Laughter, Sobriety, and the Spiritual Life: AA Speaker – Paul O. – Laguna Niguel, CA
AA speaker Paul O. from Laguna Niguel, CA shares 30 years of sobriety, from psychiatric ward to spiritual awakening through laughter and acceptance.
Paul O. from Laguna Niguel, CA celebrates 30 years of sobriety in this AA speaker tape filled with humor and spiritual insight. After ending up in a psychiatric ward while working as a pharmacist, Paul initially resisted AA but eventually found his spiritual awakening through laughter at meetings. He walks through his experience with the steps, particularly Step 3 surrender and Steps 6 & 7 on character defects, and how accepting reality without approval transformed his life from a downward spiral to continuous growth.
This AA speaker tape features Paul O. sharing 30 years of sobriety, beginning with his psychiatric hospitalization and resistance to AA meetings. Paul describes how he found his spiritual awakening through laughter at meetings and learned to surrender his will to God through Step 3. He emphasizes accepting reality without needing to approve of it and explains how working the steps repeatedly every five years has moved him to new levels of spiritual growth.
Episode Summary
Paul O. opens his talk with characteristic humor, describing himself as “a very mild alcoholic” and joking that he “wasn’t even an alcoholic” until he’d been attending AA meetings for seven months. Speaking to a room full of newcomers in Laguna Niguel, California, Paul celebrates his 30th sober birthday with a blend of comedy and profound spiritual insight that makes this one of the most entertaining yet meaningful AA speaker talks on surrender and acceptance you’ll encounter.
His story begins in the psychiatric ward of a hospital where he worked as a pharmacist. Paul had escalated from using alcohol as a sleep aid during pharmacy school to eventually injecting Amytal to get to sleep at night while taking amphetamines to wake up in the morning. The complexity of his drug and alcohol use led to a complete breakdown, landing him in what he calls “the nut ward” where occupational therapists insisted he make leather belts as therapy.
When a psychiatrist suggested he talk to someone from AA, Paul’s first reaction was dismissive: “My god, don’t I have enough problems of my own without trying to help some drunk from AA?” The AA member who visited him was Frank, who burst into the room “yelling at the top of his voice, ‘My name is Frank and I’m an alcoholic.'” Paul was embarrassed for Frank, thinking it inappropriate to lead with being an alcoholic when meeting a stranger.
Initially attending meetings only to impress his psychiatrist and earn “brownie points” to get discharged, Paul had no intention of continuing with AA. He wasn’t an alcoholic, after all – the meetings were just a means to an end. But his wife began attending meetings and enjoying them, which bothered Paul immensely. He recalls the futility of “sitting at home on a Saturday night drinking while your non-alcoholic spouse is off laughing it up at an AA meeting.”
Paul’s spiritual awakening came through laughter. After seven months of trying to analyze what everyone found so amusing at meetings, he describes the pivotal moment: “I found out the alcoholics laugh at anything. Laugh at nothing. Laugh just to be laughing. Then I sat there trying to figure it out seven months and I ended up going to one meeting too many. And one night I laughed with them. Haven’t had a drink since.”
This experience of finding God through laughter shapes Paul’s entire spiritual perspective. He’s convinced his Higher Power laughs every time alcoholics laugh, “even if he doesn’t understand the joke, just enjoys the laughter.” This insight connects to the broader theme found in Don P.’s talk about spiritual transformation, where spiritual awakening often comes in unexpected ways.
Paul’s approach to Step 3 is both practical and profound. He modifies the Third Step prayer throughout his day, telling God, “I offer myself and this situation to you to do with as you wish. Now, I would like it to turn out to be phenomenally successful. But if you have it in your mind that this is the night for me to make a complete fool of myself, well, at least one of us will have a good time.” This surrender isn’t passive resignation but active trust in God’s direction.
His work with Steps 6 and 7 reveals a revolutionary understanding of character defects. Paul explains that he was taught all his life that he could do better if he tried harder, but AA showed him something different. Instead of asking God to help him remove his defects, he learned that “God won’t help me do my will, but he’s perfectly willing for me to help him do his will.” He describes becoming “friendly” with his character defects rather than fighting them, explaining that they’re “really energized” by conflict but can be managed through acceptance.
Paul emphasizes the ongoing nature of step work, redoing the steps approximately every five years and finding that each time moves him “to a new plateau in sobriety.” This isn’t because the steps don’t work the first time, but because spiritual growth is continuous and each encounter with the steps reveals deeper truths.
The concept of acceptance versus approval runs throughout Paul’s message. His life changed when he accepted “one reality” – that he was an alcoholic – without approving of it. He realized that approval had been the impediment to acceptance his entire life. “I can’t think of a single significant thing in reality of my life where anything was changed just because I didn’t approve of it,” he observes. This insight transformed his relationship with all of life’s circumstances.
Paul describes his life as a giant V-shaped graph, declining from birth in 1918 until July 31, 1967, when everything changed direction. Since accepting his alcoholism and working the AA program, his life has been “getting better and better and better.” Even when it goes down temporarily, he knows specific actions to take: attend more meetings, read the Big Book, talk to newcomers, make program calls, or start new meetings.
The talk is filled with Paul’s observations about the voices in his head – what he calls “the people in my head” who argue about what he should say or do. Rather than fighting these mental distractions, he’s learned to listen to all of them and then decide what action to take. This acceptance of his internal dialogue reflects his broader philosophy of accepting reality without requiring approval.
Paul’s marriage to his wife provides another lens for understanding acceptance and communication. Married 57 years at the time of this talk, he believes that “people treat me the way I have taught them to treat me.” If he doesn’t like how someone treats him, it’s his responsibility to change his behavior rather than trying to change theirs. This principle transforms marriage into “an ongoing test of one’s communication skills.”
Throughout the talk, Paul maintains that his job is “to accept life whether we like it or not,” while simultaneously following the Big Book’s instruction that “we absolutely insist on enjoying life.” This seeming paradox – accepting everything while insisting on enjoyment – captures the essence of spiritual living in recovery. Paul notes that AA is unique among medical textbooks in requiring that patients “absolutely insist on enjoying your recovery.”
The humor never masks the seriousness of Paul’s message. His 30 years of continuous sobriety demonstrate that spiritual growth through laughter, surrender, and acceptance creates lasting recovery. He wants “all I can get out of this program” because he believes nobody can live long enough to receive everything AA has to offer.
Paul closes by acknowledging his love for his audience, even referencing his initial skepticism when speakers said “I love you all” in early sobriety. His journey from cynical newcomer to spiritually awakened old-timer illustrates the transformative power of acceptance, surrender, and finding God in unexpected places – including the sound of laughter at an AA meeting.
Notable Quotes
I didn’t become an alcoholic until I’d been coming to these meetings for 7 months. I found out the alcoholics laugh at anything. I sat there trying to figure it out seven months and I ended up going to one meeting too many. And one night I laughed with them. Haven’t had a drink since.
God won’t help me do my will, but he’s perfectly willing for me to help him do his will.
I can’t think of a single significant thing in reality of my life where anything was changed just because I didn’t approve of it.
People treat me the way I have taught them to treat me. If I don’t like the way somebody’s treating me, it’s up to me to change my behavior rather than to try to get them to change theirs.
We absolutely insist on enjoying life. I’ve never seen a textbook on how to recover from a seemingly hopeless state where part of the recovery was that you absolutely had to insist on enjoying your recovery.
Steps 6 & 7 – Character Defects
Acceptance
Spiritual Awakening
Humor in Recovery
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Full Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Good evening. My name is Paul and I'm actually a very mild alcoholic. [laughter] Things that Max said were grossly exaggerated. [laughter] Truth is that at the time she was talking about, I wasn't even an alcoholic. I didn't become an alcoholic until I'd been coming to these meetings for seven months. [laughter] It wasn't funny. It changed my life dramatically. I'm glad to be here. I'm really glad to be here. I've had a wonderful weekend already and it's just now getting started.
For the rest of you, Denny and Phyllis were our hosts and hostess. We've had a wonderful time and really enjoyed it. Everybody should have a chance to be hosted by them at least once in your life. [laughter] We had a great meeting this morning at seven o'clock, and I'm just delighted with that. I'm looking forward to a great weekend and particularly want to look forward to Earl's talk tomorrow night. Earl, stand up and wave to the people. I know you'd love that. Come on, come on. Stand up. [laughter] [applause]
Too bad you can't see the blush that I can see.
[laughter]Oh jeez, I just made a terrible blunder. One of the things I learned early in AA is that you never smart mouth anybody who is going to follow you to the podium. [laughter] Oh dear. [laughter]
It was interesting the way Kristen opened the meeting with the Serenity Prayer. It reminded me. I went to Colorado one time to talk. They were having a fundraiser, and it was the second year that they had had it. The first year was on a Saturday afternoon. They had a meal at noon, followed by a speaker and other stuff. The first year they had 150 people, and they were quite happy with it, but wanted to have it again.
They asked me to come and talk. What happened was the fellow who was setting it up and doing the work got what he called a resentment. I don't know if you have those here in this area. But he quit and called it off. Well, that made everybody in town have a resentment that he called it off. They decided he couldn't do that by God—they were going to set it up and do it themselves. Instead of having 150 people, they shot for 300. Well, they worked so hard that they had 500 come to the thing.
What that did was put a strain on the caterer. It was a catered meal. The caterer said, "But it's okay. I can do it. It'll just take me a little extra time to get it ready." The other problem was that the local minister was supposed to come and read the invocation, and he hadn't shown up. So they solved that by going to one of the old-timers and asking if he would give the invocation if the minister didn't show up. The old-timer said, "Well, yeah, yeah, I would do that," and he started thinking about what he would say.
Meanwhile, the caterer is working and getting things going, and the alcoholics are getting hungrier and hungrier. The old-timer is making notes on what he's going to write for his invocation. Finally, the caterer says, "Well, the food's ready. We can serve now." The alcoholics all wanted to go. No, no, they said, "You can't eat now. You have to have the invocation first."
So they called up the old-timer to come and give the invocation before they could eat. He got up there and started to read, and the first word was the word God, and they all recited the Serenity Prayer and ran for the food. I don't know what the moral of that story is. I guess that if you're an old-timer and they ask you to give an invocation, don't bring God into it too soon.
Anyway, we're glad to be here. People asked if we drove up or flew, and I said we flew up. One of the first things people ask you when you fly somewhere is did you have a nice trip and a nice flight. What we had happen on this flight was there were two flight attendants—a man and a woman, a boy and a girl—and they were going down the aisle with the cart giving out drinks. They were right by us, and he served us. Then he turned to the man in the seat behind me and said, "What would you like to drink, sir?" and gave him his peanuts and napkin. The man said, "He would like some white wine." She went through her cart and didn't find any white wine. She turned to the male attendant and said to him, "Do we have any white wine?"
This is all happening right here beside us. The man said, "No, we don't have any white wine, but we have plenty of red wine." So the woman attendant turned to the man behind me and said, "Sir, we don't have any white wine. Would you like red wine?" And he had to think about it. [laughter] Yeah. [laughter]
Until he got to thinking about that, I hadn't realized what a serious social blunder it would be to drink the wrong color wine [laughter] with airline peanuts, you know. [applause]
This actually brings me to something. I'd like to ask a favor of somebody. I've been looking for somebody who is planning a trip. You know all the airlines have a magazine they put out. American Airlines—it's American Way or something—and in this magazine I was reading through it. One of the departments is this gal who writes every issue on the best buys. She'll talk about the best audio and the best video and the best play and the best movie and the best book and the best this and the best that. Under the best drinks, she has a thing under the best wines. What she said was that the 1992 Napa Valley Chardonnay has a crisp pear apple flavor with a touch of clove at the end.
Now, what I'm looking for [laughter] is somebody—somebody who's planning on going out there anyway. [applause] I really—it's. Remember, it's the 1992 Napa Valley Chardonnay. I don't really care too much about the crisp pear apple flavor, but I really would like to know, does it really leave you with a touch of clove at the end? [applause] [laughter]
Thunderbird never left me with a clove. [applause] [laughter] Thunderbird was my favorite white wine, and Ripple was my favorite red wine, you know. So if you're out there, would you check? It's not worth me going out to check it out. Not worth me going.
In fact, the last day of last month was my birthday. It was my 30th birthday. [applause] Oh, no. No. You're nowhere near as impressed as I am. [laughter] Thirty years is the longest I have ever gone without a drink, you know. [laughter] Thirty years is a long time between drinks for me. [laughter]
The part about it too is thirty years without a drink, and I'm not even thirsty. Yeah. [laughter] When I was drinking, I was always thirsty. It seems like nothing makes me thirstier than having a drink. Alcoholism is a self-perpetuating thirst. The best way to not be thirsty is to not drink. It took me a long time to figure that one out. It doesn't make sense.
Actually, one thing I noticed—we didn't ask for newcomers. Could we see the hands of the people with less than a year of sobriety? Everybody with—oh my goodness. Look.
Oh my goodness. Wonderful. [applause] [applause]
That's wonderful. That's wonderful. The place is crawling with them. We love that. We love that. We love to have newcomers. I mean, uh, Chuck—I said Chuck, his name was Bill. Bill W—one of the two [laughter]—they haven't been around long. You know, people are always changing their names. Every time I learn what their name is, they change it.
Bill W—one of the two founders of Alcoholics Anonymous—wrote something that I read. He said that carrying the message of Alcoholics Anonymous—carrying the message that alcoholism is a disease and that AA is a spiritual answer to that disease—carrying the message of Alcoholics Anonymous, he said, is our primary aim and the chief reason for our existence. I thought, God, those are pretty strong words. Our primary aim and the chief reason for our existence.
Then I got the word "our." But does he talk about us as individuals or us as groups or both? But apparently, carrying the message is the most important thing we do. One of the main ways or most common ways of carrying the message is by filling seats in an AA meeting and participating, being part of it, and carrying the message to newcomers, especially, and to each other, even. It's particularly fun to carry the message to newcomers. I'd keep coming back to AA even if it wasn't keeping me sober just to see what happens to the newcomers. It's exciting to see the change that takes place in people when they get sober and how, when the Alanons sober up—so we're you newcomers. They say you're the lifeblood of the party and you're the most important people in the room and all that crap. Actually, I'm the most important, but we're really glad you're here.
In fact, we're so glad you're here that we don't care whether you're glad you're here. [laughter]
As a matter of fact, if you're really new here tonight and you're just really happy, happy, happy to be here, we may not be able to help you. [applause] [laughter] At least not until you get off of whatever you're on, you know. That's why they say keep coming back, you know. [laughter]
Anyway, we're glad you're here, and I'm glad to be here. I talk about me being the most important person in the room. You thought I was kidding, but I'm not.
We have a new meeting there. We started a topic discussion meeting, and the format is for the leader to come in with a topic, and then we talk on that topic for an hour. This gal came in and announced that her topic was going to be bondage of self. I thought, "That's a dumb topic. She won't get anybody to participate with that." Well, she did. I thought of a lot of good things, and they didn't even call on me.
But you know, that bondage of self—I hadn't paid much attention to that until she said that, and I got to thinking about it. That bondage of self—I came to realize that I am basically the most interesting person I know. I really find me fascinating. I love to think about me. [laughter] Somebody asked me the other night, "Well, have you figured out what you're going to talk about tomorrow night?" I said, "Yeah, me." You know, I love to think about where I've been and where I wish I'd been, where I wish I hadn't been, [clears throat] things I've done, things that I wish I hadn't done, things I maybe will do, things that are going to happen, things that might not happen, things to worry about. I love to think about me.
You are interesting, but you're nothing compared to me. That relieved me of bondage of self. I mean, I hope he doesn't take that too seriously. What would you think about if you—anyway, in fact, somebody said to me, "Do you still get nervous when you're going to talk?" I said, "Well, I don't think of it as nervousness. I'd rather think of it as anticipatory anxiety." Sounds a little more scientific.
Besides, what I do is I take—I love the Third Step Prayer, and I use it. The Third Step Prayer says, "God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will." I modify that when I'm going to talk. In fact, the first thing in the morning before I really get out of bed, I say the Serenity Prayer, the Third Step Prayer, and the Seventh Step Prayer. Then at breakfast, Max and I say those three prayers, and we read some stuff that we read, and we have a period of meditation.
Then during the day, frequently if I have something I'm going to do or something that's a little bit scary or whatever, I'll say the Third Step Prayer. Sometimes when I've got nothing to do, I'll say that prayer. But like when I'm going to talk, I'll say, "God, I offer myself and this situation to you to do with as you wish. Now, I would like it to turn out to be phenomenally successful. I'd like to say things that will ring in their hearts forever. But if you have it in your mind that this is the night for me to make a complete fool of myself, well, at least one of us will have a good time." [laughter]
Sometimes he really has a lot of fun. He refers to it as having something to do with humility. I don't enjoy that. So anyway, I leave it up to him.
Speaking of humility, I think I'm really impressed with my humility. [laughter] She bumped me. I'm proud of my humility. I think I handle things very well.
Anyway, I guess that's enough for the introduction. I should get into my story.
I was born November 3rd, 1918. It was a cold and blustery night. [laughter] I remember thinking to myself, [laughter]—I wasn't talking very much then. I remember thinking to myself, "What am I doing here? Why wasn't I consulted on this?" Yeah. [laughter] I think I carried that thought the rest of my life.
I used to drink socially. I didn't have a drinking problem. I was neurotic. In fact, I remember—this should be added to the things we have tried in chapter three. I was reading a medical journal, and it talked about how carbon dioxide inhalations were good treatment for psychoneurosis. I've always thought that I was neurotic, and I came from a very neurotic family. I used to endear myself to my family by telling them how neurotic I thought we all were. Not alcoholics, but neurotics. I thought, "This carbon dioxide inhalation should be good for me."
What it is—carbon dioxide is the thing that makes you breathe. It's the thing that keeps you from holding your breath longer than you can hold it. It's not lack of oxygen. It's the fact that your body builds up carbon dioxide that makes you breathe. If you hyperventilate, you're overbreathing. You're blowing off the carbon dioxide and you feel breathless, but actually you need to hold your breath or breathe in a plastic bag and accumulate the carbon dioxide. I'm going to send you all a bill on this. [laughter] You don't get all this physiological instruction for nothing.
But anyway, when you're breathing carbon dioxide and you keep breathing too much of it, you breathe faster and faster and faster and deeper and deeper and deeper, and the lights flash and the bells ring and you go blind and everything gets louder and louder and louder, and all of a sudden your brain explodes and you pass out. I thought, "Boy, that ought to cure something." [laughter]
I will try that. But I couldn't see my way to going to any doctor and saying, "I'm neurotic and I want some carbon dioxide inhalations. Here's what it says in this medical journal." Besides, I was the best doctor I knew. So I just called up the gas company—not your gas company, but the gas company that sells tanks of gas—and ordered a tank of carbon dioxide gas.
The guy delivers it in the big truck with these big tanks. It was a tank about so big and so big around, must weigh about 250 pounds. Had it on a dolly, runs it up to the front door and says, "Where do you want this?" I said, "Well, in the master bedroom, naturally, you know. Where would you think I would want it?"
You know, with a hose and a mask and a valve you can turn on, it didn't take any medical degree to know you should lie down to do this. You put the mask on and you turn the gas on, but you didn't have to be a genius to know you needed somebody to turn it off, you know. So I go into the living room, and Max is watching TV, and I said, "I'm going to take this treatment, and I'm going to breathe faster and faster, and finally my brain's going to explode and I'm going to pass out. When I pass out, will you come in and take the mask off and turn the gas off?" [laughter]
She said, "I suppose." [laughter]
Anyway, it didn't work. It didn't take care of my drinking problem. I didn't have a drinking problem. I had a sleeping problem. I had a lot of marital problems. Geez, Max, as she said, she drove me to drink for 28 years.
In fact, as we were growing up—we've known each other since we were four years old—the Gansline boys, her uncles, were alcoholics, and they were always getting their names in the Anaheim Review and put in jail for common drunk. As we were growing up, my parents were not the least bit happy about me all the time playing with the Gansline girl. They were afraid that when we grew up, we might get married and I might turn out to be an alcoholic. [laughter]
By God, they were right. [laughter]
It's not really funny. Most people don't know how they got to be an alcoholic. I do. I'm an alcoholic by marriage. [applause]
Anyway, yeah, we had our problems here and there, and it caused me to have trouble sleeping. I used to—I found out that when I went to pharmacy school, I found out that I'd work, go to school all day, work in the drugstore all evening, and then study all evening, and then jump in bed and everything I'd been studying had been running through my brain. In the morning, I'd be both tired and stupid. I found that I could drink a couple of beers, jump in bed, sleep real fast, and wake up smart. That's how I got through pharmacy school—drinking more and more.
As time went by, I found it took more and more to get me to sleep, and it kept me asleep for a shorter and shorter period of time. So I had to repeat whatever I had taken to get to sleep. It increased to the point where it was harder and harder to get up in the morning. Then finally I started taking amphetamines to get going in the morning. I shouldn't mention drugs. This isn't the place for that. But I feel I do owe them at least an honorable mention. [laughter] I don't know that I could have had the stamina to have completed my pharmacy training period if it hadn't been for them. [laughter] They did tend to affect my voice, and sometimes I couldn't listen fast enough to hear what I was saying.
I'd think, "My God, what are you saying that again for? You already said it again. I don't know. It just sounds so good. I think I'll say it again." [laughter] You know, that's you have to take. Finally, the ultimate of trying to work on a sleeping problem. That's a really good oxymoron if I ever heard one—working on a sleeping problem. Because if you're working on your sleeping problem and you find something that works, you've got to think, "Oh man, what was that? I've got to remember what that was so I can do it again," you know. You're constantly alert to see whether or not you're sleeping. [laughter]
The epitome of that was that I finally was injecting Amytal at night in order to get to sleep. I would go through the day taking pills, and in the evening drinking, and then it was time to go to bed. I'd keep Amytal or pentothal or anything at all. I'd keep it in my bag, and the bag in the car, and the car in the garage. In the garage, thank God, was attached to the house. I'd go out, and I'd try to mix up the stuff and get it in the syringe. Then I'd try to figure out how much I had to take out of the uppers and how much of the downers, how much I can squirt in, take it out, take it in, throw it in the bag, throw the bag in the car, slam the car door, and run down the hall so I could jump in bed. [laughter]
It was very tricky to judge it. It took a lot of experience. It wasn't entirely practical, because the least little bit too much and it just zings right under the car, you know. [laughter] But that wasn't too bad. The worst part was the least little bit not enough. I'd squirt it in, take it out, take it, throw it in the back, throw it in the back of the car, slam the car door, run down the hall, jump in bed, and nothing would happen. You know, half measures got me nowhere at all on this thing.
Even when it did work—when I did get just the right dose—you know, you take the needle out, you're supposed to put a band-aid on and keep it antiseptic and all that. I didn't have time for that. I didn't have time to put a band-aid on. So I would put my arm up like this and hope that gravity would take care of it. I'd do all this one-handed, throw it in the car, and run down the hall. I'd run down the hall with one arm up in the air, and I'd run into Max and try to act casual, you know.
It's actually hard to be casual when you're in a hurry and it's tight. [laughter]
Anyway, I ended up in the nut ward. That's what I did. I remember sitting there in the nut ward. They wanted me to make leather belts. In fact, at that particular hospital, there were fanatics—fanatics on leather belts. [laughter] You can't graduate. I'll bet if they had a Senate investigation, they'd find people who've been there for years, and they won't let them out till they make something useful. They wanted me to make a leather belt.
I told them. I said, "I have a whole wall. I have a wall full of licenses and certificates and diplomas and papers to prove that I've been educated way beyond my level of intelligence. I don't see how making leather belts would improve my life in any way. I didn't understand the philosophy, and besides, I didn't understand the instructions."
Which is not my fault. That's the fault of that dumb occupational therapist, because I've always known if you don't understand something well enough to explain it to me so I understand it, then you don't understand it as well as you're supposed to. She explained it to me three times, and I wasn't going to embarrass her by asking her a fourth time.
So I was sitting there in the nut ward commiserating with myself about what's a nice guy like me doing in a place like this, you know. This dumb psychiatrist, who couldn't see that my problems were strictly marital, walked up behind me and wanted to know would I be willing to talk to a man from Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought, "My God, don't I have enough problems of my own without trying to help some drunk from AA?" [laughter]
I could tell by the look on his face that he thought it was a good idea. I decided right there that happiness in the nut ward is having a happy psychiatrist. I said, "Yes."
In no time at all, this clown comes galloping into the room yelling at the top of his voice, "My name is Frank and I'm an alcoholic." [laughter] I was embarrassed for him. [laughter] Meeting a perfect stranger, and the only thing he could think about to talk about was that he was an alcoholic. For God's sake. In fact, everything he said, he said in a loud voice—us drunks and us alcoholics and Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought, "My God, man, why don't you lower your voice? These people all think I'm a nut. Why don't we leave it at that?" [laughter]
Another thing I didn't like about the nut ward is they wouldn't let you stay in bed in the morning. You had to get out of bed, and if you wouldn't go and make moccasins and whatever their leather belts, you had to go and sit in the day room. The day room is a big room, and one whole wall was glass. On the other side of the glass was the sidewalk to the main entrance of the hospital, which was right there. I could just see my patients walking by looking in. "Oh, hello, Dr. Paul. How are things in the nut ward?" You know.
Anyway, Frank told this loudmouthed story. I don't remember how long. It was very interminable. I don't remember anything he said, but I know it ended with him saying, "Well, that's my story. I'm going to a meeting tonight. Would you like to go along?" I said, "Hell no, I won't like it, but I'll go."
We went. I have no idea what meeting we were at. In fact, I don't know how many meetings we went to before I knew what meeting we were at. But I knew that meeting had a profound effect. It had a profound effect on the psychiatrist. Now he was suspiciously very interested. He wanted to know, "What's this about a book? What's this about meetings? How often do they have meetings? What's this about steps? What other kind of meetings do they have? When do you go into another meeting?"
I thought, "My God, I've got me an alcoholic psychiatrist." [laughter] He's ashamed to go, so he's sending me, you know. So I wanted to go to every meeting I could so I could get enough brownie points to get out of that dump. I told Frank I wanted to go every night. Frank was good about that, except for one Friday night. Friday night he didn't know whether he would be going. He thought maybe on Friday night he might have a date with Carolyn. I thought, "Well, that's a hell of a way to run an organization."
I reported him to the psychiatrist, who got somebody else to take me on Friday night. I finally got enough brownie points, and I got discharged from the hospital. I had no intention of going back. Why would I go back? I wasn't an alcoholic.
The only problem was that Max liked the meetings. Of course, once I found that out, I threatened her. If she didn't shape up, I wouldn't go to AA anymore. I said that once too often, and she did what she couldn't do—she drove down to Laguna Beach from Anaheim. Went by herself. She went to AA by herself. She couldn't drive the freeway. She didn't know how to get that far. She did it anyway. She went to the AA meetings by herself.
Have you ever tried that? Have you ever tried sitting at home on a Saturday night drinking while your non-alcoholic spouse is off laughing it up at an AA meeting? [laughter]
I found it boring. I had to go back to meetings and find out what they were laughing about. I found out the alcoholics laugh at anything. Yeah. Laugh at nothing. Laugh just to be laughing. Then I sat there trying to figure it out. Seven months and I ended up going to one meeting too many. One night I laughed with them. [laughter]
Haven't had a drink since. [applause]
Yeah, laughter is very spiritual to me. In fact, I'm convinced that my higher power laughs. My higher power—[clears throat]—laughs every time he hears alcoholics and Alanons laugh, even if he doesn't understand the joke. [laughter] He just enjoys the laughter.
So I've been coming back ever since. When I first became an alcoholic, I was just very, very mild alcoholic. Very mild, almost a non-alcoholic. But I had to keep coming to meetings in order to drink. I was. In fact, I decided that I came into this thing embarrassed to be here. I saw myself at the bottom of the social barrel, and I had this overwhelming sense of failure in all areas of my life. I turned into an alcoholic, and I found out I had to become an alcoholic in order to quit drinking.
Then I thought, "You know, if I'm going to fail, if I failed in everything else, I ought to at least succeed in this for God's sake. You can't get any lower than this. You got to at least succeed here."
I decided I wanted to be a successful member of AA. Simple request, it seemed to me. I didn't make a pact with anybody else, just with myself. I decided I was going to be a successful member of AA. In fact, I even went so far that at that time they talked about stick with the winners. Stick with the winners. Stick with the winners. They said, "Otherwise, if we're going to stick with the winners, we ought to find out what a winner is."
So I asked Chuck C. He'd been sober 100 years or so, and he knew everything. I said, "What's a winner?" I was surprised when he had to think about it. He said, "Well, I guess you have to die sober." [laughter]
I thought, "Die sober?" [laughter] God, that reminded me of how I used to plan on being one of the saints. [laughter] I was really going to do it. I went and got the book, Lives of the Saints. Big thick book. I was reading it up. I decided which one was going to be my role model. I was going to be a saint, and I was trying to pick my role model until I found out that the final thing about being a saint is you can't be declared a saint until you've been dead 300 years.
I thought, "Well, screw that, you know. I've never been happy about anything where you have to die to get the accolades for."
So I lost my sainthood. I thought, "Well, if I have to die to be a winner, I'll just be a successful member of AA."
Over the years, I've changed my criteria a little bit for what it is to be a successful member of AA, but I don't know any successful members of AA who drink. Then I found out that if I want to keep from drinking, I've got to keep going to meetings. It takes a lot of meetings to keep from drinking. But the more I went to meetings, the more I realized that if I want to stay sober, I've got to work the steps to stay sober.
Then once I worked the steps, I kept going to meetings and working the steps and seeing what was going on around me. I found there are a lot of people—seems to me a lot—who go to meetings long enough to stay sober, find out they have to work the steps in order to stay sober, work the steps, then find out they don't need the meetings anymore, and end up getting drunk after 15, 20, 30, 40 years.
So I thought, "I've got to do both. I need to keep on with the meetings and keep on with the steps in order to stay sober."
I've been doing that for a long time, and it's been working real well for me. I plan to keep that up. I keep on planning to keep on doing what I'm doing.
I was going to say I enjoy working the steps, and I stumbled over that. [laughter] Well, only in the sense that working the steps isn't always fun. But I enjoy the life that I get from doing the steps. I've gotten involved in the pamphlet on how to study the first 164 pages of the book and how to do the steps when you come to it. It's not a step study, it's a step do it.
Being involved with that as a part of that, I redo the steps. I have redone the steps about every five years. My experience is that every time I've done that, I've moved to a new plateau in my sobriety. I'm not saying that's what anybody else should do. I know a lot of people say you do the steps once and that's all, and you do the maintenance steps. Other people say you do the steps every year. I don't care what you do. I'm just saying what I do and what has worked for me, and I like it that way.
I enjoy the steps. I touched on the Third Step before, and I really enjoy the Third Step—turning my will and my life over to the care of God. I tell him, "God, you take my life and do what you want with it, and I'll pedal and you steer, and for God's sake, watch where you're going. [laughter] I'm sick of some of the places we've been, you know." [laughter]
In fact, I have at my den, at my office at home, I have a plaque-like thing. It's a photocopy of one page from a magazine or the book section of the LA Times. It has a picture of the author and the name of the book and has a quote from the book. I have it up there because I like the quote from the book. The quote says, "I suppose if I'd got the job I wanted at Montgomery Ward, I never would have left Illinois."
Simple enough statement. I suppose if I'd gotten the job I wanted at Montgomery Ward, I would never have left Illinois. The author didn't get the job at Montgomery Ward, and he did leave Illinois, and he became a sports radio announcer, a movie actor, a union president, the governor of California, and president of the United States.
And you know, that's so much like what we hear in AA. We don't get what we want, but we get what's according to God's plan. I need to remember things like that. It's often best when I don't get my way.
This business of enjoying working the steps—the more I think of that, the more I think of it. The sixth and seventh steps are so profoundly different than what I feel I was taught all my life. I was always taught, as I understand it,