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
You never saw that in ay, most of it, but
she always a wore hat, very very proper. And sometime
between the first six months and first year, she called
my house thinking to get me, and she got missus
c on.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
The phone, and she said, who there are you? Misses
it Why I'm Ket's wife? He didn't only had a wife.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
And Missisine said, well, he doesn't either, And I didn't.
But I discovered I had a wife and kids and
they were living like kittens, and that wasn't bad. And
another year, oh maybe six months went by, and I
(35:24):
discovered I was still trying to clean up my desk
and business was good.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
That was good.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And now another year is gone by, and I discovered
that my state of being, my own life was better
than anything I ever dreamed of. And of course that
was quite a discovery. And now either five or six
years of going by and I can't place this better,
(35:56):
Either five or six years and I discover it. I
was never a looned anymore, I who had walked alone
all my life, and I discovered I was never loaned anymore.
I had a God on my very own and wherever
I am, he is. Now that's the great discovery. That's
(36:20):
the great discovery. We make this discovery, and the search
is over and life begins.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Now. My opinion of.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
This program of ours is that it's nothing in the
world but uncovering, discovering, and discarding, uncovering, discovering and discarding,
and all of it, as far as I am able
to perceive, is an inside job. Every bit of it
(36:56):
is an inside job. It is my opinion that there's
no one in this room tonight that needs anything added
to their lives. All they need is to uncover and
(37:19):
discover what's already there.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Because having lived with people like.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
You for over thirty two years, I am convinced, from
the top of my longest hair to my toenails that
the first two words of the Lord's prayer mean what
they say Our Father God, Now that's true. You can
(37:48):
let your imagination go absolutely crazy and you can't get
close to the truth of being itself. You can't even
get close to it.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Our Father God, I his kid. Now. If I'm his kid,
you are.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
If one of us are are his child, all of
us are. If one of us ain't, none of us are.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
And I am so you is.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And it's not something added, it's something uncovered and discovered.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
And this is one of the reasons that I am
not in sympathy with so much of what you all
are doing in the program right now, which is self
thinking self thinking.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I don't know how many pens those of you in
this room tonight have go out in the last six months,
running home and writing. That's all I hear about you monkeys.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
You get some feeling somewhere or other than you run
home and right right, right, right right. I don't think
it's uh well, according to me now, and that's all
I know because I never did it. According to me,
(39:30):
that ain't it.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Because self thinking is insanity.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Self thinking is insanity.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Our problem is I want to don't want to like
or don't like die. That's self thinking. That's what God
is here. My next pole y act, that's uh poll
for project.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
We got a Polish pope. Now you know, I'm gonna
use Polish as best I can from now on. But anyway,
my next project is to go around and collect all
the think Think Think signs.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
And all the meeting halls and.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Clubhouses in the United States and having a great bonfire.
You know, for an alcoholic, thinking is disaster, particularly if
you drink and think you're done. You either wanna think
(40:48):
or drink that God makes them up. Think it is
what God is here, So quit thinking and start doing.
I was sure for forty three years.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Of my life.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Then as soon as I knew enough, everything was going
to be all right. And when I knew everything there
was to know, there wasn't anything that I didn't know.
I couldn't even get out of bed and come and
tell you what I knew.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
And for a philosopher of my ability, that is bad.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
So now I'm pretty well convinced that you can live
yourself in the right thinking, but you cannot think yourself
in the right living.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
So if we take the first nine steps of the.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Program of alcoholics Anonymous honestly for sobriety only, sobriety only,
not for related disorders that most of us are working
on related disorders now writing about this and stuff like that.
(42:10):
I had a few. The lady over there with divorced
mer kids wouldn't spit on me. The boss was gonna
show me through the window. I had no home, no job,
no health, no sanity, no money, which I believed to
be pretty good related disorders. I don't think he could
(42:30):
find any assortment. It's much better. And I never spent
five seconds on anyone of 'em. Yeah, and they all
disappeared along with the obsession to drink. So I believe this.
If we honestly apply the first nine steps to ourselves
(42:51):
for sobriety only at number nine, when we finish it,
we are surrendered. That's the purpose. Are the first nine
steps of this program to squeeze us out of ourselves,
to get rid of self thinking, to get rid of
the human ego, if you will, and it squeezes it
(43:15):
right out of us. If we get here not surrendered,
we are surrendered. If we do that, and then we
can look deeper than ourselves and find us, which includes
our relationship to each other and to God, and it's
a fantastic discovery, and it's an inside job.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
You see, we have to find him where he is.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
And I believe that the great cosmic joke is that
God hid himself in the last place wherever look, right here,
the last place wherever look. So we uncovered discovered where
it is, and that's right here.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Along with this discovery comes a feeling of dignity, of value,
of worth that is unspeakably wonderful. And it has absolutely
nothing to do with the human ego, but it has
everything to do with gratitude. Gratitude, gratitude. It's so grateful
(44:20):
you can't see because you discover the thing you've been
looking for all your life.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Now I haven't much time of an any but again
it's not my fault.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
So I wanna, I wanna take uh, just a couple
of minutes to see if anybody else thinks like I do.
That is in the past, the teachers and what not
of the past.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
I have the feeling that the carpenter man.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Saw things pretty much the way I think I see them,
because he said I and my father are one up
to one. Little later on he said, I am and
the father and hid me and I and you. And
that's pretty close, isn't it. It's pretty close.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And a little later on he said, the Kingdom of
Heaven is within you.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Hear me, that's what we're talking about. There was a
little old guy he wouldn't uh, didn't mount much. He
was just uh a monk. He was a pot and
pine washer and a monastery just outside Paris eleven in
sixteen sixty six, and we were boys together. He didn't
(45:52):
pay any attention to it, he is when they had
washing pots and pans and talking to God said, ever
know what of these prayers of office started and stopped?
And these prayers began, and he became quite a successful
counselor for people in trouble. He was talking to one
of these old boys one day and he said to him,
(46:15):
he is within you.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Look not for him elsewhere. That's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
And there was another guy, he's Dominican, lived in Germany
by the same time, by the lawrence, and he said
it like this, you have heard the nature of horror
A vacuum. I tell you, the God of horrors a
vacuum can't buy the vacuum any place under heaven.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Harbor small now says he.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
All you gotta do is get empty of self or
is either words surrendered and automatically you full of got automatically.
Now that that comes near explaining what happened to me
in January nineteen forty six, and anything I've ever read,
(47:07):
and I'm gonna step up.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
I'm gonna trustle little is out of seat.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
If you're Irish, his name is Saint Augustine. If you
like me, it was Saint Augustine. Now Saint augustreint was
a bad boy. He reminded me a great deal to
me because he had a very strong weakness for strong drink,
(47:37):
and he had a very strong weakness for women.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
And I identify a little with it, cause.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Mama was praying for him for forty years and he'd
go by her and say, Mama, keep it up. Some
of these days it might take. And they did so
help me. And there's a devitee of his in this
(48:09):
room tonight that told me that Saint Augustine, for one
thousand of the two thousand years since the Worth of
Jesus was the authority in the ChRI in the Catholic
Church on Christianity. You know, So that's quite a quite
(48:33):
an up jump. It's like Clancy an alcoholics anonymous. Really,
so he was talking to God after things got good.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
He was talking to God, and this is what he said.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
He said, too late, Have I loved the old, our beauty.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Of ancient days that ever knew? Too late?
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Have I loved thee? And behold thou wort within and
I abroad. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
And there I searched.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
For thee deformed eye plunging amidst the fair form which
thou hast made.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Thou wert with me, but I was not with thee?
Did serve me? God?
Speaker 2 (49:26):
That just blowed my mind because I was my life
for forty three years, and this, with this I closed.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
In my last days of drinking.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
I had a son of as big as I was,
and he wasn't drunk, and so.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
He was the bird dog to keep me in hand.
And when I got home and put that car mine.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
And grow, I was never allowed to take it out
until I sobered up it. Oh, and on occasion I
would run out of medicine.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
After the UH stores had closed, and I had to
have my car, and what am I gonna do?
Speaker 2 (50:22):
So I come and deer one of the boy's bicycles.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
And I ride all over Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Trying to talk somebody out of a bottle after hours,
and quite often I did.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
Now here's the thing I wanna say to you.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I've got a big window with a beautiful view, and
I liked to look at that window and see lots
of things. And sometimes I can't see after window because
your faces all over it. It's blocked by your faces.
(51:13):
And I sit theren ball to myself, nobody around but me.
And sometimes I'm sitting there and I see me on
that bicycle hunting, you know, traveling all over Beverly Hills,
hunting for something. And I see God riding right with me,
(51:37):
and he's saying to himself, look at this silly son
of a bitch hunting all over Beverly Hills for me.
When I'm riding with him all the time. God blessan,
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Happy birthday, knows my next birthday.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
It was for twenty years for Clancy.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
I had people Day. Do you had people Day? Do day?
Speaker 4 (53:09):
My name is Clancy Muslin and I'm an alcoholic. I
very pleased to have this birthday. Really, the birthday fever
left me truly I'll explain that you get a little
birthday feverite birthday. Sometimes when they have zero's on them,
(53:29):
they get a little more.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
And I don't know.
Speaker 4 (53:32):
I got so busy this afternoon, in this evening, racing
around here like a dummy and seeing all a lot
of people I haven't seen for some time, people I
talk to every week on the phone from various parts
of the country, but people whom I love. And it's
the funny thing. I saw them all in this room tonight,
(53:52):
and they all they all look the same to me.
They all look they all look like people whom I
know very well, and I know intimately, and I know
what lies behind their armor, and uh they are like
partially like children, my own children, and partially like dear friends,
(54:15):
and partially like good AA's and each of them, I uh,
I just feel that I'm a very lucky man to
have uh known so many people so well. I'm very
happy to have uh my children here tonight. The ones
in America. UH one is in France and one is
(54:37):
in Hawaii, but the others are here, and I'm very
pleased to have them. I'm glad to see that I
used to get a lot of juice out of talking
about my little boy, my little tyke, and tonight the
little sneak is wearing my shoes.
Speaker 3 (54:56):
I better crack them all I can. I wanna thank.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
My sponsor truck See, whom I have talked to at
least once a week for the last thirteen years, some
times more. I wanna think that people who have given
me a great privilege of allowing me to be part
of their lives, because uh, I I s it sounds
a little strange, but I wrote some thank you notes
(55:21):
to these people, and the one constant I put in
each note was thank you for allowing me to think
about you, because when I think about you, I don't
think about me, and that really.
Speaker 3 (55:32):
Is what it's all about. I never would have uh
dreamed that.
Speaker 4 (55:36):
I would make twenty years sober, nor did I even
aim to when I uh when we started this little
group over in Ohio Street cause they had a dead
night on a Tuesday, I uh I was pleased to
s l start it be and uh the first meeting
they were just a very few people. But I remember
(55:56):
near the end of the year when I got my
birthday cake there. That was the one of the first
birthday cakes I guess it was my fifth cake. And uh,
I don't remember, but maybe Jimmy Hampson or of George
were in the audience that night, and they're here tonight sober.
And I want to thank uh my wife, Charlotte for
a for being extremely gracious through my insanities. And I
(56:23):
want to thank her for uh, you know, she always
tells me, let me tell you just one little anecdote
about how it goes on Lake Street. They just built
u They just built lights on the park across our house,
and they put a gray box, a small gray box
there and by the time we.
Speaker 3 (56:42):
Noticed that he was I didn't even see it, you know,
just a.
Speaker 4 (56:44):
Small gray box. And Charlotte says, that interrupts my view
out of my window. I guess she's looking for the
boats in Laguna Harbor or something. And uh I, she says,
do something about it. And I called up the Consuman's
office and I says, uh, my wife thinks I should
(57:05):
do something about this, and they said, well, it's it's
all installed and the wires are all underground circuits, and
you're gonna do anything about it.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
And I came home and told her.
Speaker 4 (57:11):
And she she said, I'm going to do something about
that ruins my view of my picture.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
When I said, you can't do it.
Speaker 3 (57:16):
It's all underground, con do, it's all plugged in.
Speaker 4 (57:20):
And she every time I've come home with the last
few months, there's been a she's been fulminating in the
kitchen about a box, and I try to explain to her,
you cannot move a ten thousand dollars box under proposition thirteen.
Speaker 3 (57:41):
Now accept it. It isn't bad. And we got a letter
yesterday from the city saying the box will remove next week.
Speaker 4 (58:00):
Many times my wife has said to me, and loudly
in front of my children and when we're alone, that
I have broken her spirit.
Speaker 3 (58:09):
But I'll want you to know.
Speaker 4 (58:11):
But I'm glad I was able to do that, because
if this is the way she operates.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
Through the broken spirit, without.
Speaker 4 (58:21):
We'd have Alan on speakers here tonight. But I wanna
thank each and every one of you this. I suppose
one of the reasons I love this group so much
is because when I was a boy, I envied people
with families.
Speaker 3 (58:34):
I didn't have a family.
Speaker 4 (58:35):
I I didn't have any brothers and sisters, and my
parents were divorced, and I felt lonely, and and uh,
the people here are my family. I look around this
room and I know just about every single one of you,
almost every single one of you. And I couldn't feel
closer to you if you were my brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
I really couldn't. And I uh, I love you all very.
Speaker 4 (58:59):
Much, and I sometimes get cross with you, but but uh,
you sometimes get cross with me. Next year, I know
when I if I stand here, if God permits me
to stand here, I'll look over here.
Speaker 3 (59:11):
There will be a lot of faces. Some of the
faces here.
Speaker 4 (59:14):
Tonight will be gone, some of them will be drunk,
some of them will be dead. There'll be some new
faces we never even heard of yet, but from up
here that look like exactly the same faces. The faces
never change. They have different people in them sometimes, but
they had They never change. They are faces of people
who are trying to do more than they've been.
Speaker 3 (59:34):
Able to do before.
Speaker 4 (59:35):
And I really thank each and every one of you,
and I thank all the people who helped me. Yesterday
morning I called up all the sponsors that are that
I ever had, that I ever burned. I call him
every year in my breath day and thank him and
some of them are still alive. And one I had
the opportunity to go to I'll Pass a few years
ago and sober up, and he now he's eleven years sober,
(59:56):
and they recreated my memories. And tonight a friend of mine, Bo.
Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Bob is here.
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Uh from far away.
Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
And another man, Jim b who is here who's had
his first birthday at night, was not a member of
the group. Didn't take a cake, but I remember he
and I drank together now passil and when I was
being committed to the insane asylum, he led the charge
of newspaper reporters and got a judge and almost got
me out.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
And if they have succeeded out have been dead twenty
four years now.
Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
Seemed right at the time. I would like to thank
anyone who wishes to stay. Someone has whispered my shell
like hair that there's a gonna there's a big cake
out there, someone's made for me. We're gonna put it
over there, and I hope that you'll have a piece
of my birthday cake.
Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
I uh, I uh.
Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
I'm gonna fight the temptation to say take eat this
is my body, and the reason.
Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
I'm going to fight that temptation.
Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
I wouldn't want you to think that coffee was my blood,
but I want to thank you all very much, and.
Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
I hope that we can stay hand in hand and
stay here forever.
Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Thank you,
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I am chuck seeing and I'm an alcoholic. I before
I get going, I wanna do something that Clancy won't like.
(00:26):
I want my wife for fifty three years and Clancy's
wife popping on for about.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Half that time to stand out. And now I wanna
share a few personal thoughts with you.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
When I'm saving tonight getting ready.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
To come down here. I was.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Looking past.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
First, looking at Clancy's past because it's more recent than mine,
and I was remembering a few years before, twenty years ago,
(01:30):
when uh, I wouldn't have given you a plug nickel
for Clancy and all of his chances for the future
and the past. He was the saddest sact that I
(01:50):
have ever seen.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I think he didn't have his seat. He was ugly
as hell, he didn't have any.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Money, living in a back end of a wrecked car
and the sixty three hundred club parking lot, and he
was arrogant as hell. And there wasn't any way that
(02:29):
he could make Miss broke, no way at all. And
I wouldn't have given a plug nickel for it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Now I looked at me thirty three years ago, and.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I wouldn't have given a plug penny for me, I
was better looking than he was.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
But when that said, it's all said, and there's no way.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That he could be having a twentieth birthday tonight, and
no way that I could be having a thirty third
by the middle of January. If I don't drink or
peel or part or acid between now and then. This
(03:47):
lad had one hundred and forty babies shere for dinner.
To me, a hundred and forty, well, I could take
a sh got gone and I couldn't get together a
hundred and forty. I've been here almost twice as long
as he has, and I was looking at the mile age, eh,
(04:15):
just casually, And in these last thirty two years, I
have driven my car over a million miles.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
In AA just a A and the miles that I've flown,
I have no idea, no idea m.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And so that's uh something, And I suspect that uh
clancy might top that by the time he's thirty three. Really,
I suspect between the two of us, we've talked to
(05:01):
with maybe two and a half million people. Really, maybe
more than that, I don't know. And now isn't that
something for a couple of guys that came out from
under a rock like he did, and I did into
(05:24):
a life like this. There is only one thing I
can say to you. I'm so grateful.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I can't see.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I'm so grateful against see. I take credit for the
first forty three years.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Of my life, because.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
During that time I was the master of ceremonies and
star of the show and the draft old age of
forty three, I was a failures, a husband, a father,
a business man, a man, and a drunker.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
And that's all the departments I had.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I might have had any more departments, I'd have failed
in them too, but that was all. Now, maybe you
don't think that you'd be a failure of a drunk,
but I was because I got to the point where
I couldn't buy a liquor with money. And I think
(06:24):
when that happened, your fags a drunk. And I'll just
tell you a little about that. My favorite supplier was
a guy the named a Vic and he had a
liquor store just west of Beverly Drive. I lived in
Beverly Hills, Throws go all my bad drinking in the
(06:47):
first eleven years of my sobriety, and Beck was just
west of Beverly Drive.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
On Pico and during the.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I had uh paid off his mortgage, put his kids
through school, giving him giving him a pretty good bank account,
besides helping him open.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Up every morning.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
And the last time I was there to help him
open up, he finally got there. You know, the last
twenty minutes before he got there of a morning to
open that store was longer than my old thirty two
years and six months in alcoholics, anonymous.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
God, it was a long time. And he finally got
there that morning, and.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I helped him get in and get the door open,
walked in right behind him, and he walked around behind
the counter and instead of reaching for my bottle, he
uh crossed his arms like that, and he looked at
me and he says, Chuck, I have witnessed your demise.
(08:22):
As long as I'm going to I'll never sell you
another bottle.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Of whisky as long as you live.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
And I'm telling you how to get the hell out
of my store and stay out because I'm not gonna
watch you die. I left there thinking he was emotional,
ungrateful son of a bitch i've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
After all I had done for him.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
He won't tell me neck he and I've got the
money in my hand, but that was one of the
things that helped me get here. It was pretty tough
to take him because I'd known him for years, you know.
So I take credit for the first forty three years.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Of my life.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I take absolutely no credit for the last thirty two
years and a half, no credit at all. The first
weekend of this year, I talked to Torrance. There's this
l lady over there that has a birthday that I've
(09:34):
been talking at for years.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
When I was there and first, uh, they had a.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Speaker before me, and there was a scotchman and he
had a patch over his eye, and he got happ
and they made a awfully good talk, short talk. But
during this talk he said, not less than a half
a dozen times, I am sober today by choice. I
(10:04):
am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous by choice.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Half a dozen times you said that.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
When I got up, I said, I'm sure glad it's
Scottie is a member of this society by choice, because
I'm not. As long as I had the power of choice,
by choice was never to come here, and I never
gave until I ran out of everything, including the power
(10:34):
of choice. So I can take absolutely no credit for
anything that's happened in the last thirty two years and
a half. And as I told you, my gratitude rows
with the days, and my gratitude starts with people like you,
(10:56):
drunks who are not drunk, because you who were the
people that took me in and rocked me asleep thirty
two years ago. So my gratitude starts with you. Then
to the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, because that's the way
it came to me, and then to my very own God,
(11:21):
because that's the way it happened, and to you, and
to the program, and to my very own God. I'm
so grateful against see, because my life for thirty two
years now, or for such time as I can remember.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Of the thirty two years, because I.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Wasn't well when I came, my life has been fabulous.
I get empty the Colosseum in fifteen minutes by just
starting to talk about what's happened to me in thirty
two years, and they said they no use talk to
(12:08):
listen to this idiot, you know, and did get up
and go home. But that's the way it has been.
And I want to tell you how it happened.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Many I e've heard this, but My last drunk to date.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Started the Friday before Christmas nineteen forty five. My boss
man called me in and I knew it was curtains
because I had it coming, but he didn't can me.
He started talking, which was a good sign, and he
(12:52):
said to me, Charlie, I was charling business.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
He says, you've had a lot of trouble this year.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
He was a non alcoholic, and he says, I think
that I know what costs. I think it's because the
pressures you're under. Now, he says, here, I'm gonna take
a little of the pressure off of you, and maybe
next year you won't have so much pressure and you
(13:22):
won't have so much trouble. And instead of shooting me,
as he had every right to do, he gave me
three thousand dollars for Christmas present the Friday before Christmas
nineteen forty five to take the pressure off of me. Now,
(13:45):
if you don't think you took the pressure off of me,
you're nice. There's one thing that's worse for an alcoholic
than bad fortune, and that's good fortune. So I got
drunk on the way home, which is not like it
(14:09):
should have been because I was a periodic for the
last ten years, and periodics don't get drunk on the
way home. Periodics never taper off, They tape her on.
And it usually took me from thirty to sixty days
(14:31):
to get off my feet after a dry spell. From
the time I started neibberling until I got down, I
always made it, but.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
It it wasn't that quickly.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
But my last one, I remember nothing from the time
I left the office on the Friday before Christmas till
after the middle of January nineteen forty six. And I
came to some time after the middle of January nineteen
forty six with the clearest head I've ever known in
(15:07):
my life, which is another thing that's impossible, because I
never ate when I drank, and I had nothing in
my skin but whiskey. And yet I came to with
the clearest head I've ever known, and I saw me
(15:29):
for the first time in my life with nothing between
me and me. Sometime between the Friday before christ Christmas
and the middle of January, everything between me.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
And me had burned out.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
All the excuses were gone, including missus C's mother, and
now there was a king sized reason for getting drunk.
That old biddy had only one daughter and I was
(16:05):
married to her, and she was living with us, and
she had a grandstand seat watching me crucify her only daughter.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And she didn't like me very good. And I didn't
like her.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
That good because if she hadn't have been living with us,
I wouldn't have had.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
The crucifi her daughter. So it was all her fault.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
We had a mutual hating DECI society. That was a
beautiful thing to behold. I'll tell you she lasted five
years at least, after all the rest of my excuse
is gone. But this morning she was even gone, and
there were no excuses left. And I saw me as
(16:53):
I was now, lest I forget to do this, I'll
tell you what happened to her. She lived with us
five years after I sobered up, And it is absolutely
astounding what this program did for her.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
In the last year that she lived.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
If she'd come in and found me slapping that wife.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Of mine all over the house, she would have looked
at her and she'd say, why, Elsa, what have you done?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And because by then I couldn't do any wrong at all.
And the wonder of wonders is that she wouldn't believe
that anybody or anything had.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Helped me at all, not even God.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
She knew that I had done it. Now, mind you,
she hated me worse than poison. And by this time
she was certain that I had done all of this
by myself. And she'd come up and put her arms
around me, and she'd say, oh, son, I always knew
(18:06):
you had it. Indian, I'd start blasting at my shoe
tops and right out the top of my head that
she wouldn't even believe that God help me.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
You know, I'd done it by myself. So the excuses
were all gone, including.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Her, and I knew that I'd lost the battle of life.
Now that's the first time in my life, in forty
three forty three years, that I had ever admitted defeat
one time. Now, I don't think that I won all
my battles.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I got the health kicked out of him on many occasions,
but it was by accident. He hit me first. I'd
get him next time, m and sometimes I did, and
sometimes I got God again too. But nobody had ever
made me admit defeat. But that morning I knew had
(19:11):
lost the battle of life. I didn't know why, because
I knew nothing of alcoholism. The biggest majority of you
people in this room tonight. YE can't remember when there
wasn't an Alcoholics Anonymous. But I ran out of time
before Alcoholics Anonymous was born. Alcoholics Anonymous was forty three
(19:37):
years old the tenth day of last June, and I
had already run out of time before it was born.
I tried for another ten years to proof I hadn't.
But at the end of that ten years, I'd proven
that I had. So I knew nothing of alcoholism, but
(19:59):
I knew had lost about life, and I accepted it.
I knew why missus C was divorcing me after twenty years,
I might say to you without cause, I'd given her
twenty of the best years of my life, and she
(20:22):
divorced me, and I knew why, and I knew she
should have done it ten years before. And I knew
why our children wouldn't come home when I was around,
And I knew why that same boss man had given
me the three had sent word to the house that
have I ever stepped foot in the planet again? He
(20:42):
was gonna throw me through the window. And the window
but she had picked out don't open. I accepted the
fact that morning that everything geared to me in life
was gone and should be gone, and that I was
not in t I didn't have it back. Now I'm
(21:03):
gonna say that again because this is what my life
has been built on for the last thirty two years.
I totally and completely accepted the fact that morning that
everything dear to me in life was gone and should
be gone, and that I was not entitled to have
it back. I also accepted death because on the next
(21:29):
of the last trip out, I'd come as close to
dying as you can, and this was worse. I had
gone to the kitchen on my in my withdrawal period,
get a glass of buttermilk.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Let's you see, and Richard were sitting.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
In the living room there't me let out a beller
and heard me at the floor, and they came running out,
thinking that they would find me in an alcoholic convulture,
which was my wont.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
But I'd already used up.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
All my convulsions. I wasn't convulsion at all. I was
lying there on the kitchen floor as peaceful as anybody
you ever saw. I wasn't doing nothing. They tell me
I was a peculiar color. I was blue, and they
couldn't wake me up, so they got all exercised and
(22:28):
called the oxygen squad at the Beverly Hill Receiving Hospital
told him to send down a squad and see what
they could do with me. And as serious as this is,
it's the It's one of the funniest things that I
can think of, because that woman and those kids had
been praying for me to die for at least five years,
(22:51):
and they came to the kitchen and found me dead
and called.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
The oxygen squad. Didn't that something.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now to show you that is in the figment of
my imagination. You know, she's sitting right over there, but
it belongs to another society. I think they call it
Alan nanny. Nanny in a hot shot char.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
I han't see. There's a lot of talking on her own.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
As a matter of fact, she goes all over the
country yaking and leaves me home to cook my own breakfast.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
That's right, that's right, sure, thank you, and see.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
You get after here talking to there's many people if
she you can find them.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
And you know what she tells me.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
She said, I found myself on many occasions trying to
figure out how to do away with the son of
a bitch and not get caught now she was talking
about killing me, which I don't think is very nice.
(24:13):
And when she found me dead, she called the oxygen squad,
and I have reason to believe they brought me to.
I remember what happened after I came to. There's a
young doctor with him and uh, he told me, says
(24:35):
he to me. He says, to all intents and purposes,
you were dead. We've had a hell of time bringing
you to It's our opinion that nobody will ever bring
you to again under these circumstances. And then he gave
me the finest piece of counsel I'll ever hear in
my life, regardless of how long I live. He looked
(24:58):
me right in the eye and he said, if I
why were you, I wouldn't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
But I do it again.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
And the last time was worse than the next of
the last time. So I know it's gonna die. And
it was all right, But I didn't want to die
with the record.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I didn't want to die with the record.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And I remembered in the bottom of this snake bit
that Mississia had found and read Jack Alexander's article on
the Saturday didn't post four and a half years before this,
she had thought it might be of some value to me,
and had put it open at the right page on
(25:46):
the left arm of the chair I sit in right now.
And when I came in, I read it, and I
remembered it on this morning. I only remembered two things
things about it, because I was drunk when I read it.
But I remembered that drunks helped drunks and didn't drink,
(26:12):
and they.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Called it alcoholics anonymous.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
And I said to myself, if I ever lived to
get out of this bed, I will find ae.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
And instantly the curtain dropped. My sanity was gone.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And I was sicken to death, drunk and insane, and
I had a lot of dying to do. But from
the second of commitment until right now, I have never
had a sedating or tranquilizing pill, or a drink of
alcoholic beverage of any kind. Such is the great significance
(26:55):
of this thing called surrender.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Surrenders victory for the alcoholic.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
And the greatest single event that's ever happened in my
entire life was when.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
The bottle surrendered me.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Sometime between the Friday before Christmas and the end of
January nineteen forty six, and I got to this program surrendered.
I did not know it. Now, just for the fun
of it, I'll tell you a few things that have
happened since. Because these monkeys used all the time Friday,
(27:50):
they have six or eight speakers before I get it,
And you notice what they did. Nobody in this country
would have talked against me tonight. So they got one
from Memphis, Tennessee, and one from Oklahoma imported them just
(28:11):
to cut down my time.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I didn't know where to find you, folks.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
My keen alcoholic mind told me that you would not
be in the phone book.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
You were anonymous, weren't you.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
They don't anonymous in the phone book, So knowing you
wouldn't be there, I never.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Looked, which is the story of my life. I knew
so damn much. It wasn't true. I couldn't learn anything
it was.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
So I had to call people and ask him if
they knew anybody that knew anybody in alcoholics anonymous, And
it took a little while to find you. So I
went to the office before I'd ever been into an
AA meeting. The boss saw my old car and the
parking lot knew I was on the premises and knew
(29:24):
I wasn't gonna stay, and he came hunting for me,
and he busted into my office like a bullet in
the tide the closet. And I couldn't have defended myself
with a shotgun because.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
I wasn't well. I didn't have to, says, I had
to leap.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
And all I could do was sit there at the
desk and say, Victory, leave me alone. I don't work
for you anymore. I'm down here to clean up this desk.
I'm here to do the things you paid me for
last year that didn't do. And as soon as I
get even, whether he'll get the hell out of here
on my own power, and you'll never owe me a
penny as long as you live, and you don't have
(30:08):
to throw me out, but for God's sake, leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
I have to get even with you.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
And he stopped his tracks and he said, what the
else happened to you, Charlie, And I said, don't know,
and I didn't, but he knew something had happened, and
he didn't show me, says the Window. I talked to
one other person prior to that time, and I was
miss c I told you she was devotion me. So
(30:39):
what I'm about to tell you was no magnanimous move
on my part.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
It was something I had to say to her.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
I called her in and I says, Honey, it's no
longer of any consequence to me whether or not I
live under this roof, it is of absolutely.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
No importance to me at all.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
I'll never ask a thing of it as long as
the two of us live. But one if I ever
have anything that will lad your life, let me give
it to you. And we close the book, and it's
never been reopened.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
If she we're talking tonight, she would say that she
knew the first time that I talk with her that
something had happened, but I didn't. Two and a half
years or three years or something after that, I might
(31:43):
be talking.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
To a man at uh at lunch about business.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
And he stopped me in the middle of a sentence
and he said, Charlie, what the else happened to you?
I've been knowing you for twenty five year years and
I don't know you what's happened? And I'd say, I
don't know because I didn't. I didn't know anything that happened.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
But I started the day that I met you.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
People in my first meeting, and I went there by
myself alone. I have time to tell you why that
came about, but it didn't. And I liked what I
had felt in the room. I liked what I saw.
(32:39):
I saw your eyes and there was something. And I
came back every night. For six months, I was in
a meeting every night, knowing that I couldn't have this
thing because I didn't have enough physically or mentally to
get it, and I knew it. But after six months
(33:00):
to a meeting every night, I had my first great discovery, and.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
That was that I hadn't had a drink or pill
for six months.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Now, that was a tremendous discovery for me, because there
it was, and I was so pleased about that that
I got lost in trying to give this thing back.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
To the drunk who still suffered. And I was very
busy with that.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And another six months went by or thereabouts, and I
discovered I had a family, and that was a great discovery.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
And I'll just tell you one little thing about that.
I had met a girl in those first months from
Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
She was about twenty twenty five years my senior, and
said a little bitty thing. She walked like she was
walking on eggs. Shears from up in the big numbers,
and she had big numbers. She was very wealthy. I
lived between Wiltshire and Olympic, down on the flat lands
(34:12):
where the poor people lived, but she lived up yonder.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
And she was quite a gal.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
She dressed to the teeth for every a meeting that
I ever took her to, which was many.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And she always a wore a hat.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
You never saw that in ay, most of it, but
she always a wore hat, very very proper. And sometime
between the first six months and first year, she called
my house thinking to get me, and she got missus
c on.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
The phone, and she said, who there are you? Misses
it Why I'm Ket's wife? He didn't only had a wife.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
And Missisine said, well, he doesn't either, And I didn't.
But I discovered I had a wife and kids and
they were living like kittens, and that wasn't bad. And
another year, oh maybe six months went by, and I
(35:24):
discovered I was still trying to clean up my desk
and business was good.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
That was good.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And now another year is gone by, and I discovered
that my state of being, my own life was better
than anything I ever dreamed of. And of course that
was quite a discovery. And now either five or six
years of going by and I can't place this better,
(35:56):
Either five or six years and I discover it. I
was never a looned anymore, I who had walked alone
all my life, and I discovered I was never loaned anymore.
I had a God on my very own and wherever
I am, he is. Now that's the great discovery. That's
(36:20):
the great discovery. We make this discovery, and the search
is over and life begins.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Now. My opinion of.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
This program of ours is that it's nothing in the
world but uncovering, discovering, and discarding, uncovering, discovering and discarding,
and all of it, as far as I am able
to perceive, is an inside job. Every bit of it
(36:56):
is an inside job. It is my opinion that there's
no one in this room tonight that needs anything added
to their lives. All they need is to uncover and
(37:19):
discover what's already there.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Because having lived with people like.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
You for over thirty two years, I am convinced, from
the top of my longest hair to my toenails that
the first two words of the Lord's prayer mean what
they say Our Father God, Now that's true. You can
(37:48):
let your imagination go absolutely crazy and you can't get
close to the truth of being itself. You can't even
get close to it.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Our Father God, I his kid. Now. If I'm his kid,
you are.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
If one of us are are his child, all of
us are. If one of us ain't, none of us are.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
And I am so you is.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And it's not something added, it's something uncovered and discovered.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
And this is one of the reasons that I am
not in sympathy with so much of what you all
are doing in the program right now, which is self
thinking self thinking.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I don't know how many pens those of you in
this room tonight have go out in the last six months,
running home and writing. That's all I hear about you monkeys.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
You get some feeling somewhere or other than you run
home and right right, right, right right. I don't think
it's uh well, according to me now, and that's all
I know because I never did it. According to me,
(39:30):
that ain't it.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Because self thinking is insanity.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Self thinking is insanity.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Our problem is I want to don't want to like
or don't like die. That's self thinking. That's what God
is here. My next pole y act, that's uh poll
for project.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
We got a Polish pope. Now you know, I'm gonna
use Polish as best I can from now on. But anyway,
my next project is to go around and collect all
the think Think Think signs.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
And all the meeting halls and.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Clubhouses in the United States and having a great bonfire.
You know, for an alcoholic, thinking is disaster, particularly if
you drink and think you're done. You either wanna think
(40:48):
or drink that God makes them up. Think it is
what God is here, So quit thinking and start doing.
I was sure for forty three years.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Of my life.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Then as soon as I knew enough, everything was going
to be all right. And when I knew everything there
was to know, there wasn't anything that I didn't know.
I couldn't even get out of bed and come and
tell you what I knew.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
And for a philosopher of my ability, that is bad.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
So now I'm pretty well convinced that you can live
yourself in the right thinking, but you cannot think yourself
in the right living.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
So if we take the first nine steps of the.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Program of alcoholics Anonymous honestly for sobriety only, sobriety only,
not for related disorders that most of us are working
on related disorders now writing about this and stuff like that.
(42:10):
I had a few. The lady over there with divorced
mer kids wouldn't spit on me. The boss was gonna
show me through the window. I had no home, no job,
no health, no sanity, no money, which I believed to
be pretty good related disorders. I don't think he could
(42:30):
find any assortment. It's much better. And I never spent
five seconds on anyone of 'em. Yeah, and they all
disappeared along with the obsession to drink. So I believe this.
If we honestly apply the first nine steps to ourselves
(42:51):
for sobriety only at number nine, when we finish it,
we are surrendered. That's the purpose. Are the first nine
steps of this program to squeeze us out of ourselves,
to get rid of self thinking, to get rid of
the human ego, if you will, and it squeezes it
(43:15):
right out of us. If we get here not surrendered,
we are surrendered. If we do that, and then we
can look deeper than ourselves and find us, which includes
our relationship to each other and to God, and it's
a fantastic discovery, and it's an inside job.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
You see, we have to find him where he is.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
And I believe that the great cosmic joke is that
God hid himself in the last place wherever look, right here,
the last place wherever look. So we uncovered discovered where
it is, and that's right here.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Along with this discovery comes a feeling of dignity, of value,
of worth that is unspeakably wonderful. And it has absolutely
nothing to do with the human ego, but it has
everything to do with gratitude. Gratitude, gratitude. It's so grateful
(44:20):
you can't see because you discover the thing you've been
looking for all your life.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Now I haven't much time of an any but again
it's not my fault.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
So I wanna, I wanna take uh, just a couple
of minutes to see if anybody else thinks like I do.
That is in the past, the teachers and what not
of the past.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
I have the feeling that the carpenter man.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Saw things pretty much the way I think I see them,
because he said I and my father are one up
to one. Little later on he said, I am and
the father and hid me and I and you. And
that's pretty close, isn't it. It's pretty close.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And a little later on he said, the Kingdom of
Heaven is within you.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Hear me, that's what we're talking about. There was a
little old guy he wouldn't uh, didn't mount much. He
was just uh a monk. He was a pot and
pine washer and a monastery just outside Paris eleven in
sixteen sixty six, and we were boys together. He didn't
(45:52):
pay any attention to it, he is when they had
washing pots and pans and talking to God said, ever
know what of these prayers of office started and stopped?
And these prayers began, and he became quite a successful
counselor for people in trouble. He was talking to one
of these old boys one day and he said to him,
(46:15):
he is within you.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Look not for him elsewhere. That's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
And there was another guy, he's Dominican, lived in Germany
by the same time, by the lawrence, and he said
it like this, you have heard the nature of horror
A vacuum. I tell you, the God of horrors a
vacuum can't buy the vacuum any place under heaven.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Harbor small now says he.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
All you gotta do is get empty of self or
is either words surrendered and automatically you full of got automatically.
Now that that comes near explaining what happened to me
in January nineteen forty six, and anything I've ever read,
(47:07):
and I'm gonna step up.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
I'm gonna trustle little is out of seat.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
If you're Irish, his name is Saint Augustine. If you
like me, it was Saint Augustine. Now Saint augustreint was
a bad boy. He reminded me a great deal to
me because he had a very strong weakness for strong drink,
(47:37):
and he had a very strong weakness for women.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
And I identify a little with it, cause.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Mama was praying for him for forty years and he'd
go by her and say, Mama, keep it up. Some
of these days it might take. And they did so
help me. And there's a devitee of his in this
(48:09):
room tonight that told me that Saint Augustine, for one
thousand of the two thousand years since the Worth of
Jesus was the authority in the ChRI in the Catholic
Church on Christianity. You know, So that's quite a quite
(48:33):
an up jump. It's like Clancy an alcoholics anonymous. Really,
so he was talking to God after things got good.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
He was talking to God, and this is what he said.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
He said, too late, Have I loved the old, our beauty.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Of ancient days that ever knew? Too late?
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Have I loved thee? And behold thou wort within and
I abroad. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
And there I searched.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
For thee deformed eye plunging amidst the fair form which
thou hast made.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Thou wert with me, but I was not with thee?
Did serve me? God?
Speaker 2 (49:26):
That just blowed my mind because I was my life
for forty three years, and this, with this I closed.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
In my last days of drinking.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
I had a son of as big as I was,
and he wasn't drunk, and so.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
He was the bird dog to keep me in hand.
And when I got home and put that car mine.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
And grow, I was never allowed to take it out
until I sobered up it. Oh, and on occasion I
would run out of medicine.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
After the UH stores had closed, and I had to
have my car, and what am I gonna do?
Speaker 2 (50:22):
So I come and deer one of the boy's bicycles.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
And I ride all over Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Trying to talk somebody out of a bottle after hours,
and quite often I did.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
Now here's the thing I wanna say to you.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I've got a big window with a beautiful view, and
I liked to look at that window and see lots
of things. And sometimes I can't see after window because
your faces all over it. It's blocked by your faces.
(51:13):
And I sit theren ball to myself, nobody around but me.
And sometimes I'm sitting there and I see me on
that bicycle hunting, you know, traveling all over Beverly Hills,
hunting for something. And I see God riding right with me,
(51:37):
and he's saying to himself, look at this silly son
of a bitch hunting all over Beverly Hills for me.
When I'm riding with him all the time. God blessan,
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Happy birthday, knows my next birthday.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
It was for twenty years for Clancy.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
I had people Day. Do you had people Day? Do day?
Speaker 4 (53:09):
My name is Clancy Muslin and I'm an alcoholic. I
very pleased to have this birthday. Really, the birthday fever
left me truly I'll explain that you get a little
birthday feverite birthday. Sometimes when they have zero's on them,
(53:29):
they get a little more.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
And I don't know.
Speaker 4 (53:32):
I got so busy this afternoon, in this evening, racing
around here like a dummy and seeing all a lot
of people I haven't seen for some time, people I
talk to every week on the phone from various parts
of the country, but people whom I love. And it's
the funny thing. I saw them all in this room tonight,
(53:52):
and they all they all look the same to me.
They all look they all look like people whom I
know very well, and I know intimately, and I know
what lies behind their armor, and uh they are like
partially like children, my own children, and partially like dear friends,
(54:15):
and partially like good AA's and each of them, I uh,
I just feel that I'm a very lucky man to
have uh known so many people so well. I'm very
happy to have uh my children here tonight. The ones
in America. UH one is in France and one is
(54:37):
in Hawaii, but the others are here, and I'm very
pleased to have them. I'm glad to see that I
used to get a lot of juice out of talking
about my little boy, my little tyke, and tonight the
little sneak is wearing my shoes.
Speaker 3 (54:56):
I better crack them all I can. I wanna thank.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
My sponsor truck See, whom I have talked to at
least once a week for the last thirteen years, some
times more. I wanna think that people who have given
me a great privilege of allowing me to be part
of their lives, because uh, I I s it sounds
a little strange, but I wrote some thank you notes
(55:21):
to these people, and the one constant I put in
each note was thank you for allowing me to think
about you, because when I think about you, I don't
think about me, and that really.
Speaker 3 (55:32):
Is what it's all about. I never would have uh
dreamed that.
Speaker 4 (55:36):
I would make twenty years sober, nor did I even
aim to when I uh when we started this little
group over in Ohio Street cause they had a dead
night on a Tuesday, I uh I was pleased to
s l start it be and uh the first meeting
they were just a very few people. But I remember
(55:56):
near the end of the year when I got my
birthday cake there. That was the one of the first
birthday cakes I guess it was my fifth cake. And uh,
I don't remember, but maybe Jimmy Hampson or of George
were in the audience that night, and they're here tonight sober.
And I want to thank uh my wife, Charlotte for
a for being extremely gracious through my insanities. And I
(56:23):
want to thank her for uh, you know, she always
tells me, let me tell you just one little anecdote
about how it goes on Lake Street. They just built
u They just built lights on the park across our house,
and they put a gray box, a small gray box
there and by the time we.
Speaker 3 (56:42):
Noticed that he was I didn't even see it, you know,
just a.
Speaker 4 (56:44):
Small gray box. And Charlotte says, that interrupts my view
out of my window. I guess she's looking for the
boats in Laguna Harbor or something. And uh I, she says,
do something about it. And I called up the Consuman's
office and I says, uh, my wife thinks I should
(57:05):
do something about this, and they said, well, it's it's
all installed and the wires are all underground circuits, and
you're gonna do anything about it.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
And I came home and told her.
Speaker 4 (57:11):
And she she said, I'm going to do something about
that ruins my view of my picture.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
When I said, you can't do it.
Speaker 3 (57:16):
It's all underground, con do, it's all plugged in.
Speaker 4 (57:20):
And she every time I've come home with the last
few months, there's been a she's been fulminating in the
kitchen about a box, and I try to explain to her,
you cannot move a ten thousand dollars box under proposition thirteen.
Speaker 3 (57:41):
Now accept it. It isn't bad. And we got a letter
yesterday from the city saying the box will remove next week.
Speaker 4 (58:00):
Many times my wife has said to me, and loudly
in front of my children and when we're alone, that
I have broken her spirit.
Speaker 3 (58:09):
But I'll want you to know.
Speaker 4 (58:11):
But I'm glad I was able to do that, because
if this is the way she operates.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
Through the broken spirit, without.
Speaker 4 (58:21):
We'd have Alan on speakers here tonight. But I wanna
thank each and every one of you this. I suppose
one of the reasons I love this group so much
is because when I was a boy, I envied people
with families.
Speaker 3 (58:34):
I didn't have a family.
Speaker 4 (58:35):
I I didn't have any brothers and sisters, and my
parents were divorced, and I felt lonely, and and uh,
the people here are my family. I look around this
room and I know just about every single one of you,
almost every single one of you. And I couldn't feel
closer to you if you were my brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
I really couldn't. And I uh, I love you all very.
Speaker 4 (58:59):
Much, and I sometimes get cross with you, but but uh,
you sometimes get cross with me. Next year, I know
when I if I stand here, if God permits me
to stand here, I'll look over here.
Speaker 3 (59:11):
There will be a lot of faces. Some of the
faces here.
Speaker 4 (59:14):
Tonight will be gone, some of them will be drunk,
some of them will be dead. There'll be some new
faces we never even heard of yet, but from up
here that look like exactly the same faces. The faces
never change. They have different people in them sometimes, but
they had They never change. They are faces of people
who are trying to do more than they've been.
Speaker 3 (59:34):
Able to do before.
Speaker 4 (59:35):
And I really thank each and every one of you,
and I thank all the people who helped me. Yesterday
morning I called up all the sponsors that are that
I ever had, that I ever burned. I call him
every year in my breath day and thank him and
some of them are still alive. And one I had
the opportunity to go to I'll Pass a few years
ago and sober up, and he now he's eleven years sober,
(59:56):
and they recreated my memories. And tonight a friend of mine, Bo.
Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Bob is here.
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Uh from far away.
Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
And another man, Jim b who is here who's had
his first birthday at night, was not a member of
the group. Didn't take a cake, but I remember he
and I drank together now passil and when I was
being committed to the insane asylum, he led the charge
of newspaper reporters and got a judge and almost got
me out.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
And if they have succeeded out have been dead twenty
four years now.
Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
Seemed right at the time. I would like to thank
anyone who wishes to stay. Someone has whispered my shell
like hair that there's a gonna there's a big cake
out there, someone's made for me. We're gonna put it
over there, and I hope that you'll have a piece
of my birthday cake.
Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
I uh, I uh.
Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
I'm gonna fight the temptation to say take eat this
is my body, and the reason.
Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
I'm going to fight that temptation.
Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
I wouldn't want you to think that coffee was my blood,
but I want to thank you all very much, and.
Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
I hope that we can stay hand in hand and
stay here forever.
Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Thank you,
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