Larry's Turbulent Path: From Childhood Drinking to Addiction

- I'm Larry, I'm an alcoholic.

- Hi Larry.

- You guys are very welcoming and it's much appreciated

and I love your share and there's so,

I feel I'm over here laughing

because I did a lot of the things that you did.

I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure

that I'm genetically predisposed

to the disease of alcoholism.

Mom died of alcoholism, her sister died of alcoholism,

mom's parents died of alcoholism

and great grandpa Terry blew his head off

supposedly 'cause he could no longer read his Bible.

I'm a little suspect of that one.

I think he had too many martinis and no way out.

I had my first drink at five years old.

My dad was not an alcoholic

and he just liked a beer occasionally.

So he would ask me to bring it to him.

And by the time I bought the beer,

there was about this much left.

I was having anxiety attacks at five years old

and the alcohol helped a lot.

The first time I ran into real problem with alcohol,

I was 10 years old.

I used to go over to my friend's house every Monday.

His mom would take his little sister to dance lessons

and we would drink everything in the house.

And one Monday we decided, you know what would be cool?

Let's take our BB guns down to the grade school.

The kids were gone.

We didn't shoot the kids, but we blew out in 1953.

We blew up $2,000 worth of windows.

That was a lot of money then.

It may not be today, but it was then.

My alcoholism wasn't a straight line progression.

I was thrown out of three high schools.

I'll tell you about one of them.

I'll tell you about two of them.

One of them was a, well, they didn't want me

at the third one anymore either.

That was Canoga High.

And one day I was teaching class and the instructor came in

and I told her to sit down and be quiet.

Now she didn't respond too well to any of this.

And I had some choice words for her at 15 years old.

It was off to the principal's office.

Today they call it special education,

but what they put me in was social adjustment.

That was the precursor to special education.

I went to a college preparatory school.

It was, I'll think of the name, but I can't write it down.

And I'd only been there for six weeks.

And I told the school director

that I thought he was late and homosexual.

And he threw me out of his office and go figure.

I guess I was practicing to be a shrink even then,

for God's sake, at Taft, which was my last school.

'Cause I tried to go back to Canoga

and I can tell you that they did not look happy about that.

They said, no, no, you're in Taft district.

Why don't you?

So I went there and actually I had another semester to go.

We were coming up on June and I was kissing my girlfriend

in the hallway and I got one of these on the shoulder

and it was a female teacher.

I said, sweetheart, don't be impatient.

You are next.

And at the end of the semester, they said,

you know, we don't really want you back in September.

They said, why don't you go to Pierce College?

We'll give you, take six units.

We'll give you double credits.

We don't want you in September.

So it did a couple of things.

You know, it gave me something to do

and I got into a fraternity.

Now I had rushed a bunch of fraternities,

but I wasn't a socialite, so I didn't like those people.

And Pierce is an Aggie school and I didn't wanna ride bulls

or do anything like that.

I went to a party with these guys, the Delta Taws,

and they're dragging the girls upstairs

and passing out in the ivy.

And I said, you know, these are my people.

This is kind of how I wanna live the rest of my life.

Somehow I got through junior college.

I left right in the middle of a semester

and I went up to Big Sur.

No, I guess it was after the semester,

it was summer in Big Sur.

And we lived in the middle of a clump of redwood trees

and it was lovely up there.

But you know, I was smoking plenty of marijuana

and drinking as much as I could.

And after the summer I was hitchhiking down

and what happened?

I got a ride with some gal.

I was gonna go down to Los Angeles Harbor

and try to get a ship to Europe

'cause I thought that was a good idea.

Anyway, she said, she's vacationing here from Hawaii.

And I said, that sounds pretty good.

And so next thing I know I'm on the way to Hawaii

and I stayed with her for a little while.

And I met a guy who lived up in Manoa Valley

and they were doing LSD.

And so that year, about 30 or 40 trips,

I can tell you for sure that one more trip

and I would have been in a psychiatric facility

for the rest of my life.

I remember on the plane home thinking,

I wonder if Hawaii was real or imagined

because I was on the other side

of the looking glass with Alan.

And so that, you know, it wasn't working as well

as I thought I had planned.

I got back here and I stayed with my parents

for two weeks until I couldn't stand it anymore.

When I was in Hawaii, I wrote mom a letter

and I was drunk on hash and LSD.

And I don't remember what the whole letter said,

but I wanted $15 a week so that I could continue

to live in paradise.

Well, my mom called my uncle who was senior vice president

of North American aviation and she was screaming at him.

And he said, Helen, just settle in.

I'll have the FBI go over and check on him.

Now I was selling dope to kids and LSD

to anybody who wanted it.

So I wasn't doing all that well over there.

So I can't imagine what the FBI report said

but I think he left out the bad parts.

He said, yeah, he's alive, he's on Oahu.

There were lots of adventures.

I have alcoholism, what does that mean?

It means I have a brain that seeks drugs and alcohol

without bothering to consult me.

Do you think this is a good idea, Larry?

No, it just wants a drink.

We are biochemically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually,

and neurologically different

than people who are not alcoholics.

I somehow got through college.

I finished a bachelor's degree at CSUN,

headed over to USC and finished a master's degree

in counseling.

I did all this drinking, right?

And I worked at Technicolor at the time.

I worked all night at Technicolor

and I went to school all day.

That took 10 years to do.

And shortly after I got the master's degree,

I got a job working with kids to be an intern

for, you have to do 2000 hours then,

to be a marriage and family therapist.

And I was a marriage and family therapist

for nine years before I got sober.

If you were a patient of mine before 1984,

you know, I apologize.

(laughing)

It wasn't that I meant to do you any harm at all.

I was really interested in the practice, but I was dying.

My sobriety date is November 1, 1984.

I've been sober for 37 years and this thing works.

Even for a person who's as crazy as this one was

when he came in.

In 1965 is when I went to Hawaii.

In 1967, I got into therapy

and I stayed in therapy for 15 years.

Now, Owen didn't help my alcoholism.

I actually think Dr. Young was,

no, it isn't Carl Young, it's Owen Young.

I think actually Owen was one of ours.

But he kept me alive long enough

to find Alcoholics Anonymous.

And he was one of the first amends that I made.

And that was scary because, and you say,

"What, you have to make amends to your psychologist?"

Yeah, I was an idiot.

He had seen me through college and got me through school

and kept me alive.

And so I really did owe him an amends

and went to do that relatively soon in my sobriety.

I went to a guy, he was a spiritual counselor

and had a PhD in mathematics.

And that was at a time in California

where you either had to be a shrink or sell real estate.

Or be a counselor.

And it was better if you were a combination

of those ingredients.

He listened to my story for about two and a half hours.

I told him about the drinking, the drugs, the sex,

everything that was going on, the whole deal.

And he listened, he didn't say anything,

except at the end he said,

"I don't think that you will ever successfully use drugs

"or alcohol ever again for the rest of your life."

And I thought, "You know, I'll see him a few times,

"maybe 10 days and a few followups ought to do it."

And then he said something really stupid.

He said, "You're gonna need Alcoholics Anonymous."

I said, "Oh no."

I said, "I'm a lot smarter than those people."

So for the next 12 days, I wore a hole in the carpet

'cause I was pacing around, no drink, no drugs,

no meetings, no nothing, right?

So I went to see him about three more times

and every time I saw him, he said,

"You need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous."

So on my 12th day of sobriety, I called the central office.

I think it was Helen Bloom,

some of you may have remembered her,

who was answering the phone and I said,

"You have a specialty meeting

"for marriage and family therapists."

And you could just hear her groan

on the other end of the line.

She said, "No, no."

She said, "The Valley Club is right down the road from there."

That's when it was on Partheni and Linlight.

And so I showed up at 805 for an eight o'clock meeting.

I was smoking and sat in the no smoking section.

I said to myself, "They'll never even know I'm here."

And they just sort of converged on me after the meeting.

Old Henry was leading the meeting.

He was coming up on 10 years of sobriety.

And so after the meeting, I said,

"So how do you tell if you're an alcoholic around here?"

He said, "Why don't you take the 20 questions?"

And I thought I did pretty good.

I only answered yes to 14 of them.

And old Henry said, "Well, what does it say on the back?"

I said, "Well, it says if you answered yes to one,

"you might be an alcoholic.

"If you answered yes to two, you're probably an alcoholic.

"And if you answered yes to three, you're screwed."

Took me a while to figure out what was wrong with me.

First place I knew that I was smarter than any of you.

And they didn't buy that into Alcoholics Anonymous at all.

I remember it about 14, 18 days of sobriety.

I was sitting in the Valley Club, excuse me,

waiting for the next meeting.

And I was talking about never having fun again

for the rest of my life.

And an old timer, it could have been Al Marine.

He was sober 30 years at the time.

He put his foot up on the seat next to me

and he looked down at me and he said,

"Boy, just how much more fun do you think you can have?"

And I'll tell you, I did not look good, right?

I mean, I did not look good.

And usually I got pissed off at people

who talked to me like that,

but I just listened to what he had to say.

Al's the one that in my second meeting

of Alcoholics Anonymous, he said,

"I want you to go back and wash the cups."

We didn't have styrofoam, we had cups that we bought

with your name on them at the Valley Club.

And I said, "Al," I said,

"I'm a licensed mental health professional

"and I don't do dishes."

And he said, "That's fine, Larry."

He said, "After you're done with the dishes,

"I want you to take this sponge and clean off the tables.

"And when you're done with that,

"I want you to empty the ashtrays,

"'cause we could smoke in meetings at that time,

"and wash those."

And instead of, I never swear during these things,

so you have to forgive me.

The alcoholic only has three thoughts.

Why me, where's mine, and fuck you, okay?

I remember the first time I ever heard that

in Alcoholics Anonymous, I fact, almost fell off my seat.

So instead of any of those three thoughts,

I said, "Yes, I'll do that."

And for the next few months,

every single time I came to a meeting, I did the dishes,

I washed down the tables and emptied the ashtrays, okay?

Now, I didn't know why I was doing that,

but I was starting to feel a little better.

Old Henry used to meet me at the door to the Valley Club,

and he said, "You know, your eyes

"are looking a little better today,

"your skin's a little clearer,

"and things are apparently getting better."

Now, at 30 days of sobriety,

he could tell that I was thinking again.

And when he met me at the door to the Valley Club,

he said, "If you're not an alcoholic,"

he said, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

And it gave me great cause for concern.

Again, this thing works.

If it'll work for a guy like me, it'll work for anyone.

Couple of years after my master's degree,

I was working at a school called the Harmony Center,

and not neurologically handicapped kids,

so I was a therapist there.

And they told me in one of my classes at USC,

they said, "We don't know

"how we had a graduate program without you,

"but we're gonna find out at the end of this semester

"you're done."

So I never did complete the PhD.

Something about my drinking and attitude

wasn't working for them.

If you're ever in a doctoral program,

do not approach your committee

and tell them in so many words

that you're smarter than they are.

It's a really bad idea.

It was devastating not to finish up.

It was disturbing to me for a long, long time.

I had decided along the way

that if they ever do give me a doctorate,

that I will never, ever listen to anyone

tell me anything again for the rest of my natural life.

Now, that would precluded people saying,

"You know, Larry, if you don't drink, you won't get drunk."

When you make a line between these two points

and these two points,

you come to a place in the brain called the limbic system,

and it's called the pleasure center in the brain.

And once you've become an alcoholic or an addict,

for that matter, it changes from telling you

when you're having fun to telling you,

especially if you're an alcoholic and you're sober,

to telling you how you're restless,

irritable, and discontent.

See, that's part of the brain that seeks alcohol

and drugs without bothering to consult me.

That doesn't happen in non-alcoholics.

In people like me, we process alcohol in the liver.

It goes from alcohol to acid aldehyde,

which is a paint thinner-like substance,

down to scenic acid, CO2, and water,

and is eliminated in the usual way.

Some of that acid aldehyde in people like me

leaves the liver, goes through the bloodstream,

and combines with a neurotransmitter called dopamine.

It has nothing to do with dope.

It's a neurotransmitter, and everybody has it.

And it produces a chemical with a name about that long.

It's called tetrahydroisoquinellin,

and no, I can't spell it.

It's a heroin-like substance that I produce in my brain

as a result of being an alcoholic.

That simply doesn't happen to people who aren't us.

We are biochemically, neurologically, mentally,

and emotionally different from people.

You know, I was sort of hoping

that the therapy would solve the problem.

It didn't.

Then I was hoping that being a therapist might fix it.

It didn't.

There's no doctor help yourself in this program.

I came in and did what I was told.

Now, did I want to do what I was told?

Not so much.

I did it anyway.

I have the one sobriety date, 11/1/84.

I told my sponsor one time early in sobriety,

I said, "Damn it, John."

I said, "This is like land in a damn space shuttle.

They only have the one shot at it.

There's no fuel left to circle around and do it again."

He said, "You only need one shot at it, idiot."

John talked like that a lot.

I think he had to talk like that

because there was such arrogance.

I remember when I was doing my fourth step

and he actually wanted me to write on the seven deadly sins.

And I told him I'd do it.

I said, "But John," I said,

"You know, I don't have a problem with pride,

so I can't possibly write on that."

And I was used to spending three hours a day with John.

He said, "Never speak to me again

unless you're willing to write about pride."

I said, "You don't have to be nasty, John.

Come and stay."

He said, "We're going to work the steps

exactly as they're written in the book."

And we went over the book together

and we did it just like the book.

I came in as an atheist.

I had to move from atheist to agnostic

just to have a shot at having a power greater than myself.

That took a while.

I have that today.

I talk to God all the time.

I talk to him like he's a friend.

I even swear at him occasionally.

I figured a God who isn't big enough to handle my temper

isn't big enough to keep me sober.

Every one of these steps require that fourth thing.

The first three are honesty,

open-mindedness, and willingness.

A very close fourth is humility.

It's involved in every single step.

Everything I have in my life I owe to alcoholics.

I mean everything.

My wife and I have been married for 46 years.

We live together in sin for six.

So it's 52 years under the same roof together.

And I acknowledge her because without her,

I'm sure I'd be dead.

Again, I'm only sober 37 years.

We've been living together for 52.

She lived through all the really bad parts of my drinking.

I thought we were having a good time.

I don't imagine she would.

I remember five years of sobriety.

I said, "Sweetheart," I said, "Do you go to Al-Anon?"

She said, "None of your fucking business."

(laughing)

By which response, I assumed that she had actually gone

to a few of those Al-Anon meetings.

I work the steps to the best of my ability in my life.

I've been through them a bunch of other times.

I've had two sponsors who died

and one sponsor who said, you know,

they probably died trying to help you.

So that might be a little harsh.

A therapist for 40 years.

The first nine of which, of course, I was still drinking.

It was good work.

I remember being in junior college

and taking an accounting class.

And I went into my therapy, Owen, and I said,

"If I ever have to take another accounting class,

"I'm gonna pull my hair out."

He said, "No problem."

He said, "How about psychology?"

And of course the rest is sort of history.

You don't have to agree with Larry or his way of doing this,

but find someone that you like what they have

and ask them, humble yourself enough to ask them

to be your sponsor and then do what they tell you to do.

Three months ago, my wife said,

which is the quote, "I hate you."

And I just figured I've got some work here to do.

So I started doing more housework.

It was on increments, okay?

I started doing more housework.

And then pretty soon she said,

"That's only one of the things I hate about you."

She said, "You're way too singular

"and you spend too much time by yourself

"and you don't pay enough attention to me."

Believe it or not, I am now less singular

and I'm paying more attention to her.

Why?

Because it's the right thing to do

and because I don't really want her hating me.

Now in the process somewhere, we had a talk about it

and she said, "Are you expecting me to build a shrine

"for you because you're being a little better?"

And I had to be honest with her.

I said, "Yes, I am."

She said, "Forget it."

He said, "I like you a little bit."

That was the first.

And then I started to be a little more personal

and a little more less singular.

And I think it was about a week ago she said, "I love you."

So I wanna continue that process forward.

I've been retired for about eight years from what I do.

I'm sponsoring a few guys.

Some of them even call me, don't they?

(laughing)

I mean, no pressure.

I don't want to put him under any pressure.

I love being retired.

I go to three or four meetings a week.

Now they're all in-person meetings.

I hated the Zoom.

It just took me forever to get used to that.

I went because I had to, because I can't do it alone.

But I'm back in in-person meetings and I really liked them.

I have two men stags on Monday and Friday

and a mixed meeting on Tuesday.

And one of the ladies in that meeting

has a eatin' meetin' once a month.

And I attend that one minute.

I'll think of it.

In the meantime, I'll tell you what he said.

Vern Williams, he died with 38 years of sobriety.

And Vern said, "The price of continued sobriety

"is constant vigilance.

"And it really annoyed me when he used to say that

"until I figured out the vigilance is of our attitudes."

And I find that totally to be true.

My mind wants to go and do this

and the program wants me to go and do this.

And so there are conflicts inside the brain

every now and then.

My message is come and do what we do and stay,

regardless of how tough you think it is.

Go down to Skid Row, that's tough.

Before the pandemic, I was doin' that at least once a month.

Soon as this is over, I'm lookin' forward

to getting to Southern California Hospital

and other panels 'cause it does me some good.

I don't know if we do them any good at all,

but I look out at the audience and I see what I don't want.

Here, I see what I want.

You guys have what I want.

The people at Southern California Hospital

and the people on Skid Row do not have what I want.

It's a privilege to be here and be sober.

And if I didn't thank you for asking me to present,

I'll do that now.

I think that's probably enough out of me.

Thank you.