The Nameless Gnawing Fear of the Alcoholic Mind – Tom I.

Tom Ive from Aberdeen to tell you his story. Good morning, I'm Tom Ivester and I'm an alcoholic. Now this is Founders Day. I've heard about Founders Day all of my life and about the gusto and enthusiasm. I don't believe y'all are awake yet. Let's try it again. I'm Tom Ivester, and I'm an alcoholic. Great, great, great. Thanks very much. That even woke me up. I am delighted to be here. I can't tell you how pleased and honored that I am to be here for the observance of our 50th anniversary. We're 50 years and five days all today. And you know when I think about the momentous nature of this occasion and what it means to all of us and to all of us yet to come, it's absolutely an overwhelming thing to me. And my emotions were varied as I contemplated coming. The intimidation for sure, you know just the overwhelming intimidation of being a part of a program observing our 50th anniversary. And then I thought back to my roots, if you want to call it that, to where I came from and thought about the peculiar nature of our program and somehow it seems remarkably appropriate to have a guy like me on this program. Now you'll probably see what I mean before we get done here. Strange thing that we have a sort of backward way of operating the way most of our society does. Most of our society operates a lot on the basis of credentials and pedigree and all that sort of thing. Alcoholics Anonymous does it just exactly the opposite. This is the only place in the world that I know where, honest to God, the worse your credentials the better you welcome it really is a strange thing but that's the way it is and this is an important occasion for us I was thinking that one of the things that came to mind when I was saying about the significance getting what it means to us was in the statement that John Kennedy made in his inaugural address and when he was elected president where he said that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans and by now we're 50 years old and our founders are gone they're not forgotten but they're gone they live vividly with many of us but they've gone and the torch has truly been passed into the hands of you and I and we need to ask ourselves how well we have taken the gauntlet how well have we accepted to pass the torch how well have we've accepted the mental responsibility that we've taken is one we need to reflect on a great deal I'm just delighted to be a part of this observance my home group is the Big Book Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Southern Pines North Carolina it's not the best group in the world but we're working on it. My sobriety date is Groundhog Day, 1957. I don't think there's any connection to the Groundhog day. I saw most of my shadows before I ever got here, but that's it. I've enjoyed a little over 28 years of continuous sobrietry in this program and I'm deeply grateful for that. Yeah, I was thinking that when you go into a thing like a weekend such as we're having here it's really a tough pace because you know what we do is ride the roller coaster of emotion together and we go through the the the heart-rending stories of tragedy and despair and then we rise to heights of exaltation as we hear and see and witness lives come together it really is an emotional roller coaster that we ride i know when i go back on monday after a conference is always sort of a hangover day because I'm just wrung out. And that's what I'm going to ask you to do this morning and just sort of ride along with me. And part of the saturation of a weekend like this and part of it and part or the saturation that you and I experience in Alcoholics Anonymous has a strange product, I believe. We tend to become a little bit jaded, if you will, at the very real miracles that we observe and perhaps even engage in. We become somewhat jaded because the miracles are commonplace. I'm going to take a license of liberty that I may not have, but I'm gonna do it anyway. They got it read how it works. Now can you imagine how bad you gotta be to get run out of Alaska? It's unreal. My God, they get a deranged polar bear and they make a protected species out of it. They ran Claude off. Later he went back and was elected the first mayor of the state capitol of that same place. And we hear this and we just let it slide by as if it was well that's interesting but not very important baloney that is an absolutely remarkable thing said in a meeting one time listened to a girl talk about lady talk about her life and everybody sat there just dutifully and paying attention and she told a story of street life she worked the streets in her city she got into alcoholics anonymous she did not have a high school education. She went back to school and she got her high school equivalency, the GED. She got turned on to education—and good Lord, I hadn't even started preaching yet. Now, I'm already brave enough. Got turned on, went back school, got her bachelor's degree. Did I say bachelor's degree? I didn't mean to say that, but bachelor's degree. Went a little further, got her master's, then her Ph.D., and at the time she was talking, she was a full professor in a highly respected university in this country. Now, that's not too remarkable to us, is it? We hear this kind of thing over and over. What's remarkable is that nobody in the audience blinked. If she had told that story at the Women's Club of Akron, Ohio. Can you imagine? They'd have been talking about that for the next five years. And we sit there and just listen to it as if it were just routine stuff. And it really is routine stuff—that's the beauty of this program, that's what it's about. The miracles are commonplace, and the ones that you and I observe, the ones we share cause us to look a little bit laid back, a little blasé to the whole thing. But it's a tremendously exciting thing. And the most important miracle that I know about personally is the one that happened in my own life, my own recovery from alcoholism. I really am grateful to be a part of this program. I came into it when we had about 250,000 members and I thought we would never get off 250,00 members. It seemed like we stayed there forever. It is a remarkable thing that's happened in this town 50 years and five days ago where one drunk loved another in a special way and that chain reaction of love and service has reached veritably around this world and has taken hopeless cases and transformed them it is a remarkable thing they'll give one example what's remarkable about this thing i was at k and casey's house they gave me the historic tour a couple of years ago and and i thoroughly was thrilled and delighted with that i was sitting at their house now this is the remarkable thing about this about 11 30 telephone right casey answered it thought his 12-step call i'm sure he answered it and said hello and then he looked a little started startled he said well thomas it's for you nobody even knew that i was in akron ohio my wife didn't know that i wasn't akron i wasn'T running away from home or anything. I was supposed to be in Canton, and they had seduced me into coming on down a night early, so I came down. Nobody knew where I was. So I answered the phone, and on the other end of the line, a fellow said, Sixth, I have AA meetings to go to. Thank God, where would I be without them? And so on. And those of you who are fans of that little black book, the 24-hour day book, will recognize that probably as one of the thoughts. That's a thought for October 26th, and it happens to be my favorite of the thoughts for the day. A man heard me say that in Michigan one night in 1964. That was 19 years prior to the night at KC and Kay's house. That made the 19th consecutive year that that man's picked up the phone on the 26th of October and he's found me wherever I've been. He's called me out of meetings that nobody could call me out, of and he said and he never says hello he just says six I have a meetings. Then the guy is a former street character from Detroit Michigan. Where else in the world would you find that kind of steadfast commitment? Few if any places in this world. It really is a remarkable thing. I don't know exactly why I'm an alcoholic. Certainly it's because I drank too much booze. I never was a normal drinker. I was somebody for whom booze was important from the very beginning. I've never had a drink in my life that I could classify as a social drink. Every time I ever drank, I drank too much. I remember a single time in my life that have ever taken one drink and experienced a feeling of satisfaction or completion. I'd never have taken a drink that I didn't want another. I don't remember ever in my life having the feeling that I'd had enough. I've never gone through that particular experience. I was an abnormal, excessive drinking from the very beginning. I think I drank essentially for one reason. I drank because I liked the effect that booze had on me. It made me feel good. it made me feel comfortable, it made me feel at ease and confident and poised. It made me willing to tackle things that I wouldn't tackle sober. It mad me get rid of the inhibitions and hang-ups that I had. And I think that's the reason I drank too much. It did a great deal for me, and the logic was that if a little does some good, a little more will do some more good. And so, that part makes sense to me. So I was an excessive problem drinker from the very beginning. I had a little dabbling bit of stuff, And in my serious drinking, my problem drinking started when I was 16 years old. And I've had two phases in my drinking. One, I characterize as problem drinking. I drank essentially for those reasons. I drank too much. I had lots of problems with alcohol. I do not believe I was an alcoholic. I used to think I was born an alcoholic because it had such a constant pattern of drunkenness, but I don't believe there's any such thing. i had a phase of problem drinking where i had all of the problems that are normally associated with problem drinking or even alcoholism i got drunk threw up passed out had dry heaves went to jail lost jobs wrecked cars all kind of stuff like that i was not an alcoholic i was an excessive uncontrolled almost uncontrolled problem drinker not an alcohol i believe there's a very sharp and important distinction between alcoholism and any other kind of drinking in which man engages. I don't believe that our disease is the same or should be confused with any other kind of drink. I was not an alcoholic during that phase for one simple reason. I believed that had I had enough resolve, I could have stopped drinking if I wanted. That was to change. In my 18th year, I became an alcoholic. I developed the disease alcoholism. I believe without any question that alcoholism is a disease. I don't think that's a synonym for degeneracy. I don'T think alcoholism IS A FANCY WORD FOR DRUNK. I DON'T THINK ALCOHOLISM IS A FANCY WARD FOR MORAL DEFICIENCY. I BELIEVE THAT ALCOHOISM Is A DISEASE. IT CAME INTO MY LIFE AT AGE 18. Now, certainly I had no recognition, no awareness of that at the time. I dare say that to any observer, including me, there was no discernible difference the week or the month before I became alcoholic and the week or month after in terms of amount or even in terms effect. But there was something very important happened to me in that period, and I didn't realize it until quite a while after I was sober. And what happened to me I think is defined better than I've ever heard it on the first sentence of the third paragraph of chapter three in that book that we like to never find. We got a flower child, that lady that got—I gotta ask you about that flower in that book. That's gotta have some special importance. And she's got every page in it dog-eared. That book is not in storage. That book's in use. definition that I've ever heard, third paragraph, where it says these words about the only thing I know in the book verbatim. We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. I have heard profoundly complicated definitions of alcoholism. I have never heard one more profoundly effective and right on than that one. That's exactly what happened to me. I lost the ability to control my drinking. The nature of the disease though is such that I didn't admit that fact until after I had been sober for several months. Never once did I fully acknowledge that I had the problem because the thing called denial set in and that was my whole life, was to deny the existence of a problem that was very real. And I didnít recognize that until well after the program started to analyze what had happened to me. But that's what happened. I developed that disease. Now, my understanding of alcoholism is a fairly simple one. I think it's a two-phase disease. It's mental and it's physical. I think its nature is that it's an obsession. It's a mental obsession. There's something about the mind of an alcoholic that is not like the mind of other drinkers. A thing called unmanageability, a weird way of thinking. There's something about an alcoholic's mind that just ain't right. I'm about half convinced we ought to have a leash law on alcoholic minds, that we're just strange people. And when it comes to alcohol, we have a peculiar reaction. Now, mental obsession, I'm sure, could be given a lot of complicated discussion, but to me, let me tell you what a mental obsession is. Well, it's an overpowering urge to take a drink. and i believe exactly what it says in the book where there's one place that says that each one of us will come to a point where this overwhelming urge to take a drink will be so powerful that we will not be able to resist it nor will any human power and if you don't believe that'll happen just wait just wait i believe that happens to every alcoholic. And therein lies the understanding of a mental obsession that I have. I'd been sober for three and a half years. I was extremely active in this program then as now. I was doing well. I was exhilarated with the events of my life. I had been to a meeting the night before. At this particular day, I had to make an airplane trip. Now, I was sort of country. I had never been on an airplane sober in my life. I had never been on a jet plane. I guess I was a little excited about that. And I didn't know they served booze, but you know how they do. You've been on the thing. Before the thing even quits going up the chimney, those poor little old girls start pushing those buggies up the aisle, you know. That's why they're hiring men, you know, is to push the booze buggys. It ain't got nothing to do with the affirmative action. Well, that's what they did. I was sitting up toward the front of the plane and the girl started to serve that. And I don't know why. I wasn't in good condition. And they started to served booze and I heard the bottles clink and I hear her asking people what they wanted and naming what they had and all at once exactly what they talked about in the book happened to me. I had an absolutely overpowering compulsion to take a drink out of the blue, and I did then what I'm doing right now. Their drink cost a dollar back then, Claude. That's how long it's been. I took a dollar bill. You remember old Victor E. in the grapevine pacing? That's what's happening to Victor, you know. And that's what happened to me? Put that dollar in my shirt pocket, now I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble." What do you do? Call your sponsor? Catch a meeting? Drop by the club? We didn't even have a book on that plane, Kate. Not one, I didn't have one. What do you do?" Well, what you do is prepare for crisis when it ain't there. What you do is listen real close in meetings and listen to the experience of others. And that's what I did. Thank God she did start at the back of the plane because I had time to think a little bit. And I did some things that I'd heard suggested in this program. One, I thought back to my last drink. God knows what a fiasco. Now, that's no fun, and that was not alluring at all. What was alluring was the imagination, the relief, the release of whatever it is that snared us. so i did that and then i did another thing that i'd heard mentioned in meetings i said a prayer wasn't much of a prayer only the most profound prayer that man has ever uttered god help me now that ain't just a cliche folks because he did almost immediately i felt the sense of release relief that was there. When the girl came, I really was country. I didn't even know they served coffee. And I asked her if they had any coffee and I tried to buy a cup. She told me they'd give it to me. And they did. Now that's what a mental obsession is about. And I've had that occur other times. Not many. But I believe that it will happen to each one of us. And we'll either be prepared and know how to deal with it or we won't. and we'll become casualties the sad fact is that that occurs i think with all of us and it has nothing to do with the state of mind or even your spiritual condition i don't believe i believe it has to do mit the nature of this disease and the sad result of that is that about half the folks in this room half of us will not be prepared that's about how it's run over the years to a mental obsession that's a part of this disease but there's another part to it i'm not of the mental health theology i'mnot one who believes that alcoholism is a symptom of an underlying problem now certainly i have underlying problems but i don't believe that that's what alcoholismis about not in and of itself the mental health school basically says that there are problems that are disturbing and the drinking is simply a symptom of those problems the outward expression of inner distress and while there may be some worth in that i don't think that's what the disease is about at least not in any way that i need to try to dwell on too much i believe there's a physical side there's aside to this disease that's characterized by a peculiar your reaction to alcohol that the founders called an allergy and that's characterized by craving. People who are not alcoholics do not crave booze, never will. Alcoholics do. And that's what happened to me in my 18th year. I developed this disease. I was to never be the same from that day to this, and I never will." The nature of that is that if I take one drink, one drink of anything with booze in it i will get drunk now i know that by the history of my own life i know it by the tragic example of god knows how many of my fellows in this program who have proven me and given me that valuable lesson that that peculiar reaction of craving that occurs with us is there and it never goes away now the good news is that that craving need never bothered me because to any examination I'm no different than anybody else I can run jog and make love and eat and whatever just like anybody else that does not bother me until I take one drink of anything and I've tried it all from VO to vitalis hair tonic and the reaction was exactly the same. Now, that's what happened. And from that point on, the story was very, very typical, just ridiculously typical. A thousand bizarre, unbelievable, ludicrous, shameful, embarrassing things. The typical story. But you know, what is it? What is it that, what is it that's really the nature of this disease? What is it we measure by? What is that motivates a guy like me with 28 years or a guy like Wilson with 44 years? What is is that that motivates us to want to hang on desperately, to pray God that it will be at least that much longer? What is if that we fear living again? Suppose it's the fear of going to jail. I've been in jail in every town I've ever been in for as much as a week back then it used to be easy to get in jail now it's difficult to get into jail drunk ain't got a chance gotta have connections to get I rather doubt that it's the fear of going to jail fear of losing a job I'm almost eligible for retirement fear of loosing my wife I was 11 years sober when my wife and I were married she's never seen me drink. My drinking is about like days of our lives or as the worm turns to her. She believes it. She won't buy me a drink, she believes it, but I don't know what she'd do and neither does she. The fear of getting beat up again, getting my nose broke for the eighth time, I rather doubt that. It's not those external things, is it? You know, those are the external activities. That's not what the disease is about. Those are results of our uncontrollable, our God knows you get some old sister here in this town that was a mother superior and you put a quart of wild turkey in her and she's going to do some bizarre things. You You know, I mean, God, anybody is. That's the nature of drunk. That's not what alcoholism is about. What is it that we hang on to? Let me share with you what I think it is. When I think back to what it is that causes me to want to hang on, pray God that it'll be 28 more. It's the part of alcoholism that nobody knew about but me. I believe that when I consider alcoholism, my conclusion is that it's an inside job. It's what happens on the inside. I hope to God that I never forget what it was like the period in my life when I was 21 years old time when most folks are exuberant they're just getting started in life they're thrilled they're optimistic they know they can beat the world if they just get a shot at it that's a good time of green time of life my 21st year I could remember was characterized by an almost constant feeling of despair. Even that young, so filled with despair and futility and hopelessness that I just wished it were done. I pray to my God that I'll never know that feeling of despair again, nor that I ever forget it. I like to remember the fear, the fear. And I'm not talking about being afraid of something. I'm talking about the nameless, gnawing, nagging fear that's a part of the way of life of an alcoholic. You hear it talked about in the halls that we meet in, where people talk about that cold knot in the stomach. I believe that that fear is a product of, well, it's the vacuum that's created where there is no faith. And if there's no faith, it gets replaced by fear. And the kind of fear that we experience, that I experience, that was my constant companion 24 hours a day. It used to wake me at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, causing me to jump straight up. For no reason, it's just the way I lived. To walk down the streets of any city with a feeling of anxiety, to be afraid to answer the phone, to go to the door, to always be plagued with the unknown—I pray to my God that I'll never know that fear again, nor that I ever forget it. I like to remember the loneliness. Wilson talked last night about the lonely nature of this disease and how true it is the national council several years back put out a poster and showed a fellow sitting on a park bench and the caption underneath said the lonely disease and i think if there's any one symbol that would best characterize what happens that would be it to me but it's tricky ground isn't it because alcoholics don't have any corner on the market when it comes to loneliness no every human being in the world experiences loneliness And many experience loneliness more severe than ours. If you want to see loneliness, talk to somebody who is recently widowed. Talk to somebody whose a recent widower and that they're at a point in their life where their patterns are so deeply embedded they don't even know how to fry an egg. They don't know how go to a grocery store. They don' t know who to talk to. They sit and rock in their chair or read books or stare at their navel or whatever or some just quietly go crazy. If you want to take a look at loneliness, visit a nursing home and you will be embarrassed that you ever even claimed loneliness. Everybody experiences loneliness. There are people here this weekend, I'll guarantee you, who are not rejoicing in our 50th year. There are other people here in this room this morning who do not feel the sense of participation and joy that characterizes this group. There are people in this room this morning who feel utterly alone on this planet. They're alcoholics, probably. See, there's a difference in the loneliness of alcoholism, in my view, as compared to others. With most people, loneliness is a product of an aborted relationship. it's a product of not being able to have those that are important to you involved in your life and that's something that people don't control we didn't control ours either but ours is a different thing and i believe that the alcoholic loneliness is a product of the prison that we built around ourselves one drink at a time one bottle at a time a glass prison but strong enough that we couldn't get in and nobody else we couldn't get out nobody else could get in a kind of loneliness is a fellow down our way who describes it i think when he talks about the the experience of coming home half drunk going to bed with his wife and they both lie there pretending to be asleep because they simply don't know what to say to each other the kind of lonliness that i believe with alcoholics i believe it's a product of our self-centered nature of our self-centred nature i think it's an expression of exactly that basic thing that brings our condition on that's just my belief i pray to god that i'll never know that loneliness again it was often good news to me when i came in this program and somebody said you never have to be alone much much more but that's the kind of things that nobody knew about that. Because to an outward observer, I might have looked like a happy-go-lucky guy who didn't care about anything or anybody. Inside, I was dying one drink at a time. I never wanted to live like that, but that's the way it was. And the impact of alcoholism on my life was about like it was on yours. Mine was a very quick episodic kind of thing. And to understand the magnitude of it, all I have to do is look at the contrast. Remember that bright-eyed young fellow who left high school at 16? Contrast him to the fellow who eight short years later, at the age of 24, Flint, Michigan, lived on the street, unemployed, darn near unemployable. The last job that I had was a quasi-legal job. I managed a club of questionable repute for a short while. We sold some booze, but we sold a lot of other things, including people. And I'm not overly proud of that, but, well, I got fired. I had to be drunk to stay in there. And then I wound up the last year that I drank living on the streets in that city. My most frequent address was a place called the Rialto Theater. It wasn't because I liked movies. It just happened to be the cheapest room in town. and when it's cold outside for 35 cents if you could get it you go in there and sleep and i've slept many many times i've had my shoes stolen in that theater the dead of winter now i never believed that's how it wound up but that's why it was i was the kind of guy who had to be brought to a stop on a very regular basis i was just one of those blind unreasonable kind of guys that were just crashing headlong through life on a pattern of destruction and i did have to be controlled i don't know to this day how many times I've been in jail it's somewhere near the number of towns i've been in because i honestly don't believe i was ever in a town as much as a week that i didn't go to jail it wasn't because i was so wild and all that i was just a drunk that was had no pattern no rhyme or reason to his drinking i'd go to sleep and i've gone to sleep in the middle of a u.s highway i've going to sleep on railroad tracks you know the old perils of pauline that ain't cartoon stuff i've done literally that going to asleep right with my head on one rail, feet on the other. And I was that kind of fellow that just had to be brought under control because of my totally irresponsible way of living. Apparently, I was not brought under control enough. And I'll tell you in no uncertain terms that I would give anything that I own, including my very own life, if I had been brought to a stop one more time than I was. If I had had one more driving under the influence arrest than I had. because I wound up staying out a little too long. I think every alcoholic, at least everyone I've ever known anything about, particularly those with blackouts, always has a rather chronic fear that they may somehow or other in a drunken mess do something that can't be undone, might wind up hurting somebody else. And most drunks don't want to hurt people. They really don't. And I was no different. But I woke up one morning in jail there in Flint, a jail I'd been in many, many times. I knew it well. I knew everybody that worked there. And after I was awake for a while, a jailer came by and I asked him when I could get out. And he said, I hope never, and walked off. I had no earthly idea of what he was talking about. And then a little later on, some of the other fellows told me that the night before, driving somebody's car down the streets of that city, that I had run down and killed two people, two fine young people. well i guess my reaction was predictable it was about like anybody's would be i just simply couldn't believe it i couldn't accept it i could deal with it you know i just sunk into the corner i simply could not face anything i i was faced with the the task of trying to balance the scales between a street street drunk and two fine young people with their lives in front of them well obviously you don't that's the only time i've ever been in jail i didn't try to get out i didnít want out. But I didn't know how to say that to anybody and after a couple of weeks somebody contacted my mother down in North Carolina and that dear lady made what I hope and pray was her last trip to anybody's jail to get her little boy out. I hope and pray it was her last one. I didn' t know how to tell her I didn''t want out and she got an attorney and arranged for a bond and I was released after 76 days. Charged with manslaughter to be tried later on in the fall i knew that i would not drink i knew that during that 76 days i had just absolutely recognized the fact i didn't think i would be capable of picking up a drink when i got out of state sober a day and a half and then i started to drink and of course for the next few months i drank like nobody i have ever seen i've worked with hundreds probably thousands of drunks over the past 28 years i have never worked with one like me. I was one of those who just absolutely gave in to the conditions, and my constant pursuit was oblivion, and it didn't matter to me by what means. The only reason that I didn't just hang it up and shoot myself or whatever, I know that the only reason was I just hated to leave that with a family that I'd already heard enough, and I guess that I figured if I were just dead drunk or OD'd or whatever that it would be a question anyway, and that went on for a few months, drinking like nobody I've ever seen. And then November the 19th, 1956, I had what I hope and pray was my last drink. Had no earthly idea at that time, but I had a little piece of a bottle of gin that morning. Then I went into court. It wasn't a trial. I didn't even know what to say. I stood mute. I Didn't know what to Say. And they had to tell me what I'd done. And I knew when I went in there that I was not coming out. I knew it was to be a one-way trip. And that day I was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in state prison, southern Michigan, a place called Jackson. And when you live on the streets of Michigan, you know what Jackson is. In my honest opinion, I think it's the worst penitentiary in the United States of America. I really truly do. The day I walked in there, there were 5,900 people, to use the term loosely. There were some fine people in there and some of the finest guys I've ever met in my life were there, and some of the sorriest excuses for human beings that ever drew breath. The day I walked in there, I was a man totally devoid of hope. I was the man totally defeated in every segment of his life, long since given up any pretense of trying to do anything. When I walked it there, even though I knew it was to be a place where man's inhumanity to man was normal, I had very little feeling. I had little fear. I was just resigned to my fate. I knew that I would not come out of that. I knew it. I think if I had not gotten into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, that forecast would have been accurate. I don't believe I would have made it. If I had tried to survive in there like I did on the street, I don' t believe I d' ve made it, no way. I was a sick young man. I sat in my cell and never spoke to people. And one day, there was a little fellow came and called me out for an interview. i'll be ever grateful to that fellow his name was martin he was a social worker and he did a fairly standard textbook social worker interview with me and i did a barely standard textbook alcoholic response i know i lied like a dog i always did that was the nature of me then when we got through he had completed what a lot of other people had completed that was a diagnosis of me i've never had one diagnosis in my life my god you sure drink a lot or you're an alcoholic or whatever. He did the same thing. He exclaimed the same thing, you had a lot of trouble with booze. Then he did something that nobody else had ever done that I'd ever met. He said we have an AA group here and I think you better go. It wasn't an order, it wasn't a invitation, it was just a flat declarative statement, we have a group, think you better get out. I don't remember if we had any more conversation or not but I remember when I walked out, I had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous in my life. I'd never even heard of anybody helping drunks. It just seemed like a foreign concept to me. And then that was from somewhere in December, January, and then I went to my first meeting, Groundhog Day, and I was not thrilled about going. I could just picture it. I thought it was going to be a sad thing. I really did believe. I could juste picture this bunch of worn-out old dudes sitting in there commiserating with each other and telling war stories. It seemed sad, and it wasn't all that different. I walked in that day. There were 300 people sitting in the room. And they were sad. Anybody that didn't stay properly sad there normally got moved somewhere else. Supposed to be sad. And I sat down and listened to my first meeting, and it was a lot like this one. We read the normal stuff, and then they introduced the speaker. His name was Shy Walker. He's dead now. Been dead for several years. And Shy Walker stood up and told his story. Now, fellow alcoholics, I lived on the streets, and I was a character, and I wasn't about as shock-proof as a guy could get. but he shocked me and I never heard anything like that in my life and I'd heard drunk tell all kind of stories but I heard very few tell the truth and this guy just told his story. I swear to God my reaction was I wouldn't have told that to my best friend as drunk as I'd ever been and it didn't make any sense to me why on earth would a you know from way back in the room kind of like up in the peanut gallery this morning I probably look pretty decent from up there and from way backwards shy look pretty good but when you get up close he couldn't stand close examination because he'd been an ex everything a pro fighter and apparently not a very good one he was a beat-up little old guy he told his story that day i didn't identify with anything that he said that i could recognize it was nothing that sounded like me he was a little short fella he had about a third grade education he was just as rough as a cop i never did identify with that part of shy with his experience but there was something happened that day and i didn't recognize it i think it's probably the most important thing that ever had happened i think what i got from shy was a thing called enthusiasm it was a things of listening to this man tell a horrible story but doing it with a joy and an energy of vitality that was just absolutely commanding it just it just captured your imagination and shai walker was that kind of man thank god that i didn't get some old bleeding beacon who was against everything that anybody tried to do that's what a whole lot of folks want to do is don't do nothing just criticize whatever the hell somebody else does you know thank god i didn't get that i got a guy who was alive and who was really on fire with living and while i didnít identify with anything he said i think that was the single reason that i came back the next week i never missed a meeting stayed in there 42 months never missed the meeting i will assure you mine was not any instant conversion i believe just like i mentioned about folks might be lonely in this room today i believe that a meeting of alcoholics anonymous can be one of the loneliest places in the world you sit in here and listen to people on fire with their lives and talking about all the wonderful things that are happening and you're sitting there thinking, that ain't me. Or you listen to all these people talking about what they are and how much together they are. We were talking about that last night at dinner about if folks get well in a year and here we are after 28 or 30 years still screwed up. You really can sort of feel out of it and that was my experience for a while. I didn't believe I was an alcoholic. that denial was still going on i was 24 years old i was the youngest guy in there about almost 10 years i just didn't believe us doc i didn't leave anybody to be an alcoholic 24 i didn'T understand anything about this disease and i said i was i hated to be the only one in the room that wasn't so so i'd go along with it you know yeah me too whatever but it didn't mean anything and i just sort of went through the motions i don't have any regrets about that because i'm one who believes a great deal in that notion called act as if I said I was an alcoholic a long time before I believed I was I said that I had a faith a long time for I had one made any sense and what I was saying that I wished I'd be it I guess and I act as you and you know many many times those first eight months in that program were a miserable time many many times I've wondered about what made the difference what happened what was it that took a beat-up young kid with a guilt complex heavier than the world and gave him a willingness to try. What made the difference? But what it leads me to believe, fellow alcoholics, is simply this. Now, I believe that this is a program of the head. I believe that this program demands the very best that I have. I believe that. I believe that it demands that I study, that I be regular, that that I attend my home group, that I sponsor people, that I'd be willing to do this. Even more important, it demands that I be willing to listen to other people and to get involved in their lives. I believe it demands the very best that I have. You can't plunge the depths of this program. So it demands a very best way. It demands commitment. It demands integrity. It demands taking a stand. It demands saying no when yes would feel good. So yeah, there are some things that are demanding in this program, but I believe when you get right down to it, It's a program of the heart, fellow alcoholics. That's what it's about, the program of the heart. And when I think back to what it was that made the difference with me, and it's true with every alcoholic I've ever met, there's always people. There's always people. It's not the message, it's the messenger that really makes the difference in those early feeble days. When I think back to What Happened to Me, that's exactly what I remember. I remember the people. I remember Shai and that infectious enthusiasm That gave me the belief that there just might be life sober I never believed that before I always thought sober was the most miserable condition a man could suffer And I believe he gave me The hope that maybe, just maybe There was something there and you could enjoy it I remember a fellow by the name of Glenn Coffey These fellows are dead glenn coffee from battle creek michigan he had a zeal that would put billy graham to shame and some of these fellas that y'all got more preachers in this area they pipe it all down south you know i don't even know if y' all know they're there but y'al got a ton of preachers here and every one of them got a straight line of beaming their message to north carolina i got thinking there's all sinners up here well anyway i don' t get off on those I found out, you know, y'all ain't listening to it. You're just sending it down there to us. Keep it up here. Glenn Coffey, he would put anyone that I've ever heard to shame because he was a fellow who was so absolutely exuberant about the events of his life that when he told his story, he could not contain himself. And he would absolutely bring you to the edge of your chair. I don't care what you wanted to do. He probably still does. He said, every man comes equipped with two ends. One to sit on, one to think with. Your success in life largely depends on which end you use. Head you wins, tails you lose. I remember those kind of days, but I remember importantly the fact that he came all the way from Chicago to carry a message to a guy like me. I remember a big fellow named Pete from Muskegon, Michigan. Pete's a great big crude, I have no shortcut to that. He's just a big, crude, rough Dutchman, about 6'4", 6'5". Seventy-three years old now. I got a letter from him about two weeks ago from the intensive care unit at Hackley Hospital in Muskegon. He'd had a heart attack and he was writing to inquire about my health from intensive care. He's a phenomenal man. He is a very rough man. He's an bitter man. He had his right eye kicked out by a prison guard when he was 15 years old. And he got in this program, and he learned about love. For the last 34 years, hear what I'm saying. For the past 34 years. For the next 34 years this man has traveled to Jackson Prison on a regular basis for 34 years to reach guys like me. Sometimes I dare to use the word dedication. and fellow alcoholics, I don't even know what it means. I remember a little fellow by the name of Johnny Snow, an Indian guy who washed dishes in a restaurant in Lansing, Michigan. We invited him to speak at our group one night, one day. And I found out later that Johnny Snow left his home at four o'clock in the morning. It's only about a 60-mile trip. But he didn't want to be late and he left early because, you see, he had to hitchhike. Johnny Snow was an illiterate man. and I seriously doubt that he could write or read his own name. And I don't remember Johnny Snow's message, his speech that day, because Johnny didn't make a speech. What he did was share his experience. But he wouldn't have needed to say a word. You hear what I'm saying? The tremendous love that... He didn't need to say it. He didn' t need to speak a word, many, many more. But when I think back to what happened, what made the difference, that's really where it comes from. And that's what gave me the hope that there just might be something here for me and that somebody cared, that somebody truly cared. But emotion is really not enough because there's more to this. There was a speaker who came there one day, and I never really liked to get into my experience about going into this because I think this is actually where it started. A fellow came over, his name was Johnny C. from Flint, and he spoke for one solid hour about nothing but the fourth step, went into great detail about the step read part of it he stressed the importance of writing the inventory of being the good and the bad and all that kind of thing and when he got through i went back to my cell and said okay i'm gonna try that and i was at a point in my sobriety where sobriete i was At a point In my fumbling that i had you know i'd sort of been thinking about it you know I mentioned about alcoholics minds being dangerous i really think they are because I was at a point where I'd been sort of thinking about it, you know, mentally taking an inventory. Now, boy, there's an exercise in rationalization. And I had figured out my alcoholism if I had it, what was wrong with me. And what I deduced was that my mother and father had broken up when I was a small kid, and she'd remarried to a little old wart of a man, a little short dude by the name of Alvin. And, I mean, no offense to short people, they got to live too, but but he was just an absolutely obscene man i just really did not like him i promised myself i was gonna whoop him if i ever got big enough and then i got big and i was too big it'd been like whooping a dwarf never to get whooped away after he died damn him he was i don't even like him dead i really don't well anyway i had focused on that and i'd figured out anybody grew up under that kind of influence would have to be a little weird and i wasn't And what I meant to do was write a little story about Alvin and life's cruelty. That's what an alcoholic's mind will do. I wrote two lines of what I had in mind, and then without any intent whatsoever that I recognized, all at once the dam broke, and I started to write about me. And I've heard a lot of people say it's hard to take an inventory. Maybe it is. I could not have resisted taking an inventory if I'd wanted it. My hand literally flew trying to keep up with the racing thoughts. and what it was was a young man taking the first honest look he'd ever taken in his life ever and when I got through with that I knew a couple of things that were important one I knew I was an alcoholic absolutely no question about it I knew I was not an alcoholic period not the atheist not the intellectual not the tragic case I was an alcoholic period and probably even more important I wanted to do something about it I truly did want to do something about it I didn't want to be a bum I didn't want to be a convict. I didn' t want to be the butt of jokes. I didn''t want to be a perennial failure at everything that I did. No, who does? And I decided that I would try this simple program and I went back to it to try. It's a strange thing. I fought everything in this program. I fought everything in this program. Thank God I lost every fight. And therein lies the real crux of this thing. It's really not something you work. It's something you let work. And my battle never was with the program. It was me. It was my willful ways. And it was only when I'd get to such a point of exasperation that I'd just give up and follow the simple directions that it would start to work and it did. It worked for me profoundly so in Jackson Prison, the first day of freedom I ever knew in my life, in my entire life, was in Jackson Prison. I learned freedom's not something somebody gives you. It's not something they take away. And I experienced true freedom there. And I finally got out. It's not hard to get out of jail, it just takes time. You guys, sometimes more than you care for. I got immediately active in Gastonia, North Carolina. They wouldn't let me stay in Michigan, not like you were in Alaska. They didn't want more of me in Michigan. And i had to go and i walked into my first meeting the night i got out of Jackson and got to North Carolina, I walked into a meeting. There were 12 men in a little place, the last place I'd been to that building. I threw up on it. I didn't even know it was an A meeting place. I walked in. Those 12 men greeted me in that special way that alcoholics are greeted all over the world. And I knew I was home. That October 26th thought was real. The next night I went to my home, what was to be my home group. Two nights later, I went to what was to be my home group, Gastonia Group. And you know, it's this thing about this thing of taking a stand, of being who you are and where you are in this program. You do have to be prepared for some rough going because here I'd been out of Jackson about three days and I walked into that group and I swear to God, that was the sorriest group I've ever seen in my life. It really was. Buck left over here somewhere. One of my North Carolina boys here, he may know that group, a sorry group. And I was tempted to move away. But like some folks say, if you're in a sorry group, don't leave it. Stay there and work on it. Don't go mess up somebody else's. And I think probably one of the wise things I ever did in my life was decide to stay and to be a part of that. And I went to work in that group. And when I left that town, there were 60 members in there and it was a fine group. But that didn't happen overnight because I had that weird experience of attending a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous all alone and sitting there with the book wondering, what in the devil am I only drunk in captivity? You've got to be ready for that. You have to be tough and you have to being willing to take a stand and do something here. You know, this thing of being a part of Alcoholics Anonymous, if I can just mention this one thing very quickly and then I'll move right on. Yeah, I'm not one that's absolutely thrilled and delighted with some of the things that I see taking place in Alcoholics Nautilus and I'll just tell you like it is. I am not thrilled and delighted with some of the things I see. Oh, I see some magnificent growth in some areas and I see som trends taking place that are good and I'm not particularly a prophet of gloom nor am I a Pollyanna who thinks that everything is just lovely because I'm not. You know, one of the things, and I guess it's a strange thing, that you get to a certain point and you start to view an alarm. You never do that until you get to a certain point in your sobriety and you start to view an alarm One of the things that concerns me is a thing that I call Me and My Program. Me and my program. I'm not sure exactly where it comes from. I suspect that it might come out of the intensive environments of treatment centers where there's such a highly individualized amount of attention paid, and I don't mean that critically because I thank God that there are places in this country where alcoholics can be treated with dignity and respect. I'd thankful for that, but I think one of the byproducts that may come from there, but any way I see it is this thing called me and my program. It's as if this were some sort of a loner apparatus. It's where people think in terms that I'm by myself and I've got to work this program, and I really believe that it's nothing more than a perpetuation of the same self-centered condition that got us in trouble to start with. This is not... I don't think this is a me program, fellow alcoholics. This is a we program. And if this program ever gets bigger than one drunk helping another, if it ever gets more complex than that, it will start to lose its value. If it ever get into that. Well, anyway, there's a whole hour of concerns in that. But let me press on because I don' t want to preach. I want to tell you my experience. But I am concerned about that, and I'm concerned about the notion of this some kind of a distorted need for respectability and competition. There's some notion that Alcoholics Anonymous is competing with stuff all over the world, and the simple fact is AlcoholicsAnonymous doesn't compete with anything because it ain't like anything else. What we do is unique and unto itself, and it ought not to be confused with I really like what you said, Kay, that there ain't going to be a treatment this morning. That ain't what it's about. This is about just sharing. The day that this program becomes just another agency, I would submit to you that we'll start to die that day. So we need to hang on to some of those canons of this thing. We need to hung on to what this Founders' Day reminds us of and help us stay in touch with what it is that really makes this program unique and valuable in this world. We need to not take that for granted because I see some drifts and some trends that I think are very unhealthy. And anyway, I got back into Gastonia. I got into that group and I did what I think you ought to do, get off your ass and go to work. And that's the way it was and it was probably one of the finest growth experiences I ever had. And some miracles started to happen in my life and I share this running the risk I know of seeming to... I know that if somebody's not having a good time in this program it's sickening to hear somebody that's had magnificent things happen. But at the risk of that, I'm going to tell you because if you're wavering in the hope department, listen to what happened to me. I'd been out of jail two weeks and I went over to a small prison near my home, visited the A group over there and I had a ball doing it. Two months later, I became the outside sponsor of that group. Two months late, I was put in a position of trust and responsibility carrying a message to guys just like I had just left, and what a thrill it was. About the same period, I sit in my house one day and my parole supervisor came by. He talked with me for a few minutes and he said, Tom, you're real active in this AA thing, aren't you? And I said, yes, sir, I am. And it scared me because I thought he was going to tell me to slow down. And he said, wouldn't it help you if you could drive? And i said, Yes, sir. But I can't. Old Harlan from Jackson can tell you that when I left Jackson, they put on my papers letters that high. This man is to never operate a motor vehicle. This man's to never drink alcoholic beverages. And I knew that that meant what it said. He said, OK, let me check on it. A couple weeks later, he got a phone call and asked me if I could meet him at the Sears store. And it just happened. That's where the license agency was. Now, this is the truth of what happened in every detail. I walked into the front of that agency. He was standing back there. My parole supervisor was the agent. I Walked up, my parole supervisor handed me a driver's license. He didn't even ask me if I could drive. Didn't pay for it. Didn't take a test. Now, I knew that that was illegal. I don't have any doubt that that wasn't illegal. But somehow or other, it looks like God's laws don't quite succumb to man's laws. And... I'll tell you one other thing I believe about that. I honest to God believe, I don't know this, but I really believe if I had been trying to con that man into doing that, I believe I'd be walking today. I really do. But five months after I was out, they had an election in my district there one time and they were electing a district committeeman. I barely knew what one was. I wasn't running for it and got elected. And not everybody's thrilled and delighted to be elected to DCM, but I guarantee you I was. I couldn't have been more pleased if they'd elected me governor because I remembered that fellow who just a few short months before had sat in Jackson Prison and literally, literally wondered if he would ever have one friend. One friend. And here were the AA members in 12 cities asking me to be their trusted servant. If I'd ever had any doubts I knew I was home. Two years later I was sitting in the house, and the phone rang. It was our state capitol. The man got on there at the end of the phone and asked for Mr. Ivester. And I got on the phone, and he identified himself. He said, we're expanding the rehabilitation program in our prison system. We wonder if you might consider taking a position. And I asked him a question. I said, are you sure you know who you're talking to? And he assured me that he did. I'd never been offered a job in my life unless it was some drunk who didn't have one himself. And he was talking about a position, and I assured him I'd rather do that than anything in the world. And inside, I knew that it would not happen, but it did. In 1961, I was employed at the first ex-con in the history of our state—most other states back then—in a supervisory position for the next nine years. I had a tremendous experience of working primarily—I was working primarily with guys with alcohol problems and development programs, training staff, and all that sort of thing, and had a tremendous, tremendous experience. Loved it better than anything I could possibly imagine. Then after nine years some people came to me and they started to probe me about the possibility of taking over a prison, of being a warden, a superintendent of the prison. Now I guarantee you when you come from where I come from that's a fairly foreign consideration. And really I didn't want to do it much and then finally I started to see that perhaps with a greater influence I might be able to do more of what I wanted to do and I finally agreed in 1970. I became head of a prison as the superintendent or warden as you guys call it and headed this small prison in Sanford, North Carolina. Stayed there four years and I saw it become without any exaggeration or false modesty the finest correctional unit I've ever seen anywhere and I've seen half of them in the country and then later on I went that's what I've been doing for the last 15 years is running prisons and that's What I do today that's my life that's My profession and I give it everything I've got except what I give in Alcoholics Anonymous many many times you know naturally it's a just a tough work it's difficult it's not highly appreciated there are many times when I feel worn and beaten and frustrated, and I get thinking I ought to be making big money to have offers or something like that. And I get to wondering if things are like they ought to me. And all I have to do is take a look around and realize that sitting in my facilities are several hundred young folks just about the ages of the ones I killed many, many years ago. And somehow or other, I feel a very powerful rightness and I know that God's in his heaven and I'm in his place that's what I do for a living now what I'd do I live in Aberdeen North Carolina it's the town smaller than this campus we got one red light like Kay says if five cars show up it's either a major traffic jam or an awful big funeral It's a little town, but I'm very proud of that town because it's mine. I own a home there, a finance company and I. I pay taxes. I vote. I'm on the school council in my county. I'm a citizen. This program works. It does, in fact, restore us to those things that are important. I'm a married man. I've been married three times in my life, once drunk, I didn't even know the lady. Another time, I thought I'd been sober long enough, I'd be sober five years, I found out some of us are sicker than others and that didn't work. And then this time, 17 years ago, I married a little Canadian girl from Saskatchewan. and I married her not because I wanted a wife not because I wanted the institution of marriage those are part of it but I married here because I wanted to be her husband and that's what this program is about and I think that's why that institution called marriage is about and today I am a husband she trusts me she trusts my and I deserve her trust she got it well placed so we have a marriage we don't sit in front of fire and hold hands except when we're trying to keep from hitting each other but she's with me this weekend spiritually she's down home taming our two teenage kids this weekend but she is with me she shares in this she's part of it my two kids are fine two kids just like your two they are absolutely great and that's what it's about today I am a functioning human being I'm active in Alcoholics Anonymous I belong to a home group and I don't miss that group I just simply don't miss it I'm an active in service I'm the district committeeman I haven't been committeemen for 25 years now I'm back in I'm brand new elected DCM this year and I'm in that not because of any dedicated idiot vent It's just the fact that I think that service is not some adjunct activity. I think it's integrally woven into the recovery process. And every one of us who's going to have long-term successful sobriety, I believe, will find an avenue of service. I believe this program is just like money in the bank. It rewards us directly proportionate to our investment. And the amount that we put in is the amount we draw. I believe you've got to be current. It's not enough for me to come up here and tell you folks what I did five years ago or ten years ago. It's got to быть current. It's gotta be a part of my life today, and that's what this thing is about. I've been more and more impressed over the years with how very little this program has to do with drinking or even with not drinking and how very much it has to deal with living. And today I use this program in everything that I do. I use it in my business. I use it on my job I use it in everything that I do I actively use this program and it works for me in everything. I don't believe I truly don't belief that Alcoholics Anonymous is in conflict with anything in my life If this program doesn't make me a better husband, a better father, a greater citizen a better employee, a bigger employer I better check up and see because I think I have just missed the boat. It's not in conflict The last thing I want to say is this. This is a process of restoration. It restores us to life, and life is good and bad. It's beautiful and it's ugly. And we live in a tough world, and you and I live in this world perhaps more than we ever have because we live with it. We live in it with awareness and sensitivity of what's going on, and it is a tough work. This program does not shield us from the events of life. It didn't shield us. my mother had a stroke a little over a year ago and a stroke is a devastating thing that's how I got acquainted with nursing homes and she's of the type who is responding very slowly so she is confined in a nursing home and that's exactly the way she sees it and when I think about that certainly that's not anything to be thankful for that's not among the things that I'd be grateful for is it because it is a terrible thing and it's a painful condition for everybody involved. And I'm not grateful that she had the stroke, but let me tell you what I am grateful for. I'm grateful for the fact that this program has given her a son that cares about that. It's given, at least in a sense, the son she dreamed I would be when she was changing my diapers. And I can walk into that room with love and sensitivity, care and concern. and give back just a little bit of what I ought to be giving. And that's what this program is about, fellow alcoholics. It's not hiding from life. It's no running away, and it's not avoiding difficulties. But it's learning how to live in a way that we can engage in this life and do it with gusto, do it without fear. Do it with great appreciation. I am without a doubt the happiest 52-year-old man that I know because of this miracle. Thanks. Thank you.