A Trial Lawyer Cross-Examines the Twelve Steps and Finds Them Airtight – Jerry J.

Thank you. I am Jerry Jones, and I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous since January 1st of 1973, for which I'm very grateful. We do that in Texas. They tell me in Texas if you don't have a sobriety date, if you give a sobrietty date, you're not likely to have one, so I try to get one. I am not only an alcoholic, I am many things. Most of them are things that other people don't want to be, like I'm a lawyer. And I'm the adult spouse of an Elmard. I have experienced Al-Anon brutality in its most severe form. They took my problem to a public meeting and discussed it there, explained to my wife that I had blackouts and didn't remember a damn thing and just gave her total freedom to make up all these lies about things I really am proud to be a part of sort of a cultural exchange here you know down in my part of the country we've not always been thought of as being very truth or what kind of backwoods actually and we appreciate the people from other parts of the country bringing culture to us from time to time. We have a town south of Dallas that's a really good example, it's named Wasahatchee. Wasahachee means buffalo dog in Indian. We had interesting names for our towns, descriptive I might say, and And Washtenaw actually didn't have much culture, and it so happened that some of our eastern neighbors decided that they would travel to Texas and bring an opera. And they didn't Have enough money to bring all the players and all the parts, so they took the leads, and they'd go from community to community, and they would take the local townspeople and train them in the parts of the opera, the non-singing roles. And it so happened that a company of this type came to Wasatchee. And they were, they got the local gymnasium and they practiced and they got local people involved and they gotten ready and they were going to have the big show. And one of the major non-speaking roles was the heroine. and the heroine, she was a local girl she didn't have to sing and they gave her one of those hats you know with the horns on it and the big hubcaps and she was to die in the final act type of thing the tenor the tenors always the lead role and the tenore was to kill her and on the occasion in question they came to the last scene of the last act and the tenor pulled out his rubber knife and stabbed her with the rubber knife. And then he delivered his lines, which were as he held her in his arms, Oh my love, too late my love. What have I done, my love? Now in this town there was an alcoholic And he attended this performance, and he saw this lady who he knew well lying prostrate in the arms of a tenor. And he stood up in the back of the room, and said, I'll tell you what you've done. You've killed the only whore in Waxahachie. I'm going to try very hard not to interfere with your social lives. It's marvelous to be here, to be in the middle of the solution. To be a part of a solution which is unprecedented. I'm always a little awed when I see this many people get together who are following the the precepts and principles that were laid down by Dr. Dodd and Bill in those early 80s, and to recognize what that can do for us in our lives. A wise man once said that to win at life, to be a success at life did not depend upon being dealt good cards, but playing poor hands well. And it seemed to me like when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I had been dealt a poor hand. I did not view this as any kind of an opportunity this was a at most very painful absolutely the last house on the block type of a solution that I had, I didn't like these people I read it it was hokey as hell you know you go to meetings and grown people some guy stands up and says says, my name's Jerry. Everybody says, hi, Jerry. Oh, Pastor O'Hare and you can talk about that. My gosh, I expected him to come up and teach me the grip any time, you know. Man, disgusting habits of hugging and patting each other at random, you know. I didn't feel like hugging and padding. It was not much fun for me. I was at the end of the road. I had gone as far as I could go, and I had no solutions. And isn't it interesting that's exactly where I needed to be? I know today that that is a remarkable place to be, to be at the end of the road and know that your solutions don't work my old idea that my disease had taken me as far as i could go that day i suppose if there hadn't been an aaa or if i hadn't found at that time i would have had another opportunity maybe i don't know but it didn't happen that way i came to alcoholics anonymous very reluctantly very angry very much convinced convinced that there was only perhaps one major, well, maybe two, or was it three problems in my life. One was drinking. I recognized I might have some kind of a problem with alcohol. The other was my out-of-mountain wife and I knew I had a problem then. I didn't like much about life at all. And I walked in and I saw the kind of solution that you had to offer and he was pathetic. I knew it wasn't going to work, and if there had been anything else to try, I wouldn't have tried it at all. But I didn't really realize what was happening there. I didn' t really realize that I was about to embark upon something called a spiritual awakening or a spiritual experience. Those had spooky sounds to me, you know, kind of like haines and that sort of thing i hadn't had much experience with spiritual awakening or spiritual experiences and i didn't much think they would work i was a sinner and i did much believe i looked very closely at them near everything and i uh i didn t think this would work and i was not really doing much in the program until until I began to observe some people in the program. If you're new at the program of AA, and I know many of you are because you're very young, and if you're a new, look around you and they'll tell you to look for the winners, to follow the winners. They'll be the last people inthe world if you really are trapped with your energy game. They won't understand you and they won't tolerate your nonsense very much maybe. But if you watch them in the way they live and the way they move, you will be attracted to what they have. And if you follow that feeling, you will have stumbled upon probably the greatest principle about politics and art, which is the principle of experience. What man has done, man can do. If the person you like and admire has achieved some beats in his life and some success and some weather good, then that's available for you also. I encountered that experience early in my life. I was raised out in West Texas, up in the panhandle of Texas, on 10 miles north of a town of 1,500 people, both being in Texas. We didn't have electricity, and we didn't had running water in houses and things like that in the beginning. And every once in a while, every once a week, we got to go to town. And when I went to town, I saw the town kids had bicycles. And I decided that I wanted a bicycle. And my dad told my dad about that and he decided he'd buy me one. So we ordered one from Sears and Roebuck catalog. And we came and he put it together and gave it to me. And I got on the bicycle. Only to find that it was harder to ride a bicycle than I thought it would be. I fell over and busted my can. My mother got out there and she would crawl along beside me and hold the bicycle up. And she would turn the bicycle loose, and I would fall over and bust my can again. I did that for about two days. And I'd come upon a great truth. I had been sold a defective bicycle. That's the truth. The bicycle I had acquired could not be ridden. And I explained that to my parents that they'd bought me a defected bicycle. We were going to send the damn thing back. And my mother looked at me. She was a spunky little Irishman. And she said, Jerry Jones, there's not anything wrong with that bicycle. That's a fine bicycle. She said, I've only ridden a bicycle maybe one time in my life, but I could ride that bicycle and I said, why would you say that? I said you cannot. So the next day she got out there and she got on that bicycle and fell over and busted her can. I knew that was going to happen. I felt a little sad about it, but God was always smarter than she was. us and so she swung up on it again and by gosh do you know she read that wrote that thing about 25 or maybe 30 feet down the road they kind of tipped over and she got off of it and laid it on the ground and said it's all yours you know an hour I was riding up my seat and that's what we've got in our voice anonymous if you pick the right people to sponsor you, to listen to, to walk you through the principles of the program of Alphalise and Honors. What's available there for them is available for you. You don't have any idea. You don'T have any idea what you can be or become because we haven't tried to be or to become what we can be by applying the principles of alcoholics and alcoholics. We have to apply those principles because it's necessary for us to learn to live life in a way that doesn't give us so much pressure and pain and disappointment, because pressure and pain, and disappointment lead us to become uncomfortable, and we know as alcoholics way down deep that we have a solution for that we know that a drink would make it better and we don't we don' find a way to live comfortably and easily we will drink again so we're motivated by absolute necessity to begin to look at our lives I didn't think I had a disease when I came down to Constance I thought i had some kind of lack of willpower or some some form of moral leprosy or something like that i couldn't understand what was wrong with me and it's difficult to explain what alcoholism is to people one of the best examples came to me in a meeting of aa one night when i remembered the story about my dog patches and a bulldog his name was patrick hell of a dog i mean he was big old English bull, mostly English bull. He was tough. He was good with kids. He just had it all put together. Everybody loved him. He had success in his life. A week or so before this story I'm about to tell you, he'd gone up in the field and found a big old badger. Weighed a pound more than he did. I know because after fighting him all morning, he finally got him killed and we were able to win. Every day for a week, Patches' girlfriend would pick pick up that old badger and just shake hell out of him. Just let him know he was boss. He had strong character. This day, another animal came in our yard. He was a big old boar hawk. Big animal. Six hundred and seven hundred pounds. Patches made the decision to go get hold of the boar hog. Didn't have any problems. Didn'T have a problem in his life. He WAS FULL, HAD BEEN FED WELL, PAID, PLAYED WITH. EVERYTHING WAS WONDERFUL. BUT But he decided, for some reason we didn't know, to go get hold of that hog. And he went out and got hold of the hog. Created a real problem in our yard when he did that. Hog began to squeal. Dog was barking. My dad got out there right away, and he was kicking hogs and dogs and cussing. I became concerned about my dog, and I got out here trying to take care of my dog. My dad was not real careful about who he was cussed and kicking at that time. And my mother became very concerned that her little boy was out there. and so she got out there and everybody was out there and we all knew the solution to the problem. Patches turned loose with that damn hog. He had gone there, you know bulldogs don't turn loose easily and finally he came off and as he came up an old warthog swung around and cut his throat and we caught him, caught Patches and we slowed him down and we cooled him off and we bathed his neck We petted him and we turned him loose. And he went right back and got a hold of that boar all again. Same problem, same problem. Hog squealing, dog barking, dad kicking and cussing. Me out there trying to save my dog. Mom out there trying to say to me everybody knew the solution. Hog knew it, we knew it. Everybody He turned loose in the damn hog packers. Well, he came off one more time. This time we caught him again. And we recognized that Pash's emotional state was out of whack. His emotions were on top of his intellect or something was happening to him. And so this time we committed it. We tied him to the water island. and we let him think about his life. And to recognize, he never had a good day catching hogs, not one. No one in the family enjoyed his hog catching at all. No one thought it was cute or funny or heroic or anything else. It's just a bad deal. Got you hurt. And we ran the boar hog off to remove temptation from him. And he lay there, and I petted him and nurtured him and cared for him, and you could see he was getting better. His little old stub of a tail would wag. And after two hours, it was obvious, he would recover, and we'd turn him loose. He had to go two miles to find the hog the next time. It wasn't going to work out. Not only is that alcoholism, we were the first chapter of Haugenot in West Texas. See, the old dog, the old dog had, it looked like his problem was catching hold of hogs. But that wasn't a problem at all. It was something behind the catching hold of the hogs that caused the problem. What made him go the first time? What sent him back again and again? What made you switch from hogs to cattle trucks a couple weeks later when he got run over? we uh that was my story too you see it seemed to me like if i just stopped drinking everybody told me jerry if you just didn't drink you would be a better father lawyer husband they had a long list of things i'd be better at I didn't recognize that I had to do some studying in my life. I had go to work on my life as the only person in the world who knew what was going on in my head. The only person who could keep up with what was going on my head, the only persons who could apply the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous in my life I was the one that had to take the action that began to let me find the old ideas that I had that sent me back again and again and again to this terrible condition that we called alcoholism and then the drug alcohol and I didn't have an idea what those were they seemed like good ideas largely certainly they weren't anything that you would be ashamed of for the the most part I am and looking at my life after I got into the program of alcoholics anonymous I I look back on what my values work you know the book says that one of the things it says in there that the great fact for us is just this and nothing less than we've had this spiritual awakening which has revolutionized our ideas about God or universe my fellow man a change of attitude about values in the lives of psyche that part of you which is in your mind which sees you in relation to the rest of you the world that has to be changed I didn't know there was anything wrong with mine I have grown up as a little kid out there in a community where everybody liked me my folks were loving and kind people they were hard-working my dad was tough he was a strict disciplinarian but my gosh he gave me a square shake the town they didn't they didn't load me up with a lot of pressures did a lot of places do. You know, my town was the kind of place if you were playing on the baseball team and they had a home run all week long, they'd buy you moss. If you happen to be the guy that struck out in the bottom of the ninth, you know what they'd do that week? Buy you moss because damn near impossible for me to be an alcoholic. There wasn't any booze for hundreds of miles but when I got it, it did something for me. Why did it do something for you? Looking back on my life I could see that I had some ideas and those ideas loaded me up pretty good first idea I want to be a man I defined what a man is and man to me was sort of cross between Robert Redford John Wayne cut myself no slack knew all my life I was going to be one of those when I grew up that's what my dad was he's a man they told me I was gonna grow up and be a man one day they told me little men don't cry and I bought all that stuff seemed like a very logical thing for me to want to be and I got off into being a man and I watched my dad then one time was working on plow remember this and he hit he was chiseling the head off of the boat with a big hammer and a chisel and he was just beating the BGBs out of it and he missed it just a little bit the chisel flew He blew out of his hand, and he skinned his knuckles real good with that hammer. Blood went everywhere. He stood up and cussed a little bit. It was okay to cuss. That's to be a man. I knew that. I practiced that when they weren't around. And he slung blood for a littlebit, and he walked back over there and picked up that chisel and got that hammer again. And just before he started hitting the die, I said, Daddy, did that hurt? He looked at me with those hard eyes and hands, and he said, Hell no. And he went right back to work. Two or three days later, I was playing like I was a man, and I had me a chisel and a hammer. And I wiped her a couple times, and guess what? Kept my hand. Not very bad, but you know what? Hurt like hell. Hurt Like Hell, and I cried. Not only did it hurt, andI cried, but I was afraid to do it anymore. And so I plunked me a man on three points right there in one short experience. And that was the story for me. I got started off, and I felt like I was supposed to be something I wasn't and couldn't be. I decided over and over, I just won't hurt anymore. And I kept being pushed into places by my own needs to be important, to be accepted, to get attention of people, to avoid rejection, to avoid being ignored, all those things. I got pushed out there just to do things that I didn't like to do. I remember when I went out for football. I was in eighth grade. I was tall and skinny, about the same height as I am now. Somebody thought I was going to be a big man someday. In eighth grade, the coach came by and said, we're going to let you boys, some of you big boys, go out for football in the spring with the high school team. Well, that sounded good to me. I didn't know anything about football, but it sounded good to me, so I went up there, and they gave me one of them outfits you put on, you know, to keep you from getting hurt. I know what they're for, and I watched real close. They put all that contraction on me, and I got out there and it was quite an experience for me. First thing you know, they begin to tackle and block and that damn equipment of mine wasn't working because I was getting the BGs knocked out of me. Skin was coming off from large hand pulls and I made a decision before I went back to the gym that afternoon that I had all this football I wanted. I caught up with a lifetime supply of football in one afternoon. And I had a little trouble getting this gear off of me and a couple my classmates got theirs off first and they slammed it over in the corner and stopped out I told the coach ain't gonna play and the coach some of the other guys high school guys down there and then begin talk about men and they talked about yellow streaks damn gas backs and they looked over to me and they said, Jones, how'd you like football? I said, I've been wanting to play football all my life. So I got into football, you see, and I never did like it real good, but I never could find a place to quit. it. Finally, it outgrew me. Thank God. I busted up everything and I just kept going back. And you see, there was a great internal conflict in me. I needed to be a man, but I didn't really feel like I was. I wanted to be successful, but it didn't feel like have ever had enough. And I kept pushing myself. I got after things called more, better, and different. No matter what I had, I wanted a little more of it, a little better quality of it or a little different. And as this went across everything, I got hold of cars, women, houses, whatever it happened to be. You know, I just wanted a littler more better or different. And I could never find anything that made me very happy. And whatever I had I didn't to feel like I deserved. Now, I don't mean I felt that way every day, but that was kind of a recurring feeling for me. Now what happened to me is one day I went to college and I ran across a bunch of guys in a thing called a fraternity. And they invited me to a party and I wanted to go because I wanted it to be accepted. And there were upperclassmen and they took me out there and they showed me a commodity called beer. Nasty stuff, I'll I'll tell you. Comes out your nose and everything. And I just, it's kind of like football. They said, Joe, I'll show you how to like beer. And I said, I like this beer. And I made myself drink that stuff for a little bit, but I got to where I liked it real good. It made me what? I didn't care. Feel like a man. Hey, man, I don't care whether the school keeps or not. I was a damn fool. These guys were on the GI Bill. They gave them their books, and they'd sell their books the next day if they gave them to him and go on a party. I went in and bought my damn books and sold them the next day so I'd go on the party. But I was off and running. I liked the people that drank. I liked where we drank. I liked what we drank and I liked how the people who drank with us. Oh, man, I liked it. It let me not care about a lot of things. I like the ease and comfort of those drinks. And I don't know whether I like that more than other people but I know that in the very beginning any, two or three of the guys that came to school with me and were my roommates at the time, told me that they didn't think that they wanted to do what I was doing. They didn't think they wanted it. They wanted to get off in that beer-drinking, hell-raising bunch. And I watched them walk out of my life, and as they walked out, I wondered, why in the world wouldn't they want to do this? Why in the world? God, this is so much better than anything we've ever had before why wouldn't you want to visit it i've got that deep obsession in this city and over time because i never intended to give that up and before i got into a lot of trouble we got an announcement here it's a license number hmk 330 and JTK 823 and HPP 294. Cars are blocking the exit. The kitchen staff cannot leave. They are armed with cleavers that are coming into the office. If you have one of those cars, if you let them out. That was HMK 330, JTKA 233, and HPC 294." I never did intend tend to give that up. I just thought that was my success for life. And the pressures that I had from these old ideas, the wanting to be a success, the want to be a winner, the wanted to be man, all those things that I was carrying around with me, each one of them seemed perfectly logical. Each one of was admired by the people that I associated with. It seemed like good ideas but they created enormous pressures in me and alcohol repeatedly gave me a little vacation from those pressures. And I commenced to use it, and I never intended to give it up, and I increased its usage on a steady basis for the next 10 or 15 years of my life. It caused trouble. It caused problems in my family. My wife, I finally had to send her to a psychiatrist because she had some kind of goofy reaction to the way I drank. just bizarre and the sky didn't agree with me she had a real strong reaction to my drinking but before long they were talking to me about the way I drank I was always solving the peripheral problems you know I could just keep finding excuses and I could do things that were just bizarre I remember one time when we took from us smoking here I gave up smoking a long time back and what I I don't know that you're going to think I deserve a lot of credit for that let me tell you this story We had a couple of experiences in my house. You know, little things. Well, in bed mainly. I smoked in bed and at times there were little holes burned in the covers and blankets. Not anything to get excited about. Certainly not anything to react the way my damn wife reacted to me. and that's why you have bed covers you cover those damn things up but this one morning I woke up at night, I guess it was my side of the bed was blazing pretty good I had been up apparently and I had binned somewhere taking care of some kind of business and came back and I was an automatic smoker I automatically lit a cigarette I apparently sat down on the edge of the bit and fired up up and then I got very tired and I laid back and rested a little bit about those dogs I thought simple little thing like that and that's a hard thing to explain if it ever happens to you the best explanation I've ever heard is just tell them you think the damn thing was on fire when you got in. I got up the next morning and I don't know where I had to go or what I had to do, but I had get the hell out of there pretty quick and so I left and I told my wife buy any kind of beds you want and I was gone. You know when I got home she had written me a letter. I don�t know why she wrote me a letter, I was going to come home anyway and she wrote me this letter. She didn't mail it, it was just sitting there on the table where I'd see it and it said, Dear Jerry, I've been talking to you about your drinking and smoking. It's now reached the point where I cannot comfortably go to bed in my own home without worrying about my own health and the health and safety of our children. You simply must do something about the smoking and drinking. And I did. I quit smoking. Never thought about quitting drinking. Gave it no thought at all. I just solved peripheral problems, and I kept rationalizing and justifying and looking the other way. And that was true of most of my old ideas. I rationalize and justify and suppress, and it's always somebody else's fault. It's not mine. If you understood the kind of problem I had, and I went through all of that. And the thing that finally caught my attention, the thing, the thing that finally got my, me aware of what was going on in my life was my wife and outlaw. I, by this time, have progressed. I was driving hard. I had a lot of success in my life. I achieved positions in my law firm that I never dreamed I'd achieve. I was making more money than I'd ever thought I would make. And all the time, my life was going to hell right there in a handbasket. And it finally got... I wasn't out in the bars either. I as I needed to protect that position I needed to protect their success so yeah I've got drunken bars yeah I got picked up with the cops yeah I had trouble but after I got caught I would quit going to that place or quit doing those things and slowly and surely I retreated into my being I lived in my damn den and I went out to work and I stayed at work as as long as I had to be there, or as long as I could without a drink. And then I would go back to the day. And that was my life. I brought my disease right home with me so my whole family could enjoy it. And I was in deep denial about this being any kind of a problem. But my life was set up. Now when I found out that my wife had gone to Halamon, hell I didn't know what it was I was asking my little girl one night where Billy was, that's my wife and she said daddy she's gone to a meeting and I said what kind of a meeting and she says I don't know daddy a family meeting well we had been having some serious discussions about our family and it didn't seem proper to me that she would go to some kind of damn meeting without me being willing to represent my interest and so when she came home I began to cross examine her I loved crossing examining my wife I just loved her And she's good at ducking. Oh, she's good at ducking You know you can ask her a question Where have you been? Out What have you been doing out? Well, I've been meeting some friends Who are they? You wouldn't know them What have you been doing with them? Oh, sharing our experience strength and hope Well, after about an hour of this stuff you know I run it down to what's the name of this meeting you've been going to Al-Anon I couldn't imagine why she would want to go to some kind of aluminum product so I asked a couple more questions and it turned out it had something to do with Alcoholics Anonymous now I made the association very quickly here I found out that this was a public meeting do you know that anybody can go to an online meeting they don't check on a damn thing just anybody who wants to come can come and you know how judges are and politicians and all those people hell they're always looking for meetings to go to and politic to and they know all the lawyers in town and it was obvious to me here I was a big time lawyer and my wife was going to a public meeting about my most secret problem I was being fried and convicted of alcoholism without any hearing whatsoever nobody was telling my side of the story and I explained to her somebody is going to see you there a judge a judge's wife one of my partners their wives their families clients witnesses jurors there are thousands of people in the city of Dallas if any one of them sees you there it will mean economic disaster and and ruin for me and my family. Do you understand how that will happen? The word will get back to my partners. You know we've had a couple of alcoholic partners for years. We have exercised our full quota for alcoholic lawyers. They don't want any more. The clients, they'll kick me out. The clients won't go with me. And when I get out of that job and that position, the money stops. When the money starts, the house goes. the cars go, the groceries go. We're not talking about college education now for our children, we're talking about abject poverty and hunger. The responsibility is all yours, Billy. What are are you going to do about it? She said, I need to go. She said I have a problem and And I said, what is your problem? And she said, my problem is the way you drink. And I says, that sounds like my problem to me. Well, I couldn't run her off. I asked her nicely. I begged her some. I threatened to kill her if she ever went back again. She kept going. If they ever get a hold on you, man, I'll tell you what, they got you, I'm telling you for sure. Anyway, she kept going and I couldn't leave her alone. Not a night passed that I wasn't after her about that outline. She was always leaving literature around and, you know, just drove me crazy. And one night I had to get her out of there, you see, and I was picking a fight with her. I pick fights. I don't just say we're going to have a fight. I ease into my fights. I try to establish and get all the concessions I can before they know they're in a fight and I would start off with something like this. not as if you think I'm an alcoholic. She said, I don't know whether you are or not. I said, what do you mean you don't know whether? You called me an alcoholic thousands of times. And she said, yes, but I was wrong. You can't hardly start a fight with a person exactly like this. She said it doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what i think it doesn't matter what anybody thinks you are the only person in the world that can do anything about your alcoholism and if you don't know you have it you'll never do anything about it you've got to decide for yourself are you an alcoholic or not now i made right at this point i made a very basic tactical error no good lawyer ever makes this mistake but i was upset off my my feet and I said, well if I wanted to find out if I was an alcoholic, how would I do it? They got an answer. She said, you should try some controlled drinking. I said what do you mean controlled drinking? She said you should drink two drinks a day every day for six months no more, no less. If you can do that, you're not an alcoholic to tell me." I said, you've been trying to get me to quit drinking for years. Is it my understanding that you want me to drink another six months? She said, I do. I knew I was in the middle of something that I did not understand. So I went and sat down on my green chair and got me a drink and began to give this thing a good thing. I was drinking a little more than I intended to drink then. I came home from work and drank about half a quart of gin before dinner, and then I had two or three bites of mashed potatoes and switched to brandy, and I drank a half a fifth of brandy. I didn't know anybody else that drank that way, but I thought I was drinkin' what I wanted to drink. It was my life. Here's my bottle. Who the hell could fuss at me? And so I sat I sat there that night, and I thought, you know, I better get that woman out of Alamo. I was serious about this. I didn't want anybody to know I had this kind of problem. I really did. I had some partners they talked pretty shabby about down at my place of business about being out in Fox. So I decided to tell her this, but I decided I'll take that damn test. Now, let me tell you this. First, I had to change the test just a little bit. Well, you don't understand. Two drinks didn't do them any good. And I didn't like the drink, but it didn't do me any good. I decided I had to drink three drinks. I had a big glass, and I'd have two big martinis before dinner. I would eat, and then I would have a big brandy. And nobody could fuss at me for drinking that way. And they could not, and they would not have. But I ran across a problem. I found out that I didn't have to hold the hog. The hog had to hold me. I would have one drink, I would get about midway through the second drink and then it would happen. A thought would come in from way out of left field. It was always about the same kind of thought. and say something like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Are you over 21? Are you a man? Who supports this damn family and pays for all this house and all them cars and all that stuff? Are you going to let a bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes tell you you have to request it? The answer was, hell no. Hell no, I'm not, and I'd go over there and drink a bottle. Another thing would happen. I'd walk to the bar, start to mix the first of those three drinks, and think, you know, I've had a bad day. I just don't feel like screwing with the damn test tonight. And I wouldn't. And when I didn't feel I screwed with the test tonight, I drank a bottle of it. Then I had another real cute trip. I could forget the test. I could just flat forget it for a couple of weeks at a time. And when I'd wake up one morning really hungover and think, my God, why did I do that? What's wrong with me? It's important to get that woman out of those loonies, get her away from me. You've got to do something about your life. You've gotta get this thing settled down. You've gonna get her out of there. And I could not understand why I couldn't do that. It was totally illogical for a grown man to decide he was going to only have three drinks and then not do it. It wasn't the rest of my life. It was only six months. I gave it a fair chance. I gave the test a good run. I ran it a year and a half. Had some good days in the middle that time, I suppose. But over the long haul, I came to know a great basic fact. I came in to get in touch with reality. One of the things our book says is that we're going to find the great reality deep inside ourselves. We're going find out what's really going on in our lives. And I had to find out, but I didn't have alcohol. Alcohol had me. And at the end of that year and a half there wasn't a doubt in my mind. I was gone. I couldn't understand what was happening to me. I couldn' talk to anybody about this. Oh, I had lots of chances, I'm supposed to talk to people, but i was so secretive about this and i was so intent upon doing this thing my way and i i just couldn't understand what was happening to me all i could do at the end of that time was to think about her wishing i had a drink wishing i hadn't had a dream trying to get the damn test remembering the tests and all this time my wife is getting better that's a remarkable thing about this damn down right in the midst of while i'm going right straight down she's coming right straight up And she's doing the damnedest things, things that kind of remind me about my test pretty often. Some, her sponsor told her that she should start every day, the moment she opened her eyes, she should say out loud, this is the day the Lord has made, I shall rejoice and be glad in it. Now if you've never had a one-quart handover with one eye stuck shut one of your arms feels like it's dead because you've been sleeping on there all night long and awakened to have somebody say this is the day the Lord has made I'm going to rejoice and be glad in it you have not truly understood what Al-Anon is I did damn well I wasn't going to be rejoicing any that day and I told my wife on January 1st I had had a bad New Year's Eve I really didn't need to bring it in with a you know some grace and dignity I wish I could stand here and tell you that I really really tore it up on New Year's Eve 1972 I'd like to tell you I've got to tell you I went out like a wimp I was gonna last till the new year came yet again and hair lift the governor. I passed out at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. I woke up about 10 o' clock at night and looked out the window and there, dark as hell out there and my wife's sitting over there in her robe and I said, shouldn't we be getting dressed to go out? She said, all right, Jerry. Don't you know what time it is? And I looked at this 10 o´clock. I'd blown it again. And I was sick of me. I was sick of what I was and what I'd become. And I didn't have anybody to blame for that. That was me. It was my doing. I was responsible. And I got up and had another drink and went to bed. And the next morning I got out to the sorriest looking world I've ever seen in my life. It's just great. There was no hope there. there. There was only one thing I knew I might try, and that was to not drink. And so I made a big step that morning. I said to my wife, I'm going to try to quit drinking. And she said, would you like me to call off my wet synopsis and get somebody over here to help me? And I said, hell no. I got myself in this deal, and by God, if anybody gets me out of that it'll be me. She happened to have a copy of the big book and a little 24-hour day book, and she said, you may find these helpful. I graciously received them and threw them back at her against the wall and said, now, lady, I'm telling you, keep the kids, the dogs, them damn day A's and all that literature crap out of my way. I don't know whether I can do this or not, but it ain't gonna be easy." And she said, You got it. And I hated it. And it had me. And I began to come apart. I walked the streets and felt I'd been alone a long time but I really began to feel lonely now. I watched people walking around doing their thing happy with their kids looking forward to a new year and I saw no hope for me. All I could think about was wanting a drink wondered what was wrong with me why did I have this terrible drive to have a drink to get away from it over and over at this thought about all the time at the end of the second day I began to think you know I'm gonna make this damn thing I better sneak in there and get hold of some that damn literature and see what it said and I did went in there didn't have time for a spreadsheet find me in there reading that damn stuff quick open it up and saw it had a date on every page my keen alcoholic mind I I went to January 2nd. I'm going to read what they say to do, what they're supposed to be told me to do. They said, give your drinking problem to God. Ain't that some kind of damn joke? How are you going to give it to somebody you can't find? I've been looking for this thing all my life. I've gone up to the front. I've being dedicated, rededicated. I've lied about whether I've even saved or not. they asked me you know and I'm standing up there to front people crying on my neck and tell me how proud they are they said don't you feel different I say oh yeah I did I felt more disappointed not ever built my life because nothing ever happened to me I want some fruit I'm gonna find this hokey stuff unless somebody gives me some fruit but this thing really works I want to hear a voice what that damn bouquet to talk to me for a little bit or something but I I wasn't getting that kind of proof, and I never did get it. And I got to looking at those people real close, and they looked like hypocrites to me. I saw what they were doing. I saw What They Were Doing Out of Church. So I just became one of them. I just hypocrite right along with them, you know. But I never found anything and never got any solutions in my life. And for me to read this stuff, you know, I thought it was perfect. And I wouldn't have done this if I didn't have anything else to do. I tossed out a little book out the middle of the table, and I said, God if you're there, I'm going to give you this drinking problem. And if you take it, I may do some more business with you. The next day I knew I was gonna have to have some help. I needed some help with skin on it. I need some people. and I began to go to alcoholics anonymous and you heard how I accepted when I got there I wanted to go a little home group at first a little quiet home group called the town and country group that sounded like my kind of place they have eons of sobriety you know the guys their baby had a year and a half from the next guy had five and then they got to ten or fifteen years and they didn't have but about ten of them and they had one little meeting a week and and I didn't think they had much of a drinking problem. You can't stay sober 10 years the way I felt and have, you know, if you've got much of an drinking problem, and then into that group came an old kid from the treatment center. He had less than six months. His name was David, and he had literature sticking out of every damn pocket. He was just talking about the disease and step one and step two and step four and all this stuff, you you know, that I just kind of had a whirl with him, you know. And after the meeting was over, I got outside with him. I said, what do you think about this AA thing? He said, you talking about what we just been in there? He said that's fine for a bunch of old times like that, I guess. I said anything would be good for me and you. He said we're going to get drunk if we do that. We're going have to get in the middle of this thing because see, we're gonna have to change the way we think. We're gonna to have to have a spiritual awakening. We're gunna have to do this thing. and i said where are we gonna go to do it and i followed david into the mainstream of alcoholics anonymous and i gave her a good shot i really gave it a good job wasn't very long until it was attraction rather than anything else that drove me i liked what was happening there i like the way that people reacting I began to have some wonderful experiences in my life I came to understand the thing called self-centeredness when I got there you see I thought my only problem was drinking but listening to you and those meetings I began understand what they meant by things like unmanageable self-centred things like that one night I was sitting in a meeting like that and they were talking about that and I remembered my fishbowl I got tired of watching television while I was doing my drinking so I bought me me an aquarium. It was my size of aquarium. I put it between my chair and the wall so nobody would mess with it. And I put the kind of gravel I wanted it in the bottom, and I put the kinds of plants I wanted in it, lacy pretty plants. And put the kinda fish I wanted in there, pretty slow swimming fish. It had a light on it. I could make it daylight or or I could make it dark. I fed my fish, if they were to be fed. Sometimes it was a land of plenty and sometimes there was a famine upon the land. And at my Sunday night meeting that night, I remembered my fish law and I remembered that there was always one damn fish who simply would not do what I wanted him to do. He was always a fish. Generally, he was after the prettiest fish in the boat. I like to watch him glide up and nibble a little food, you know, at the top. It's like a pretty slow-swimming fish. And I could dream and think about those wild things I was going to do next time and, you know, fantasize. And fast swimming fish just are not conducive to that. And he'd go up and nip the tail of a fish, you know. And as he nipped the tail, the fish began to swim faster and he'd chase it. The first thing you know one of them is chasing and they begin to pass other fish and the other fish get to go in too. First thing you know, the whole damn boat was just going back and forth. Just drove me crazy. If I wanted fast swimming fish, I'd have bought fast-swimming fish. And I'd reach over there and I'd walk off the side of that bed and then move it like that. Give them a clap of thunder. Let them know there's a power greater than they are. It's what I wanted, to prove, joy. I was there, I gave them three chances with the money. You know that some fishes didn't learn after three times? Then I had a little dip in it. After the third time, I just reached down there and catched the bad fish, pulled him out of the water, hold him on my lap, have a drink. Think about those people out there I'd like to put my fishnet on. When they got real still, I would put them back. Sometimes they float. If they float, you might as well give up on them. Once again, I practiced the mystical rule of three and I gave them three chances. You'd know after three claps of thunder and three hands-on experiences from the deity, they would learn, wouldn't you? Well I got to tell you there are such unfortunates they seem to have been born that way. The last time, the fourth time after the bent nets, I pulled them out and went with them to the commode in Plushland. See, I never told a soul about that That was a game I played entirely on my own My son heard me tell that story one time And he said, my God, I want to grow all those fish And I thought my life was manageable You know, it's difficult to argue That your life is manageable When you can't run a fishbowl It's difficult To say you're not self-centered when you take personally what fish do. And so I began to find self-centeredness in little ways first and in big ways later on. I did the inventories and the fifth steps and I learned that the principles of alcoholics are an honest word. I made amends. I mailed a copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous to the other liar's mother of mine. And let her read it to my dad so they could understand what their kid was trying to do. I got to straighten out that deal with my mom and dad before they died. I buried both of them. See, life doesn't go on undisturbed after you find its program. You're going to have death, and you're going have disappointments, and you are going to lose jobs. Lots of things are going happen to you that you don't like. but your job from this point forward in this program is to recognize that you are responsible for your interstate you don't have to be hurt and sick all the time you don t have to get repeatedly fired from a job one after another you don d have to go through a whole string of relationships always looking for that wonderful one that s just going to fix everything what you ve got to do is learn from your own experience you ve gotta get down to the cases and recognize it's your life and you're responsible for it and that's why I was lucky enough to have a sponsor and the lucky enough to find people who let me do that we helped me do this we help me see the way to go and my life began to turn around remarkable things happened in my life I began to see the world in a brand new way I got new values the feeling of uselessness that I used to have I had no no idea why I was on this ball of mud we call earth. I couldn't imagine what the purpose of the whole damn thing was. It didn't make any sense to me. But I'll tell you what, after I'd been an Alcoholics Anonymous just a little while, I came to know that I had a particular gift to give. I have a unique ability to talk to another alcoholic and to share with him the road to recovery. Let him look at my life, let him know me warts and all. Let them understand that the most important thing that's happened in my life is to know that I am who I am I'm fearful at times I am weak at times other times I do things that I don't know how I did I buried my mother I watched my father die in arms never once in those occasions did I ever think about taking a drink those were important people in my life all sorts of things have come my way and i've had the strength to do it and you see i have this ability to reach another alcoholic i don't ever have to wonder what my purpose in life is again i can do something that you can't go to school to learn how to do i can touch the life of another person by telling them of my experience by describing accurately what happened to me with this disease and telling them what happened how to go about it themselves and that's a great gift there are many doctors who would give a lot for that i've been given tools that have allowed me to live a life that's different than better than anything i ever thought about you know sproy at one time said the goal of all psychoanalysis is to return man to that unhappy state called normalcy ain't that a hell of a deal you've been paying $100 an hour for, we got a better deal than that. We got a way that works. And the secret is to get out of your own life. Did you ever say I have to have this to treat yourself real good one day? I've never done that but I didn't wind up in a deep depression by the end of the day I just got the day you know the time I feel best when that damn drunk has called me at two o'clock in the morning I wind up you know I've got some place to be the next morning they got time to mess with him I told him not to get drunk I explained how to work the band program and I go and I talked to the silly fool one more time and as I walk out of that place no matter what time it is I always know I have been in the right place doing the the right thing and I feel good. Happiness is the byproduct of right living. Dr. Bob said our whole program boils down to two words, love and service. The steps in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous are designed to teach and allow you and I to have love and service. To enable us to contact a power that's in this room now that many of you feel. It's an experiential thing. It doesn't have anything to do with the words I say particularly or the memory you have, but it's an interaction that we have. It's a presence that's with us, a power that will restore us to sanity. God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Is there any doubt in your mind that this works? Think for a minute. Just take this group of people right here tonight. Here we are in a nice community, in the public, the nicest building in town. I wonder how many crimes this group or people have committed. it. I wonder how many people, banks, creditors we've sent in one way or another. We done down there everything wrong you can do wrong, haven't we? What would it be like to talk to the mayor and say, Mayor, we'd like to get a group of my friends together. They've been convicted of every felony known to man. They owe thousands of dollars to people they probably never will pay back. They've done just about everything wrong you can do, and we'd like to get together in your community for a little cheer. Here we are. and it's not because of our own efforts it's because we have taken the action to enlist the aid power greater than ourselves and that power that power according to our book if what we think or feel means anything at all it is that a living creator we can all have a living creator no matter what our race color are created we have the honesty and willingness to look we take the action the power is there we find self-centeredness and when it's removed by giving of ourselves to others the power is there and we don't have to look anymore we have our own experience of the power we don't have to listen to what somebody else what's happened to them we know in our own lives it just says in the vision to you that a miracle miracles have occurred and one has come to me and to my family we among all people are among the most blessed and it is our duty it is out of our hands to practice these principles in all our affairs to carry this message to the alcoholic who still suffers, to give away what we have been given. I want to thank you for having me at this conference.