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I heard from Dino and from Jack that he does a real nice job and we were kind of wondering if he was going to make it tonight. Somebody came running in with a big book under their arm, running like a windmill salesman full of brushes. I figured that must be him. He comes from a Primary Purpose group over in Dallas. I've met some people from there and I've heard a lot of good things about that group. I don't want to take any more time. So John, if you'll come up here, let's give my east side welcome.

That stool up there makes me nervous. I'll move it to the other side. For some reason, it feels better on this side than that side. My name is John Kelly. I'm a grateful recovered alcoholic. My sobriety date is September the 4th, 1999, and for that I am very, very grateful. I just saw my sainted mother today, and she's pretty grateful, too. She likes that because I sure put that woman through a lot of misery over the years.

Some might call me fanatical. Some call me a big book dumper. That's the way I was brought up. I'm not going to tell my story tonight. I'm going to get right into the steps. I got sober in September of 1999, but that wasn't my first go-round in this rodeo. I started trying to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous in July of 1988. I've been to literally hundreds and hundreds of meetings all over the state of Texas, all over this great country and the Caribbean. I got piles and piles of desire chips. In the last five, six, seven years of my drinking, I did not want to drink anymore. I didn't want to go to jail anymore. I didn't want to lose any more friends, lose any more jobs, lose any more freedom, lose any more of my dignity. And I had no idea what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was all about.

See, I'm one of these cats that's pretty hip, slick, and cool. You get me sober for a few days and I can hear what these people say in these meetings and I can mimic and I can copy and I can come up with my own stuff, and you'll be patting me on the behind after that meeting and I'll tell you I'm doing great. And I always got drunk. I have no success doing it any other way. So we just go right by the book. We are big book thumpers where I come from.

I've had an Alcoholics Anonymous book since 1988 and I never read the darn thing. I'd read some stuff and some of it would make some sense, some wouldn't make any sense. It just didn't sink in. I didn't really identify with much. I remember the first time I read Bill's story in 1988 and I'm thinking, man, that guy really needs to be sober. I had no concept of what he was talking about because I hadn't done any of that stuff yet. I'm sure a lot more happened to Bill in his life than what's in his story. But when I got sober in '99, my story made his look like a walk in the park.

It was a tedious process to get me to see what was in this book. I thank God every day that I made it to a group where the people in that group had the lights on. I won't mention the group, but my last home group before this one, I got so many desire chips there. They didn't even clap anymore when I got one. They didn't have anything to offer me either. I was convinced that I was just going to die drunk. That's what I tried to do in the summer of '99 because I couldn't stay sober. I'd been in five emergency rooms in about a ten-week period, all alcohol-related.

I was just resigned to the fact that I was going to drink myself to death. That's what I tried to do that entire summer. Drink enough vodka—not the good stuff, Skull—pop that little governor out of the top so you can drink it fast. Somehow on Labor Day weekend, that Friday, I came to with blood all over me. I hadn't been stabbed. I had one thought that crowded out all else: I don't want to die this way.

I detoxed myself not too far from here at my brother's house and I made it to Primary Purpose on that Tuesday of September '99. The first person I saw was this little old man I'd met the year previous, about eighty years old. I was shaking and vibrating and stunk to holy hell. That old man walked up to me and gave me a hug. I looked at him and I said, "I need to talk to you." He looked back at me, over the top of his glasses like your grandpa would do when he means business. He says, "What the hell can I do for you?" I said, "I'm scared and I don't want to drink anymore." He said, "Come home."

We sat down in this little room before the meeting started. This little old man opened up his big book and he must have done a marvelous job twelve-stepping me because it sunk in. We're going to do it the way the old man does it, and it was passed on to him like this, and this is the way we're going to roll.

If you have a big book, you open it up to the title page and it tells you right what this book is about right off the bat. It says: Alcoholics Anonymous is a story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism. I can't tell you how many treatment centers I've been in that tells me I'm always going to be a recovering alcoholic. When I think of that, I'm thinking of some sniveling, whining. I'm always in recovery. That offers me no hope. They're telling me I'm going to recover from alcoholism. This is a book on how they did it.

If you turn past the table of contents to the preface, in the second paragraph it says, "This book has become the basic text for our society. This is a textbook." What do you do with a textbook? We study it, right? When we got to first grade in math class, the teacher passed out math books to everybody. Unless you were a freaking genius, you didn't go to the end of the book and start working big problems, did you? No. We had a teacher who was there to guide each one of us students through the work so that we could learn the principles of mathematics. This is a textbook. I'm going to refer back to it over and over. It's all marked up. Notes in the margin, pages falling apart. I'm going to study it.

Why on earth do I study the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous? If you flip the page, it tells you right there. In the forward to the first edition, this is how we open up our meetings. We don't read "How It Works." That's granted. We were granted that right in the fourth tradition. But it says, and as it was written in 1939: "We of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than a hundred men and women who have recovered."

There's that word again. They hadn't even got to the real numbered pages yet and they mentioned recovered twice. It says, "We've recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body." A hopeless state of mind. Here's my definition: Back in the day when I was drinking, in order for me to get through the day, I had to drink no matter what. And it was killing me. In order for me to live, I had to drink, but it was killing me. That sounds like a conundrum. I couldn't live with the booze, and I sure as heck couldn't live without the booze. But I had to drink. A hopeless state of mind and body.

Now here's another great line, probably one of my favorite lines: "To show other alcoholics precisely how we recovered is the purpose of this book." They're telling me that the textbook of Alcoholics Anonymous is giving you and me precise instructions on how to recover from the deadliest illness known to mankind—alcoholism. Alcoholism kills people that ain't even alcoholics. Precise. What does precise mean? Means exact. No gray area. The big book, the textbook, tells us how to take the steps, when to take the steps, with whom to take the steps. There's prayers and promises all along the way. Promises of what happens when you follow the directions in the big book. And there's some promises that'll come true if you don't follow directions in the big book. I've experienced all those promises at one time or another.

Precise telling me to put the plug in the jug and keep coming back. That sounds good. They don't mean me any harm by it, but if I could not drink and go to meetings, I'd be out there not drinking and going to meetings. I have no successful experience in that. I'm a chronic, end-of-the-line, street-level alcoholic of the hopeless variety. Me sitting around a meeting and hearing about your divorce one more time is not a program of action for me.

It says, "For them we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary." This is the only book where we have instructions on the steps. There's lots of great books put out by Alcoholics Anonymous. I have them all. I encourage you to get them all and read them all. They're awesome. The Twelve and Twelve is an awesome book. There's no instructions in the Twelve and Twelve. It's written by a guy who was twenty years sober at the time. That's like me showing up September the 4th, 1999, and my sponsor that night instead of twelve-stepping me, he told me what his life was like today. Great. How in the heck do you get there from where I'm at? That's why we have this book.

If that rubs you the wrong way, read page 17 of the Twelve and Twelve. It'll tell you that this book is where the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is. It says, "We think this account of our experiences will help everyone to better understand the alcoholic. Many do not comprehend that the alcoholic is a very sick person." So we're going to have chapters called "Doctor's Opinion." They're going to explain this illness. We've got chapter "To the Wives," to the family, afterward, to employers. Why? To let those folks out there know what's killing us.

See, their solution for us drinking is totally different than what our solution is. You know, they get hurt, they stop. I get hurt. Oh, it wasn't that bad. I keep going. It says, "And besides, we're sure that our way of living has its advantages for all." Obviously, we get sober, our lives improve, our family's lives improve, we're better employees, we're better taxpayers, et cetera. But since these twelve steps were adopted, there's over like two hundred and eighty other groups that use the same darn twelve steps. Cocaine Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous—you name it, Anonymous. There's one called Messies Anonymous for people that I guess are too messy or not messy. I don't know. They'd have a relapse if they came to my house. That's for sure. The basic thought on that is the twelve steps work when applied to whatever is killing you out there.

Next part of the book is the Forward to the Second Edition, written in 1955. It tells about how AA grew, how it was started, how it grew. It grew real slow at first. All word of mouth. Bill met Dr. Bob, they got Bill Dodson. Slow, slow, slow until some articles were written. Jack Alexander in particular, and AA blew up. It grew incrementally year after year after year until a little bit later on. The part I want to talk about here is that I know I'm doing the steps, but I got to get ramped up before I get there.

If you look in the Forward to the Second Edition on Roman numeral twenty, five lines down from the top, they give you some statistics. These aren't empirical statistics. They didn't talk to every single member of Alcoholics Anonymous, but the Home Office contacted the groups that were in existence at the time and asked them some general questions about their membership. This is what they generally found to be true. It says: of alcoholics who came to AA and really tried, fifty percent got sober at once and remained that way. So back in the day, early on, half got sober and stayed sober. That's pretty darn good. Real good. There's not a treatment center on this planet that can sniff fifty percent.

It says out of the remaining twenty-five percent returned as time passed. So they had twenty-five percent out of that other fifty percent who had to go do some more drinking. Knuckleheads like me who weren't willing to get a sponsor, weren't willing to help anybody, weren't willing to make amends, whatever the case may be. They went out and did some more drinking and twenty-five percent of them made it back.

It says out of the remainder of those, two out of three returned as time passed. There's groups in existence still today with documentation from way back in the early days that were knocking out seventy-five, eighty-five percent. All right. AA in the year 2000 estimated less than five percent of the folks coming into Alcoholics Anonymous are going to achieve five years of sobriety. I don't know about you, but that sucks.

Well, how could you go from at least fifty percent to less than five percent in a matter of fifty years? How can that happen? I mean, alcohol is alcohol, right? Booze at one hundred proof is one hundred proof. Rotten nagging spouses are still rotten nagging spouses. Crappy jobs are crappy jobs. Problems are problems. Well, what changed?

I'm going to lay out how it worked back in the day and see if this matches up to your experience today. Back in the day, we got this guy. We'll use a guy. He's in the hospital detoxing one more time. His family has thrown more money at his disease than I mean, he's been on the Dr. Phil show. He's been to the best treatment centers and this guy's in the hospital detoxing, dying one more time.

Back in early AA, the guys would come visit this cat in the hospital. We'd sit down with him and we'd tell him our stories. We'd identify with him. We'd find out all we could about this young man. Then we'd leave. Then we'd come back the next day and we'd sit down with him again and we'd go through that same spiel one more time. Find out a little bit more about him. We'd identify with him. We'd tell them our story. We'd tell them what it was like when we were trying to stop drinking and drinking. Then we'd leave. We'd do this for a couple, three or four days. This guy's getting a little more clear-headed while he's in the hospital.

We'd come back to visit him and he'd know one thing: I drink as much booze or more than he ever dreamed of drinking and he's dying and I ain't. He'd say, "You're just like me. How do you stay sober?" Now I got him. Now I get to lay out this program, the spiritual program of action. I become that man's sponsor. We go through the steps as outlined in this book. This man recovers and now he is helping another man. That's the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Folks, not once did I say it was sitting around a table talking about our days, the IRS, any of that stuff. I mean, if your doctor diagnosed you with cancer, you wouldn't go to a meeting talking about cancer for ninety days, would you? No, I don't think so.

So let's find out what it means to be a real alcoholic because if we don't understand step one, all the rest aren't going to make a difference. We're going to go to the Doctor's Opinion. This doctor's opinion was written by William D. Silkworth. He worked at Towns Hospital in New York City, a little hospital right off Central Park. He worked with over fifty thousand of us alcoholics and drug addicts during his tenure at Towns Hospital. He was an expert on us. He loved us. But he couldn't figure out why is it that guy or that gal who comes to his hospital drinking to excess—maybe they're going through a divorce or maybe they're just going through a period of their life where they're drinking way too much—end up in his hospital and they counsel them. They nurse them back to health. They give them some hydrotherapy. Whatever that means, I guess it means we're really clean when we leave there. They do all they can. This person's scared to death that they're going to lose the rest of their family or their standing in society or whatever the case may be. This person leaves the hospital never to return. They learn their lesson.

Then you got guys like me. I go to the same hospital, get the same treatment, knowing full well when I leave there I cannot so much as take one drink of alcohol or I'm going to lose my job, my house, my car, my kids, my freedom, my dignity. Knowing all that, I leave that hospital in high hopes. In a short amount of time, I'm right back to drinking. Man's been trying to answer that riddle since booze was invented. They've been praying on us, moving us from here to there, giving us hobbies. They tried everything. Finally, they just came up with a solution. They just lock us up for it.

This doctor came up with a theory. When this book came out, it was just that theory. If you can ever get a hold of a first edition, you'll notice he doesn't even sign his name. It's just anonymous doctor, I think, but I don't remember what it says. Since then, science has proven his theory to be one hundred percent accurate.

Step one says: "We admitted we are powerless over alcohol, now a completely different thought, a hyphen, that our lives have become unmanageable."

So let's see what the doctor says. He says, "We believe and so suggested a few years ago that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of allergy." He's saying if you're a real alcoholic, a chronic alcoholic, your body reacts differently to booze than ninety percent of the world's population. They estimate about one in ten of us have what it takes to be an alcoholic. An allergy. An allergy is just an abnormal reaction to something you eat or drink.

Who's allergic to penicillin in here? Susanna, what's up? What happens when you have a penicillin allergy? I've heard that to a lady a couple days ago and she says I die. She went straight past the hives and throwing up, straight into die. She just had a flare for the dramatic. Isn't that odd? If I get an infection or something like that, I can go to my doctor. He gives me penicillin and it cures me. It fixes me. Susanna can get this very same infection and go to her doctor and they give her penicillin and she swells up, her throat constricts, she has a hard time breathing, and maybe if they gave her enough penicillin she would die. She has the allergic reaction. That's just the way she is. That's the way I am.

It doesn't matter. He's saying if you're an alcoholic, you have an allergic reaction to alcohol. He says that this is how the allergic reaction manifests. I don't break out into hives like normal allergies, and I've broken out into some stuff on alcohol, but I haven't broken out of anything. But this is what I got. This is what the allergy does in a real alcoholic. He says that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in those other people.

The phenomenon of craving. It's one of the things that sets me apart from those normal drinkers or those hard drinkers. See, I get the thought in my head, I'm going to take a drink, and I take the drink and I trigger this allergy. If she takes penicillin, once she takes it, she's going to have the reaction. There's nothing she can do except go to the doctor and get an antidote or whatever. I take a drink of alcohol, I trigger this allergy. Bam. My brain says, "Let's have another and another and another."

It was just my intention. It was Friday night. I just got paid. My boss's birthday. Everybody's going to a little pool hall to sing happy birthday to my boss. I call my girlfriend and she says, "Hey, I'm making your special dinner." I've got the Wonder Woman costume all lined up. It'll be ready at eight o'clock. I'm like, "It's my boss's birthday. I'll be home by eight, right?" It's my intention. I love the Wonder Woman costume. But I get to this place, everybody's having a good time, and I take that first drink and bam, I trigger that allergy. Now my brain says, "I'll have another and another." Now I'm doing shots. Now I'm at a bar where the girls don't have any clothes on. Now I'm here. Now I'm there. Who knows when I make it home?

The phenomenon of craving. See, it happens to alcoholics. It don't happen to those other people. I mean, did you ever get to a point where you said, "No, I'm too drunk tonight"? I didn't utter those words. I drank till I passed out and I drank as soon as I came to. That's how I do this thing. I'm powerless. I've lost control once I start. I cannot control how much I drink.

That makes sense. It's my job in the beginning when I sit down with a newcomer to lay this out. It ain't my job to pat him on the behind and tell him I'm going to love him in sobriety. My job is to paint the picture. I'm going to paint the picture as dark as I can. Why? Because that's my experience. I drink. I can't control how much I drink.

If this was my only problem—and I know there's been many, many times where I woke up after one of those bad nights and I thought, "This has got to stop. I've drunk too much again. I've just got to stop." I think alcohol is the problem. Well, if this was the problem, what would be my solution? Don't drink. Makes perfect sense to a normal person. Oh, you drink too much, so don't drink. Well, that doesn't work out for me.

Why? Because of the second half of step one. My life is unmanageable. Why is that? Because my mind always leads me back to the drink. Always. It always leads me back to the drink.

I'll read the rest of this paragraph here. It says, "These allergic types can." And the reason I read this is because I remember in my first or second treatment center—and I still have the big book from there with all my notes and everything—but on this one particular big book, they told me that's why my life is unmanageable. So I'm going to read what they say. It says: "These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all. Once having formed the habit, found they can't break it. Once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them, they become astonishingly difficult to solve."

I'm just listening to what they said and they said, "That's why your life's unmanageable." That made perfect sense to me. Right? No, that's not the right answer. Those are consequences. Hell, you drink from the time you get up till the time you pass out. Life becomes increasingly difficult to handle. Problems pile up. Those are consequences. That has nothing to do with why my life's unmanageable.

The second half of step one. The reason my life is unmanageable is to save my life, to keep that job, to keep my freedom, to keep my girlfriend, to keep my kids, I am unable to manage the decision to stay away from the drink. I cannot do it on my own power. I've tried it over and over and over. That is why my life has become unmanageable. It has nothing to do with those consequences. Nothing. The circumstances of my life don't make me an alcoholic.

Down at the bottom of that page, they say, "Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol." That's a pretty true statement. Let's make it a real true statement. Alcoholic men and women drink essentially because we love the effect produced by alcohol. I mean, come on. Don't tell me you just drank just for the taste. I've drunk some nasty stuff in my day, including rubbing alcohol.

Hey, if you're stuck out in the country and you ain't got no wheels and all they got is rubbing alcohol and you need a drink, you'll drink it. Or I did at least. I don't recommend that to anyone. I hear you can go blind or whatever. I don't know. I was in Iceland. You should see the stuff they drink there.

Anyway, I want the effect. Think about it. I went through life before I ever took a drink. I didn't know this until now that I'm sober and all this stuff, looking back, reflecting upon my life, but I needed a drink long before I had a drink. My girlfriend had it right. She drank when she was eight. She held out as long as she could. She needed a drink when she was eight. I held out till I was fifteen.

See, I'm the first kid. There's two sets of twins behind me. I'm the first grandkid. Granddad was pretty well off in West Texas. I had the best shoes, the best clothes. My family loved me. There's no alcohol in my direct family. I had everything. The future looked bright. I played every sport. I was great at every sport. I made great grades. Everybody patted me on the butt telling me how great I'm going to be when I grow up. I dreamed that I was going to go to UT and be a lawyer like my uncle and work at his law firm. I'd be retired by now.

Except I had this little voice in my head. You're telling me I'm great, but I had a little voice in my head going, "You're a freaking loser." We moved around a lot. I was self-conscious. I was real shy. I'd meet some friends and then we'd move. I had that little voice in my head. I'd walk into a room and I'd think, "You're all staring at me. What did I do? I just didn't fit."

The twins below me, they bond with each other and I just don't fit. Until I was fifteen at tennis camp in Florida and I took my first drink and then I fit. All the dots were connected. The keys to the universe were in my possession. Those chicks that I was with, they wanted me. I was hip, slick, and cool. I want that effect. I want that effect.

It says, "This sensation is so elusive." See, I had that effect for years and years and years until the tables turned and I couldn't quite keep that effect. Oh, I'd just drink right on past it. It was fleeting. I don't know if it was the third drink or the fifth martini or whatever, but I'd get that effect. But I had already triggered the allergy and I'm gone. I overshoot the effect over and over.

The sensation is elusive. It's like trying to catch a greased-up balloon or a pig or something. It's elusive. I can't just get to that sense of ease and comfort and stop. Why? Because I got this allergy telling me to drink another and another and another.

It says, "That while they admit it is injurious, oh, I got some injuries. The injuries don't make me an alcoholic, but I got plenty of injuries. I've been to jails only two times. I've been to jail twice. I mean, it's not like I'm a hardened veteran of jail. I can't stand up here and say, oh, I could do jail time standing on my head. That's nothing. I've wrecked cars. Most of the wrecks I've had were not my cars. They were your cars. I was always driving them. I've been to five treatment centers. I don't know how many hospitals. I don't know how many friends I've lost. How many great jobs I've lost. Family members I've lost. How about dignity? I lost some dignity, too.

Alcohol took me to places I never dreamed I'd go. Took me with people I never dreamed. Hell, I'd go home with Bo Derek, wake up with Bo Diddley. I've used that joke for like six years now and it always gets a laugh. Yeah, I had some injuries. That's the truth. I leave this building today and I go have a drink, that stuff starts to happen in a hurry.

A little bit before I got sober, I left one day. Before I'd ever had a drink, I had a little like two months of sobriety. I left this little halfway house. All I was going to do was look for an apartment and I ended up in jail with a felony possession, PI, and kicking a cop in the chest who was trying to pull me out of a cab. That's where my drinking took me. That's the truth about my drinking.

But what does my brain tell me? It's not that bad. Just a little bad luck. I had bad luck for the nineties. Everything was bad. I had a psychiatrist when I was like nineteen years old who was telling me, you know, list all the bad things in your life. And even at nineteen, all the bad things that I considered bad in my life were all a direct result of alcohol. I drank seventeen more years.

He says to them, "Well, I'm going to hold my finger on that page. I'm going to go over here to page twenty-four. There's a solution. It's in italics. This is the bad news of step one." It says, "The fact is that most alcoholics for reasons yet obscure have lost the power of choice in drink." They're saying if you're a real alcoholic, you ain't got no choice in the matter. You're going to drink. It's not a matter of if you're going to drink, it's when you're going to drink.

It says, "Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent." Now here's the tricky part. This is the part I like to ram home all the time in little treatment centers because this is the part I never understood. It says, "We're unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. Welcome to your life being unmanageable."

They're saying that the day I take my last drink, within a certain amount of time—and it varies. For me, my life unravels quickly when I'm not drinking. So the time frame is very, very short. But they're saying the day I take that last drink, I get removed from that last drink. My little brain is unable to come up with a solution to not drink. I can't remember it.

Well, let's do a little test. Close your eyes and think of the worst, most painful, degrading experience you had as a direct result of drinking. Now, what were you doing twenty-four, forty-eight hours later? Oh, drinking. Ain't that amazing? Amazing.

The first time I got thrown in jail, God, I prayed all day long. I'd been kind of twelve-stepping a little bit and I kind of knew a little bit more than I had done in previous times. I'm praying all day long in there. God, if you'll get me out of this, I'll do anything. I'll call Frank back. I'll get the best lawyer I can get and I'll get out of this and I'll go back to my meetings. I'm just praying all day long. I'm in bad shape. Bad, bad shape. Shaking it out. It's horrible.

My little boss at the time bonded me out that day. I got thrown in jail on Sunday night sometime. I was bonded out Monday evening and I'm walking out and I'm putting my watch on my wrist and my watch says eight forty-seven and I ran across the street and bought me another bottle of vodka. You think that I walked into the liquor store and put that vodka up there and said, "Hey, I just got the hell kicked out of me and I got a felony possession, PI, kicking the cop in the chest. Give me another bottle of this stuff, man"? No. But I had to drink. I drink no matter what.

See, left to my own devices, I'm unable to manage the decision to stay away from booze. I've lost the power to choose. Those are the only two questions you need to answer in your little heart of hearts for step one. I know they've got little pamphlets that say twenty questions or forty questions. Hey, if you answer those two questions, you're going to answer all the rest of those other questions. I think. I don't know. I've answered them all. Hell, drink in the morning, drink at night. Yeah, I mean, you name it. Lost jobs, lost everything. It doesn't matter. I've lost the power to control it. I've lost the power to choose. Welcome to step one.

But let's look at what Bill says more about step one. Go over to page thirty. And I love the way he writes. This is why we do a big book study all the time in my group. Why? So we can learn what's in here.

Look what he says: "Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics." See, when I was in college, I'd be proud to tell you I was an alcoholic. Why? Because it was fun. I drank better than most people. I didn't get sloppy back then. I didn't slur my words. I could drive better, dance better. You name it, man. It was good. I was proud of it.

But towards the end, now I'm hiding booze and I lived alone. I don't know what I was thinking. We cleaned up my apartment when I sobered up. There's booze everywhere.

I didn't want to admit that I was a real alcoholic. See, I went through like most of the nineties trying to still prove that you were the reason why I was an alcoholic. That's why I moved to Puerto Rico. I got drunker. You know what? I just had to get away from Dallas. I tried to blame it on my family for a while. Trying to wish upon myself—I mean, I'm not making light of this—but wishing that I was