Hi everybody. My name is Carter and I'm an alcoholic. I want you to notice the tie and
the coat that I haven't worn since COVID, and maybe before. And my first reaction when
I saw that goddamn, pardon me, I wore the coat and tie, but the language may not be
perfect. My first reaction was, "No, you can't make me wear a goddamn coat and tie." It's
like, "I hate him. I've had to wear him to work for a long time." But I decided, "Well,
maybe that'd be nice." It was actually kind of fun. I feel like I'm at Halloween. Why
did I come here outside of for my own sobriety to save my own ass, which I've been doing
now for almost 48 years. Can you believe that? I was really impressed with four days and
one day at a time things happened. But the big book says that the main purpose of this
book is to help us find a power connection to a power greater than ourselves that can
solve our problem. Not this problem or that problem, all our problems. That's hard to
really take. Where do we... Well, I'll tell you. Okay. Where do you find... Tomorrow I
just sent out, I teach a meditation on Sunday mornings now online. Actually, I love COVID
because I now sponsor people in Europe and Asia and all over America. Just sit down there,
put your feet up and click a few things and say, "Hi, there. How's it going?" I teach
meditation online and I send out this email. The email says, basically it says, "Where
do we find peace? Where do we find happiness? Where do we find joy? Where do we find feeling
okay? Where do we find self-esteem?" To talk about that, feeling okay about ourselves.
Where we find it is by stop, stop being thinking. In that stop, if we take a breath, you might
try it and you might not. I don't care. But take a breath. Just take a breath and just
drop thinking and just shift your attention to the warmth of your own heart. Then take
another breath and deepen it even to the connection of peace and power and love deep inside. That's
where the big book says we find it. Man, I spent a long time learning that goddamn lesson
because as a little kid growing up, I thought I learned that I was separate. I had a separate
body and a separate thing. Then because I was separate, I needed to find love and I
needed to figure out how to manipulate mommy and daddy so I could be okay and find love.
Daddy was in the Navy and disappeared and mommy was a good Navy wife and was unavailable.
She was like emotionally couldn't connect. She took care of me. Events happened in my
life that disturbed. When I was four, I lived ideally, actually. I think about that now.
I lived on a beach in Hawaii. All I had to do at four years old was put on a pair of
swimming trunks. We lived by a little stream. My brother would take me on his canoe rides
and his outrigger and I could search for shells and mommy was there. She'd fix me lunch and
dinner and dad would come home from his ship. He was in the Navy every day and give me a
ride on his shoulders. I was in happy land. Then you may guess my age now and then at
the age of four, idiot people in charge of governments decided to have a war with each
other and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and destroyed my happy little vision, my happy
little vision. I started not trusting this world. You got to watch out. The bombers may
come. Who knows what's going to happen? I started being scared of the world. Then later
on, I want to fast forward. I want to spend a lot of time on this, but came back to the
States. Actually had a good time and skipped the second grade, which was a terrible mistake
because I was very immature. Then I ended up in this city school and these city kids,
I was so naive. They were pushing me. They wanted to see what I was made of. They were
challenging me and they were scaring the hell out of me. There was a gang of them all ganging
up on me. I ran home crying to mommy and daddy. Dad said, "Don't be a wimp, Carter. Don't
be a chicken shit." Now I knew what I was, a chicken shit wimp. I also figured out pretty
early that it was a good idea not to let you know what I was. That started the whole game
of let's pretend to be something you aren't so that the people out there. I started suffering
from this delusion, the big book says, this delusion that in order to find rest, satisfaction
and happiness from life, I need to manage well. I need to manage what I look like.
I watched two idiots in my yard play that game. Now I'm true. It's like still trying
to manage through anger. I don't want to go through a whole lot of that. We moved around
some more. I grew bigger. I was smart. Like the lady that just talked, I was smart. I
had something going for me. I was smart. I skipped the second grade and I was smart.
As far as connecting man to man, as far as being a real man in this real world, I was
like, I don't want you to find out who I really am. I decided at some point that I was really
ugly too. I had this funny Adam's apple. I grew from this height to this height and overnight.
I was skinny and had these funny arms and legs. And, and so then I was supposed to ask
girls out, you know, and I knew, I knew that if I was a girl, I wouldn't want anything
to do with the skinny wimpy chicken shit, the ugly guy, you know, had the big fat lips
and this big Adam's apple on his ears. It stuck out. I knew no girl was, so I would
say, you don't want to go out with me. Do you? And she would agree. No, I go out with
you. Thereby proving that at least I was smart. I don't know whether I'd ever want to relive
that part. I sponsor some of these guys and they're busy getting laid at like 12 or something
or other and having a happy time. And, you know, and my approach, you know, it took forever,
you know, for me to, but I was smart. You know, I talk about that smart doesn't do a
goddamn thing for you being smart. You know, I, I was, I just realized I was accepted to
Harvard and to MIT at the age of 16. And I was talking to another guy and he was trying
to decide who's a very, very smart son. And he was trying to decide what school to go
to, you know, MIT or Caltech or Michigan. And he started writing in a little, little
list of which one was, wasn't he? And he was like writing down, he's going to figure it
out. He's going to figure out what schools to go to by the very best intellectual process.
And he got to the very bottom and he had made a decision and it was midnight or 11 o'clock
and he had to make a decision. And the guy from MIT called him up and said, Hey, you
want to go to school? He said, Oh, okay. You know, they sort of, we have suffered from
the delusion that we can figure things out with our mind. And even though maybe this
mind is pretty good at figuring out algebra and techniques and crap like that, but it's
worthless in figuring out whether I love you, whether I care about you, whether this is
the right thing to do, it's totally worthless. You know, I may meet my ego may decide I want
this and then my mind thinks, yeah, you should do it for this and this and this and this
and this reason. And then the other part of my mind says, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but
yeah, but yeah. And then I'm like crazy. And then I haven't talked about drinking, but
that's where drinking comes in. You're trying to figure it out and you're trying to figure
it out and try and figure it out and try and figure it out, try and figure it out. And
finally you say, I need an escape. You know, I really understand now why young girls trying
to figure out why nobody likes them at school will cut themselves because you know, I'd
rather feel the physical pain than the mental pain of my head. And that's where I was only
I didn't get into cutting myself. I did drive cars fast. You know, I never killed myself
driving a car, which some kids do, you know, or I did later on, put my fist through a wall
from just that stress, but drinking. Oh yeah. Oh, thank God. You know, I remember I got,
I did go to MIT and I was in this fraternity and I still didn't have a date. And because
the girls in Boston didn't like me any more than the girls in Seattle. And I said, you
don't want to go out with me. And I had a few, it's just a little what, but I'd had
a few beers, a couple of beers, I think, or something to drink. And I remember walking
into this room and there was a guy over there with this girl. Oh, you know, usually I would
feel, oh, I don't have a girl. They'll find out what an idiot I am. There was a guy over
there with his girl and with this alcohol in me, I thought, oh wow, bless you, my children.
You know that wonderful thing that sometimes we got when we first started drinking or using
or something. Oh yeah. It's all just wonderful. And the fact that, you know, a half an hour
or a couple of hours later, I'm upstairs, barking my guts out was a very small price
to pay for feeling okay. For feeling, feeling a connection, you know, what the alcohol does
is it shuts off this fucking head of mine that was just driving me nuts. And unlike
the other speaker, you know, when I went to, at least when I went to MIT, it was like,
okay, I got here now and I'm really smart. So I should get really good grades without
studying. And it turns out to be a very poor strategy. I got A's and F's and A's and
F's. And I finally, I did, you know, I went back and finally completed that and went back
to Seattle, which is where my, my father retired to. And so I hadn't found a girl though. I
was, I was like 21 years old and a virgin, but I'm speaking to Playboy and saying, oh
yeah, you know, trying to pretend to be okay. You know, that trying to pretend to be okay.
I'm jumping around, but I just, I see people with 10, 20, 30 years sobriety in this program,
still trying to pretend to be okay. You know, I'm trying to keep up the, you know, pretense.
You know, there was my wife just, she sponsored, there's a lovely black woman she sponsors
and, but that she's trying to pretend to be okay. You know, she threw a party for a hundred
people for her mother's 80th birthday. And then this big funeral for a mother actually,
but it was huge. And, and then she just got married all in white in Las Vegas to this
perfect, really good looking guy, except that he was total fake. And she just, she was married
for two months, married in June. That's right. And it lasted until a month ago, you know,
because it was all this illusion. If I can only just arrange the, you know, the actor,
see the actor part of the big book, you know, if I can only arrange the scenery and get
everything okay, then everybody will think I'm wonderful, except that I know I'm a piece
of shit, you know? And so it doesn't work. I see people, you know, on this program, I'm
actually working, it's the craziest thing. I'm working now with three people and we're
going through the steps with the addiction now, you know, they've all been through SLA,
but the process I go through of really using the big book as a tool to examine yourself
can be used for more than alcohol or drugs and using it for this addiction to, oh, that's
the person that's going to make me okay. You know, come on, come on, come on, come on,
come on, come back here. Oh, God damn it. You know, you know, we get, you know, we,
you know, first we're kinder and more loving. And then because our ego is trying to get
us into it and the steps are working for that, you know, it's really, it's fascinating. We're
going through the, even the first step of body, you know, I'm powerless over, over alcohol
and my life is un manageable and it's both body wise and mentally and, and spiritually.
And once we get into the, you know, where I'm okay for a while and then I find her and
this guy, I sponsor, he teaches, he gives workshops in Europe for Christ sakes, you
know, because they take him over here to do workshops and he really helps people because
he got a really fabulous recovery from heroin and alcohol and stuff in the, in the ghetto.
And they think he's wonderful, except that he's still, you know, okay, God can handle
this, but there's part of this, this part that I never got this connection to mother's
love and I can find it now. And it gets over to Europe and there's four good looking young
women in there. He's 65 and black and they're 32 and white, but that doesn't matter. They're
looking at him, you know, because he's the answer and he, you know, he violated all his
principles because he's like, he got into it, you know, it's like it kicked in again.
So anyway, I'm okay in my life. Yeah. When he came back, you know, I want, what time
is it now? Yeah. Well, I've got some time. Yeah. One of my, one of my stories about you
know, just the craziness of alcohol was was I decided, God damn it, I've got to get laid.
You know, I'm 22 years old and I haven't been laid and I keep pretending like I know what
to happen that every time I get near a woman, I like get all scared, you know, it's like,
and I can't do it. And so I'm going to seek professional help. So I decided I got my little
blue Ford and I drove, I was in Seattle and I drove through downtown Seattle. Actually
there's a lot of professional help. I was seeking professional help, you know, of the,
of the informal kind and, and we'll go through Portland and down to San Francisco. There's
a lot of professional help in Seattle, but it was kind of odd. And and down to here in
LA and then on to where any good Navy kid would go, you know, if he was seeking professional
help in 19, when was it 1958 or something? And that was to Tijuana, you know, and I got
out of my little blue Ford and Tijuana and there was, there was professional help helpers
on the street. I want to come over here and I got a little scared, you know, I've just
been thought, been thinking for God knows, you know, five or 10 years about getting,
getting laid. And now, you know, it's about to happen, but I, I was a little nervous.
So I decided to go into a bar and have a drink and, and their bourbon was awful and the scotch
was awful, but they had this tequila stuff, you know, that was, and they had this little
ritual where they put a little salt and then they looked at, and then they took a shot
and it was really good. I thought I'd have another one. And I did, you know, look shot.
And then that was really even better. I think I'll have another shot. And I think something
happened that night, but I'm not quite sure. I have a vague memory of road beds and dirt,
but I can't really remember any of them. So I really drove 1500 miles back to Seattle
problem unsolved, you know, God damn alcohol, you know, it was that tequila. That was the
problem. But we always have some bloody excuse, you know, from that. And there was a lady
back in Seattle that then rejected my brother that spotted me because I had a job. I was
working for Boeing and she dragged me over to apartment and she got me. So I had a couple
of drinks, so I wasn't like this, but not so many drinks. I was barking on her and which
was another problem I had. And it's really discouraging in a relationship, but if you
go back out again, you know, try not to barf on the woman. And she solved my problem. And
so now I'm a man. So now I've got her and actually I've got her every night because
I don't want to let her go. But I also got this blonde from work. It's really pretty
that I've been longing for an awful lot. But this one wanted to get married and said, OK,
I'll get married because I don't want to lose her. But I'm still after the blonde from work.
And even after I married, you know, it's like we are so crazy. And that marriage got really
crazy. You know, that woman, the girl I married, she was quite young to 19 or 20 and had been
through the own hell. You know, people that are attracted to alcoholics are not necessarily
the best people in the world, you know, emotionally stable. And, you know, she you know, I taught
her to drink really. And she would she exceeded. She really exceeded me. And she would get
so goddamn drunk, she would pound her head against the wall after screaming epithets
at me. And I would finally learn to not pay any attention to people that go into blackouts.
But but I only realized recently that the reason she was pounding her head was, yes,
she was emotionally crazy. But it was also I was emotionally unavailable. I've been trained
by those two parents of mine not to express emotion. If you have negative emotion, you
don't do it. It's almost like you don't shit on yourself and you don't spout out, you know,
negative stuff. You keep it in, you stuff it in. You don't ever express it. So this
poor girl is trying to talk about her emotional problems with me. And I'm talking about what
did you know that according to science, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or according
to, you know, it's like, I'm totally no wonder she's pounding her head against the wall. And
we decided after a while, Seattle wasn't working out. We moved to Boston, we moved to Boston
where everything was going to be wonderful. And it worked, you know, kind of move that
the big book describes and it worked for a while. And then she we had two kids too, by
that time. And the drinking was worth on her part and my part. And then it really got worse
on her part. You know, she discovered she, she was going to help the people in the in
the Boston ghetto. And she ended up, you know, getting getting a lot of help as far as connecting
with drugs and heroin. And, and then she ran off, she deserted me with these two goddamn
kids and a dog and a cat in the house. And she ran off across the country with Billy,
the near knee breaking is a knee breaker. That was one of the, he had several professions,
knee breaking, prostitute, pimp and, and drug dealer, you know, he was a man of many trades
and she ran across the country with him, stole all the money she could get rid of. And I
was upset. I was terribly upset with her. And I can remember, you know, I actually,
I really do qualify for Al-Anon too. In fact, I've been in Al-Anon some, and I remember
here's my, my perfect Al-Anon AA saying one time when she was out running around with
somebody or other, I'm getting really, really angry at her drinking. And I get really drunk
and I start in a rage looking around the house for his fucking vodka, which I hate. And I
found it hidden in the drawer, two bottles of goddamn vodka. And I find myself in a drunken
rage pouring out her vodka into the sink. Goddamn bitch. We are so crazy. You know,
we are just goddamn nuts. And I see that we're nuts, you know, but we're nuts in sobriety
too. Anyway, what happened was what time is it now? Yeah. I want to, I want to get sober
somewhere in the medicine there. I was feeling so sorry for myself, but you know, I was suicidal
for a long time because it really gets, you know, it really gets confusing. You know,
you should be smart. You should be able to figure it out. You know, people on, you know,
gun smoke, which I watched, they seem to have figured out, you know, all these people seem
to all people you look at, you know, they're walking hand in hand. How come I can't figure
it out? You know, how come I'm so goddamn miserable? You know, how come I'm confused?
I can remember, you know, my wife, yeah, my wife had run away and I was up in Maine and
I was feeling so, you know, I decided, fuck it. And I dove into this. I decided, okay,
I'm going to swim out to that island and that I can just barely see in the icy waters of
the main fjords. And I dove into the water drunk as a skunk to swim out to the island.
And if I live okay, I'll live. And if I die, that's fine. Now, a guy named Bucky Fuller,
who you may have done this, did something similar in the, in Lake Michigan. And, but
he got out of there and when he turned around, he decided he would give his life to mankind,
which he did, you know, with an off geodesic dome and an awful lot of things. But when
I dove into the water and swam out there, I got really cold and I got really sober and
I decided it would be a really good idea to come back and go back to the fire and the
bottle of scotch I had and, and the hell was killing myself that night. So, which I'm really
glad because, you know, my life is, that was only, that wasn't too long before we, the,
you know, that's fascinating too. You know, I, I just, I, that goddamn wife of mine, I'm
thinking, I got, I hate her. I hate her. I wish she'd die. You know, that God would kill
her and drop a, you know, I don't care what, and then she runs off with across the country
and then I'm mad at her for running away. And when she calls up, you know, Billy apparently
didn't think she was a very good prostitute and she loved, he deserted her in San Francisco
and she said, Carter, can I come home? And I sent her the money to come home. This woman
that I've been screaming, you know, I wish she'd die, you know, and I sent her the money
to come home and we decided, Oh, okay, Boston didn't work out. Let's move to Los Angeles.
You know, we've got a, got a possible job out here and we moved to them and all the
little children here were little angels. You know, they got blonde hair. You didn't know
that, did you? But you know, from our point of view from Boston, all the little kids were
blonde and beautiful and singing on the beach. So we moved out here and of course that lasted
about two weeks and, and then you know, and then the craziness started again and I couldn't
get a job too. And I was, you know, I was lying around, you know, if you want to get
a job, here's, here's a secret I have. If you want to get a job, you shouldn't lie in
bed or getting drunk, thinking about getting a job and thinking about how you're going
to do it, you should actually get up and go look for a job. And I can't remember, it was
all in the middle of trying to get sober and try not to get over. Now she would, she actually
almost physically died from alcoholism, bad creatitis at the age of 31. She was a God
damn bad alcoholic, you know, two fists a day and a little bit of, get a little bit
of milk for her sustenance. And and that's where she got into the program. And then,
and then I got hooked into one of these friggin, you know, support group things and it was her
problem, but I decided to be a good person. I also, I was vaguely suspicious that getting
drunk every night and hating myself and not being able to get a job who had something
to do with getting drunk every night. You know, I didn't usually drink during the day.
I usually survive the day and got drunk at night survive. Okay. And every night after
night after night. So I didn't do whatever needed to be done during the day, but then
I relieve myself by getting drunk at night. And, and thought maybe there's a relationship
between and I tried not drinking because they told me in the support group, don't drink
and just support her the ditch, you know, but I'm sorry, but that was, we did not have
a, have you ever, have you ever laid side by side with the woman that you've sometimes
loved and you're like, you know, you don't touch each other because you hate each other
so much. You don't touch me, you know, it's like, Jesus, you know, that was, that was
throughout that whole period, you know, don't touch me. I can't. And so I tried not drinking,
you know, and and I actually, and I also tried looking for a job at that same time, you know,
I tried looking for a job. I think it was connected to the, I started going to, I didn't
want to go to fucking AA because they made, they said you shouldn't drink. And I wanted
to retain my right to drink because she had the problem. So I went to Allen on of all
things and and I stayed sober for a while and I got a job and then, which, and then
after I got the job, everybody at work, this is 1974, everybody at work drank a lot and
I wasn't drinking and it wasn't fair that I could drink and they could, I couldn't drink
and they could drink. And I finally decided, you know, my problem was I drank at home alone.
That was the problem. And and it would be all right if I drank socially because I never
drank socially before. And it's like people, I didn't like going, I wasn't a bar drinker.
They scared me, but I just drank, you know, and watch television or drooled on myself.
And so I decided I'm going to become a social drinker and I'm only going to drink with other
people and then it will be okay. And I remember we went to San Francisco on a business thing
and I drank there and it was okay. So then I came back and for almost a whole week, that
worked pretty well. It was an experiment that was looking really successful, except that
there was no underlying, you know, you know, let's look at the conditions that cause us
to cause that thing. Yeah. You know, people that have shitty whatever, you know, don't
necessarily drink. They may use or they may overachieve or they may, you know, they may
overeat or they may do all sorts of things to suppress the thing. So, but alcohol was
what works for me. And I, and one night I'm driving home and I'm facing this goddamn environment
at home with the crazy children and the wife that may or may not be there that I hate anyway,
because she caused me all these problems. And so I decided, well, I'll stop at Woody's
Steakhouse and I'll have a steak barrier. I won't have to go home. And when I was at
Woody's Steakhouse, I looked at all these people and I thought, gee, there's lots of
people here. I could have a drink. You know, it's not quite, it's social drinking, you
know, they're here and I'm there. So I had a, I'll just have one though. So I had a triple
martini at Woody's Steakhouse. And it turns out that a triple martini was not enough to
calm the mind. Mind is still going, you know, and I had this thought, well, I'll buy to
hell with it. I'll go out and buy my bottle of Cutty Sark and take it home. And I loved
Cutty Sark. It had this ship on it and I always had this fantasy if I could get in the ship
and just go off into fantasy land on the good ship Cutty Sark. And I'm about to leave and
go get my bottle of Cutty Sark. And through God's grace, I had a thought. I had a thought,
if you get that bottle of Cutty Sark, it's not going to take you off into happy land.
It's going to take you back to the last 12 years of fights and blood and confusion and
suicide attempts and hatred. And it's going to take you back to 12 years of goddamn misery.
And that 12 years of misery got compressed into that Cutty Sark. And it was like, no,
I don't want it was God's grace. You know, it was like, I work with people that, you
know, that don't have that, you know, they just sort of stumble around and it's like,
it can be even years in AA of in and out and in and out before they say, Oh, I can't do
it. But I got it in one compressed thing of, you know, it reminded me reminded me of trying
to put the cat in the cat box to take it to the fat bit. No, you know, all four paws against
the guy gave me another gift to that I didn't quite recognize initially. And that is the
gift of realizing the problem is here. The problem isn't the damn bitch wife. The problem
isn't the crazy kids. The problem isn't the job. The problem isn't the parents that obviously
fucked up when they raised you the problem or 2000 miles away. The problem is me and
my thinking and the solution. I'd been around this program enough. The solution seems to
be in this program in this process of steps. And it got me into working the steps and looking
at myself and looking at my behavior, eventually finding a sponsor and, and being willing.
There was a willingness, you know, I realized, you know, I was a month sober and I was driving
to work and actually was I we lived near the beach and I was driving to work along the
beach. And I had this realization, I'd rather be alive than dead. I'd rather be alive than
dead. That was such a wow. You know, maybe there's a possibility for Carter in this world,
you know, possibility, peace and happiness and joy. And that got me into, you know, I
found a sponsor and I did the one minute, one minute to go. Oh, okay, one minute to
go. And that drove me into the steps and the willingness to work through the steps and
the willingness. I just want to say, you know, that at five years sober, I was still looking
for a woman and I, and, and because I was still scared, I still had that thing. And
finally, you know, I finally, I was over, I felt okay about myself at five years sober
that I had something to offer another woman. And, and first I explored the world of women.
I just had fun and took out on dates and then I found the woman I've been with for the last
40 years, you know, and staying with a woman for 40 years as powerful as my wife is, is
not that easy. And over and over again, I've had to choose, choose a loving relationship
over being right over and over again. I'm so right. I'm so right. She should understand
it except that I love her and I care about her. That's the power of that is that you
know, that I want, I want to, I want love. I want a connection with God. I want connection
with other people. And it's been 40 years now, 40, I'm going to be sober 48 years. And
in about, and this coming week and 48 years since that moment in Woody's steakhouse. And,
and it's been a life of, you know, peace and possibility for the last 10 years, I've really
gotten heavily into spirituality and teaching meditation and teaching what I just talked
about over and over again, working with people to help them connect to that power greater
than themselves that can solve their problems over and over again, to understand that their
problems are not out there. The problems are in their thinking about what's out there and
that their true self is not this little ego itself, but this child of God, this awareness,
this formation of God that is okay. Each and every one of us is inside perfectly. Okay.
We just haven't figured it out yet. Some of them. I love you all. I love this program.