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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Hi, my name is Vince and I'm an alcoholic >> and uh I am most happy to be here this morning and I want to thank you for inviting us down here.

I want to thank Lynn and uh anyone else, Roy, anyone else on the committee who is responsible for inviting Pat and I down to this convention. It's been a pleasure to be here. It is always an honor and a privilege to get to do this.

And I don't want to forget that. It's not a chore, it's a it's an honor. And so, thank you for inviting us.

It's been a great convention and uh we've had a great time up until now. I don't know what the rest will be like, but this thus far it's been good. This was uh I was going to start off by saying good morning, but uh it may be evening.

I don't know, but it's good to be here. And uh we've had uh the countdown was wonderful. People with over 50 years of sobriety uh and the new people.

And it is it is to you I will talk this morning. You who are new, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. >> And that's where you are this morning.

If you didn't know, you're in AA, which is a hell of a thing, isn't it? Not really what you intended, but this is where you are. you're in AA and you will find this confusing if you're anything at all like I was when I was new.

Uh none of this will make any sense. It's all illogical. AA is not based on logic.

Believe me. Uh you'll find it's fraught with paradox. For example, you are in a room of about 2,000 people, none of whom can manage their own lives, but will be delighted to take yours on.

And hopefully you will allow them to do that because that seems to be the prescription here is to be utterly convinced that you are have no answers about what is good for you and to be desperate enough to accept almost and I'll tell you if you're new here anybody here is knows more about what you ought to do than you. almost anybody here's judgment is better than yours. So, uh it's good if you just simply do what they say.

Uh you will be far better off. I know that that's certainly uh my first a meeting which was I'll start out there I think today which was a long time ago now. It was in November of 1965.

I know girls. I know you think he cannot be that old. And you're right, I was only 11 at that meeting, but it was up the freeway here in Long Beach in the Los Alto se section of Long Beach in the Presbyterian church on a Friday night.

And it was a great AA meeting. It was a big meeting. It was a speaker meeting and it was dynamic.

And all of the AA community in Long Beach went to that meeting on Friday. That's where they went. And they all dressed up.

The ladies wore dresses and the men wore coats and ties and they looked good and they sounded good and they were tightly wrapped. The overwhelming characteristic of that meeting was that nobody looked like an alcoholic. They looked good and they sounded good and they all seem as though they had well-ordered lives.

And if you were to wander into that room on any given uh Friday night and you were to look around that room and someone were to say to you, "Pick out the alcoholics," you would have picked no one. Except on that first night that I was there, you would have picked me. You could you could have definitely identified me.

I had on a ripped t-shirt and a dirty pair of jeans and I had not shaved or bathed in over a week. And I had spent the previous five days in the Long Beach City jail due to a series of unfortunate circumstances that were clearly not my fault. The uh police department in Long Beach is fascist.

I don't know if you know that. And they had abused my civil rights on a regular basis in those days. And that was the latest of those occasions.

And I ended up in the basement of that Presbyterian church. And I don't ever want to forget why I was there. And if you are new, this may be helpful.

I was not there because I was in search of sobriety. Nor was I particularly interested in serenity or peace of mind or quiet. I was 23.

If you are here and you are in your 20s and you're interested in serenity, get some therapy, you know that that's not I wanted girls in a convertible, you know, not so my motives were not the best. And if you were here new this morning and your motivation is less than noble, I have excellent news for you. We do not evaluate you as to your motivation here.

If we did, this would be a lot smaller meeting. I will tell you that does not matter why you're here. It only matters that you are here.

And I sat in the back of the room up against the wall, a concrete wall in the back of the basement of this church. And I should also tell you, I'm Irish and I'm Catholic. That's funny.

And I'm from New Jersey. Now that's funny. And I have great difficulty with people from Texas.

We seem to have a chemistry problem or something. I guess we don't. And I sat next to this guy who was about 6'5 and he had on cowboy boots and a cowboy hat in his lap and his name was Tex.

And Tex wanted to he me and he told me said, "Boy, I'm gonna he and you know, I remember thinking, why don't you go he somebody else, you know, leave me the hell alone?" But he was going to he me. And the first thing he did was he repeated to me in rapid succession all of the AA cliches, one after another, which are really dreary, aren't they? God almighty.

They're really grim. I mean, you think easy does what? What in the hell are you talking?

Finally, he draped his arm around my shoulder and he said, "Ah, keep it simple." And I thought, "I'll bet you do, Tex. I clearly have no argument with that, let me tell you." And the meeting continued and it began in much the same way we began here this morning. They read essentially what is our program.

And if you are new and you wonder what it is we have, that's what we have. And if you are to recover here, it is required that you take those 12 steps. It is not suggested.

That's a lie. It is required. If you take them, you recover.

If you do not take them, you do not recover. And moreover, you get worse while you sit sober in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think if you're new, we owe you that information.

You ought to have it today. Now, I know this by personal experience. It's not a theory.

I listened to those 12 steps read at that first AA meeting. And I don't know about you, but I didn't hear anything new. I'm the end product of eight years of Dominican nuns and four years of Jesuit priests.

And I want to tell you this is not new. None of this is new. It is really I know all about these principles.

I've lived within the framework of this ethic all my life. And I'll tell you what, if there's one thing I know about all of it, I am sure it has nothing to do with the way that I drink. Because if it did, I certainly would not have to go to a Presbyterian church on a Friday night to search for the answer.

As a matter of fact, if you ask me, this is really superficial. It's really, really fundamental broadbrush stuff. I mean really, you know, and I could see though it might help you uh if you are Protestant or not educated this would be very good for you.

But my case is clearly different. It simply does not apply to me. So I sat in the back of that room and somewhere in my subconscious I dismissed these 12 steps.

I said my case is different. They don't really apply to me. And the meeting continued and it was a good meeting and several people participated and I don't really remember what most of them said except that it was innocuous and inapplicable to my life as near as I could tell.

But they were really nice people clearly. And at the end of the meeting if I had any doubts as to whether I belonged there or not, they were cured. They had birthday parties.

I mean, good God, you know, birthday parties for a room full of middle-aged people singing happy birthday to some who didn't have a drink for a year and they had a cake with a candle on it. I mean, God, it's like something should take place at a mental institution. Is it right in the day room, you know, right before dance therapy, you know, a birthday party for the alcoholics and they had several of these birthday parties and one in particular for this woman who was about 110 and she was sober forever.

They had a fire on top of this cake and she came down the aisle. She blew the candles out and she got up here and she said her name was Phoebe and that she was an alcoholic. And then she said something about did I want what she had.

Okay. Not tonight, Phoebe. And that was my first AA meeting.

And I think you could safely say that I did not have a spiritual awakening. But I'll tell you what I did. I stayed sober for the next 3 and 1/2 years right in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And during that period of time, I did everything there was to do in AA. participated in Alcoholics Anonymous on every level. I was in involved in meetings.

I set up chairs. I washed cups. I did everything there was to do in AA except one thing.

I did not take these steps. And as a result, my alcoholism got worse. And it got worse while I stayed sober in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I knew it was getting worse. And there are people here today in a meeting this big that are precisely in that state of mind and body. You've been here some appreciable length of time and you're very busy in aa and you're all involved except you're not involved in these steps and you're getting worse and you know you're getting worse because you are surrounded by people who are getting better and you can watch them get better.

You know they're getting better. Something happens to people who recover here, doesn't it? You can see it all over them.

They they their eyes change, their persona changes, they have a sense of purpose about their life. They're going somewhere. They have direction.

And you are a loser. You are consumed with resentment. And you are arrogant.

And even since you arrived here, you've accumulated a whole new set of resentments. And they are the people who are getting better. And that's the way that I lived in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now, on the outside, wonderful things happened to me. I I got in on it. I I was in on the ground floor of of a new profession in medicine.

I should tell you, I uh I am Irish and Catholic and I come from a huge Irish family in New Jersey. None of whom are alcoholic. Just me.

The rest of them are disgustingly normal. They have nothing wrong with them. They are kind, loving, warm, successful, welladjusted human beings.

All of them. I am the fifth child in a family of five children. I have four older sisters.

My youngest sister is 11 years older than I am. My father was 50 and my mother was 45 when I was born in 1940. And that was really a big deal.

It was a uh this big Irish family with all of these girls and along came this boy. The prince had arrived. My sisters fought over who would get to babysit for me.

They was during the war. They dressed me in soldier suits and sailor suits and I had pictures saluting the flag would really it's nause would make you throw up but they love me. My father adored me.

My father just the sun rose and set on me. He loved me so much. He had this boy after all of these girls and and I'll tell you it was just I don't think my father never said a cross word to me until the day he died.

He he just never did. He loved me so much. Uh, my earliest recollections of Christmas are are my father in the in my bedroom in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve kneeling down beside the bed and he would wake me up and he would say things like, "I just saw this sleigh leaf.

Let's go downstairs." And the entire family would get up at 4:00 in the morning and go downstairs and celebrate Christmas because my father couldn't wait. So I was loved and I was cared for and I was nurtured and I was not abused and he was the vice president of a railroad. So we were privileged.

We were affluent and we I had all privileges known to a human being. And I like to talk about that in AA meetings because I have been present in a meetings and I've heard people describe the way that they had to grow up that is unspeakable that I can't believe it. I can't believe human beings have have had to have lived like that and have managed to make it here and and I have literally wept listening to the horrible way that people have had to grow up.

None of that is my experience. It is completely the opposite. And it tells me about alcoholism uh that it doesn't matter where you've come from or what's happened to you.

It has nothing to do with anything. We just represent one out of 10 people who who for some reason can't drink alcohol. That's why we're here.

We come from all different places. And I uh my parents died within one week of each other when I was 12. My father had a massive heart attack on July January the 3rd, 1953.

And he died and my mother died a week later. She'd had congestive heart failure and she was s quite ill for some period of time. And uh a week later she just kind of gave up and she died.

And we had these two big Irish wakes and funerals in the space of a week. And it was a tough thing on me. There's no question about that.

For a 12-y old kid, it was hard. That is undeniable. But I was surrounded by this loving family, these sisters who are now had all grown up and completed their educations and uh married great guys and uh had wonderful families and uh all of them surrounded me and and and it was just I was loved and cared for always.

I ended up however going to live with an uncle, a bachelor uncle who was 65 years old. He was my mother's brother and uh he decided I should go live with him because he was the well he was a very powerful man. He was a politician in New Jersey.

He was mayor of Jersey City for 20 consecutive years. Uh and he was state chairman of the Democratic Party. He was a a boss is what he was.

And uh I went to live with my uncle and he was to see to it that I was educated and that that good the right things happened to me. And now we had a communications problem. I was 12 and he was 65.

And we ate at opposite ends of a long dinner table and uh talked about politics which was the mother's milk of our family. And uh that's what we did. And I began to get in trouble.

Now, I'm a very good student in school. I get A's, but I am what is known as a behavior problem. I don't know if anyone here understands that.

I get in trouble and I'm in Catholic schools and I'm in a lot of trouble all the time. And I get in high school and I'm in Jesuit prep schools, four of them, one every year. And that is because I'm thrown out of the one I'm in.

And my family has to get me in another one the following year. And they always managed to do that. And I uh my senior year I was uh valadictorian of my senior class.

I had the highest grades in the class. I was number one in the class and due to give the address at graduation. Except I did not get to attend graduation.

Graduation was in June. In May, I stole a priest's car and got drunk and went joying. So I did not get to go to graduation.

and they told me, uh, if we ever have a reunion, don't come. Stay away. And that's the way that I went through school.

Now, if you grew up in the environment that I grew up in, uh, and you were time to go to college, there was only one school you wanted to go to, and that was University of Notre Dame. >> That's where everyone wanted to go to school in my Bailey wick. Uh unfortunately uh my family felt that that would be a bad idea for me.

Uh Notre Dame at that time was an allmale institution with strict uh lights were out at 10:00 and if you got caught drinking they threw you out of school. Clearly not a wise choice for me. So, uh, my family insisted I go to school in New York, and I went to a very fine university in upstate New York and, uh, spent every semester on disciplinary probation in the 60s.

I don't know if you know how difficult that was to do. That was not an easy thing to do. And, uh, in the middle of my senior year, I got in an argument with my family over money and I quit school and joined the Navy as an enlisted man.

Now, I left an Ivy League university in the middle of my senior year with a 3.8 GPA in biochemistry to join the Navy as an enlisted man. It's a very bright kid. And I sobered up in Great Lakes, Illinois in boot camp.

And I remember telling the uh the they didn't call them drill instructors there. They called them some something else. But I remember telling this uh chief uh we've made a mistake here.

Uh I uh I have a paper due next month and uh I really have to go back to school. And he said, "Well, you're in the you're in the Navy now as a kid." And they gave me a battery of tests and I do well in tests and I score very well. and they decided to send me to Albuquerque, New Mexico to a guided missile program to make me a nuclear weapons expert.

And uh then they gave me some psychological tests and decided that that was a very bad idea. And since I was a chemistry major and on track to go to medical school, they uh sent me to hospital core school to make me a Navy corman. And uh I went to that school and I did very well.

And they sent me to a more advanced school where they uh trained Corman to uh go on destroyers that don't have physicians on them and it's a more sophisticated medical. I went to that school and I did very well and then they sent me to medical administration school and then off to Newport, Rhode Island to OCS and commissioned me an officer and uh now I was in Enson and they assigned me to the third marine division in Okinawa as a medical administrative officer. And I got to Okinawa and uh they didn't have a job for me.

They couldn't figure out what to do with me. So they put me in an officer's club at the northern end of Okinawa and forgot about me. And quite frankly, I forgot about them.

It was a mutual uh agreement. And uh my duty consisted of getting up around noon and reporting to the cocktail lounge of this officer's club and drinking Heenhe Pinch. 60 cents a pop, which is not bad.

I will tell you that. Yeah. And that's what I did.

And pretty soon they put another guy up there. He was a surgeon out of Temple University who was a uh they did he was a bad had a bad drinking problem and they did not want him around patients. So they put him up in this officer's club and he and I bonded.

We become spiritual brothers and uh we both got up every day about noon and went reported to the officers club and drank and nobody bothered us and we didn't bother anybody and we kind of forgot we were in the military after a while. We grew beards and wore shorts and uh uh at one point had lost all our uniforms. Didn't know what the hell happened with kind of gone, you know, but we didn't uh we just did fine.

We didn't bother anyone and we expected people not to bother us quite frankly. We that's the way you get along in life. And uh but the regimental commander of the fifth marines had this dinner party, this bird colonel, and he insisted that all of the officers in his command show up to this party.

And so we had to shave and find uniforms and go to the colonel's dinner party. And we showed up and he looked around the room and he looked at us and he said, "Who the hell are those guys?" You know, he said they two officers in his command he had never met. And he said, "What do they do?" And uh somebody said, "Well, one of them is a doctor.

I don't know what the other one does. He's uh and he says give them a job. So they gave us a job.

They put us in charge of veneerial disease control for the island of Okanau. And our job was see the Marines would get hideous veneerial disease. They would get lymphogranuloma venerium and gran gorrhea and stuff like diseases you only saw in textbooks and in marines were the only two places they ever existed I think.

And and our job they would our job was to go out into the villages to the bars where they and find the young ladies in question and uh make sure they were you know it's very toddy isn't it for a Sunday morning but it's not but now it's evening anyway so what's the difference we uh our job was to go around to these bars and find these young ladies and so we rode it in a jeep all around Okinawa from bar to bark and we had this power to quarantine these bars. So when they saw us coming, they would just set up the Chev Regal in the So uh needless to say, we never quarantined one bar. It was just really uh but you had to be careful.

You didn't want to drink too much in these bars because you want these girls to start looking good to you, you know. I mean, you knew why you were there. So you walk kind of a fine line.

But that's what we did. And pretty soon our naval career was over and we came back to the states and and uh he went back to Temple and he completed his residency in cardiovascular surgery and he's a cardiovascular surgeon in Philadelphia today and as far as I know he's not yet gone to AA if you need a bypass I'd stay the hell out of Philadelphia. moral to that story, I went back up to Cornell and I finished my undergraduate degree and uh uh I had applied to several different medical schools and was tentatively accepted at a couple and uh uh they felt I had social problems and was not quite material to go to medical school at that time.

So I did the next best thing. I got married. You remember when you were at loose ends and you didn't know what the hell was wrong with you, but you knew something was wrong with you.

Remember that point in your life and you and the remedy for that is always to get married. I mean, just that will fix it. And I got married and uh I married a a a girl that I'd known in the Navy and a Navy nurse and we came to Southern California.

The idea being I would apply to SC or UCLA to medical school and and we moved in with her parents in Orange County here in Santa Ana. And uh I got a stop gap job as a bartender for the summer which and she immediately got pregnant. You notice how men always say that she got pregnant.

You know they always say but she did. and uh we uh moved in with her parents and uh I went to work as a bartender and it was a terri you can imagine how that worked out. I'd come home at four o'clock in the morning and various stages of undressed with drunk and they threw me out and I ended up on Bulsa Avenue out here in Santa Ana with a lot of Samsonite luggage and no money and I got a job for the rest of that summer as an ambulance driver in Orange County and I drove and I'm a blackout drinker.

So some of these ambulance calls were really colorful. I will tell you, I I've been on ambulance calls with the lights and the sirens going and uh I'd have to turn to the guy next to me and say, "Uh, where are we going?" You know, which would unnerve him, I will tell you. And one night I uh right here in this lovely city of Costa Mesa, I uh got stuck in a culde-sac.

I don't know. You know, I uh we had the lights going on top of the ambulance and we were I came out of a blackout going around a circle in this culdeac very slowly. You know how you lock on to something and you can't quite get out of it, you know, and you and we're just going around the circle and everybody was coming out on their porch in their pajamas in their bathrobe watching this ambulance go around this circle and culde-sac and they finally sent a police car in to lead me out of the culdeac.

and they did and uh I lost my job as a result of that and I lost my driver my driver's license got revoked forever in the state of California as a result of that and that's what I brought to Alcoholics Anonymous to that first AA meeting and as a result of staying sober a new a new profession had concurrently opened up in civilian medicine it was called the physicians assistant program uh PAS And a lot of you know what that is today, but in those days it was brand new. It was embryionic and it was a new concept in medicine. And the reason for it was that in in those days in the late 60s and early 70s the all of the guys getting out of medical schools all went into residencies to specialize and there were not enough physicians doing primary medicine in the emergency rooms.

So they that was the genesis of this profession. That's why they created it. And the first PAs were people such as myself who had this sophisticated me medical training in the military.

And we were the first PAs. I was the third licensed PA in the state of California. And I went to work in an emergency room in East LA nights.

And I I don't know you. It was really a hell of a job. It was a uh it paid a lot of money and it was rewarding both from a psychologically and and in every way because I I loved what I was doing and it was a a new concept in medicine and I was in on the ground floor of a new profession.

I was in AA. I was sober. I met a beautiful girl, the daughter of a longtime sober AA member and we fell in love and we got married and she went to Alanon and we were just too precious is what we were.

We were really I mean I had this wonderful job and she was beautiful and we had such a bright future except I had not taken these steps and there was no recovery and I would go into this emergency room at night and pretty soon I'd get depressed and I'd get at loose ends and I'd get inadequate and not up to the task and I have no program and there is no recovery. But I have an excellent medical education, so I know how to take care of depression. I use dexadrine.

15 migram spans work best. And by the time I'm through with those, I'm taking six or seven of them a day. And if you know anything about amphetamine abuse, you will understand that has you moving right along.

Hey, whatever you're doing, it will be in a hurry. The problem with that is long about the fifth or sixth day when you've not slept nor eaten and your eyes dilate out here like this and your hair stands up on end. And I used to get this white crud that would come down here like this.

And I'd show up in the emergency room to help the sick and the guy I was relieving would never want to go home. You know, they would look at me and they'd say, "Vince, Vince, you need sleep. Get something to eat." But thank God for medical science.

There is an anecdote for that and that is a drug called demorall. Now demorall is a uh this is an aa I'm going to say this. We need to talk about this.

Demoral is a nar it's not a narcotic it's a synthetic. I bet you didn't know that. Don't worry.

You never know the difference. You don't have to worry about it. It's purely an academic.

Narcotics, uh, morphine, heroin, dilotted are all the same drug. Did you know that? They all come from opium.

They're opiates. They all come from the same place. It's all really essentially the same drug.

And they're addictive. All of them. And they're addictive for everybody.

Doesn't matter who you are. Doesn't matter. You don't even need an addictive personality.

You have a syringe and a needle and heroin and you'll be addicted. Period. That is not true with alcohol.

Alcoholism and narcotic addiction are different. Alcoholism, alcohol, we represent only one out of 10 people. Nine out of 10 people drink alcohol with impunity.

They don't ever come to AA. They don't lose jobs. They don't they don't wreck cars.

They don't go to jail. They drink. They are social drinkers.

Cliff talked about them last night and I'm like him. I don't like them and I certainly don't understand them, but they are they drink with impunity. They say things like, uh, no more for me.

I'm driving, right? Or, I'd love to have another, but my wife's waiting dinner, going home. Well, not me.

I'm going to Las Vegas. So are you. But that that's what social drinkers do.

They and they represent nine out of 10 people who drink alcohol. We represent only one out of 10. On the other hand, I have never met a social heroin user.

they don't exist. The dynamic is different and uh it just is and I don't know why and I don't know the deal but it is it's different. Alcoholism and narcotic addiction are not the same.

Now many of us here have experience with both I mean we have all kinds of things wrong with us and uh but to function here in alcoholic synonymous you must be an alcoholic. That's who you have to be. Now, it doesn't matter what the hell else you did.

As a matter of fact, it's kind of an extra added benefit if you can write down. So, it doesn't matter, but you must be an alcoholic. And the other problem with demoral is that people care about where it is.

You know, I tell you, you you go in in the emergency room in the morning when the shift changes and they start to count the narcotics and they open the drawer and they say things like, "Vince, Vince, all the dope is gone. You know, I mean, where the hell is the demeral and I'd say, uh, I don't know. And it was always a bad bad morning.

And the end result was that was the the people who care the most about demol. I'll tell you who they are. The medical quality assurance board of the state of California have a absolute obsession with narcotics.

They really do. And I ended up in that emergency room one night inspecting the narcotic logs. And the result of that was I was placed under arrest for appropriating narcotics for my own youth and taken to the LA County Jail.

And they, believe me, in those days they had no program for impaired physicians. The program was the LA County Jail. That was the program.

And I was charged with a felony, was subsequently reduced to a misdemeanor, and I didn't have to go to jail, but I lost my medical license. And I ended up spending the summer of 1972 living in an apartment by the airport in Anglewood, drinking one half gallon of vodka a day. And I don't have to tell you about that.

You know all about that. And I'll tell you, if you drink one half gallon of vodka a day, you are an alcoholic. Uh social drinkers don't drink a half gallon of vodka a day.

None of them. And if you do, your experience is the same. The experience is uniform.

You vomit bile. Uh you lose 35 lbs over that summer. And you don't eat and you don't sleep and you're in blackouts.

And if you look at a clock, it says 9:00. Is that AM or PM? You don't know.

Your wife leaves you and they take the furniture and the car and the drapes and the Jesus. They take everything when they leave me. I gotta tell you.

Uh, and I end up walking to Alpha Beta Market to buy Alpha Beta brand vodka, the kind in the wire cage and by the cash register at $7 a half gallon to take it back to the apartment in Anglewood and drink it hot. Cliff Roach likes hot vodka. He has no class.

I drank hot vodka cuz I had to, Cliff. And I remember sitting in the middle of that dreary apartment with all of the furniture gone with a 4-day growth of beard and a filthy Turkish bathrobe on and that and I remember the doorbell rang one morning and the guy had come in to take the telephone out and he looked around that apartment and he looked at me and he said, "God," he I could see the pity in his face. He said, "Your your family left you, didn't they?" I said, "No, we're redecorating.

I mean, what the hell are you?" You know, really, and that's the way it ended for me. Now, I I'm in and out of blackouts, and I came out of a blackout in Newport Beach, sitting on a bench by the Baloa Peninsula in early September 1972. And I don't remember how I got there.

I became cognizant of where I was sitting on a bench by the Balboa Peninsula in a three-piece wool suit and a white shirt and a tie. And the temperature was about 110 and I had a suitcase next to me with some clothes in it. And I don't became I don't know how I got there.

I don't remember going there, but that's I became cognizant of where I was sitting on that bench and I knew that I needed a job and I went and I got a Orange County newspaper and I looked through the ads and I found a job as an apprentice inbalmer for a Oh, >> mortician right here in Costa Mesa. And it, believe me, well, if you're new and you need a job, don't do this. Bad choice.

But I went to work for this mortician over here on uh by Newport Boulevard and as an apprentice and bomber. And it was a dreadful the uh the uh the the job paid $85 a week and a fringe benefit was this bachelor apartment over the room where they kept the caskets. So, you'd get to walk through the casket room every morning with a hangover, which would set you free.

And I didn't like the Undertaker, and he didn't like me. And we got in a fight and I got drunk and I stole his hearse. And on September the 20th, 1972, I came out of what I hope is my last blackout, driving the wrong way on Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach in a stolen hearse with a young lady next to me who I did not recall meeting, oddly enough, who was screaming at the top of her lungs.

And and I remember thinking, you know, I'll tell you what's wrong with me. I really have a character flaw. I always choose neurotic women.

All of the women in my life end up like this. You know, I tell you, if you have a date with me, I'll tell you how it's going to end. About 2:00 in the morning, I'm going to look at you and your eye makeup's going to be running down your face like that.

You know, I always know the date's over then. You know, it's always a clue. And she was screaming and and I remember telling her, you know, you're really unstable.

you should uh get some counseling. Maybe you do better. That was September the 20th, 1972.

Now, I have not had a drink of alcohol, nor have I used any mood altering chemical whatsoever from that date to this. And well, that's that's you got people 50 years sober over here. Clap for them.

I ended up taking the guy's hearse back to him and he was upset. He had thrown all my clothes out the window of the bachelor apartment and I found myself with a cardboard box in the black top parking lot of this parking lot of this mortuary in Costa Mesa with no money, no car, no job and picking up my clothes and putting them in this box and and I thought, my god, what am I going to do? And I don't know about you, but every time I get in that kind of shape, I go to AA.

So I reported to the Costa Mesa Alano Club over here on Placentia, which was a god awful, dreadful Jesus. It was grim. And I reported there for duty.

And I sat at the coffee bar and I had a cup of coffee and they had an AA meeting there that noon. It was it was just dreadful. Six out of work Texas plumbers sitting around a coffee table talking about putting the plug in the jug.

Jesus Christ. I thought, God almighty. And then they had another meeting there that evening and it was worse.

And the manager let me sleep on the sofa. And uh and in the morning I got up and got in a gin rummy game and won some money and uh rented a room on Federal Avenue in Costa Mesa for $11 a week. And I if you want to know what that was like, just uh use your imagination.

Those rooms are generic. You'll be correct. They're all the same.

You know, there is a dreadful, disgusting Hubble. And I moved in there and I thought, "Good God, I can't I have to live here for several weeks. And I don't think I can live here that long.

I've never had to live in a place like this. How will I ever? And I don't think I can live there 3 weeks.

Two years later, when I moved out of that room, it didn't look that bad for some reason. I spent my first two years of sobriety right here with you in southern Orange County. And I want to tell you about those two years.

They were the most significant two years of my life because what happened to me during that period of time changed me eventually. But I also want to tell you that I did not know that at the time. So if you are relatively new here and someone asks you how you're doing, tell them you don't know because you don't.

Don't tell them how you feel. That is irrelevant. We don't care how you feel if you're new.

We only care what you do. This is about action. And so I spent my first two years here.

And if you would have asked me at any given time during that two-year period of time, how are you? I would have told you, my god, it's awful. It's just awful.

My life is terrible. I lost jobs that were unbelievable. I lost a job as a gas station attendant for being incompetent.

I lost a job right down here and not far from here in a machine shop as a drill press operator. a $187 an hour drill press operator where you got in there at 6:00 in the morning and you sat on a stool and they wheeled up a cart of copper plates and you took a copper plate and you put it under the drill and you pull the handle and put a hole in the copper plate. You took the copper plate and you put it in that bucket.

That was it. It's impossible to do that wrong. Except I managed to put the hole in the wrong place in about a thousand of these copper plates one day.

And the foreman came over to talk to me. And he was from right outside of Dallas. And he said to me, "Uh, boy." Oh, boy.

He said, "We got to let you go, boy." He says, "Too bad, too, cuz I can see you're a real tryer." He said, "But you're really not quite bright enough to do this kind of work." And I went crazy. I said, "Bright enough? bright enough.

I said, "You, you illiterate redneck." Let me tell you something. I went to an Ivy League university. I'm a graduate of which a bad thing to say, you know.

I said, "I went to Cornell." He said, "Well, I'll tell you what, boy. You ought to go on back take the course in drill press operating." And he was right. And I ended up that day going back to this dreadful $11 a week room and it was pouring rain and I got bronchitis and I had a cold and I had a fever and I didn't have medical insurance and I just lost this godamn hideous job as a drill press operator and I going back to this, you know, what's the inongruity of my life?

How did this happen to me? How could this be? And some mail had caught up with me.

And one was piece of mail was a letter from a physician in upstate New York inviting me to join a committee for my college class reunion. And I remember looking at that letter thinking, "Good God, how do you answer this letter? I can't make it this year, Dr.

Medolf. I just lost my job as a drill press operator." I mean, you know, how the hell does this happen? THE INONGRUITY OF MY LIFE.

And that night, I went to the big meeting in those days down here was at the EVEL Club on Thursday night. That was the big AA meeting then. It was a great meeting, wasn't it?

It was. And uh I went to that meeting and uh that night and the speaker was the quintessential speaker in all of AA, Norm Alpie. And he was uh I don't those of you who knew don't know who that is and it's too bad you don't because he was a Norm Alpie was I'll tell you who he was.

If Frank Capra >> came up with an AA speaker, it would be Norm Alpie. He was Mr. Everyman.

He was a wonderful, wonderful speaker and he was just a guy that you you I'll tell you what he had when you listened to Norm Norm Alpie speak, you didn't hear words, you heard music. It was the music of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he because it certainly wasn't the words.

He said the same thing every time. He you if you heard him a dozen times, you could repeat his talk word for word, but every time you heard it, it was as though this was the first time you heard it. He was a wonderful speaker and a tremendous inspiration and uh every time he talked I heard the music of Alcoholics Anonymous and I listened to him that night and I was still depressed and I went back to that $11 a week room and I got caught in the rain again and I got coughed up.

I got another fever. I was sick and I got back into that terrible, crummy, horrible room over here on Federal Avenue. And I was so depressed and so so desperate that I did something so stupid.

I mean, I can't believe I ever did it. I got on my knees beside the bed in that room and I said a prayer and it was a simple, unsophisticated prayer. It was God, please help me.

I am alone. I'm afraid and I can't make it anymore. My recovery began that night.

And if you are new, that's how you begin in Alcoholics Anonymous. It is not necessary that you believe in that God or have any faith in that prayer. This is about action.

It is only required that you do it. And if you do, you will get better and you will get things in your life that you cannot possibly imagine. That is the that is the prescription in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I began to get better, although I didn't know it at first. The next day I went back to the Alano Club and I ran into this guy who was sober about 11 years and he was in the floor covering. He was from Texas.

His name was Clarence. And Clarence was in the floor covering business. And he was a one-man operation.

He would uh he would run down to Bal Island and sell floor covering to the rich people and then he'd run off to the factory and buy it and run back and install it. And he said to me, "Would you like a job?" He said, "How would you like to be my gopher?" He said, "I'll pay you $10 a day and provide your meals." My overhead was low. So, I uh I went to work for Clarence as his gopher and we went and we bought floor covering and we installed it and I carried the tools and I went and got the coffee and at the end of the day we'd end up in B calendars.

We'd have dinner and he'd give me a crisp $10 bill and I thought and something happened to me during those days and I didn't know it then but I know it now. It was the beginning of recovery. I began to take these steps, the first three, and I began I found myself one day down Bel Island months later, and I don't know what happened to me.

We got done with the day. We had dinner in recalers, and I I bought a frozen banana, and I watched the sunset on Balboa, and I ate that frozen banana. It occurred to me that I felt very good and that I was going to be okay and I didn't have to drink, and I never had to use another drug.

And uh I didn't know why I felt that way because if you looked at my life, it was terrible. But something good was happening to me. I acquired some material possessions.

I got a 1964 red Chevrolet convertible with no brakes and a hole in the top. I used to drive that down to the Ebell Club on Thursday night and I'd pull that into the parking lot and they would immediately get into their Mercedes and BMWs and put them on the other side of the lot. They're always asking me questions like, "Do you have insurance on that car?" You know, I hadn't had a driver's license in 3 years.

Why the hell would I have insurance? But I stayed sober here. And good things happened to me here.

And when I was two years sober, I needed to get a sponsor. I recommend you wait two years to get a sponsor. I was helped by people here.

There's a guy, I don't know if he's here this morning, a guy named Tom Lord who was very kind to me when I was new who uh I rode around with him. We he was in business and I was a catatonic and we rode to Santa Barbara and we rode to San Diego and he was kind to me and he was loving to me and uh he's one of those Eskimos that are responsible for my being here and being alive and I want to thank him. Uh, but I got a sponsor when I was two years sober and I knew who the sponsor had to be and I think that's why I waited so long to get this sponsor because I didn't like him.

He was arrogant and pompous and self- serving. But there was something about him that was indisputable. He had an amazing capacity to help losers and Alcoholics Anonymous more than anybody.

I mean, the guy had a magic touch and he was willing to help anybody at any time. And you know what? He still is today.

And I called him and I asked him to help me. And the first thing he said to me was, "Uh, well, why don't you come up and have lunch with me at this mission I run on Skid Row in Los Angeles?" So, I drove my 1964 red Chevy with no brakes up to Skid Row in LA and I parked it in front of the mission. I went in, I had lunch with him and I asked him to help me.

And I'll never forget what he said. And if you are new or relatively new here today, I help somebody says something like this to you someday because it is the difference. It is literally the difference between life and death.

He said, 'I will help you on one condition that you can accept the proposition that your best judgment about your life is terrible and that my judgment about your life is infinitely better than yours. And if you will do everything I suggest you do without debate, I will help you. Well, I was just desperate enough that day to make that unholy pact with the devil.

I agreed to do what he said. And he had me do a whole lot of things that I'm not going to go into today. A lot of things happened to me.

My recovery began and miracles happened to me. I got my medical license back as a result of taking direction from him that was a you know I mean he told me the first thing he told me do I want you to live in this mission. I said live in the mission.

I said I live in Newport Beach. Why the hell am I going to move into a mission on Skid Row? What are you crazy?

He said you said you do everything I said you do. So I moved into this mission. He said I want you to come down here every day during the week at 9:00 in the morning.

I'm going to give you an allowance. I'm going to give you $8. Put on that three-piece suit.

Go outside. Get on that 83 bus that runs up Wilshshire Boulevard. And every time and get some transfers from the driver because every time you come to a hospital or medical facility, get off the bus, go inside, speak to the administrator, tell them that you were a physician assistant who lost his license because you stole Demoral in the emergency room, but now you're an Alcoholics Anonymous for two years.

You don't drink, you don't use drugs, you need help getting your license back, and you need a job. I thought that may be the most hor's ass, preposterous, stupid thing I've ever heard. It was ridiculous.

Now, I didn't say this to him. What I said was, "Okay." So, I moved into that mission and every day I reported to his office. I got that eight bucks and I went outside and I got on the 83 bus and I'd ride all the way I'd stop at every medical facility between downtown LA and and and and the ocean.

And during I lived there eight months and I was right and he was wrong. It was stupid. Just stupid.

I mean I didn't nothing ever happened to me. I didn't get a job. And I went to during that 8-month period of time I went to every I went to places like Good Samaritan and UCLA and St.

John's. I went into the Elmer Belt urological clinic. I mean, I went everywhere and I would say this exactly what he said.

Then I'd go back and I'd say, "See, doesn't work. This does not work." And he'd say, "Shut up." And I'd say, "Well, okay." The next day, I'd go down, I'd get the eight bucks again, and I'd do the same thing, and I'd get ride that bus. And 8 months that went on.

And finally, one Friday morning in June of 1975, I went downstairs. I got the eight bucks. I went outside.

I got on that bus. And the first thing I did is I sat down on this huge wad of chewing gum all over the back of this wool suit. And I got off the bus at Western and I went into this 76 station in the men's room.

And I I began to I found myself I'll tell you what I was I found myself standing in this bathroom of this Union 76 station with a three-piece suit on a vest, a shirt, a tie, and a coat and black socks and and my trousers in this hand and wet paper towels in this hand trying to clean chewing gum off the back. And I looked in the mirror and I saw the most grotesque loser. I I mean I was two years and eight months sober in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I lived in a mission on Skid Row, the only Ivy League man there then. I had no job, no car, no money, and I was standing like I was in some bad porn movie in a goddamn gas station bathroom trying to clean chewing gum off my pants with wet paper towels. And I don't know if you've ever tried that, but the gum went all the way down the legs.

I mean, it was a disgusting mess. And I thought, I am the worst loser ever known in AA. I mean, there's nobody ever did as bad as I did in AA.

Nobody ever. And I thought maybe if I stay the only way I could stay sober today is if I if I go to a movie. So I put my pants back on.

I got back on the bus. I rode to the end of the line to the to the to the to the beach and I got off and went into the Santa Monica Mall and they had a Manning's cafeteria. You know where you get a tray and you go get your lunch and you I got my lunch and I set the tray down and I went outside to get a newspaper and the bus boy came by and took my lunch.

Bust the tray. I mean that's what kind of a loser I am, I'll tell you. And I walked from Santa Monica to Westwood Village to go to the movies.

And I stood in line to buy a ticket to the movie The Godfather 2. And while I was in line to buy that ticket, I heard someone call my name. And I turned around and came face to face with the administrator of the medical center in which I had been arrested in for stealing Demol.

And he said, "Vince, how are you?" He says, "So good to see you." He he uh he said, "You look great." He said, "Where have you been?" I said, "Well, I'm in AA and I'm sober over two years." And he started to cry and he put his arms around me. He said, he was so glad to see me. He said, "When have you worked last?" And I said, "I haven't worked in a long time." He said, "Well, there's an amazing thing.

We have a urologist who's joined our group practice who's a member of the medical quality assurance board and he's going to be down in the clinic tomorrow. I want you to come down. I'm going to introduce you to him.

We're going to have lunch. Maybe he can write some letters and get your license back. And if he can, how would you like a job?

And I went back the next day and I met that urologist. We had lunch. He wrote some letters.

was in 60 days my medical license was restored in the state of California and I went back to work in the same emergency room in which I was arrested in for stealing demoral and I will tell you I worked there for the next two and a half years and I want to tell you something no drugs were missing and the patients got good care I know because I gave it to them and I took these steps 1 through 12 just as they're outlined in this book. I wrote that inventory. And if you're new, you have to do it.

You have to write that inventory. And there's no mistake. It's a searching and fearless moral inventory.

And the word moral is not a mistake. It's not a psychological inventory designed to get you in touch with your feelings. It's nobody cares about that here.

It is about your secrets. The dirty, filthy nickel and dime secrets that are going to kill you, you get to give them away here. You give them away and you walk free and you have to pay the money back.

You owe it. You have to pay it back. You are not number one on your amends list.

I've got bad news for you. You're not even on it. >> It's them.

It's what you did to them. You need to go make it right. An amend, if you're new, is not an apology.

An apology is only an announcement that the amend is coming. You have to change how you live here. And that all of that has happened to me slowly over a period of time.

Uh, magnificent things have happened to me. I've made mistakes. In 1976, I met this little redhead.

We met in September, got divorced in October, divor and met in September, married in October, divorced in November. That is a mistake. And the last time I saw her, she was on the way back to her daddy's ranch in Elorado, Texas.

So, you know, but I'll tell you what else. There was a woman who came to our group who was married to a man with lung cancer and she got sober while she took care of him which is no small task and we became friends and he passed away and we fell in love and we got married and we're married for 21 years and I want to tell you something and I'll tell you this without embarrassment. I love my wife more than life itself and that is a result of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I have become become a man here and a man in this relationship and if you are young and male here, I'm going to give you some useful information. I want you to hear it. Women are not the enemy.

They are your loving equal partners. Equal. You walk this way together.

They are partners, not prisoners, not hostages. Equal partners who you love with you all of your heart. And if you do, what will happen to you here will be spectacular.

I uh in our group several years ago got to work with people who've had trouble with money. Started what is known as the finance class. I also should should tell you that uh uh that first wife had a had a little girl and and uh she was adopted out and I had to go find her years later.

And I I always regretted the fact that I I never had a relationship with this daughter, but I did find her and I did try to help her and but there was no relationship there. And I I always felt bad about that. But life gives you everything.

Hey, Alcoholics Anonymous. The gifts are amazing. I always wanted to go to Notre Dame.

I didn't get to go, but I'm a past president of the alumni association. I mean, it's impossible. How does that happen?

But it's almost as if God said, "Well, here it is. You can have it." I never had a relationship with this daughter. And I started working in with people in this finance class and I it seems to me that I've had this ability to deal with young women.

And uh and I've watched these immature, selfish little girls come into this class and grow into strong, confident women. and to have been a part of it is is a wonderful thing and I love them very much. They are my daughters.

That's a gift. That's the gift of Alcoholics Anonymous. So, if you are new here today, all of this is yours.

It can happen for you. You must. But for God's sake, let me tell you this.

If you're new, if you have a plan, tell somebody about it. You know, don't execute it. And if you do that, what will happen to you will be beyond your wildest dreams.

It's wonderful to be in Orange County. It's very special for me to be here this morning. Thank you very much.

>> 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.