Ken D. AA Male

**Earl** (0:12)
My name is Earl, I'm an alcoholic. Hi, these are very nice glasses, whoever these are going to.
Perfect.
I, okay, I want to thank the committee for asking me to come share. It's always an honor and a privilege to share it in the event of this type.
I got up at 4 o'clock in the morning, jumped in the car, grabbed the bags, jumped in the car, drove to the airport, got on an airplane, which is an absolutely absurd thing for me to do. You'll find out why.
It's just a completely unnatural act as far as I'm concerned. Getting a large metal cylinder and go rocketing across the sky. It's completely wrong.
And as I was, I'm about to get on the plane, I look in the line, and a buddy of mine, Jack, who's the Al-Anon speaker tomorrow at 1, you got to go hang with Jack at 1 It's a great guy. He looks up when he sees me, and I said, Jack, you know, I got an Al-Anon on the plane. My odds have improved.
You know, it's getting better. And Jack knows me, right? He's keeping an eye on me. I mean, Jack made me feel a lot safer. Get here, and I'm the kind of guy that, like, I get asked to speak somewhere. I find out when I'm supposed to be at the airport, you know, on what date, and I get on the plane, I fly, I land. I have no idea what's going to happen. I'm completely unprepared. I'm just in the hands of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I get off the plane hoping there'll be somebody there with some kind of, you know, roundup T-shirt on, or, you know, a big book in their hand, you know, or something, you know. And I get off the plane, and Suzanne was there, says, right this way, in the car, to the hotel. Everything's been great. I've had a great time since I've been here. Met a lot of great people. And I'm happy to be here. So I think I covered all that stuff, right? So, I drank.
You know, I got to tell you, I did not drink until I was 12
I held off as long as I possibly could.
I had been restless, irritable, and discontented for some time prior to that first drink. And it was, I mean, I wasn't like this clairvoyant kid. You know what I mean? I wasn't, you know, just this troubled child realizing, you know, what I need is a drink. You know, I had no idea what I needed. I just knew that something was wrong. Something was just wrong. And it started when I was four years old. How long do I do this? How long am I up here?
As long as I want.
Thank you very much.
That's how long I want. All right, all right, all right.
Four years old, I started sleepwalking, talking in my sleep. You stand at the foot of my parents' bed, talking to them in the middle of the night, scaring the hell out of my parents. And whenever I talked about what I needed to, I'd walk back to the house and get in bed, and they'd follow me, and they'd ask me questions, and I'd answer them, and it was all very bizarre. And they took me to, had a bunch of tests run on me, and the answer they came up with back in those days was, every night before I'd go to sleep, they'd give me a big table spoon of this liquid, and it would just knock me out, right? No more sleepwalking, no more problems. I think very early in my life, I got the information that if things aren't going the way you want them to, take something. So I sort of filed that away for future reference, you know? Went on into my life, 12 years old, and I, you know, I'm a strange kid, you know? I'm quiet, but if you take your eyes off me, I'm gone, you know? And they did a bunch of more tests on me, and I found that I had this very high IQ. I don't have it anymore, so I'm not bragging.
You know? That began to plummet around 16, right? But so my father decided, time for me to become a man, you know? I'm 12 years old, I'm 5 feet tall, I'm 104 pounds. Yeah, man, right? Good thinking, dad. And so I had gotten accepted to this think tank of a boarding school for boys. I mean, there were 250 boys, ages 13 to 18, in this school. How I found out I was going to this school is my father came in my room and said, Get in the car.