Clancy I. - On the topic of Feelings 12-Step Recovery from Alcoholism - THE M2 THE ROCK SHOW - Michael Molthan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
My name is Clancy Muslim. I'm an alcoholic.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Seems like a shamed ruin a wonderful evening like this
for an AA talk, But I'm uh glad to be here.
I really enjoyed. I did enjoy everything about the meeting,
but I enjoyed Charlotte's talk very much. I am also

(00:27):
married to an al Anon named Charlotte, and she uh,
she isn't as soft spoken as this Charlotte, and I
can't say too much about it. I would tell you
exactly what what hell it's been, except my daughter's in
the room and she'll snitch. I'm glad to be here.

(00:49):
I've had a very nice trip. I have a daughter
and son in law and three grandchildren who live here
in Vancouver, and so I had a chance to uh
sleep in one of the little kiddy's bed was last night,
and uh, once I got my leg's massage this morning,
was able to straighten out, it wasn't too bad. We Uh,

(01:11):
I'm just fooling. I don't wanna hear about this later tonight. Well, what, dad,
I'm very glad to be here. A nice tour of
Port Vancouver and got a chance to walk from the
visitor center down to the fort in the rain, and
that's that's kind of nice. When you live in California

(01:33):
you don't have much rain. But all it also has
been a very pleasant day. You got a chance to uh,
my grandchildren gave me a special treat today. That's kind
of added a dimension in my life. I had dinner
at Burgerville. I felt like coming up and getting a

(01:56):
newcomer ship tonight in the twelve promises just quite enough
of that. We are here tonight because we all share
certain things that either a problem with alcohol or problem
with people who drink alcohol. And I look over my life,

(02:17):
I had a very i'd a a lot of experiences
in my life, as most of us have. The probably
the primary problem I've always felt in my life. I'm
sure some of you felt this. I always felt for
years and years and still do intermittently, because I'll tell you,
when you come to AA that doesn't change things. That's

(02:38):
just you try to lessen them up a little bit.
But most of my life I've had the feeling there
was something terribly different about my emotions, something different about
my feelings, something different about how I react to things.
Over the years, I always had the feeling if I've
ever been given any gift at all. It's a gift
of self analysis, and I didn't want to waste that gift. So,

(03:04):
but how do you really feel? You think you're feeling good,
You're kidding yourself. And nearly all my life, I've had
a lot of self examination. For example, certain things I
found over the years that I didn't really say this

(03:25):
is one, and this is two, and this is three,
but things that I've felt little by little that I
can see in retrospect what they were. Nearly all of
my life. For example, I've always felt that I, somehow
or rather I'm too vulnerable to things. I'm too sensitive
to things. I feel things too intensely. Now I don't.
I never talk about it much. I never talked about

(03:46):
it much, but I always seem to me as though
there are other people hear the same things that they say, Well,
that's that, But I I crying and thinking, feel and
I'm almost so the people's looks and glances, and I
h another thing that does for you, It makes you,

(04:09):
It gives you, makes you very susceptible to rejection. I
have always been able to see rejection where no one
else has been able to see it. Later they're not rejecting,
you will ship turner. I'll kill them. You know. Sometimes
when I'm not feeling good, a glance can ruin a day.
Just the a tone of voice can just destroy a

(04:31):
whole morning, you know. On h I've always had to
why do I have these? Why am I so sensitive things? Though?
Why do I have antenna? I'll just to get dinged somewhere,
you know, uh the uh. I remember joking in the
bar once with a guy. I thought I was joking.

(04:52):
I guess it must be true. I said, when I
came off the assembly line, there must be some last
operation where they put some insulation on you to protect
you against all the slings and arrows. And I must
have just got there. Somebody said, hey God, I said,
ye ha, scro he's Norwegian. In another thing, I've noticed

(05:21):
in my life that I seemed to have a lot
of most of my life. Once in a while now
but not much. But most of my life I've been
a great I've been prey to waves of anxiety, just anxiety. Now.
I know everybody has anxiety. I studied psychology and so on.
I know that way has anxiety, but they have anxiety

(05:43):
about something they're anxious about. I seem to have waves
of anxiety when I can't find out anything wrong enough
to justify that much anxiety. It's just I discovered an
It's called a sense of impending doom. And the reason
you have a sense of impending doom is because there's

(06:05):
doom impending, I guess. But having that feeling and there's
it's something you see a lot of newcomers, you know,
you say, how are you feeling anything wrong? No, no,
you know, and they shake hands. That's one of the

(06:28):
ways you know you've turned the corners when you don't
instinctively wipe off your palm to shake hands everything. But
it almost these ways. It was almost a blessing when
something bad happened. See, I guess I saw that coming.

(06:49):
It said, you feel goofy is what you feel. I've
always been one of the things that's always bothered me,
and I didn't put words to it. I can see
ittress much of my life. I've always been prey to
some kind of loneliness. Now, I know everybody gets lonely,
but people get lonely when they're alone. I have attention

(07:10):
to get lonely in the midst of crowds of people,
or I just feel shut off, Just feel shut off,
like sitting in the middle of that crowd right back there,
just feeling what the hell am I doing here? I'm
just detached. And when that happens to me, I get depressed,
and I withdraw, which makes me more lonely, which makes
me withdraw more, which makes me more lonely. And the

(07:31):
day has come probably a hundred over a hundred times
in my life, when cold, sober, and without any drinks
in me at all, I just can't get up in
the morning, just can't face it. It's whole. Just call
in and tell him I got the flu. I've just
depressed it. It hasn't happened for a while, but it
happened before that lot. And it's hard to justify what

(07:54):
the hell's wrong to your loved ones, cause you know
that what's wrong. I'm lonely. You're gonna stay that way too,
slim Go. It's almost uh, there's nothing you could do.
You can't take the covers down to argue. The best

(08:15):
argument I've ever been able to find. You can hold
the covers with this hand. Try to find the top
of the covers with this hand. Now that's I'm glad

(08:36):
you brought up an empty glass, Jr. I can I
can hear the Columbia River the wh that way know

(08:57):
how to flow? Do you know what mister sweet grateful
John just said to me? Or other speakers knew how
to poor? Now? I know that other people gets Other

(09:34):
people aren't like that. I remember sitting in a advertising
agency in Dallas thirty some years ago. I was supposed
to be a big hot shot, and I was and
listening to my secretary outside of my door, sitting in
the hall talking to her friend down the hall and
saying something like, I was so lonely last night, but
I called up Mary Joe. We went to show and
had a wonderful time. But I didn't say a thing. Ever,

(09:56):
I didn't say much usually, But I remember looking out
the door and thinking, I wish I were simple like you,
you bitch. I wish ride I Uh. I've had a

(10:17):
lot of feelings with insecurities in my life that seemed
to come out of nowhere. Other people seem to be
secured and I'm not sometimes and I feel feelings that
I'm not sure where I'm going. Other people seem to
have goals and I just I'm always in the hall.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
I heard some guys say one time in any meeting,
remember this, when one door opens, or when one door closes,
another door opens, and that's very nice. If you have
to be where the door is opening, would you fine
open bang bang? You know, I s seem to spend
my life in the hall. You know, I've had these

(10:57):
feelings and a lot of other feelings. They've always they
didn't all come at once. They come like a bubbling pot,
you know, there's never any rest. And I've always been
in troubled by them since I was a kid, and
I've hated them. And I've always known that if I
could understand the nature of what makes these damn kind
of feelings, I could probably get straightened out and be something.

(11:19):
So when I was a young man over god, thirty five,
six seven, eight years ago, I'm trying, that's when I
started in psychoanalysis. Now they say, hey, you should go
to psychoanalysis, but I loved it cause you see, today
psychoanalysis is not very good because it's so common, so

(11:43):
many little people have been in it. But in my day,
just the sensitive and intelligent people went and I made
breakthroughs that would send shivers down your spine. I uh.
I discovered, for example, that I had been religiously repressed

(12:05):
as a child. Now I have never known that, and
when I found it out, I was really pissed. I
just I was right. It's always seemed to be. The
family was a regular We went to church, and Easter
was a big thing. At Christmas, we went to church
every Sunday, and I went to Sunday School and I
learned the Catechism of Norwegian and all sorts of things.

(12:26):
And when I got older and I discovered there was
a repressive, cruel church for something called the Norwegian Lutheran Church.
It's not very well known most parts of the country.
You know, when you go to AA and you hear
about strong churches, you always immediate think of Catholic cause
AA about half the membership of AA is Catholic. And

(12:46):
they all get up in wine about the kist mean.
The nuns hit my fingers on. They were real in
our group. We have five nuns. When they speak, they say,
when I was I sponsor, I got a new guy.
I'm working with a priest. I'm almost afraid to listen
to his fifth step. And you get the feeling that

(13:12):
Catholics a strict church. In Old Claire, Wisconsin. If you
were a Norwegian Lutheran and you couldn't make it and
you had to find an easier, softer way, you became
a Catholic. But it was for quitters who just had
to go wild and play bingo. And there's no saying
about Norwegi and Lutherans. I know it's true or not,

(13:33):
but it sounds true. They say that Norwegian Lutherans, even
if they're married for thirty years, would never make love
standing up just in the fear that some passerby would
think they were dancing. Yeah, it's a tough church. And

(13:53):
I discovered the sagmaze that I had been repressed as
a child. I discovered that my parents had given me
a deep sense of rejection. I wouldn't think so now,
but it seems right. Then. I discovered all sorts of things.
I discovered how I'd been psychologically scarred. I used to
go to that place and have a Martinez thing. It's
just it's amazing I'm doing as well as I'm doing.

(14:13):
If I knew then, when I knew now, I would
have formed I was telling you at dinner tonight, I
would have formed adult children of Norwegian Lutherans. I could have.
I could have kept unhappy on that for thirty years.
The I'm not judging, I'm just reporting.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
The UH.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
I did a lot of things, but I discovered a
lot of things in psychroanogis reason for that seemed to
explain why I had these unnatural feelings. And some years
after that, when things were really bad again, I got
into metaphysics. Now that's another thing that's been ruined by
pop literature. In my day, there were very few people

(15:01):
who were capable of seeking the infinite self in the
universal understanding and modality. I was about s half crazy
by this time, so I really at a head start
into it. I just I don't like to gloat. It's
bad enough to have people come here from sunny climates
without having him glowed. But at one time, for the

(15:25):
best of my knowledge, I was one of six people
in the state of Texas who knew truth. And that's
a very heavy load to carry down there. And in
their envy and jealousy, they put me in the state
insane asylum. Not for drinking either. I also my life

(15:50):
have read books. I read Nietzsche and if any of
your read Nietzsche, he's a great one to if you've
been raised in a bad strong religion and you are
a sinner, they're something that there's some discord in your life,
because you know God's gonna get you. No matter how
old you get. The time is gonna come. Uh. There
he is now. And Nietzsche is an old German philosopher,

(16:16):
and he had, among other things, one of his characters
says one of his treatises, he said, to God is dead.
Why are you concerned about God? Certainly, he said, of
the arms swirling, But look at the anarchy about you.
There's no God. God is dead. Put aside your fear
in despair. I remember reading that and thinking, oh, I

(16:36):
hope that's right, because if it isn't, I'm screwed. Well
remember telling somebody one time, God you when you've broken
and there are always luther in church. If you break three
or fourth commandments, your damned. And as far as I know,
I've broken all ten, and there's not much chance. And
after sober a while, I begin to remember I haven't

(16:56):
broken all ten commandments. It's like World War two. You
need a little each head to get back in that
I haven't broken all ten commandments. I have never coveted
my neighbour's man servant. It isn't a hell of a lot,
but it's a start. You know, you're just but I listen.

(17:21):
You think about nietzsch in fact, that is such a
well known quotation to have it on the wall of
the Theological seminary in Chicago, and it says God is Dead,
signed Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, eighteen eighty four. And beneath it
it says Nietzsche is Dead, Signed God, nineteen four. You

(17:48):
never want to read the second half of things in
theological seminaries. They're always turned out bad. But I read
a lot of things. I'll tell you. I'm sure some
of you are depressives. I got to be a terrible depressive.
Recommend a book. It's called The Decline of the West
by Oswald Spengler. He was a nineteenth century German philosopher,
and he proved that everything you believe is false. People

(18:14):
are false, social institutions are phony. There's no such thing
as decency. Everybody's corrupt and rotten. And if you're terribly
depressive and you read that, that cheers you up. I
want you know, well, I spent a great many years

(18:37):
of my life and I'm sure you have too, and
I'm sure some of you are in the middle of
it in that quest for why why do I feel
this way? Why am I like this? Why am I
not like them? What is different about me? Why? And
I'm gonna tell you something. I think as one who's
spent many, many years at this, I can tell you

(19:00):
some good news and bad news that there are two
or three therapies where you literally can find out why
you feel this way. The bad news is it doesn't
help you wind up feeling crappy and knowing why. Yeah,

(19:30):
Intense self examination, except in the fourth step, has the
same effect on me as something that happened to be
many years later in Los Angeles. Intense self examination is
very similar to peeing your pants on a street corner.
It serves no lasting purpose, but it makes you feel
warm while you do it until the next cold wind blows.

(20:00):
I've always been looking for something to ease off these feelings,
to empty, to fill these holes I felt in my
emotions all my life. And the one thing that helped
most I paid very little attention to, cause I took
that for granted I was after a sober a day
for a while that I really had to go back
and look at myself and think. My life changed when

(20:22):
I was fifteen years old and the deck of a
ship in Pearl Harbor early in the Second World War,
and some men gave me a whiskey bottle to drink
out of for the I know how many time ever
I drank out of it before I threw up, But
this time it stayed down and it made me feel
terrible for a minute, and then something changed and I

(20:44):
felt good, and I took that for granted. I had
no idea then or for many many years later, till
I died once was brought back to life and almost
died again, that I haven't that my body has an
almost immediate unnatural reaction new alcohol. I didn't know it

(21:04):
was unnatural. I never knew anybody knew it was unnatural.
And that is the unnatural reaction to alcohol is what
makes an alcoholic. That must be there without that. Let
me put it this way, if you have an if
you do not get an unnatural reaction to alcohol, you
are not an alcoholic, no matter what else you got

(21:26):
wrong with you. If you get an unnatural reaction to alcohol.
You're an alcoholic, no matter how good everything else looks.
But hardly anyone knows this, and we have no way
to compare it, and there's no way to measure it,
And so every one of us have to struggle through
to find out eventually if we can, before we die,
that that was an unnatural reaction, because you don't know

(21:48):
it's an unnatural reaction, but it makes you feel better,
makes you feel better than it should. That's wrong. And
I started drinking. Then I'd become a terrible drinker. Later
on the war in the Navy, and I came home
and took some tests so I to I'm still a
junior in high school, but I took some tests in
the Navy so I could go to college, and got

(22:09):
married in college, and I had a couple of kids,
went out in the world, became a sports writer, and
I got advertising work finally, in little by little. In
all these years, I searched for intellectual truth, had a
resolution of emotional conflict. But the one thing that kept
me going better than anything was a few drinks. I

(22:30):
look over my life now, and I can say this
with equanimity. A few drinks will make you feel better
than a year of psychoanalysis. A few drinks will make
you feel better than an understanding of man's role in
the universe. A few drinks just makes it better. A

(22:52):
few drinks fills my holes, and it makes me feel
the way men look, which is all I've ever wanted,
and I didn't know it to for years later that
men don't feel as well as they look. So I
was feeling better than they were, but I didn't know that.
And with a natural insecurity or whatever it is who

(23:12):
knows that comes with it. I can look over my
life now and see a trait that made it impossible
for me to ever continue to be comfortable anywhere as this,
and I'm sure some of you will have it if
you think about it. When you feel less than, or
different or put down upon, there's a certain trait that
falls in. And I didn't even recognize this because it's

(23:35):
almost all over, But it turns out I have to
be treated special in order to feel average. When I'm
treated average, I feel rejected when I come around the
corner and say high clans, Oh, high clans, move on

(23:57):
to the next bar. Is not that when they've feting
you special you're you're kind of a novelty when they
treat a normal You've accept they've accepted you, But it
doesn't seem that way. See another. They don't like me anymore.
Get out of here, and on and on. I've always
had to have a little more than there was, and

(24:18):
I couldn't. You can't get it from people. But I
discovered a few drinks makes it wonderful when my holes
get full. That's the way it seems to be. Other
people have been all along, and I'm just catching up,
and I get along, and I can make small talk,
and I'm pleasant and I'm fun. I'm a better father
to my children. A few years ago, maybe ten twelve,
Federal when the ACA thing was just starting. In a nightline,

(24:42):
they had a program, one of the first program's ever
done on adult children of alcoholics, and they set out
a camera crew to our house at Christmas time for
my oldest daughter. She sat there with my with me.
They interviewed us, we don't know tells of going on,
talked about her experiences a little girl with a father,
an alcoholic father, and so on. So it's supposed to

(25:03):
show the next Monday, and we all waited with and
in this rotten I rarely am unforgiving, but this Kadafi
in Libya did something so terrible that they preempted the
program with a special news bullets. I've never forgiven that
son of a bit, yet I don always understand me.

(25:27):
I didn't care for me. It was my daughter, but anyway,
so it never came on. Three four months later, I
was in Madison, Wisconsin. My wife called me, says, they're
gonna have that programmer tonight. They're gonna have that program
on you and Mary Oh. I forced myself to sit
up and watched it, and sure enough, they had a

(25:48):
whole bunch of children, one after another, grown up children
whining my father and drink. Then these parents go, yes,
his own, I fall. I would have been president if
I hadn't had that beer. God damn any know. They
had me on their own man. And they got all done.

(26:12):
And my daughter had never got on television, and I
was shocked, and I called her up in Albuquerque, rejected
university teaching, and I said, Mary, you saw the program.
Mother called you said yes, I said, they didn't even
put you on. I'm not surprised, I said, you're not surprised.
Why not? She I didn't say what they wanted me
to say. What I said was, I thought you were

(26:33):
a lot of fun when you drank. It's when you
were sober it was so hideous. But when I regized,
when my holes are full, I don't get rejected. I reject.

(26:55):
It doesn't sound like much, but what a world of difference.
Some of you, guys, I'm sure have had the experience
in your younger days of sitting in a bar late
at night and watching the miracle of alcohol take place.
Just watch some old pig get beautiful by one o'clock.

(27:18):
You might sidle over to words imply there will be
delights beyond her comprehension, and should like to join you
in the old Chevrolet at the curb. Now, she would say, Now,
when my holes are full, I don't feel rejected. I

(27:40):
feel sorry for her, too bad, bitch. Don't come big
in tomorrow. If that would happen to me sober, I
just go hang myself. Well, that's why I drink. I'm
not a drinker. I'm a feeler, and drinking makes it better.

(28:02):
And the only problem I've ever had with alcohol is
that sometimes I've accidentally overfilled my holes and I get
right into a little bad luck. And I've always been
a little flamboyant. When I drink too much, i'm sober,
I'm repressed, and when I drink too much, I become

(28:23):
terminally cute. And so I was sent to my first
AA meeting in nineteen forty nine. That's a long time ago.
I was twenty two, which doesn't seem so terribly young now,
but then I was the youngest b I mayde me
fifteen years in the whole Midwest. Was anybody in their
twenties anywhere anywhere in the world, and this was you know,

(28:47):
it didn't impress me much seeing old people in their
forties and fifties of it. They thought you were in
God's waiting room, you know. Just and these guys would
say it seemed to me they were saying things like

(29:08):
I drank a great deal of whiskey, and I came
with this wonderful program. I just never felt so warned.
Do you want to say, why don't you tell your face?
But I didn't last long because there was one terrible

(29:29):
dichotomy between them and me that was this, Their problem
was alcohol, and I thought maybe my problem was alcohol.
But as soon as I stayed sober while I realized
alcohol was not my problem. My problems were the things
I drank. For drinking makes me whole. Well, I'm not drink,
I'm empty. So I went to psychoanalysis and metaphysics and

(29:49):
read books to find out why. But they never refilled
me up. Alcohol filled the holes, and so I went
to psychoanalysis, and then I went back to AA because
some of I drank too much, and at that time
they were you know, people didn't know much about it,
and you could hustle them a little bit, and then
employers would say, well, you're drinking too much. You're sure,

(30:10):
you're so erratic nothing. I I think I've got a
drinking problem, mister Collins. I I'm going to go to
A and A and nobody knew what it was. This
good you go that and and you could come home
and say to your wife, well, Charlotte, Charlotte, I'm going
back to A and A. Wonderful They they wanted me

(30:36):
to taper off, and there was no Alanon then to
screw it up for everybody. Since Alanon came around, there's
never been a moment's rest for anybody anywhere. Oh yeah,
don't get nothing. We got Thanksff, you do good. I

(31:02):
release you, you son of rich. But in those days
there's easier. But I but I went to court sometimes,
I got the fights, I got into jail and did
a lot of things. But that's always I had pretty
good jobs too, But I eventually in every town, I'd
eventually it would get intolerable and I'd have to leave,
and and pretty sure my family would join me, and

(31:24):
we have another child, and just on and on and on.
But the one thing I realized, I wish my problem
were alcohol. I wish it were that simple. I wish
I could be one of these people who stopped drinking
and feel better. But there's something different about me, and
I can feel good for Aubert, pretty soon it grabs

(31:45):
you again. There's gotta be some place somewhere. I uh,
I had no idea that I was following the most
common pattern. You know. In the years since I've been sober,
I've read of literature about alcoholism written my authorities in
the field. Twenty five years ago, I was director of

(32:06):
a I was promotion director for big television station in Hollywood.
After a sober been a representative down from Shikshedell on
our station and explained to us how alcoholics could return
to normal drinking with the new treatment they had found.
And I was thrilled to hear that. My tongue duarted.

(32:27):
I hung on for a while, and the same guy
was putting a locked ward in his own hospital. So
it gives it an word. Now you could be healed
in seven days. That isn't bad either, I'll tell you.
But there's always been theories on alcoholism treatments knowledges. It's
an amazing thing that this book, written by a guy
three years sober who didn't know enough to write it,

(32:48):
has still the most definitive work on alcoholism in the world,
which leads you to believe this book truly is divinely inspired.
I am not one who easily says divinely inspired, because
I there's a lot of people in the who see
miracles everywhere. I don't see him, you know, I am.
I saw a miracle this morning. I I got up

(33:09):
when the sun came up, and I I said, it's
a miracle. Well get up tomorrow you'll see another one. Goof.
You know, miracles have to be something for which there
is no actual explanation. There's no explanation for that book
I'll tell you, cause this guy wrote a book. He
had no background, no knowledge, He was surrounded by people failing,

(33:33):
and it saved more lives than all other treatises on
alcoholism for totaled in the last five thousand years. But
one of the little things he writes in there is something.
I read this twenty times, I guess, and when I
was sober a while, I began to see it against
my God, That's my story. I never saw it before.
What seemed to me now when I think about it?

(33:53):
What do we all have in common? Year? What makes it?
What do all alcoholics have in common? We all who
are families, some wish they could, some don't have a family.
Have we lost our jobs, become broke on schedule? Not
at all. I sponsor a guy the last year he
is drinking, he made two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

(34:17):
Is it that you can't hold a job? I sponsor
a guy that put the American flag on the moon.
Heal a job. I spose, you know, I've seen a
lot of people. What is it we all have in common? Well,
there's a couple of things. I suppose. An unnatural reaction
to alcohol is one, but The other one is this,
there has to be somewhere in our lives for each
of us. I believe have done something without either being

(34:42):
aware of it, or we've done it knowingly or unknowingly.
But we've had to do it. We have had to, somehow,
in the face of opposing evidence, accept an obsession that somehow,
someday I will control and enjoy my drinking. And it

(35:03):
says in the book, the persistence of this illusion is astonished.
And why do people have to accept that obsession because
they have discovered that life in sobriety becomes unbearable. I've
got to believe drinking can be controlled. Then it goes
on to say we all seem to have brief recoveries

(35:27):
followed by still worse relapse till you get to what point,
till you lose your family, lose your job, something more
deep than that, till you reach another moment of pitiful
and incomprehensible demoralization. I used to think that's how you
got when you get drunk, But that's how you get

(35:48):
when you're sober coming off a drunk, pitiful and incomprehensible
to moralization. We talk a lot about drunken suicides, people
being drunk to winning suicides. Let me tell you a
little funny statistic. Most alcoholic suicides never become even close
to death, and many of them that do can are
considered to be accident. It's the guy passed out before
you can stop the act. When successful alcoholic suicides takes place,

(36:12):
usually is within a short time after again becoming sober.
There's no long notes, no long farewells, just pitiful and
incomprehensible demoralization boom or however you do it, but that
if you survive that pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, your body
built scabs on your mind and on your body, and

(36:35):
pretty soon when it becomes untenable, you can believe that
you can control and enjoy it. This time, in fact,
it goes all the things in there, says, changing from
one brand to another, reading spiritual literature, taking exercises, taking
a trip, not taking a trip, all the things they
talk about for page remember sober while reading that, thinking,

(36:55):
I have tried every one of those things except one.
I have never tried not taking a trip, cause I
spent my experience with the heat is on, move it out.
Only only cowards stay and face the consequences of their actions.
And I did all these things, and I tried to

(37:18):
control my drinking. And the years went and I had
good jobs, and bad jobs brought it. My drinking got bad.
Sometimes I went on the wagon in Texas, went on
the wagon so long that one day I couldn't stand it.
And my wife and children were in church, and I
was directing a grand oper at the University of Texas.

(37:39):
I was about to lose as my night job, working
in an advertising against you in the daytime and writing
a sports column. I had diversity of interests, and it
was so bad, and I couldn't drink and I couldn't
stand it, And so they went to church, and I
took my car and put in the garage and hooked
up a hose and turned them out and went to
sleep and died. I couldn't stand it, and I didn't
what tell's wrong? And uh, somebody found me in there

(38:01):
dead and took me out and beat in my chest
and breathed my mouth, and there rushed me to the
hospital and examined me and determined I said I hadn't
had a drink for a while. They determined I was
a badly split schizoid personality and committed me for an
indefinite period up to the rest of my life in
the Texas State Insane Asylum at Big Spring, Texas. And

(38:21):
I'll tell you, when you're desperately trying to hold it
together and you got a bunch of kids that you love,
and you're trying to make something of yourself, and you
discover that you've had committed maybe for the rest of
your life in the Texas State Insane Asylum, you have
a feeling this is not gonna look good on the
old resume. And it was a little bit of leave

(38:42):
a little hole there perhaps. But I got out of
there cause they I was there for a while, I escaped.
Once they brought me back, they gave me electric shock
feedments for two months. I didn't but then they put
in an alcoholic for it, and I could beat that
cause I'd been in out of AA for seven years
by this time I knew how to play their sick
little game. Oh, tell us about the steps, mister Ross.

(39:04):
Tell us how to room, get the garbage out and
live in a new path of serenity freedom. Tell us
about God. Mister ROSSI has wonderful client, say he's silly
old son of a bitch, tell us I well, And
I got out of that nut house the next year,
and I never had another drink until I ran out
of thorizine. In fact, I had forgotten this, but my

(39:29):
daughter will remember this. My daughter was here tonight. When
she was a little girl, my wife used to be big,
have to give me big orange thorisines on my plate
every meal, and came shuffling into the dun and she
and her sister's watching daddy take his candy. And one
night she danced out to the table a little early
and got my thors in and she slept for three

(39:52):
days just her mother thought that now look what you've
done now, oh mm, And UH bought ups good jobs
and one day Uh, I always exploded again. One day

(40:13):
I came home from losing my job and it began
advertising against me, and where some other guys that I
had been writing these old elsie l morts for the board.
I was always talented, I just couldn't hold a job.
And my wife would finally taken the children and left
left Dallas. Didn't know where she went from where we lent.
Couple weeks later, I wal woke up and I was
on the floor of the Phoenix, Arizona drunk tank. The
guy just got them kicking my front teeth out. He said,

(40:36):
you bombed on my bunk. You'd drunken, some of a bitch.
Now so sick and lay there in a hot sick.
And I was one of the few mornings I was
glad I'd been in psychoanalysis, cause why she went in psychoanalysis,
you have insights that most people don't have. And that
that morning I was so sick I couldn't move my head,
but I was almost instantly able to identify his problem. Remember,

(40:58):
thinking I'm a bitch is overreacting. And a month or
so after that, I found myself being thrown out of
a skid row mission in Los Angeles. Now, how can you,
in two or three months go have been a big
job in Dallas to be skid row mission. I'll tell
you how have everybody burned off at once, have no money,

(41:20):
lose your clothes, and everybody burned off. So no one
in the two no will except a collect phone call
from it. There's nobody who knows. I don't want to
hear about it. If you can make the call. No,
that's the same promise you gave me last time and
you're screwed. And when this guy threw me out, I
try to explain to him, I'm not a bum. I'm

(41:41):
not a bum. I on your front teeth. I'm hard
to real communicate it, but I got to tell me.
You know, two years ago, I was directing the Grand
Opera at the University of Texas. Ads that I have
written are running this month in Life magazine and Colliers
and Saturay Ring Post. I've had my picture in the
New York Times for how many people? Do you know?

(42:01):
I had their picture in the New York Times for achievement.
But it's hard to explain these things. In mid air
and I saw a side of a skied row Mission'll
tell you. I if a man club and said, your
life depends on a correct answer val but on a
light detector. Are you an alcoholic? I had said, no,

(42:23):
I'm not. I wish to God I was. I wish
to God. I didn't. There's something inside of me, devil's
or what the hell it is, but it isn't. It
was raining and I walked seventy one blocks out to
an a club that had asked me to leave a
week before hustling, and I hung around there, and I
hung around there, and I slept in some a car
in the back of the parking lot, in an abandoned car,

(42:45):
and I hung around there for months, just dying. And then,
as they do then, as they do now, they say,
get a SPONSI SPATCHI So I got a sponsor. There
was an actor I used to come in there, and
he he alays, played kindly roles on television, radio, her movies.
Uppiced to be my sponsor. In turned of those were
just roles he was playing. He was a cruel, dictatorial

(43:10):
person who didn't He intimidated me terribly. I just hated
him for that. He say, we're gonna work at seven.
I'm not gonna work. Have steps, I know I So
we never worked any steps. That was one thing that helped.
But he'd make me do things and humiliate me and
hurt me. And this went on for weeks and months.
You know, I just I was always in meetings and
so was he, and there's just there's no release from

(43:31):
this man. I mean, he'd say things at meetings. Are
just humiliated me said, govern to apologize. That woman you
call her a bitch. She is a bitch. Why do
you think she's a bitch. Well she told her newcomer

(43:52):
not to go to bed with men. Well, she's right,
don't apologize. And I learned in my first year that
something that some of your new people may want to know.
You never have to believe in what you're doing here.
You just have to do it.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
Sorry, bitch, I'm not gonna go to that Tuesday night
meeting anymore.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
They never call on me. It's just a big clique,
that's all. It is. What he means a big click.
I be called each other and they got their coffee
and love each other, and they treat me like a
piece of crap. You know why, No, you're a piece
of crap.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
On on.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
He was kind to me in between two, but I
don't remember that. But he made me do terrible things,
and later I looked back. He was having me do
the steps, but I didn't know I would have done him.
The day I lost my job as a dishwasher six months,
he made me write my I just explained to him
a week before, when you've taken your inventory with a

(45:04):
professional psychoanalyst, you don't have to take it. Some goddamn
outwork actor in Pacific Pallisads the day I lost my
job as a fishwasher. If Bob, I've lost my job,
what am I gonna do? Said? Might you write your
goddamn inventory the way I told you? I was so

(45:25):
upset several times my first year. If I would have
had the money, I would have called the World Service
Office in New York area code two one two six
eight six one one oh and turned that old bastard in.
I just I just want you to know there's an

(45:47):
old timer in Los Angeles killing newcomers. And I'll give
you his name and home phone number. Now things are
all different, many many years later, when I call the
World Service Office in New York and I say, no,
I'm not well. I've had it both ways. This side

(46:12):
is better. But a little by little, I've uh I
did the steps I guess, Little by little, little by
little started to come together. It's starting to make sense.
You know that one of the great, the great truths
you find an AA. We would like to think they
all come at once, but they don't. The hard thing
to remember if you're new is that a comes in
disassociated pieces. So often, you know, you get a piece
of me. Oh, there's some put it on your but

(46:34):
it's like having to cross their jeeksawfus you you get
another piece, Oh look look when I learned it. You
don't fit that sound bitch, I'll have.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
You uh.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
And you find another piece that doesn't fit nothing. Then
you just you start to get discouraged a bunch. The
pieces all seem important, but don value any kind. Then
you find you one day get a piece and this
one fits, and this one fits. It's a horsey.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Here.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
But sometimes there's a long wait getting that piece that
says horsey. I'll tell you, but I stayed sober, finally
held a job and has about a year sober, wrapping packages.
Done much of a job, but I held a job.
I had a couple years over to get a job
as a writer. Little writer still didn't have any front teeth.
Had saved some money. Up here's gonna go working in

(47:36):
a medical corporation. The adai bourbon. No front teeth, He
says money, I said, Bob got the money together, gives
him front teeth. You send that money to your kids
in Dallas. What I sent them everything I can With Jesus,
they got front teeth, Bob. They lived in a post

(47:58):
office box. See i've been. It's just you've been a
hideous father sending the goddamn money.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Mm.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
But I learned to carry my lip like this, And
for a year and a half nobody knew I didn't
have front teeth in the company. They thought I had
been burned in the fire. Well, but I finally held
a job and some more jobs and done radio and television,
became successful.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Ha ha ha.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
The rape when I was five sober five years the
same family came out from Dallas to get into my
wallet and live off you forever again and have another child.
And how we lived half the ever after. It's all
a very nice story, as you can tell today. Let
me give you some hope, by the way, if you're
kind of new, if you've lost teeth in your drinking,

(48:51):
let me give you some hope. Once you became spiritually transported,
they grow back. Hope you'll have your sponsor explained that
to you. But so it's very nice, you know, Speaker's dolls.
Wind I'm saying now, I'm happy and successful and wonderful.

(49:14):
You try to find a newcomer to look at so
you can give them that look. I've got it all together,
and you haven't and probably never will have. I want
to say just one couple little things before I sit down.

(49:35):
For the reason I'm here does not tell you that
I became successful. It's so much the most important thing
I said tonight, I said a long time ago, and
none of you paid me attention, nor should you. I
wouldn't have, but I said, my name is Clancy Immuslin,
and I'm an alcoholic. That's the single most difficult thing
I've ever had to come to believe in my life.

(49:57):
I did not believe I was an alcoholic. Really when
I drank. Maybe I was an alcoholic. When I got sober,
I didn't. Maybe I was an alcoholic after I was sober.
I can talk breaking stories, and I can talk jails
and hospitals, but I'm not an alcoholic because of one thing.
My problem really isn't alcohol. It is sometimes and it

(50:19):
looks like it, and it smells like it, and people
think it is. And I want to just shout. If
you think my problem is alcohol, why don't you come
in my bedroom at two o'clock in the morning some
morning when I'm sober and watch me lying in bed,
looking off in the darkness, sick and desperate and afraid
and wondering what the hell's wrong with me and what's
happened in my life and just can't. If they are
going insane, then you won't think my problem is alcohol.

(50:41):
You'll know it's something else. Now. I've gotten sober a lot,
and it makes me want to kill myself. It's too long.
I wish my problem were alcohol, But how can you
be an alcoholic if your problem is an alcohol That's
a big question. I've raid the God that I stayed here,
that I had a sponsor who insisted that I take

(51:04):
the actions, who intimidated me into doing it. I'm glad
that I stuck with people who are trying accidentally in
some cases, that I developed a revulsion for people the
fringers who stay on the side and tell you don't
have to do it. I'm glad that I stayed here
long enough to discover the most important, single thing I've
ever discovered. That little jigsaw picture in my life was

(51:27):
I finally discovered what the hell was wrong with me.
I discovered something that I'm gonna say this slowly. It's
goodnat sound so upside down, it's gonna sound strange, But
I discovered this in alcoholics anonymous. I discovered if my
problem is alcohol, i am not an alcoholic. And conversely,

(51:48):
if I'm an alcoholic, my problem is not alcohol. You say,
how could that be? That's craziest, the kind of treatment
center talking. That's nonsense. If I've been around here at
a wrong time. I'm convinced that's the message of this book,

(52:11):
of what we do here, of these meetings. I'm sure
I'm the only one in this room and one of
the very few wherever sat down with Bill Wilson for
an hour and talked to him, and he said that's
what he felt too. But how can that be? Of course,
the problem is alcohol. I can disprove that in ten seconds.
If the problem is alcohol, detoxes turned on winners, and

(52:33):
they don't hospitals turn on winners. They don't jails turn
out winners. Toilets turn on winners. You talk all you
want about the hospitals and treatment facilities, the number one
detox in the world is still the toilet. There's I'm
sure there was anyone in this room who wasn't knelt

(52:54):
down in the morning and gazed into those shining waters
and say your morning prayer.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
Oh God, you hardly.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Ever stop think you're getting a free detox. Look, Betty,
this won't go on the insurance. Some mornings, when you're
sick enough your you get an unnatural reaction alcohol. Your
body will reduce toxicity for both ends at once. That's

(53:28):
good on your body, but it's terrible on your nerves
because you've called upon to make a series of instant
decisions and every answer must be correct. There's a film.
If you guessed wrong, just once, you fellas But if

(53:55):
getting sobers the answer, you don't need any help. Oh
what is the alcohol? What the hell is it? Something mysterious?
Is something spooky? Is some physical thing the old timers
have kept from us. It's something you hear every day and,
like me, misunderstand until I die from it. It's something
that sounds like alcohol, but isn't. It's something called alcoholism.

(54:18):
It's the same thing, alcohol, alcoholism, same thing, semantics, not
the same thing. Your life depends upon learning it's not
the same thing. There are many many differences involved, but
probably the most significant one that for us. A couple
years ago I asked him Dona Orlando, Florid and address

(54:39):
a group of psychiatrists and doctors and the differences between
alcohol problems and the disease of alcoholism. I felt almost
sheepish what they called them. Said, well, I could tell
them over the phone, you know, could save a lot
of money. Then I thought, if I do that, I'll
never get to Disney World. So I went down and
dazzled them. But I can tell you in one sentence

(55:01):
the difference is this, and alcohol problem is overcome by
stopping drinking. In this strange, denigrating, emotionally destructive conflict enhancing insanity,
causing eventually fatal thing called alcoholism. You will discover sooner

(55:24):
or later, if you haven't discovered it yet, that stopping
drinking as such has no significant effect on your life
other than to gradually make it so painful that you
eventually can't stand it. The curse and fatal curse of
alcoholism is that sobriety always becomes unbearable. You may have

(55:49):
a little time full of would make his decisions and
changed my life until but one night here they come again.
Here come your pals, despair and hopelessness, and fear and
feeling different and feeling people are screwing you around again,
and the feeling that nobody really cares for you anyway.

(56:12):
And it's just on and the time comes when you
just you're sober, and it's just I wish my problem
was alcoholic was there? And now? Oddly enough, even this
doesn't make you an alcoholic. That's just the precondition. People

(56:32):
who have those emotions like you and I do think
we're the only ones. Let me tell you something, there
are millions and millions of people who have all the
emotions you and I do who are not alcoholics. They
are people for whom the psychiatric cultures are set up.
People who live in reality but have all the emotional
obsessions and neuroses. They're called amcuter intense neurotics. They live

(56:55):
in much pain and conflict a lot. They are the
people for who things like valium were invented and dirve
on and all the depressants to take intense, conflict prone
people and slow them down and hold them down, and
they can drink every day of their life and they'll
never become an alcoholic. So feeling that way does make

(57:18):
an alcoholic. One other factor must be present. Alcohol must
have an unusual effect on your body that it doesn't
have on about ninety four or five percent of people
who drink alcohol. What is This unusually effect keeps you
drunk all the time. No human body can stay intoxicated

(57:40):
two straight weeks in the laboratory. You can't handle alcohol faults.
Alcoholics handle alcohol better than social drinkers under almost any
conditions and tests. If you've ever been to a party
with social drinkers and you all drink the same, I
would imagine you'd drive them home. It's just it's just

(58:02):
hard to get them to drink to say that's the problem,
because they say things like, oh no more for me,
I'm starting to feel it, And you want to say,
why don't you feel this? Whoosy?

Speaker 1 (58:16):
You know?

Speaker 2 (58:24):
I don't know. They have it here in Washington. In California,
they have a new law now where they set up
roadblocks at Christmas time to catch drunk and drivers. Do
you have that up here? They're not trying to catch
people like you and me. They're trying to catch social
drinkers who are out on their Christmas drunk who don't
know how to drink. You're through, They're bump into trees

(58:45):
and each other, while experienced, decent people like you and
I have to sit behind them and say, hurry up
up there for Christ' sight.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (59:06):
What is alcohol? What is it that alcohol does that
it doesn't do to ninety four percent of people. It
turns out just the one thing I never I always
took for granted alcohol does what it does to you
at all. That's just an after effect, an unnatural effect.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Is alcohol has to be able to take untenable reality
and make it comfortable. Alcohol has to change my perception
of reality.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
It's hard to realize. It doesn't do that for most people.
That's why they don't drink. But I was about a
year sober. The bestiness especially I ever got. I was
working a little advertising agency in the cup Or. One
of our accounts was camp chat Ya Vodja, and I
was a package wrapper there. I was involved in any
creative work, but they had used the same billboard for

(59:53):
ten years, and they did four years later. After that,
it always said vodka is pronounced. Can check what they've changed,
the colors of the artwork. There's always that. That was
back to wrapping packages out front. Here, I'm gonna I'm
gonna make my move. I'm gonna tell I'm gonna give
these people an idea that's gonna turn set them on fire.
And I say who's that masked man without any front

(01:00:15):
teeth with a silver boats. So I came by one
day and I said, they really got to the president.
None of my business, and which is an idea for
how about this for your slogan canvas Actio Vodia goes
boom better than all the vodkas anywhere. And they looked
at me the same look I've been getting all my life.
It's just one guy says, are you supposed to be

(01:00:40):
up here? And the other guy says, you know, even
a bad looking mouth and a bad sounding mouth, And
somebody else said, you know, if you don't like the
way we do things, once you wrap your goddamn packages
somewhere else. And no one likes to be publicly humilitated.
And they laughed at me. I get out of here.
If I would, I would have jumped the desk and
killed him to know how to explained to my sponsor

(01:01:03):
just and I went away. It's crazy and that that's
all my sponsored me. I said, Bob, he'd hold it down.
If you can't be a man trying to act like one,
you now, what the hell's wrong with you? I gave
him ten minutes on the story is how they screwed

(01:01:25):
me around. I tried to explain to him and give
him the slogan I don't care if they accepted it, Bob,
But they humiliated me. They just laughed at me. They
just acted though my slogan was no good at all.
They I'll never be anything, Bob. He said, oh, shut up,
But he got mad. He used to wave his finger
into my nose, and they said time I really missed
my front teeth. I just and I wasn't gonna give

(01:01:50):
them the pleasure of gumming it. He says, listen, can't
you understand they're not against you. They don't know what
the hell you're talking. Can't you understand this cam Chad
Kivodka doesn't go boom to them, to them, it goes
That's why you're in this goddamn meeting and they're not.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
You might die.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
You might think about this, put this in your mind somewhere.
You may sometimes think all of us have done. Am
I really an alcoholic? I haven't had a story like
that one has. Am I really an alcoholic? Maybe I
just was a situational drinker. Maybe I could have a
little drink. And here's the test you give if you
are willing to look forward to a drink. So when

(01:02:46):
you're back to the wall and the hounds of fate
ripping at your throat and you take a drink, oh god,
and have a go. If that's what you're looking for,
you can drink. But if you're like me and your
backs to the wall and the hounds of fate each other,

(01:03:08):
oh god, it doesn't go atle bit, but it goes
spring on your goddamn hound. Missus Basterville. Well, if that's

(01:03:30):
what you're looking for, you can't drink. You're screwed, because
every time it works for you, it ruins sobriety a
little bit more. The curse of this illness is not
to the people get drunk and die. But you drink till
your body makes you get sober, and you stay sober,
till your mind makes you drink, And you drink till

(01:03:50):
your body makes you stay sober, and you stay sober
to your body makes you drink, and you can go
on for years in agony and all drink. What is
wrong with them? See you guys I talked about the
guys made two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year
in the astronaut and for a football player and actors
and so on, what do we all have in common?

(01:04:11):
I leur sponsor what the hell we got common? They
haven't been a schedule. We've all lived in an untenable
sobriety and no now drinking is no longer tenable. That's
a deadly aspect today. That's estimated over ninety percent of
alcoholics in America still die drunk. And do you know
why they died drunk? With all the help available, they

(01:04:32):
die convinced they are not really alcoholics because they say,
but you don't understand. My problems were real. They came
when I was sober, and they never knew. So that's
why it's important tonight. It's just take an minment to
think what AA is. It's not a place to go
and get sober, not a place to go and get

(01:04:54):
off their boozze, not a place to go and become wonderful,
to become holy, none of these things. The function of
alcohol axnonymous is to, over a long period of time,
to do what alcohol did quickly. It's to almost instantly
what alcohol did almost instantly. A is designed to little
by little alter my perception of reality, to little by

(01:05:18):
little begin to fill holes that nothing has ever filled
in my life, to little by little live in some
degree of dignity in the world. One of the drawbacks
of courses for people like me, how do you return
to God and thank God? My sponsor pointed out to
be I didn't have to return to God. I think
an aas is that a return to God. If I
didn't like God is the higher power, I could use him,

(01:05:41):
and he became my higher power. As a result of that,
I came to believe an AA And over a period
of time, I found myself coming to pray to a
God that I had finally discovered to the best of
mine now was meant was for my good, not for
my punishment. And I have a had a day for

(01:06:02):
almost thirty years, and I haven't prayed earnestly to a
God that I think loves me. My sponsor made me
make an amend to my father that I hated, I
hadn't talked so many years. He made me write a
letter of vinsit that o't follow them. He ruined my
life and this demands perfection to me, and he deserted
my mother and I and I hate it. And I
wrote a letter of amends to this overpowering, tall, frightening figure.

(01:06:24):
A couple of years later, we of course went back
was a little bit and I visited in Old Claire,
Wisconsin and opened the door, and that tall, powering figure
was a small kind of weary man, and he said,
O son, I'm so glad you're home. I've wept about
you so many times. And we wound up dearest to
friends for twenty five years. And he died two or
three years ago. Sat at his bedside and he smiled

(01:06:46):
at me and pressed my hand and died. And I
felt so good that he died in a couple of
days later, sitting in the Norwegi and luther In church,
and No Claire Stot said, what's my time? I swore
never go in with my father's little casket seeing looking around, thinking,
isn't it amazing? God? This is in the Norwegian Lutheran church,
just like he's in my group in Los Angeles. Somebody
good for me if I can get out of the way.

(01:07:08):
But I'm still a human being, and I still have emotions.
I still enough. You know. That's why they say, hey,
don't get hungry, angry, lonely or tired, doc, Because they're
bad things. They are perception distorts. They make things look different.
When you're hungry, people get stupid. I don't know why.
What's wrong with you? For Christ act when you're angry,

(01:07:31):
God wants you to kill them for their own good.
This is their own good. When you're lonely, you just
know that everybody's at a party somewhere, but nobody told you.
When you're tired, they attack you. I've used the example
of mantim It's still true. I can get on that

(01:07:51):
Santa Monica in the freeway in the morning. I've been
sober thirty one years. I'm an old timer and I
know enough not to act tired. I get hume, but
they know they know I'm tired that just see a
lady up there lost yet I see the boy in
the gray car. He's exhausted. I'm gonna cut that son

(01:08:14):
of a bitch off. But when he has done for me,
is enable me not to have to chase people pass
my exit if I if I have fought him by

(01:08:38):
fourth Street, I say, good, Flying Red Barn, We'll meet again.
A few years ago I came off said I'm gonna freeway.
The little girl the Toyota just about killed him. She
almost put me in the overpass. I just the trouble
is when you catch these people and hey, you can't
do anything, but you get next.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
To go.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Give him a raid. And I caught up with this
little girl. God, it's just crazy. She almost killed me.
She didn't even look back. I gave her a triple
ray of nice. Suddenly you realize, here's your little girl
about seventeen, look just like my granddaughter Katie. Blond hair
and rosy cheeks, and downtown driving and rush over nothing.

(01:09:18):
What am I doing? What kind of a craphead am I? Did?
I attack some little honey like that? So I smiled
at her as she went. So if these are got
things you gotta face when you're sober, but that's all

(01:09:41):
part of living. No matter what therapy you take, you
will never feel good all the time. Don't let people
sell you a bill of goods that if you go
to a therapy that says your parents cause this, you
will feel better than human beings feel. There is nothing
that will make you feel better than a human being.
Human beings have ups and downs, and the time comes
when you can't I'm then anymore. The time it comes

(01:10:02):
in aa when then is then and now is now,
and God damn it, let's live in the world. I think,
I uh as most of you know. I got to
be kind of successful when I was fifteen years sobers
and marketing Rectord Beverly Hills, and my kids were all

(01:10:23):
growing up, and he was fine. And one day I
found myself leaving a job in Beverly Hills and for
the last sixteen years I run the mission on schedule
in Los Angeles. That threw me out. It's not alcoholic
treatment centers. I went down there just for a couple
of days looking for the guy that threw me out.
Is going to get him. I haven't found him yet,
as soon as I do, but it's a He is

(01:10:44):
an odd wind up for me because I'm not known
for sacrificing myself much for anything. But I've had I
lived with the same wife, a lot of wonderful grandchildren.
I'm in this town some of other towns. I've had
a lot of great things happen to me. Now I
can say, what's the best thing that ever happened to me?
What's the best thing never happened? My children? I love them,

(01:11:07):
but they're not the best thing ever happened to me,
my uh, my home. I love it is that the
best thing ever happened to me. What is the best
thing that ever happened to me? Is that somehow, in
rooms like this, with people like you taking actions as
outlined in that book, I have come to understand. My
name is Clancy Immerslund, and I am an alcoholic, and

(01:11:32):
through the power of this program and the grace of
a loving God, I can walk with some degree in dignity,
of dignity in the world that has baffled and destroyed
me as long as I can remember. So, if you're
new tonight, or if you're afraid, or if you're saying
the church weak in heavy laden, everybody understands that you

(01:11:54):
could be sober twenty five years and go through periods
of being weak and heavy laden and thirty years. But
you have to remember is this You're not so different.
Your case isn't unusual. You're not surrounded by people who
always feel the way they look. We all do the same.
That's what makes it so successful here. And I think
if I could wish you anything to be would to

(01:12:15):
wish you with some Christmas for New Year's or next
July sixteenth, to find yourself walking in the world that
has been foreign an alien to you, and walk with
some degree of dignancy, and say I belong here, and
I owe it to the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, for
which I shall be ever grateful. Thank you,

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Clancy I. - On the topic of Feelings 12-Step Recovery from Alcoholism

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Clancy I. - On the topic of Feelings 12-Step Recovery from Alcoholism