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>> >> We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Hi, I'm Cliff Roach and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm absolutely delighted to be here.

I'd like to thank Bob for inviting me and picking me up at the airport today and as I got off the plane he says, "You want to go to a noon meeting?" I said, "Hey, why not?" He said, "At detox." I said, "Even better." He did not tell me it was in purgatory, however. I just left the coast and THE THE MEETING'S OUTSIDE. IN A IN A CONCRETE CUBICLE.

AND HE SAYS, "Call on Cliff." I went, Then he took me to the Bates Motel. So Bob, I really like to thank you. Uh >> >> Oh, you guys, when you start a meeting, you don't screw around, do you?

My home group, we started with 12. It took us about 5 years to get 100. You guys start right off the bat.

Of course, the first week you have uh Johnny in all in prison and gangster there dying in prison and you know, the next week you have Clancy, huh? Down and out on Skid Row selling his blood. With his With his teeth all kicked out.

This week we have Cliff. The little fat school teacher that drank too much. I'll do the best I can with what I got, I'll save her.

>> >> Well, it's about time you had a functioning alcoholic here anyway, huh? Two losers in a row. Now you got a real alcoholic, a functioning alcoholic.

The experts, whoever the hell they are, uh I think an expert is a guy who has a PhD who's still drinking. Uh And I think they all live in Fresno, California. That's my personal opinion.

But anyway, the experts, whomever they say that the 95 to 97% of the people who die of the disease of alcoholism, who become dead from alcoholism, are people just like me. Functioning alcoholics. One guy out on the coast said, "A functioning alcoholic is one whose wife works." Yeah.

Don't tell that in an Al-Anon meeting. You're going to go over real well with that You You You married guys remember that? "Don't you think you had a few too many?" Let's just say you had a few too few.

That's your goddamn problem. "Have a couple and loosen up, baby. What the hell?" I'm counting.

Remember the counting? Uh "That's your fifth one today." "Will you just shut up and eat your breakfast, for Christ's sake?" But I'm a function I I go to work every day. My old man told me if you eat breakfast and go to work, you're not an alcoholic.

Made sense to me. He never said a word about puking breakfast back up again, but you know. So, I go to work every day and I do the job.

I got to do 10 times more than you to prove I'm half as good. Anybody identify with that? You're in the right place.

You're in the right place. I'm a goer and a doer and an achiever. NO SKID MARKS.

NO BUM. PRISON. THE week I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, the week I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I weighed 163 lbs.

I used to surf for like 3 hours on on the weekend and then get out and run 10 miles. Used to bench 285. Took me 25 minutes to pass a mirror.

>> >> Sometimes you had to be forcibly dragged away. Wait, I'm not through yet. My daughters used to get money from me real easy.

They'd come up and I'd have I wouldn't have any shirt on most of the time. And uh in church they really didn't know, but anyway uh my daughters come up and say, "V up, Daddy. V up." You know, and I said, "Oh, can I have some money?" Yeah, sure.

Whatever. I was 2 years sober before I figured that out, you know. But I mean, and I want to say that uh AA has made me twice the man I used to be.

You know. But I was a functioning alcoholic and I almost died of alcoholism because I could say that I'm not one of them. I don't look like that.

When I was in college, I was a freshman in college many years ago. Uh I had just won World War as a matter of fact. And uh and I'm going to college at San Jose State there in California and uh and uh my buddy and I used to walk to school every morning briskly.

And uh we were cutting through St. James Park in uh San Jose there one early one morning on our way to class. And we heard some noises we walked by this bench and there was this derelict lying on the bench.

Uh that's the filthiest thing I ever saw. I mean, I won't even describe the whole thing. I used to describe the whole thing to people running out on me.

Uh I mean, it was horrible. I could you you couldn't believe the the stench and the sounds and everything. And as we walked on through the park, my my friend said, "That guy was an alcoholic." And that picture in my brain almost killed me.

Cuz I know what an alcoholic looks like. He's a sorry mess lying on a bench in a park. And I'm one of the top three debate coaches in the United States.

>> >> That's like being one of the top three prostitutes in Elko, Nevada, you know. So, I uh I've always loved to drink. I I really loved the two 10-minute speakers uh They didn't really need me to write the time of the church, >> >> but we'll just add another story.

Another school teacher, thank God. Uh I thought I was the only one. No, that's not true.

But, both the 10-minute speakers told it beautifully. And uh that's the kind of person I was. Both of them were were a lot like me.

I I really enjoyed drinking. I loved the taste of booze. I can't identify with people.

Can you that who get up here in an AA meeting say, "I never cared for the taste of alcohol." I always want to say, "Would you care for the taste of these?" I love the taste of alcohol. I LOVE IT ALL. I LOVE IT ALL.

I LIKE SOUR mash bourbon the best. But, I like scotch, too. I'm not knocking scotch.

I And rum, oh, I adore rum. Rum and coke, oh oh Vanilla extract, I'm not real crazy about. But, if that's what you're drinking, hey, okay, let's go, you know.

Pour me one, baby, if you're buying. You have to admit it has bouquet. And I you know, you know that I'm the third speaker tonight and I uh by the way uh Marnie, I come from an alcoholic family, too.

And uh mine was much more violent than yours. Uh and nobody had any We never tried to hide anything. When people are flying through windows and you know, guns being shot.

Now, that's kind of hard to hide. Uh when my wife uh married me, she she had her mother was an alcoholic and she could Her mother was this little 4-ft 11-ft lady. They could hide her, you know.

You don't hide moi, I'll tell you. But anyway, I'm I'm going wild here tonight. But anyway, my family was alcoholic and so I came by alcoholic drinking.

All of us tonight are talking about our first drink, huh? In an AA meeting, that's a sure fire deal, you know. Everybody might not be paying attention, but when you say, "I took my first drink." Everybody Do you ever notice that?

Everybody said, "What?" Go go up to some non-alcoholic and say, "When was your first drink?" They're going to say, "What the hell do I care? I don't know." That's like saying, "When was your first taco?" But it tells us it's a big deal because it it was the beginning and it was the beginning of the end, huh? You can't Clancy says it can't do it to you unless it does it for you.

And I'm just like the other two speakers tonight, hollow, empty, lonely, whatever, and you're not enough, never enough. Had a drink, I was 16, 4-ft 11, 89 lbs. 12 lbs of that was pimples.

And uh I'm going to a high school dance and I'm a hell of a dancer, see? I'm a hell of a dancer. My sister taught me to dance and great jitterbug in those days and but there were only two girls in school I could dance with.

They were small enough, you know. But I choked down a half of a half a pint, a 10-high, and I went to that dance and I danced with all of them. Come on, baby, let's go.

I didn't care where my face was, you know, what I mean? Uh uh. And I had the time of my life.

And I said, "Now I know why my folks drink." And I couldn't wait to do it again. The second time I drank was 3 weeks later. I drank a fifth of port wine.

I figured that'd do it better, and it did. And I had a blackout. You never had those in the desert here, I don't imagine.

Uh But over on the coast, you have blackouts. And I had uh from now on, uh most of my life is hearsay. Uh Uh I I just spent most of my life saying, "I did?" I said, "I'm sorry." And I'm like "Your mother, huh?

Oh, God, I I might have been the father of Marty's child, who knows? I've been to Reno. Yeah.

They They tell me I've been to Reno, you know. And after I got married, it became hearsay, you know. Uh I met my wife when we were in college, and uh she was down on Skid Row looking for an alcoholic to abuse her.

And uh You want to be abused? Here's your boy right here, I'll tell you. And we entered into a 20-year suicide pact together, and uh This is It was wild.

It was wild. It was crazy crazy crazy. And uh we had that dreaded dual disease, alcoholism and Catholicism.

And uh we had a kid every 9 months and 20 minutes, seemed like to me. Uh Every time I came out of a blackout "Who in the hell is that? And then they grow.

You know how they grow? They're When they're kittens they're all right, but when they grow And I became a school teacher. We moved to Oceanside and uh And I became a very good teacher and a very well-respected teacher and a you know, a highly successful teacher if you That's not a contradiction.

Uh And anyway, my drinking got worse. Oh, really? Yes.

Uh-huh. And uh But I became very paranoid about blackouts. You know, when I'm already when you're a school teacher, you kind of hate those blackouts cuz they you know, especially I commit felonies in blackouts.

It's kind of a hobby with me. Anybody Are there any felonious uh blackout drinkers here? Oh, I'm a fighting fool when I'm in a blackout.

I love to fight. Oh, fighting's good. Better than sex anytime.

Better than sex. Makes you a real man, you know. And unfortunately for me, at the very precise millisecond that I would get enough booze to be brave, I would lose my muscle coordination.

Ah, you can get hurt doing that. You can really get hurt doing that. But I became terrified of blackouts cuz I do those felonies.

And I you know, when you're a teacher, they call you up to Sacramento and take your license away. So I I try to stay away from blackouts, but I became more and more and more and more and more and more a daily drinker. And that's my part of my alcoholism I like to talk about.

That's what I like to remember that getting up every day every day and saying I'm not going to do it again today. I'm saying that as I'm kneeling at the porcelain altar calling Ralph. Ralph.

Remember Ralph? I hate that part where you're just down with you and Ralph. I hate that part.

Eat breakfast, it's called Ralph, go to work, you know. Go in there and teach school. These kids that adore me talk about love and honor and truth and justice.

Dying Dying of alcoholism and talking about honor. And I was working for this jerk principal that was out to get me and he'd get me. He'd get me and get me and get me and get me and And I'd go home, huh?

And I was married to her. And I had all these long-haired dopey children and uh Life was bad. It was really bad.

And I'd go in the bedroom in the evening, get out my pistol. I always had a pistol. I mean, you guys pistol carriers, too?

I just want to check and see if the barrel was still cold. And uh you know Just then old uh Bob would come by and say, "Hey, Cliff. Let's go have some fun." Remember fun?

Getting a cliff dwelling and going to jail. Fun. Finding your car at the bottom of a ravine in the morning.

Remember that? With you in it? Fun.

When Bob would say that, I always had the same reply. Huh? For you new guys tonight, welcome.

Welcome. If uh it's never been defined for you before, that's called alcoholism. Unable to remember with sufficient force the tragedy of the night before, tonight it's going to be different.

And that's the way it was. Well, in 1965, before most of you were born, probably. But I judge no man.

Uh I uh I was a surfer dude. And another surfer dude and I uh, decided in the summer to open up the surfboard shop down at the beach. Guy donated us this building right on the water.

An old building been vandalized. And uh, we're going to open this surf shop and give surf lessons and rent surfboards and fix surfboards and make a fortune and never have to teach school again. The guy gave us this building.

We fixed it up, painted it, put windows in. And we got a refrigerator. Uh, couple months later we got some surfboards, too.

What the hell. And we had these two chaise lounge chairs sitting right on the beach. I mean, on the water.

We were on the ocean. These two chaise We became sunset connoisseurs, Woody and I. People come down to you and say, "I'd like to rent a surfboard." Get the hell out of here.

We're watching a sunset now. And we We used to measure, uh, sunsets by martinis. I was the mixer.

I looks like about an eight tonight, Woody. The best one we ever had was a 15-martini sunset. Oh, you should have seen it.

It was glorious. It was glorious. And the sun and Woody and I went right together.

They found us in the morning with sunburned mouths. You remember that? I think that ought to be on the 20 questions, don't you?

You ever had a sunburned mouth? Nah, get the hell out of here. You're not ready.

Come back when you're ready, for God's sake. I I talked with this old guy, Bill B, down in Texas. This old Texan guy he said that on the 20 questions he wants to put, "Have you ever been run over by your own car while you were driving it?" I've done that twice.

I belong here. But in the February of 1965, I went down to repair a surfboard. It was a Sunday morning.

I went down to the shop and I had a hell of a hangover. >> Really? >> Yeah, Sunday morning.

And I know you'll find that hard to believe. And I was really thirsty. And uh I went to the refrigerator.

I was not a morning drinker in in 1965. I was a weekend drinker, remember? Take Thursday off.

I only drink on weekends. Get off my back. And uh I opened the refrigerator and I was just looking for a Coke or something to slake my thirst.

And Woody had been there the night before and he left about this much vodka in a half pint. And there was some orange juice in the refrigerator. And I said, "That would put the fire out, you know?" Cuz I felt crappy.

And I mixed up that little bitty drink and I drank it. And went on about my business. And I was sanding on this board and the resin was cooking there.

And that little bit of vodka, you know, circulated all around my system. And my mind talked to me. My mind said, "Shame on you, Cliff.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

Shame. That was Woody's booze you drank. Why don't you go up to the liquor store and get your old pal Woody a pint?" That's the kind of guy I am, you know?

Matter of fact, that afternoon I got Woody a fifth. And uh just ended up boy, I drunk my daddy used to say, just falling down resin all over me. The board was a mess.

The shop was screwed. Crawled home on my hands and knees about 11 blocks. And got up the next morning sick and said to my wife, uh "I got to do something about my drinking.

I get drunk now and I don't even mean to." And my wife had had one of those pre-Al-Anon tickets at the time or I'd got had her sense of humor surgically removed many years before. And she'd cut this little thing out of the paper about the A and A. I don't know why she thought to do that.

And it said what it has always said since we started, if you want a drink, that's your business. If you want to quit, call Alcoholics Anonymous. I love it.

It's just perfect as far as I'm concerned. And that's just how I feel about it and the people that I love feel about it. If you want to drink, I would not stand in the way of you drinking for a second.

But if you want to quit, there are people in this room, I'll guarantee you, who go to the end of the earth for you if you want to quit. And uh I called A and I went to a couple meetings and realized right away I'd made a grievous error in judgment. No, it wasn't really that bad.

I These people seem to have the collective IQ of an orange. Uh I'm highly educated, you know, I have degrees, you know. My sponsor always said, "You're educated far beyond your intelligence." Uh uh That hurts, you know.

And I said, "I have degrees, you know." He said, "So does a thermometer. You know where they stick that sometimes?" Uh Narrow man, narrow. And uh I tried to help them.

Have you done that forever? I tried I tried explaining Nietzsche to them one night and uh So, I don't know. They were I quit going to meetings.

They were just too boring and uh Once in a while I would go to the speaker meeting there in Oceanside at 6:30 on Sunday evening and at that time had maybe 30, 40 people and I I would wait in the car. Any other losers here? I should be in the losers hall of fame, uh hall of shame.

Uh I would wait in the car for the meeting to start cuz I didn't want to hang around with you, you know? And after the meeting started I would skulk in the back door, get the losers chair, you know, you know the one. Somebody else had it I'd say, "Give me that.

I'm the loser here. Give me that goddamn chair." And uh I would sit in the back of the room, in all my majesty, and judge the speakers. Fat chance I had, huh?

Sounded to me like everybody's name was Clem. Been out of bib overalls about an hour and a half and uh wife's name is Martha. And I heard them say this, if you're new tonight, and there are new ones here, not what they said.

This is what I heard them say. There's a lot of difference here. Self-delusion is in the book.

And I I heard them say that they had been good, decent, happy, uh sincere, worthwhile folk their whole lives, but they had drunk too much. And uh after they drank too much for a few years it started interfering with their lives, so they'd come here to the A&A and put the plug. And they had returned to being good, decent, happy, sincere, worthwhile folk again.

It sounded to me like they had been rehabilitated. You know, rehabilitated. My hero in '65 was a guy named Eldridge Cleaver, who was a black militant terrorist.

That was my hero. Uh That's my politics in '65. Blow it up or burn it down.

I didn't really give a what. I was for peace. And uh if you weren't for peace I'd kill you.

Or at least hurt your body. And Eldridge had given us an incredible speech a few months earlier. He was talking that night about the prison system, about how they were always trying to rehabilitate him.

He says, "You know what they never known? He had never been habilitated." And you can't rehabilitate somebody who's never been habilitated. I don't know about you, but that's how I felt in the A&A.

I have always been crazy. I've been nuts since I was born. The earliest recollection of my life, I was 4 years old, we lived in Venice, California.

I used to stand by the speedway there in Venice when I'm 4 years old, wait for cars. And a car would come, I'd go Didn't know how to do this yet, you know. I'd wait for another one.

People drive along, they say, "Look at the little boy That's how I felt when I was 4 years old, it never changed. I had this big black rock right I've heard these people talk about the hole in the belly. To me, it was this black rock right there.

Jagged edges to it, like a piece of volcanic rock. Right there. On a good day, it was about the size of a tennis ball, and on a bad day, it was the size of a basketball.

But it ruled my life. It was an absolute control of my life, that black ball. I never had a thought or a reaction or an emotion or a or an emotion in my life that wasn't generated and controlled by that black ball right in the middle of my belly.

That's a horrible way to live. I can't think of a more painful way to try to go through life. But when I was 16, I found a great secret.

I found that after I drank about 40 minutes, something happened to me. Looking back on it now in AA, it was like I would disengage whatever lobe of the brain was connected to the black ball. And then for like 8 minutes everything in my life was all right.

There wasn't a thing wrong with me for about 8 minutes. I was enough for 8 minutes. And we do PI talks, you guys do that too, probably.

You know, I go to the Lions Club, I don't tell them about the 8 minutes. They look at you funny, you know. I can tell you because there's people in this room whose head is going like this.

You know what it's like to live without the 8 minutes. Thank God I'm an alcoholic. I could have just been crazy.

Thank God I'm an alcoholic. If it hadn't been for that 8 minutes, I would have killed you or you would have had to kill me, one of the two. I could not have stayed alive in the world without that 8 minutes.

Thank God for it. It got me here to you. But I'm sitting in that Sunday night meeting one night listening to those clowns and I thought they want me to give up the 8 minutes to hang around with Clem and Martha.

And for the next 5 years I'm in and out of AA. Gets worse every time I'm in and out. I'm drunk most of the time.

I come to AA for 30 days or 40 days or 1 day or whatever and I always got drunk again and it always got worse and I my life was falling apart. But I kept functioning. I became one of the top speech coaches in the United States by accident.

I was teaching a AA speech class and one of the other classes. The principal called me in one day and he got this flyer in the mail about a debate and a speech tournament down San Diego State, just 30 miles down the road. He said, "Oh, this looks like something your students would get a lot out of.

Why don't you do that? You ought to do that." So, being in the trouble I was in, I said, "What a good idea." And uh got about six or eight dummies wanted to give it a go and we went 30 miles down the road to San Diego State. We were astounded when we got there.

There were like 500 contestants in these debate speech contests. 50 schools. They're all dressed up.

Boys had three-piece suits, vests, ties. Girls in these lovely business We're in Levi's. What the hell do we know, you know?

And they killed us. THEY SLAUGHTERED US. We didn't win one round.

Not one. The crowd doesn't understand what they did to us. I don't know what kind of drunk you are, but I don't care for losing.

Picks me off to lose. And I went in the coaches room, there were about 20 of them in there. They were buddies, they're pals, they've been doing this for years, and they just snubbed me, it seemed to me.

So, I hung around all day. You know, we can be snubbed longer that way. One guy really pissed me off.

He had a lot of hair. That bothered me right away. And uh Beautiful gr- Beautiful gray hair, steel gray hair.

I'm looking at him right now. Uh Beautiful. It needed nine barbers to get it right, you know?

He had about a thousand-dollar suit on and the other coaches did this when they went in front of him and uh In the afternoon, this guy turns to me and says uh "Where are you from?" God, I was grateful to be spoken to finally. I said, "Oceanside." And he said, "Oh, where's that?" 30 miles up the road. "Where's that?" The guy gave me a resentment.

And I went back to Oceanside High and I built a speech team. And I did it with sheer hatred. I built a juggernaut speech team is what I did.

I BUILT A POWERHOUSE SPEECH TEAM, AND I DID IT WITH SHEER ANGER. GET UP AT 7:00 in the morning, go all day, all day, in their faces, screaming and yelling and coaching till 9:30 at night. IN THEIR FACES.

COACHING. Guy next door said, "I'd love to watch them leaving your room, wiping the spit off their glasses, you know." The reporter said to my my captain one time, "What's the secret of your coach's success?" The kid said, "Terror." She was a lion. I will tell you that kid's the chair chairman of the speech department at San Francisco State and the chancellor of women's studies.

So, I didn't do her any harm, you know. But, she was in sheer terror for 4 years, too, I'll tell you. And you I go all day she I don't drink all day.

That's kind of alcoholic I am. I'm a functioning alcoholic. All I have to know is in the glove compartment of the car, when I get through here tonight, there's a half a pint of hot vodka waiting there in the glove compartment, calling to me.

"Go get them, Cliff, baby. I'm waiting for you, darling." Oh, I'd love to talk about hot vodka in Alanon meetings. They go, "Eh, ew, yeah." But, we know, huh?

Huh? Oh, anything get in the bloodstream faster than that, I don't know. When I finish with that last I'd lurch out to the car at 9:30 at night, 10:00 at night, open up that hot vodka, light up one of those cheap stogies I smoked in those days, and I always drank half the half pint, just and it would go down there just into the bloodstream.

I'd puff on that cigar and think, "God damn, you're a good coach." Then I go home and destroy my family. I'd have my 8 minutes in the car, then I'd go home and destroy my family. We had three kids in the late '60s now.

We have three kids in high school now in the late 60s. My oldest son is working his way through high school as a heshie salesman. Oh, you should have seen him.

He had boy. He had hair down to his ass, you know, his head went like this all the time. Call his mother, man.

Hey man, what's for dinner? Oh, he loved LSD. Some of you probably had that stuff.

Yeah. Oh, they see things all the time. Scared the hell out of me, you know.

I'd be right in the middle of a sentence he'd say, "WHAT WAS THAT? WHAT WAS THAT?" OF COURSE HE'D SHAKE EYES AND I'D SAY, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT. WHAT WAS IT?

WHERE? WHAT?" And my drunken mother-in-law lived with us. And she would lean on her walker and say, "I'll explain it." And all these years later I think, we used to listen to the goddamn explanation.

That's We used to listen to her and listen to her explain it to us. And my daughters had boyfriends looked exactly like my son. The three of them used to get on the couch together and the place was a zoo.

Outside of a locked ward you will never find several loonier tunes in the history of the world. CRAZY PEOPLE. ALL OF US CRAZY.

Whenever they do the ABCs I always say, "No human power could have relieved my family." But God could have or would sought. And we sought God through AA and Al-Anon. And I put my family against any family in the world today.

And the only therapy we've ever had is AA and Al-Anon. And I I tease Al-Anon, but I adore them. They have a great program.

I've seen miracles just as great as ours, maybe greater, that have happened in the Al-Anon program. They're magnificent people. And I hate people who sneer at them and tell Al-Anon jokes.

I'll tell you an Al-Anon joke. I'll tell you a real Al-Anon joke. Now this is an Al-Anon joke.

And what's the difference between a dog and an alcoholic? If you let the dog back in the house he quits whining. Now that's an Al-Anon joke.

My wife's a 22nd degree black belt. Ha! Al-Anon.

She has the smile down. I'm releasing you. I always said the Mona Lisa was an Al-Anon.

Huh? We we were all totally insane, but I built that speech team. Thought I forgot didn't you but After a couple years one of my uh teams won one of those speech tournaments.

Did I say anything to the gray-haired guy? It wasn't time yet. We know when it's time, don't we?

The next year there were 12 or 14 tournaments, 30 schools in each tournament. My team took first place in every single tournament. I can wait.

The next year there was a tournament there were 25 schools competing in the tournament and my team scored more sweepstakes points than the other 24 schools combined. Then I went up to the gray-haired guy and I put my nose right against his and I said, "Do you know where Oceanside is now?" And he just looked blank. He said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Don't you remember Don't you remember four or five years ago?

You said to me, 'Oceanside, where's that?'" And he said, "We just moved here from Nebraska. I didn't know where it was. That's the story of my life.

This guy for 4 years is in his bed every night in San Diego. >> >> I'm up AND I JUST I GOT YOU, YOU JERK. Couple months ago my wife and I were driving in LA and some guy came over nine lanes just to cut me off.

You know what I mean. I said, "You see that? The guy was nine AND HE CAME CLEAR OVER HERE." And she said, "They all get up this morning and said, 'Let's go on the freeway and get clipped.'" So right after that, Pat and I had one of our main events which the neighbors have come to miss so much.

And our neighbors never had television to laugh at I got sober. They didn't need it. You know what I mean?

We were the entertainment. You know what I mean? They all had those Venetian blind marks on their foreheads and their front And I moved out and I'm living down at the beach where I wanted to live anyway with my surfboard and this dump with a couple other the guy and his girlfriend and and I had said for years, "Didn't you?

If I get rid of them, I can drink like a gentleman again, you know?" And I couldn't. It was awful. I was missing work.

I was drunk all the time. And I went by the house one afternoon was ringing my wife about money as I remember. And actually salesman is kind of bobbing in the background there.

Humming a tune from the planet Pluto. And thinking back is maybe the dumbest thing I ever did. I turned to him and I said, "Dave, what's it like not to have your own man around the house?" And old Dave looked me right in the eye and he said, "It's beautiful." And I didn't know it for a couple hours, but that was my bottom.

That's as far as I'm going. I lost the respect of a 16-year-old kid. And I realized myself uh later that afternoon that I had lost my own self-respect a long time before that.

And I sat out on the screen porch in that dump where I was living down at the beach. And I watched the most beautiful sunset that I've ever seen to this day. The sky and the water and the wet sand everything was just magenta.

And uh about the time that the sun set down into the water I had what our big book calls a moment of clarity. Paulie, my friend, your friend, calls it the moment of grace. I really like that.

I said I like that. It's all a gift, isn't it? It's all just a gift.

But you can't receive the gift until you're empty. It has to have whipped you. And when the sun went down that day, I was just out of answers to my own.

I was all out of excuses and rationalizations theories And uh I went in the bedroom and uh I dug out the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is offered to you newcomers tonight. When I came in they used to say steal the son of a you'll get honest later. And I recommend that to you.

If you're embarrassed about asking for credit, just steal it. Bob doesn't mind a bit. He has plenty of money left over from the hotel room.

Uh And then the I read the book uh for 3 days and 3 nights. I called in sick. I didn't go to work.

I just read the big book. I read it. If you're new, I read it cover to cover.

I read all the stories. I read the appendix at the end. And in the second edition, which I was reading, was a story called The Professor and the Paradox.

And that's the man that saved my life. He's another egotistical school teacher. And he rang my bell.

And on the third time through the book on the 13th of January, 1970, at 3:00 in the morning, I was on page 63 again. And if you're new on page 63, there's a little prayer. And it is step three.

I was called it the formal terms of surrender. And in my before condition, I knelt down on that filthy linoleum floor on that dump on the beach where I was living and I read that prayer out loud to myself. I read, "God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as you will.

Relieve me of the bondage of self." And when I was new, I looked up the word bondage. You know what it means? It means slavery.

Relieve me of the bondage of self. For more than 30 years now, that's what AA's been doing for me. It's been getting Cliff out of Cliff.

I have learned a great lesson. You can't have it unless you give it away. Uh I was sober maybe 2 years when I was reading the promises again and I'd read the book about five times.

I'm reading along it's about 2:00 in the morning. I can't sleep. I'm up reading the big And after 2 years of sobriety and two descriptive inventories, I saw the promises.

You know why I could see them then? Cuz they had started to come true a little bit in my life and so I saw them. It says you're going to know new freedom and a new happiness.

Why would it new? Cuz my old ideas of freedom and happiness suck. Yeah.

It tells me all these other wonderful things are going to happen to me. And right in the middle, right in the middle the promises Bill Wilson sneaks in the solution, too. And I saw it because I had already been doing it.

It says, "No matter how far down the scale you have gone." And a lot of people like to read that to say, "Well, all the way to the bottom." "No matter how far down the scale we have gone, whether we whether we were functioning alcoholics or prison inmates, it doesn't make any difference. No matter how far down the scale you have gone, we'll see how my experience can benefit others." And my favorite sentence in the whole book, "That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear." Bill was a grammarian. Why did he Why didn't he say, "These feelings of uselessness and self-pity"?

Why didn't he say that? He knew what he was doing. He said, "That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear." It's the same feeling for people like me.

As long as I'm living for Cliff, I'm a dead man. As long as I'm walking around the world seeing what you're going to give me, I'm screwed. And I still do it a lot of the time.

But not nearly as much as I used to. "We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows." I have a meeting every month in one of the guys' house or my house. We had it at my house this month of all the guys I sponsor.

And I said to them somebody leads the meeting they take something out of the book and we go around the room and talk. And I get to sit there and remember what they looked like when they got here. To see the miracle after miracle after miracle that's happened in my life.

I could have missed that all together if I'd have been useless. And I learned everything from a guy named Bill Blake. And that night I was at his house.

Five year loser, overeducated, pompous, obnoxious loser. And I Margie but Bill's wife opened the door and I'm standing there in the porch. Miguel on the forehead, loser.

And you for you new guys, let me tell you let me tell you what happened. I have never seen anyone so glad to see me in my life. Can you imagine?

This loser. She just lit up. Margie said, "Oh, Cliff.

Oh, well, come in Cliff, come in." In the house I go. Pours me a cup of coffee. "This is wonderful." she said.

"Bill's been nuts lately. He's had nobody to work with. He's just been crazy.

Oh, this is so nice." Then Bill comes IN AND SAYS, "CLIFF!" AH, CLIFF'S HERE. AND ABOUT A HALF AN hour I'm thinking, "Anything else I can do to help you folks out?" Be glad to help any way I can. They made me feel like Cliff's here.

We can start AA now, you know. But three weeks later I was in meeting with newcomers. All newcomers, me too, three weeks later.

By the way, you read better than I did after 12 years. So, uh And one of the guys, one of the other newcomers says, "What do you mean this is a selfish program?" And I knew the answer when he asked the question. I knew the answer.

See, Bill and Margie were tickled to death for me. They'd been praying for me for five years. But Bill and Margie knew the great secret.

You can't have it unless you give it away. You can't keep it unless you give it away. And boy, those two gave it Marky just celebrated Thursday Monday 37 years.

Bill stayed now for about 11 years. I miss him every day of my life. I miss him.

He was my sponsor for 20 years. And by the way, that was the last nice thing the man ever said to me. Now, I hear people talking in the program that they had a kind sponsor and I mean I I don't argue with anybody.

If it works for you, it wouldn't work for me. I was too obnoxious and too overeducated and too much of a jerk. So, uh I I thought the first step was shut up.

>> Get in the goddamn car. >> Maybe it is, huh? My sponsor he took me to a meeting every night for 2 years.

Every night for 2 years he took me up to Clancy's meeting every every Tuesday night in those days. Then we had to go up there on Saturday and play volleyball which is a game anyway. And uh except the way they play it.

You know, uh and then we shower and go to the Saturday night meeting there. And I found out in Clancy's group about how much fun Alcoholics Anonymous is. I heard the laughter.

See, I can't live without the laughter. I don't know about you. You know, I sponsor guys that love those great tunnel meetings, you know.

You have to have the hemorrhoids to get the expression right. But I like to go where people are laughing. Because to me to me this is my personal opinion the most spiritual thing that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon is the laughter.

I get me a newcomer and I'll take him to a meeting and I'll take him to another meeting. I'll take him to another meeting. And then one night I'm sitting beside him and he goes >> >> Got you now, you son of a I got you now.

If you're new tonight and you've been laughing, you're screwed. Cuz you can't go back in that bar and think you're having a good time. Cuz you knew you've heard the laughter of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Oh, I love to sit in like in a convention right in the middle of the room and we're all laughing together. Just screaming with the tears running down our face. That's some sick real sick thing.

We love the sick stuff. You know? And God comes and whispers in my ear when we're all laughing together.

He says, "I- It's going to be okay, Claude." Cuz we're laughing. Nothing I laugh at will ever come back and haunt me again. Nothing I laugh at will ever come back and bite me in the butt.

I'm through with it cuz it's funny now. It was the most horrible part of my life, but now it's funny. And we laugh about it and we the spiritual comes in and away we go.

My wife's kind of a mean like me. And we get brand new little Alanons, you know, we take them to AA speaker meets like this, you know. I recommend that, by the way.

You know. And the guy's up here and he says, "And I fell in the Christmas tree and smashed ALL THE PRESENTS." AND WE'RE ALL GOING, AND THIS NEW LITTLE ALANON'S GOING, "Not funny to her." And we just take her to another meeting, you know. One night she throws her head back and laughs and we got her.

We're laughing together, aren't we now? All those tears are gone. We love to laugh.

I I don't know what you were like all your life, but in my all my life I knew exactly what was the matter with me. I always knew what was wrong with me. I wasn't loved enough.

And that's true. It's absolutely true. A lot of people tried.

See, but my little sponsor knew about me what I didn't know about myself. He knew that had never been my problem. Yeah.

He knew my problem had always been I never loved enough. I had a philosophy minor in college. I took so many units in philosophy trying to find a spiritual answer, I guess.

And every one of those philosophers, every one of them when I went back over and looked them over again, said the way to be happy is to love. Not one of them said the way to be happy is to be loved. And I never saw that, never heard that.

I heard from an electrician. But he knew how to put it. Shut up, get in the goddamn car.

SHUT UP, YOU DON'T KNOW NOTHING. IF YOU KNEW SOMETHING YOU WOULDN'T BE IN THE BACKSEAT OF this car, so shut up. Oh, cruel man.

Stands at the door and greets people. Oh god, I hated that. Cuz I'm a snob.

I don't like greeting. Hi, what's your name? Like I really care.

You know. Mop floors and go on all the 12-step calls with him. Do this and do this.

What he was doing and I didn't realize it was, he knew I was incapable of giving love. I didn't know how. I didn't know where to start.

I lived in a prison. Completely self-obsessed. And by the way, if you're new or old, I've heard, I don't know how many hundred fifth steps in my career, every single one of those fifth steps that I've heard, the primary defect of character was self-obsession, which leads to self-delusion.

And that's when you die. And so, he just made me take loving actions, which I thought were stupid things to do. You know, it didn't make any sense to me.

So, I took loving action after loving action after loving after loving action, not knowing, just obeying orders cuz I was out of ideas of my own. And I told God I was out of ideas of my own, and he gave me sobriety. And so, I was willing to go, and then all of a sudden I started to see you.

I'll never forget the first 12-step call I went on by myself and saw the guy take a 90-day token. I'll never forget that feeling as long as I live. And I started to see you, and I started to care about how you felt and how you're doing.

And alcohol, that being of service in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've done it all. I've been I've been the coffee maker.

been a New York delegate. I've done it all. I was telling somebody tonight after I was delegate I was really depressed cuz I had been a big shot.

And we had this huge hall like this, you know, all old filthy carpeting. And so the day I got back from the conference my sponsor brought over this old beat-up vacuum cleaner and a 100 yards of extension cord. So that's what will cheer you up.

And it did. That's what's funny. Being of service.

And both of 10-minute speaks tonight, God bless who talked about the steps. And we took the steps. Because my little sponsor believed in those steps.

He didn't believe in studying them or meditating on them or put them in your navel or anything. He said we had to do them. We had to do them.

We had to act out the actions and adopt the attitudes. We had to do the steps. I hear these guys talking about the steps now they drive me crazy.

Reminds me of the the old priest is back in the sac. The young priest has been out in front and he comes running back. Father, you'll never guess what happened.

He said there was a young man came in the back of the church. He was on two crutches. Two crutches you He took some holy water and he threw it on the left crutch and he threw away the crutch.

And he took some water and threw it on the right and he threw away the crutch. And the old priest said, "My God, it's a miracle. Where is the young man?" He said, "Flat on his ass out on the road." They won't work unless you do them.

Do them. And they have changed my life. Those promises have all come true in my life.

All of them. In spades. You know, I love so many people today I can't keep track of them.

I can't I just I love so many people I can't even keep But I when I see them my heart always jumps though. Really love people. And I know they love me but that's not important.

It's not important what you do for me. What's important is what I do for you. I found a new freedom and a new happiness.

Uh sister What was her name? Mother Teresa was in our area 4 or 5 years ago before she was dead. Oh, really?

Yes. Uh I always thought she was an alcoholic. She sure like to hang around with Lord Companions.

I'll tell you for sure. And uh But she had a heart attack in our area in San Diego and she was in a hospital and my buddy cardiologist was take one of the guys taking care of her. And all those doctors said she It was true.

She was just a magic person. She was just so spiritual. You could feel it when you walked in the room.

Some reporter asked her uh her philosophy or whatever it was and it was in the paper. I I carried it around till it yellowed and fell apart. She said to this reporter, "The fruit of faith is love.

And the fruit of love is service. And the fruit of service is peace. I will comprehend the word serenity and I will know peace." The fruit of service is peace.

If you do not you don't have to believe anything that I talk is going to happen to you. All you have to believe is that it happened to me. That a sick, angry, miserable human being as a result of the steps in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I live just how the book promised me.

I live almost every day of my life happy, and joyous, and free. And I hope you do, too. >> >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.