A Moment of Clarity Is Grace — Action Is What Keeps You Sober – Don C.

About This Speaker Tape

Don C., sober since August 31, 1961, tells his story from a lectern in Atlanta. He grew up Italian in a Cleveland ghetto, enlisted in the Army at 17, racked up 15 summary courts-martial and a stint in Leavenworth, then volunteered for Special Forces, made two Pacific invasions, and watched his cousin Mikey step on a landmine beside him. He woke up in Pasadena General, fell in love with California, and drifted into a 20th Century Fox hairdressing career that led to eight beauty salons, 176 weeks of live TV, and a vodka-filled windshield washer bottle rigged to a hose under the dash of his '59 Cadillac.

His drinking pattern was maintenance — two and a half to four ounces of vodka every two and a half hours — driven by a guilty conscience about married women on the ocean liners where he worked for Helena Rubinstein. A first Italian wife left him, an Irish second wife watched him have DTs on the bathroom floor in 1956, and a doctor told her to pick imaginary bugs off the wall. Faith healers, Keeley cure, Peraldehyde at Ingleside, and wonder drugs all failed. On August 31, 1961, yellow and jaundiced, he was brought to Sister Ignatia at Rosary Hall by his sponsor Ted, given last rites by Father Winchester, tapped five times for seven gallons of water, and told by Sister Ignatia to go home and finish his drunk because his attitude stunk.

He stayed. His sponsor drove him to Gethsemane Trappist monastery where Father Ralph Pfau (Father John Doe) walked him through the first steps and a fourth-step inventory given to a silent monk. Sobriety cost him everything he had already sacrificed on the altar of alcohol — his first three children he never fed a bottle or changed a diaper for, a second AA wife who relapsed on nerve pills and died within eighteen months, and a son with paranoid schizophrenia he institutionalized for twenty years until signing trust papers in 1988 for a new medication.

He closes with the parable of John the Baptist sending word from prison — the lame walking, the blind seeing, only one returning to say thank you — and the clown at the circus taking the boy's quarter outside the big tent. His message: AA is a program of action, not willingness; Higher Power is not a cosmic bellboy; nice people don't come to Alcoholics Anonymous, but if they stay long enough they become nice.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction, gratitude to Tom, Bill, Charlie, and Jack, sobriety date August 1961
• 3:30 Sister Ignatia's letter, the Sacred Heart she gave him at discharge, and her teaching on dignity
• 8:00 Italian ghetto childhood in Cleveland, father's discipline, character defects before the first drink
• 12:00 Army career, fifteen summaries, Leavenworth, and the accidental marriage in Joplin after gin at a dance
• 22:00 Volunteering for Special Forces, Pacific invasions, cousin Mikey killed by a landmine
• 27:00 20th Century Fox hairdressing, the Sting-style payback on movie stars, fleeing back to Cleveland
• 34:00 First drink at Billy Berg's on Hollywood and Vine, ocean liner work for Helena Rubinstein, maintenance drinking every 2.5 hours
• 45:00 1956 cold-turkey attempt, DTs, Blessed Virgin statue haircut, police raid hoax about the mafia, Ingleside and Peraldehyde
• 58:00 August 31, 1961, jaundice, Ted driving five hours off a road job, Sister Ignatia, last rites, seven gallons of water tapped
• 68:00 Gethsemane monastery with Father Ralph Pfau, first through fourth steps, inventory given to a silent Trappist monk