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 My name is Doug Ralph. I'm a great poor alcoholic, and I thank you for inviting me to come and

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 do this. And I want to thank Elizabeth for welcoming me. And my name is Scott. Thank

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 you for your talk. I am planning to get my society dated June 7th, 1987. So I'm 37 and

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 a half years sober. I'd like to get to have in there in case, not I'm obvious to say,

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 in case they ever get a punching deal going here at this program for 37 and a half years.

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 My sponsor's name is Ralph White. And my home group is called the New Attitude group of

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 Alcoholics Anonymous. We meet in Burbank, just off of Hollywood Way, every morning at

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 7 a.m. And it's kind of fun because my former home group for 30 years, at some point right

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 after the pandemic, decided the traditions were just a suggestion. They didn't really

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 need to follow them to the letter. So about a dozen of us left with 400 years of sobriety

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 and started tuning Zoom meetings. And my home group, this New Attitude, a face to face meeting.

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 So now in the Burbank, North Hollywood area, there's four places where people can come

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 and get sober. So anyway, I don't know why I'm an alcoholic. It almost seems like I shouldn't

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 be. I don't come from an alcoholic family and I didn't start drinking too young. Really

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 when you first come here and your sponsor or somebody will say, look for the similarities,

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 not the differences. It's good advice. But usually what we do is go, oh yeah, yeah, I'll

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 do that. No, we don't do it. We start looking for the differences. So maybe I can find a

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 reason why I can't be here, you know, like Scott was saying, you know. Yeah, this isn't

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 really for me. I love it that your guide said, OK, well, you know, if you make it back, basically

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 I wish that we'll be here. When I was brand new, I was either brand new or about to be

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 new. But I was going to meetings and I was going to the Pacoima group. There was a woman

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 there named Doris who was, we used to call her Mother Superior. She died with almost

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 40 years of sobriety, I think. But anyway, Queen Bee, you know, she was there. And she

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 said before the meeting started Thursday night, she said, Doug, would you go outside and be

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 our greeters, down at the door and welcome people? I said, you know, I'm new, you know,

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 and I don't know, I might be welcoming somebody with 20 years of sobriety to visit their home

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 group. And I'm saying welcome. They're going to say, what do you mean welcome, here's my

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 home group. I didn't mean for them to be too bad. But the movie is all about me. And I

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 said, would you do that? I said, yeah, I'm really not comfortable doing that. And there

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 was a, there was a guy there. He said, I wouldn't be comfortable, would you? Sitting on your

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 deck, having a whiskey jar, would you be comfortable doing that? And I said, yeah, I would, actually.

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 And he said, would you do that? And he looked back and said, there's a lot of great people.

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 These people are tough, man. As I said, I didn't come from an alcoholic family. My dad

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 was the kind of guy who would drink the beer once in a while. You know, it wasn't important

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 to him. You know, he might be working the yard, working his car, watching a game or

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 something, stopping to have a beer. And then he would go back to what he was doing, you

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 know, whatever that means. Because I don't, that's not the way I drink it. If I stopped

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 to have a beer, that's what I'm doing, whatever I was doing. Before, I couldn't drink it.

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 And why would I stop and have a beer? We never knew if she was an alcoholic or not because

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 she wouldn't drink. And, you know, they all swallow the alcohol. It makes it very difficult

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 to diagnose a case of alcohol. And I finally asked her one time, I was about three years

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 sober, I guess, you know, and it's just the two of us were sitting in her kitchen. And

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 I said, Mom, why don't you drink? And it caught her off guard. She said, what do you mean?

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 I said, well, I mean, why don't you drink? She said, alcohol? I said, yeah. What? I don't

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 know. When I was young, my friends drank, I drank with them. And every time I drank,

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 I got sick, stupid and obnoxious. You got to drink through that, Mom. I promise land

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 lies beyond sick, stupid and obnoxious. My mom was a great woman. She was, there's a

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 little bitty thing, she was about four foot eleven. And she was very loving and generous.

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 She was smart and funny. She was, I mean, you know, my friends would say, God, I wish

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 I had a mom like yours, you know, but she just did not have the tenacity to make it

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 to AA. So I never said, I have three younger sisters, none of them are alcoholic. So I'm

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 kind of a soft-made alcoholic, I guess, you know, and I didn't start drinking too young.

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 Like I said, what happened was the guys in high school didn't make it look attractive.

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 The guys who drank, you know, they would get sick, stupid and obnoxious. It didn't look

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 like anything I wanted, so it didn't appeal to me. But my friend Morris, he was like,

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 seemed like a sex sponsor, you know, I mean, he was this, he was limited business to the

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 guys we all got with him. Morris said to me, you know, if you want to get a home with this

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 girl, you're going to have to get her drunk. And I heard that, because we used to use these

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 baseball terms, I don't know if it was a civilian to any brother, but we had a first base, a

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 second base, and a third base. I don't know where the bases are. It doesn't matter,

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 people did not know bases if you're doing it right. And second, you know, I'm married,

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 it's like step up to the plate and slide home. So anyway, I'm going to say, we're going to

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 get a home with this girl, you're going to have to get her drunk, so I heard that. Now

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 I'm interested in drinking. And I grew up in Gardenville, and you know, the liquor store

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 in Gardenville Boulevard, people said, there was an old man that ran the store and he ran

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 it by himself. So if you ran in the back door, which for some reason was always unlocked,

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 you could run to the fridge and grab a bottle and run out. He couldn't catch it, he couldn't,

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 you know, he'd run the store by himself. So I tried it and it worked. And so I grabbed

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 the quarter of 80 rail, and that's pretty much the neck and the beverage, you know,

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 and so now I got my ammunition, you know, the school and then parked by the railroad tracks,

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 which we had done before, but now I got my leg, you know, so like, it's something to see in my

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 car. And we started to hug and kiss, and we send her, got this bottle that cracked the top on that

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 bottle. It's used in that carbonated dishwater, but I wondered if you were quarantining so much,

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 and so I handed it to her, and she drank some past the break of that bottle in about five

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 minutes. So it's a little awkward to stand in a room full of alcoholics and say, Eason,

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 half a quarter of 80 rail will take your ass downtown, but if you're 18 years old and you've

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 never had any alcohol before, it works. Half a quarter of 80 rail will do the job. And I just,

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 all of a sudden, I felt something I'd never experienced. I was like, I'm charismatic,

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 you know. I was intelligent and witty and handsome and cool, you know. Cool is one of

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 those words. Everybody knows what cool is. You don't have to, in fact, in the dictionary,

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 look up cool. It says cool, cool. What would that mean? One thing I mean about cool is that

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 really, all of a sudden, I was so cool, you could see me across the street and go, that guy's cool.

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 You know, that's what alcohol does for me. And so it turns out,

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 first time I ever had an alcohol voice, and the first time I ever had sex in front of a witness,

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 so Morris was right. And it turned out, I made a commitment that I'm going to do both of these

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 things as much as I can, left in my life. And I talked about commitment today. That was a life

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 commitment that I made as a teen years old. And I was, you know, I'm still too young to legally

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 buy pills, but it was still easier to get than sex. But I did the best I could. But I started

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 playing guitar, because it looked to me like all the girls like guitar players, but that's why I

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 got to start playing guitar. And I graduated high school in '63, 1963. Goddamn, it was a long time

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 ago. And the music of that time, the popular music was folk music, Kingston Trio, Peter,

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 Paul and Mary, John Baez and Bob Dylan. And then there were the old guys, the Pete Stevens and

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 Woody Guthrie's. And, you know, so I got, I got this guitar and I started going to coffee houses,

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 which coffee houses in the 1960s were not Starbucks, nothing like Starbucks,

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 nothing like them. And they were dimly lit performance venues. People were playing music

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 and tell jokes. So I started going there and playing music and telling jokes. And, you know,

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 make a couple bucks here and a couple bucks there and started performing at these things.

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 And then I got with a partner, Bill, named Jennifer. Well, we were, Jennifer did the

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 rum and tube, and we started playing some bigger coffee houses. So the thing that happened is the

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 Beatles came to town. And that wasn't the whole British invasion. So, you know, the Rolling Stones

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 and the Yardbirds and just, oh my God, Green Top. And then we started getting our own American

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 rockers, you know, grateful dad and Jefferson Airplane and the holding company and Jenny

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 Hendrix and Jenna's chocolate. And I got a record guitar, man. That's what's happening now. I got

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 an electric guitar and I joined a band. I joined a band in the county called the Scepters, which

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 we played, because it was actually 21. I didn't move up to Hollywood. That's where the music is.

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 Well, I went to high school with him as a musician. He was in a band called the Music

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 Machine. And I moved up there and moved in with him and this other musician in Royal Canyon. And

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 it was a really cool place to live in 1969. You know, Royal Canyon was the deal. It was funny.

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 Anything I missed because I wasn't always sober, it was strange. Okay, let me get this out of the

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 way. I also used some drugs. I only use them every goddamn day I've ever heard of. Some are not even

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 careful. So they're only using my five or six times. Anyway, you've got to give me a shot,

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 you know, I mean, really. But still, I mean, it just, I'm sober so long. But AA is a big

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 part of my life. If I had known then, when I know now, the first time somebody said,

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 somebody said, you know, I'd love to, but I'm going to be talking to an AA meeting in 30 years.

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 I don't want to piss anybody off, you know, so, but I didn't know. So yeah, just, you know,

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 you use every drug I've ever heard of. I moved into Royal Canyon and I got in a band called the Rock

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 Wall. And we played all the clips up and down Hollywood. You're shaking your head. Have you

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 heard of the Rock Wall? Okay, guy is big son. We haven't recorded anything. We just went to,

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 we just went to work and played mostly cover songs, a couple of original things. We played

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 almost every clip up and down Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevard. And,

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 and we were making a living, you know, and, and people would buy you drinks and, and, you know,

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 any joints and stuff. And, and what happened during the, it was a fun part of my life, but in 1969, a show

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 opened on Broadway, actually '68, it opened on Broadway, called Hair. And I liked Broadway

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 musicals. I always did. I loved Flower Drum Song, The Music Man, and Oklahoma. It's not what my,

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 my band played. We played rock and roll and we had meltdown stuff. But I always loved those

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 musicals. And this musical was rock and roll. Hair was about people living on the streets of

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 New York and, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll, you know, and playing band way. They did a Tony

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 on them. They got two Tonys, one on Broadway and one on Broadway. I mean, this was a popular show.

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 And then they brought the company to Hollywood. And I went to see that show and I just fell in

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 love with it. I was like, Oh my God, these people are acting and singing and dancing. And the next

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 thing I saw on a Tuesday night, the next day, I called the playlist theater. I said, Cory,

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 a theater, can I help you? I said, yeah, I want to be in your show. And this can't happen today.

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 Today, if you tried to do that, they would say, well, who is your agent? You know, or do you have

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 a manager? Have your representative call us. I just, that's just the way business is now.

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 But at that time they were hiring people off the street. I said, I want to be in your show.

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 She said, hold on a second. Connected me to the company manager. He said, can I help you? I said,

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 I want to be in your show. He said, you do. Can you sing and dance? Hey man, that's what I do.

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 That's how I pay my rent, brother. That's how I put gas in my car. You thought I'd sing and dance.

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 I never danced a step in my life. I'm up on the bandstand. I'm playing, I'm singing every night.

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 I'm singing, singing, singing, but you know, I'm watching you dance like good dancing, bad dancing.

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 I mean, how hard can that be? So I even tried it, but I was pretty sure I could do that. So

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 I said, yeah, yeah, man, I sing and dance. And he goes, what's your name? And I told him, he said,

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 what's your phone number? I gave it to him and he said, okay, what are you doing Friday at one

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 o'clock? So you tell me, he said, we're having auditions Friday at one o'clock. Come down to

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 the Aquarius theater at one o'clock Friday. We'll give you a shot. But I haven't been on the phone

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 three minutes and I got an audition for hair. So we went to work that night and I told him,

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 oh, he said, get, get a piece, bring a piece of sheet music, a song you like to sing.

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 So I went to, I went right down to Warwick music city and got the sheet music. And I went to work

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 that night and I said, let me sing this song a couple of times a night. Cause I got an audition

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 Friday and he said, okay. So I did it Wednesday night and Thursday night. I sang a song a few

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 times and Friday morning I got my guitar and I'm practicing the song cause I know I got a shot at

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 this thing at one o'clock. I broke a string on my guitar. And yeah, I know they said big sheet

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 music. I'm not going to be playing the guitar. We're going to have a piano player there,

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 but somehow I can't explain it now. But here he's like, I went to my room to see if he had

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 the string that I broke and that in the middle of his messed up dresser was a little white envelope.

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 And I thought, I wonder what this is. I picked it with the white envelope. I needed the D string.

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 When I picked it up, I threw in a white capsule underneath the envelope. And that's when I thought,

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 I wonder what this is. And I got in cause we didn't have a PDF. You pretty much had to swallow

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 the test. I think it's a good chance. And then really, if you eat it, you're going to know

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 precisely what that drug does. And so I did. And it turned out it was THC, synthetic marijuana,

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 which is a nice little psychedelic drug. And so my addiction was like in 45 minutes. Just right.

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 Secondly, I got down and rode about maybe a few miles down to the Aquarius theater,

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 pulled into the parking lot, put the kickstand down. And it seemed like it took me about three

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 minutes to swing my leg over that. Now that was really how I opened my shoulders, you know,

165
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 just squished when I grabbed it. I had these hip hugger bell bottoms. On bell bottoms,

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 I bet they call them elephant bells. Cause they're when you walk and tickle your ankles, you know,

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 and like, and I had no shirt on. I was wearing this belt with six legs and foot long red,

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 red and bean leather French. It was like, I was like a walking wind chime. And I kind of

169
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 flooded up the stairs at the Aquarius theater. And I'm standing at the back of the other term.

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 I think I was late because they were already auditioning people. And so I'm standing back

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 there holding my sheet music. And now they're, God damn, these hippies can sing and dance.

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 And they called my name, Doug Rowell. Is Doug Rowell here? Yeah. And I went,

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 ran down the aisle and up on stage and handed my sheet music to the piano player.

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 And he opened it big green and he started to play. I can't do it like I could do it when I was 24

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 because I had COPD. In case you thought that was in my nose, some kind of cocaine delivery system.

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 [inaudible]

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 When people who are auditioning are looking at me, looking at each other, this guy says,

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 "Hey, that's your energy, dude. Can you do something a little mellow? So we kind of get

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 arranged, you know, what you can do?" I said, "Sure." So I went into this a capella version of

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 Otis Redding's "Doc of the Bay," you know, setting in the morning sun. And the piano player knew the

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 tune. He didn't need the music. And he just started and he was writing my key. We were in the

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 pocket, man. [inaudible] I made myself cry. And back then I could sing. And people go, "Well,

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 you still sing?" Yeah, I can sing for like seven seconds. Anyway, so they said, "We love you, man.

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 We just got to see you dance." I said, "Okay." So the guy started to play and I started to move.

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 And I wish I had a film of it because I don't know. But I suspected initially I looked like

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 the offspring of Joe Cocker and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, you know, say a book. It got good to me. And I've

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 seen my hair come around, getting trails off my hair, trails off the fringe on this vest,

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 you know. And I'm in this tornado of trails and I heard somebody say, "Jesus, can you dance?"

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 I thought so. And they said, "Come on, come down here." They said, "Turned out they were having

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 auditions. It wasn't for the Hollywood show. It was for the Las Vegas show." So they said,

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 "Here's the deal. We're putting together a show in Las Vegas. Can you be in Las Vegas Tuesday?"

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 "Yeah, yes I can." "Where do I go?" "Go to the International Hotel, go to the Jets." And

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 that gave me his name. So I got a job in Las Vegas doing hair in Las Vegas. I went to work

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 that night. I said, "You got to get a new bass player. I'm going to Vegas to do hair." And

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 they're like, "Cool, man." Because we knew a lot of musicians, you know, with somebody could feel

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 a lot of singers, a lot of bass players. So that wasn't a problem. I told my roommates,

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 "You got to get new roommates." Shit, everybody wanted to live in Laurel Canyon. That was no

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 problem. I had to find a home for my dog. That was the only thing. I'd say it was a little

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 Vietnamese restaurant. Said they would take them. So I know now. So Tuesday morning,

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 I loaded up a duffel bag and dropped it on my Harley and ate a tab of orange sunshine and

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 headed across the desert for fame and fortune. About five hours later when I pulled up to the

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 International Hotel, I was fried, man, riding a motorcycle through the desert on LSD. And

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 got there and found the people I needed to find. And it took about three days, three or four days,

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 to learn all the steps and lines and everything we had to know. And now we're doing hair and

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 Vegas. And it was a cool job. And we did it for six months. And they gave me the understudy of

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 one of the lead roles. So two nights, two out of eight shows, I would play the lead. And it was

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 Vegas with strangers. We did one show at nine o'clock and one show at midnight, you know,

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 on Fridays and Saturdays. So they would give me the midnight shows. And sometimes there'd be like

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 11 people in the audience. Because they would, if somebody like was drunk at the tables,

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 falling asleep and causing a scene, they'd say, "Why don't you go and see hair on us?" You know,

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 it's complimentary. Okay. So we had like an audience of like maybe 20 people, you know,

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 drunk and on the last show. But anyway, we did that for six months. And then we became the first

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 national tour. And we started touring. We toured the United States and Canada for three and a half

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 years, two weeks here and two weeks there and a week here and all over the United States and

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 Canada on the game of the lead role, Burger, the obnoxious speed freak, sex crazed leader of the

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 tribe. It was a stretch, but I could do it. And it was a fun thing to do. And I'm traveling with

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 all these other hippies. And, you know, we would get to town and somebody would score like a

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 quantity of pot or something. And we split it all up. And we figured when you're with a bunch of

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 people who make a union scale, you can afford anything if you split it up among the tribe.

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 But anyway, by the end of that run, I hooked up with a girl that worked in the office.

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 She got pregnant and we had a little girl born in Baltimore when we were still on the road.

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 And we finished our running tape back to Hollywood with our little one year old daughter.

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 And she went to work, my wife went to work, Kelly girl doing office temp work. And I went down to

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 Goodwill and bought a used car seat, welded some brackets on it and broke it in on my Harley.

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 And I would take my little girl and with me in a diaper and the back of my Harley and make shift

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 car seat on the back of a Harley. And she would take her with me to auditions because I was

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 auditioning for other things and go visit friends and cheat on her mother and other things. What a

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 good father I am. I'm taking care of my kid while I'm supporting the family. And I wasn't a good

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 father. Taking a one year old in diapers on the back of a Harley in LA traffic is just not a good

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 idea. Unfortunately, there was never an incident with that. And going to visit friends and cheating

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 on her mother and taking her into bar rooms. And her mother said, look, I can't do this anymore.

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 You got to go. You know, I want you to stay in your daughter's life if you want to. But

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 but just get the hell out of mind. And so she did and she married at some point. And I did stay in

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 my daddy's life. And we had a lot of fun doing stuff together. But to work, I got a job as a

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 prop man on TV, because I ran into the guy with the prop man on the show. And then I was parking

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 cars at the Aquarius theater. I was a parking attendant. And he said, why don't you go to the

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 union and tell them I sent you to make some good money. So I did that. And I started being a dealer

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 on a soap opera. And it was just my life was getting out of hand. You know, I would show up

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 on a call, and I might fall asleep or might break stuff or sometimes I'd be real good. I was real

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 good when I was good. But other times, you know, I'd fall asleep and miss a call or make something

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 in the middle of the taping or something. And one time I dropped a glass table, a glass table from

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 four feet off the ground and shattered in the middle of the eyeball, kind of love scene or

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 something. But anyway, you never knew who was going to show up. And I got sober about halfway

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 through that 25 year thing, I started hurting myself. It was one day when I went to pick up my

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 daughter, picked her up at noon on a Saturday. And we would spend the weekend together and bring her

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 back Sunday night. I had to pick her up and her stepfather let me at the door. He said, Doug,

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 you're drunk. I said, I am. It was a little point in debating it. You know, somebody says,

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 have you been drinking? They already know the answer. So I said, yeah, I am. And he said,

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 well, Sarsa didn't have a call with you. He was right. And I knew that, you know, it was built my

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 heart, you know, that not that I was drunk. I didn't mind, I like being drunk, but I was caught

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 and embarrassed. And my daughter and I were going to spend the weekend together. I said, I'm really

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 sorry. I was looking forward to this. And he says, so was she, who are we? But it's not going to

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 happen. And then he said this, syllable for syllable is exactly what he said, Doug, you're

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 welcome in our home any time sober. Don't come over here drunk anymore. It's very hard on Star.

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 Very hard on my daughter. He's protecting my only child from me and he should because he's a good

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 father. And I understood a little bit of that. And it killed me. It was like a knife in my hand.

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 And I said, it won't happen again. And I went, I went home and a lot of things happened. I started

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 hurting myself. I skied off a cliff up at Arrowhead, got my shoulder and a lot of work in grid two

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 for six weeks. And a kiss came back to work and I fell off a four-story building, drunk. I happened

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 to know that I had a .4 blood alcohol level because the thing I fell off was the parking

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 structure at St. Joseph's Hospital. So they took my blood and they also, I was in that hospital for

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 10 days while they tried to figure out how to put my foot back together. Cause I landed on my feet

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 and my knees buckled and I kicked myself in the ass and broke my pelvis in two places and broke

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 the heel bone on my right foot, shed it to my foot. And my foot looked like a tether ball with

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 toast. And it only took me five months before I could walk with a cane or a crutch or something.

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 And my friend, Teddy, who I used to like to drink with, was with me when that happened. And

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 it scared her like, I fell off a four-story building and she hit bottom. And she went to 8A.

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 By the time I got out of the hospital, she was nine days sober. And she got active. She got

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 active at 8A and watched her help people get sober. And she met and married a handsome TV star.

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 And they had a little girl, she had this storybook life. And I finally decided to try

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 just to go and check it out. And when I went, I mean, people would try to help me and say,

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 "I'm not here to get help. I'm just here checking it out. I just want to see whether in case my

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 drinking ever gets bad." You know? Meanwhile, I'm missing people walking with a whip, but they're

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 all like, "Oh, look at him. Oh, I'm walking there." And I said, "I got a book at that meeting."

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 And I started reading this book. And they were like, "I didn't, I just skinned it." You know,

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 "Bill's story. Who cares? Doctor's opinion. I've had doctor's opinion." But we had nothing to stop

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 my attention because I thought that would be like, this is how the smart people get sober without

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00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:06,880
 God. That information is not in there. But there's a sentence that says, "We found that God does not

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00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:11,840
 make hard terms on those who seek Him." I never heard anybody say that before. All the religions

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 I thought I knew something about seemed like they all said, "Yeah, I'm talking about my drunken

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 opinion of organized religion." Seemed like they all said, "God does make hard terms. The hard

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 terms are the right ones. We have everybody up as well." That's what it seemed like to me.

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 But it seemed like, in fact, it didn't seem like it. So this is what we found. God does not make

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 too hard terms on those who seek Him. And I didn't go back to AA to seek God. I went back and I

285
00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:40,480
 started to fall in love with the fellowship. And after five months, my first five months, I didn't

286
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:44,000
 have a home group. I didn't have a sponsor. I didn't read the book. I didn't take the steps.

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 I didn't know what the tradition was. I didn't believe in God, and I was drinking every day.

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 But finally, after listening to people in meetings for eight months,

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 I finally fell on my knees and asked God for help. I didn't even mean to fall on my knees. I

290
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:59,840
 used to fall a lot. I tried my knees, and I had a bottle of whiskey in my hand,

291
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:04,160
 and I spilled it all over the bedspread. Oh my God, there's whiskey in the bottle,

292
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:08,720
 but I melted it to the bedspread. So I started bringing my knees, second whiskey out of the

293
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:14,240
 bedspread in the voice of my answers. And I'm like, "You're thirsty? There's whiskey in the

294
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 bottle." I'm like, "Shut up. No, I'm not thirsty. I'm frugal." That was my life.

295
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:23,040
 That's when I got the whiskey evaporating the bedspread over. I looked at what I'm doing.

296
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 God, I've been going to AA for eight months, and I haven't learned how to not suck whiskey

297
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 out of a bedspread. And I did a dumb thing. I said, "God, if you're there, please help me."

298
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 And over the next couple of weeks, I started reading into people from AA. I forgot to tell

299
00:27:37,120 --> 00:27:41,280
 you, I've got four different sibratic dates and four different groups. I've taken chips all over

300
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:46,720
 the place. I'm doing everything wrong except keep coming back. And finally, after two weeks of

301
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:51,120
 running into people from AA, behind the counter of liquor stores, in the liquor department of

302
00:27:51,120 --> 00:27:55,600
 Bond's Market, as a waitress in a restaurant, it's like every time I reach for a drink,

303
00:27:55,600 --> 00:28:01,040
 there's some little little familiar agent. When I finally got the message, I asked for help. I

304
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:06,240
 got the help. I came to believe that a pile greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

305
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 It's time for me to quit, but I'll tell you this, I'm this close to being restored right now.