Brought a 48-Quart Cooler of Beer to a Baptist College and Offered the Dorm a Round 🤦 – Red S.

Red's my friend. He's my buddy. And he came to be our alternate speaker tonight. I got a chance to witness his story at the Hawk Club anniversary this last June. And he was the noon speaker, which is, that's the main one. And I tell you what, you guys are in for a treat. He's not just brawn, he's got brains. Come on, Red. Good evening, everyone. My name is Red, and I'm a power of sober alcohol. And before we get started, I'd like to know, is there anybody here from Forest Park? Nobody. How about Gainesville? Cleveland? That's all part of my story. Georgia? Alright, I was just checking on that. That's good, though. That's good. Anyway, I also... I'd like to joke with you and say that I'm the biggest drunk in this room. And by looking at this crowd, I think I am. So, anyway, this is kind of breaking the ice a little bit. My mother, her father's name was Joel Stewart. People always had a lot of trouble calling me Joel. They'd say Jewel or Joel or something like that. I'd say, man, just call me Red. If you can't get it right, just call me Red. I was red-headed anyway. So, I like that a lot better. I grew up in Forest Park, Georgia. Right down by the airport. I was born in Griffin. My parents moved to Forest Park in 1964. My dad was a factory worker. If you saw me, I was drinking out of a can. He worked at a plant that made cans. That's part of my story. I'll get to it in a little bit, too. He was a blue-collar worker. He was the fifth boy. The fourth one didn't live, but he was the fifth boy born. Family of six. By the time he got there, he was old hat. They had boys. They were used to boys. They wanted a girl. Well, eventually, they got one. It was his little sister. She suffered from this disease. I remember as a child coming to see her at Charter-Peachford Hospital. It was just Peachford. She had the disease as well. And my dad drank. My mom didn't drink much. Once or twice a year. I grew up with my dad drinking. And he smoked, but that don't mean a lot. But that's not why I'm here. I do remember getting burned with a cigarette one time when I went to hug him. That didn't cause me to drink. We grew up on the south side. I'm a south-sider. And I grew up in a rough neighborhood. It was all blue-collar. The men worked at the airport. They worked at the can plant. They worked at Owens, Illinois. They made glass. There was a guy who worked at Union Camp. They made cardboard boxes. It was a blue-collar neighborhood. When you walked out that door, you better be sure you had everything you needed to get back home. Because, I mean, there was a... There was a fight nearly every week. Somebody got into it. Somebody showed up at the bus stop with a shiner. And, I mean, if one person beats you up, you better get ready because here comes somebody else. And it was on until you got to upper hand on somebody and then get off of it. I was an athlete. I played basketball. And my brother played baseball. He was much better at baseball than I was. We're decent. You know, we played all right. And there was the kids that smoked. And then they, you know, if you drove by the bus on them, you could smell it on your clothes when you got home. And mom would say, who you been with that's smoking? You know, all this kind of business. And in that neighborhood, at 12 years old, I took my first drink. There was a guy named Jimmy. He lived on a dead-end road in the neighborhood. And there was a little knee wall on the other side of it. You walked down there to the creek. Well, his dad was a construction worker and a fisherman. And he drank all the time. He had a refrigerator outside. First one I ever seen. On a carport that had pony lice or pony millers in it. And Jimmy snuck one out down to the creek one day. This is how funny it was. He cracked the lid on it. We was catching crawfish in the creek. And he took a sip off of it and handed it to me. And at 12 years old, a miller pony, I drank the rest of it. And, you know, I wasn't going to admit I was sipping going on. I drank the rest of it. And he said, damn, you know, I wanted some more. I said, we better go get some more of that. Because this is gone. I don't remember my next drink. I do remember it was in the 8th grade. I made the 8th grade basketball team. My brother was there a year before me. And this is an important part of the story. Back then we went to an 8th and 9th grade school. And there was a whole class. Several people stayed back a year to play football again. My brother didn't. He caught them when they stayed back. He was in 9th grade and they were supposed to be 10th graders. He was popular. He was popular with them because he was as big as they was when they were a year older than him. He could compete with them when they were a year older than him. And I fell right in with them everywhere he went, I went. So then in the 8th grade, they should have been in the 10th grade. They would have been 16-year-olds. They had driver's licenses. And if you're not familiar with it, there's a place there called Moreland Avenue. We would get off on Moreland Avenue. And it was on the railroad track side. There was a little bitty store. And they sold alcohol to anybody who'd come. And I came through that door. I came through the door at an 8th grade or whatever age that was. 13, I guess. I could buy a beer in there at 13. And my friend was on the basketball team with me. He invited me to spend the night with him. And I said, well, that'd be cool. You know, Steve's all right. He was a little bitty joker. Everybody liked seeing us together. They called us Nut and Jeff. Well, I spent the night with Steve. And he decided we were going to go rolling houses. So we went to the farmer's market first. And went in there. And there was a closet with a whole box full of one-ply toilet paper. We stole that whole box. And his mom had a big old Oldsmobile. She popped the trunk, went through it in there, and took off. The next stop was Moreland Avenue. And that little bitty hole in the wall. And I had some money from cutting grass. And he said, go in there and get us. But back then, they were courts. They weren't 40s. They were courts. So I went in there and got us both a drink of milk. And we went in there. And I got a Coke of Miller that first time. So I got us a Coke of Miller Court. And we rode around with his mother drinking beer. And a Delta 88 in the eighth grade. Picture that nowadays. What if you got pulled over right there? The two 13-year-olds were at court. And you were riding them around. That would be on YouTube. It would be on everything you've ever seen. You would be a headliner. You would. So this went on all the time. I couldn't believe it. I said, man, you go to Steve's house. And we went rolling and was having a good time. Wasn't getting caught. Somehow, we stopped and got some more beer. This time, we went in and got a six pack. She went in and got it. She said, y'all been drinking. Let me go in and get it. And she did. She went in and got a six pack of Miller. Now, I guess they call it genuine draft. It was just Miller. And Steve, he was a little bitty guy. He drank about one and a half. And I drank the rest of them. You know, I didn't. What were we saving them for? That ain't the purpose. We didn't. So I drank all of them. And so that's what we did in the eighth grade the whole time. That's how I got started drinking. For a long time, when I got sober, and I'll tell you about this in a little while, I had a lot of resentment towards that lady. You know, because she did this. Well, no, I drank them. That was my character defect. I didn't have sense enough to go home and say, Mom, I had something going on. Or Daddy, you know, because that killed my good time. You know, I had something going on here. I'd sleep it off the next day and, you know, nobody knew nothing. I just went on that whole year. In the ninth grade, he didn't make the team, so he was gone. But I was in the ninth grade. I remember my brother now. He was in the tenth grade. And all his buddies that had stayed back a year, they were 17 now and had cars and had jobs and had money and knew where to get the beer. There was another place by now in Lake City that was much closer. It's called Lake City. Lake City Bottle Shop is something on the corner right there in Lake City. Guy named Richard worked there. And he'd go in and get a 12-pack of bush for five bucks. And he knew we were underage. In Clayton County on the south side, it wasn't a big deal. Nobody cared. Nobody cared. We'd go there. I was the youngest one in the crowd. We'd go get a 12-pack. And I'd sit in the back seat of a 69 GTO. I was the only driver and my brother in the front. And I drank them as fast as I could so they wouldn't have as many to drink. That's the way I was. I was that way. I drank them as fast as I could. And so Mom and Dad got the idea. They figured it out. The boys were drinking. And by now, my brother had a driver's license. So they come up with this idea. Let the boys drink at home. You know, we can see it. And we'll know what they're doing. But they won't be out there driving. And about that same time, there was a guy who had a hot rod. It was a big old Chrysler thing. One of them Duke Hazard cars. And he jumped a railroad track behind JCPenney's Islet and killed three girls. And there was big news in Forest Park. It made the headline on the Clayton News Daily. And that's when our parents said, Yeah, we're going to let y'all drink at home. Well, dad, come, man. It's on now. It's on. And so you remember me talking about that can. Well, one day, the only hell racing I ever got from my parents about drinking was I came in one day. And Daddy had done come home from work. He was beat down and worked 12-hour shifts, four on and four off at this can plant. And I walked in with a 12-pack of long-neck millers in the bottle. And he looked at me and said, What are you doing? I said, Man, I've been cutting grass all day. I'm going to sit down and drink me a beer. He said, Out of that bottle? I said, What? Yeah. He said, Don't you ever bring a bottle in this house again. He said, I feed this family off these cans. Don't you ever bring another. I said, Okay, I got it. So I went and put them in the trunk. Didn't do that again. So at 16 years old, I'm drinking at home. But it was a party. You know, it was a party. It wasn't to get drunk. It was to watch the Braves. We had that cable box with that little dial on it. And, you know, we'd sit there and watch the Braves. In the basement, we had a split-level house. We were down in the basement. It was always cooler. We'd sit down there and watch the Braves game. And I'm talking about Dale Murphy, Bruce Benedict. And another thing, I had a mascot back then named Chief Nakahoma. He lived in our neighborhood. He sure is. And Levi Walker was his name. And his daughter was Gwen. She graduated with me. But that ain't got nothing to do with drinking. So that's my claim to fame. Chief Nakahoma grew up in my neighborhood. Anyway, we moved from that neighborhood and got over to the new neighborhood. Had the basement and the cable and all that. We'd just sit down there and drink beer and watch the Braves and go to bed. Eat supper. Mama could. I made it to high school. I drank every weekend. I was in peak physical condition, but I drank every weekend. That's Friday night, Saturday night. And you wake up Sunday about 1 o'clock because you've been out Saturday night until about 3 o'clock. And never got arrested. I can stand here before you. I never got arrested. And I'm not talking about, well, they got me for a DUI, but I'll be in court. No. By the grace of God. It's in these days. By the grace of God. It's in these steps. By the grace of God, I never got caught. Never got caught. Ever. At one time, we were coming back from deer camp. I'll get to this later. But I got pulled over in a roadblock. And I was in a pickup truck. And my son had his head laying on my lap. He didn't even have a damn seatbelt on. And I grabbed my beer and stuck it on the threshold of the door. And that cop looked over at me and saw him laying there. And he didn't even take my license. He just turned his back on me. And he said, you know what? I'm going to call the police. I'm going to call the police. I'm going to call the police. I'm going to call the police. And I was. I know my face had to be as red as your shirt. It had to be. I was maxed out in panic mode. By the time I graduated high school, I probably should have got some treatment then. I could have used it. It would have been difficult for me. But I didn't. Never. hard to convince me of it because I was still having fun, man. That's what everybody was doing. At that age, nobody had a problem. Nobody had been in treatment. The ones that didn't drink was smoking weed. They had Quaaludes back then. I don't know if y'all remember them. People was eating Quaaludes and drinking beer and smoking weed. That's about as far as I got. Didn't nobody come around with any other things but a stick with alcohol. I went to college. I got a scholarship to play college basketball in Cleveland, Georgia at a little big school called Truett McConnell. That's a Baptist school. And my future father-in-law was a chaplain there. We went up the weekend before it moved in. So all I had to do this weekend, I'm too ready for the party. I'm going to play college ball. We're fixing to throw that out. So I had a 48-quart cooler full of beer in the back of my car or truck. I had a 70-model Ford truck. And my partner's my brother and my best friend. He also rode me around and we drank a lot. I missed about my whole senior year with all my friends because me and this guy, he was class of 79. I was 81. We dated best friends. They both broke up with us and me and him kept hanging around. I missed partying with all my seniors because I was partying with him. Alienated myself from a lot of them. A lot of them got jealous when I got my scholarship. They really wouldn't hang out with me. I was partying with my parents. I didn't know them much anymore. I probably let it go to my head. I'm sure I did. They were good people. You know, I was the one that changed. Got to college. Got a cooler full of beer. Walked up. Unlocked my room. I had a handful of clothes and a bag. The total of boys next door were Bill and Bob Bradley. They were twins. One was a coach in Powersham County. And one was an administrator in Rockdale County. They both got an education. Their dad was a very successful basketball coach and football coach in the state of Georgia. Bradley. But I told them, I said, hey, man, y'all want a beer? They said, beer? I said, yeah. They said, you brought beer on this campus? I said, yeah. They said, man, this is a badness school. You can't have that up there. I had no idea. I had no idea. They said, you need to get rid of that. I said, well, come get in the truck and we will. I can't tell you, I can show you how to get rid of cool soul beer. I know how to do this. I said, just take me where we can park, man. We'll, you know, start a fire. We got moved in. Y'all already moved in. I moved in last weekend. I ain't got nothing else to do. So we got back about 10 o'clock that night and everybody was out there on the campus under a streetlight. I met this pretty girl. I ended up marrying her. She was the chaplain's daughter. I heard somebody say it. Somebody said, oh. We partied. We partied a lot. Didn't play much. When I got up there, everybody was my size. And they beat on me like a drum. There was one guy, Tommy Lee Armstrong. I don't think I heard him tell his name. But he came out of prison in Savannah. He was 27 years old. I was 18. He was 6'4", 250 pounds. There was a guy named Irk Russell that coached Georgia football and wanted him to come to Georgia Southern as a linebacker. And Georgia Southern had alcohol. And the people that let him out of prison wouldn't let him go there and play football. But Cleveland was dry. White County was dry. You could go to Helen and make a hoard up there, but you still couldn't buy a six-pack. You had to go to the line, is what it was called, all the way down to the Hawke County line to buy beer. And that was me. I did that. I was the driver. And we knew what the prices were. Everybody just gave me some juice money, is what I called it. It was a little extra. A 12-pack was $12. It cost me $7 or $8. So I paid for my alcohol. I'd get an order together, you know, get the money and everything. And now I'm in college, and I'm drinking all the time. And that Tommy Lee Armstrong liked to beat me to death. He was a grown, 27-year-old man coming straight out of prison. He was missing that finger. He could shoot the eyes out of it. But he became friends with my father-in-law, who was a chaplain, because he didn't have nothing. He got out with his clothes on. You know, clothes. He had on them. And we got them together, a bunch of stuff and all that. But anyway, by then, I was drinking too much. I was gaining weight because I wasn't playing much because I got hurt. I got my nose broke three times and tore my hamstring and rolled my ankles. I mean, I got beat two pieces. So at the end of that year, they cut my scholarship, and I had to go home. I think it was $3,400 a year to go then in 82. They were going to give me a 5. And I had to make up the rest. Well, I went home, and that guy I was telling you about I drank with on the weekends, his daddy was a foreman at Georgia Power. I had to get a job because my dad, I mean, he had his foot reared back, ready to kick. I got a job July the 12th, 1982. I come home sometime in May. That six weeks was tough. He was tired of seeing me. It was time to go. And so I got the job. It was a temporary job. I paid $5.22 an hour. And I found my first check stub. They wrote it out. It wasn't a regular payroll check. I found that the other day. October the 11th, that same year, I made what they call payroll. And I was a Georgia Power employee then. There ain't Georgia Power people in here. I can't get anybody to raise their hand for nothing. All right. Well, let's go with that. So I got that summer job. I talked to my girlfriend. And she decided to be down that weekend. That Friday, they offered me the job. And I came home at lunch and told her I got the job. I got married in February. Went to work, and the drinking just kept on. January 2nd, 1996, I got laid off from Georgia Power. And I had to start over. I had a son at the time. He was born October 15th, 1987. I had a daughter born. Yesterday, 30 years ago. I had a birthday party yesterday, and I was sober. There you go. You can hear more about that later. I had endothelitis. And she was passing blood in her diaper. And I lost my job. And they gave me insurance for 45 days. And I had plenty of work, but I had no insurance. So I had a guy. He was in labor relations. He called me. And he said, look, Red. Some of the people you work with called me and said, you got a sick daughter. I said, I sure do. He said, well, I know it ain't the money you was used to, but we got a job. He said, I think you need to take it. It was a meter-reading job. The most disrespected I'd ever been in my life. You know, you had to walk around collecting money. You know, argue with people. You know, you going to pay it? I'm going to cut it off. I had a gun pointed at me one time. I told the dude, shoot me. I'm working more days than I am alive. Damn it, man. I mean, really. That was in Sequoia, Georgia. But I stopped drinking that year because I couldn't live on myself. I took a 41% pay cut to keep insurance. I started working my way back up to drinking. In 1999, I took a job in construction. Started traveling all over the state. I knew all them guys who I used to work around before I got laid off. I took that job. And they paid us per diem to stay in motels. And then, we wasn't partying anymore. We wasn't partying. We were drinking to get drunk. And every day, I'd sit up on the side of the bed and I'd look at my clock. Before I didn't get out of bed, I'd think about, what time can I start drinking today? How are we going to get this thing rolling? I ain't drunk. You set me up, Tim. Anyway, we were drinking to get drunk. And it was every day. And I worked in a department that had high overtime rate. And sometimes I'd work 11 days straight, sometimes 14. And I would get blackout drunk every day. And I'm ashamed of it. I'm not bragging. I'm ashamed of it. The weekends I would come home, it was like... I even said it. I sponsored this party. Y'all figure out who's paying the bills, who's doing what. I'm paying for all this. Just leave me alone when I get home. Because I ain't been here forever. I want to stay home and get drunk again. Blackout again. And I did that at home, too. One day, my daughter was in Georgia. And she was in a band. My wife was supposed to go pick her up. She was going to watch her perform. She was going to ride home where she didn't have to ride the bus. Stop by Harvey's to get some to eat. Take another hour and a half. Get back at 1 o'clock. So she said, I can't go. Can you go get her? And I've been sitting there drinking all day long. My mother was there. And my brother. And he's from Fayetteville. I got a brother and a sister. And I said, shit, how am I going to do this? So I drove her car. Because the windows were tinted. I said, they ain't going to suspect nothing in this mama's grocery getter. So I drove, drinking these little wine bottles all the way down there. Got there. Told them I was going to be late. My mom and my brother told them, give me a Chick-fil-A sandwich. And they did. And I got there. And it was over with. And Emily wanted to ride home. And I said, OK. Everybody in the band saw me. I mean, they had to be fancy enough. I wasn't even trying to hide I was drunk. They had me now. And they let that girl get in the car with me and ride home. And I stopped a quick trip in Carrollton and got another four pack of those little wine bottles. And I started home. And I don't even remember getting on I-20. I don't remember. I don't remember a word of it. My daughter said she prayed the whole way home. The whole way. I don't remember when that was. But on April 24, I think it was 2014. It was. I was in a motel down here on Lawrenceville Highway. I woke up. I woke up. Feet hit the ground. What time am I going to start drinking today? Got in the shower. Got out. Opened the door. And my truck's gone. I had a company truck. Georgia Power Road all open. And I said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? What did I do? Because I blacked out. I don't know what I did. My truck's gone. It was right here in front of my window. And I said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? What did I do? Because I blacked out. I don't know what I did. My truck's gone. It was right here in front of my window. That was part of the deal. You parked right where we're here, you know. You ain't got to hunt nothing. Well, that night, after I had blacked out, a truck driver had come around that parking lot and couldn't get by my truck. So they called my room. For what? I couldn't even hear the phone ring. I was blacked out. So they called some more Georgia Power guys that were there. And on the back of the Georgia Power truck, there's a little blacked out truck. And I said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? What did I do? They said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? I said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? They said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? I said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? They said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? I said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? They said, oh, God. Where did I put my truck? I said, oh, God. So they called some more Georgia Power guys that were there. And on the back of the Georgia Power truck, there's a locked box. It's so the mechanics can come up there and unlock the box, get in it, and do the maintenance on it and all that. They said, oh, God. There's a key in that box to that truck. My coworker moved my truck and did not put it back. And I walked out that door, and when my truck was gone, I freaked out. I lost my mind. I can't even tell you what I did. I went around the motel, I do know that, and I found it. And then what? How in the hell did I get this thing over here? So the next thing I do is start walking around it looking for dents, dings, hair, blood, glass. What did I do? What did I do? And I got the truck, got in it, started it home, and called my boss and told him I had some help. That was on April 20th, and it was my best friend's birthday. I told him, I've got to go to rehab. So they've got this whole system you've got to go through. I can't just meet you at Peachford. No, you've got to go through this cat who's going to put you where you go and monitor everything. Because I had a commercial driver's license. He was a United States Department of Transportation substance abuse professional, USDOTSAP. And he was that far back then. And it was his job to get me gone. Because I was a liability now. I was a risk. I was an insurance risk. He came up there and interviewed me. He put me in rehab. But anyway, that was on the 24th I called him. And I said, look, man, I went to my doctor like y'all told me. She gave me some pills. I'm out of pills. I said, you know, are you going to get me in a place or not? And I started, he said, are you drinking now? I said, you're damn right I am. Yeah, I sure am. I said, are you going to get me in a rehab or not? Well, he did. And that was April 24th. I went to Blue Ridge Mountain Rehab Center. I thought I was going to be there five days. It was five weeks. And I heard five days because I was drinking. And I brought enough clothes for five days. And that's what I wanted. I wanted to dry out. I wanted to dry out and get out of there and figure out how to drink like a normal person. That wasn't their plan. I was there for five weeks. We were in a house. It was 50 guys, 10 women. They were in a separate house down there. And they'd always come up every morning, so forth and so on. I'm sure everybody has got an idea how rehabs work. But that didn't work for me. A lot of those people, they didn't have alcohol issues. They had other dry good issues. I didn't. I'd never done any drugs. If it wasn't behind my seal, I didn't drink. I didn't boo with it. I had a seal. The seal cracked. Somebody brought half a bottle of liquor or something. I wouldn't drink. I didn't know what was in it. I was nervous like that. I was out of control. Then they had family day. It puts you in a circle. And my wife and daughter came up. My son was in college in LaGrange. He was playing basketball. They put us in a circle. They unloaded on me, and I gave them what I had. And that was when I learned my daughter had prayed all the way home that day. That broke me down pretty good. That was what it was like. I told her, let's see what it was like. What happened? The rehab is what happened. And when I got out, I was on paper. An 18-month program started when I got there. I was on paper for the rest of the time. And it was seven days a week, 90 and 90. I did that. But that went on for a year. Then the next three months, it was three or five days a week. I can't remember. But I went to a place. I went to a place in Lawrenceville. Summit Ridge. Anybody ever heard of it? If you've got any doubts about the effectiveness of this program, go to Summit Ridge. Walk in that door. And right over there on the right is a bunch of chairs. I had to leave Atlanta. They let me go back to work. I had to go see a psychiatrist. So they let me go back to work. I had to leave Atlanta, go to Lawrenceville, catch a 5 o'clock meeting. They had a meeting over there in that room. And then this room was the ADIOP after discharge intensive outpatient was over there. I'd catch the meeting, go out there, and just wait for everybody to get there for that meeting. And I saw people drug in there with their feet dropping off on gurneys that someone had done a check, welfare check on. They went in there and found these people. I listened to people looking just like me and you. Sitting in them rooms arguing with their brother and sister. No, you go watch her. I've been here three days. Not you doing it. It was a nightmare. The meeting before the meeting, the sitting there watching all that, it convinced me. It convinced me. When I got out of rehab, there was Facebook. It just come around for adults. Back then, it used to. It was only college kids. Well, some girl came up with this bright idea about getting up a Facebook page for, you know, April 24th to June 1st, you know, if you come in up there. And I got on that thing and joined it and got to looking. And going through Summit Ridge and watching that post, I came to realize that this disease will kill you dead. It'll kill you dead. Out of 50 men that I sat in there with, 10 went home. 10 went home and relapsed. 10 was dead in six months. Six months. And two of the girls had relapsed and was dead. And seeing that and Summit Ridge, that made me realize what I was doing. When I came to the Hawk Club, Sam was sitting there. Tim was sitting there. And there was a bunch of guys in there. And they had years of sobriety. Years of sobriety. And when I walked in the door, I said, all right, I'm going to get this paper signed. And I'm going to sit here and listen and figure out what these guys are doing. And I'm going to learn how to be a regular drinker. You know, I had no intention of quitting. No intention of quitting. I was going to learn how to drink like regular people. That was my goal. Well, on September 10th, Irma hit. It was a hurricane. Irma hit. My dad died that day. We had to wait a minute to bury him. We got him buried. Then the next wave from Irma hit. That van that was on the back hit. And nearly floated his casket out of the grave. My son went down there to pay his respects. His wife was pregnant with my first grandson. It was in the heart of COVID. I mean, right in the middle of COVID. Couldn't hardly nobody come. We had to stay apart, mask, all that. It went very well. And more than that, I didn't take away George Powertree from me when I went back to work very well. I came back sober. I wanted to be the comeback player of the year. You know, y'all got no excuses now. I'm sober and I'm doing this thing. And you just hide and watch. They didn't. That wasn't their plan at all. Their plan was to get that U.S. DOT sat and get me out of there. They weren't interested in me anymore. You know, I was 51. And they were through with me. They had all these, I call them, puppies. They were great guys. You know, like my son. They were great guys. But that's who they were interested in. They counted on me to make sure they didn't get hurt. You know, just make sure they don't stick nothing in the hot stuff. That's what I was doing. And I didn't like it. I didn't handle it well. And then Dad died on October 15. I think it was 2017 it was. It was my son's birthday. He came home and he had been through a marriage and got divorced. He came home. It was his 30th birthday. And I had to move all these cars because I couldn't drink that day. I was trying to work a program to start with. I had to drive all the way to Valdosta. Right in the middle of the birthday party to get there by 7 o'clock. And the only place I went I was, the place I found was right in front of the liquor store. And I went over there and got some liquor and I relapsed. And the next day I went to Plant Hatch. It's a nuclear plant. And Georgia Power's plan for me was to work from that day, October 17, through the end of the year, every day, on night shift, running a crew and not getting paid crew leader pay. While I got on the day shift doing the same exact job as me. One of the puppies. Was going to get paid crew leader pay. And I lost it. I didn't do well. That next morning I had a badge. Plant Hatch badge. I got one. Well, they changed the configuration. And now the area where we're working in, you had to have this new badge they came up with. And they saw me drive up and they said, you need to go get a white badge. I said, I got a white badge. They said, no, they changed it. This is a new badge. You got to go get a white badge to work in this area. A yellow badge to work in that area. And a red badge to work in that nuclear part. I wasn't going in there. But anyway, I went in there and got all the paperwork. And I had to go through health and physics, they called it. So I went in there. Did a urine screening. Then they did a Boeing, the thing there. And that girl said, uh-oh, we got numbers. If you run it zero, zero, zero, you're good. But that girl hollered, we got numbers. And I said, oh, shit. This is it. There was a dude. He looked like Tony Atlas. He'd come in that place with an AR-15. And I heard him racket. And they were scared to death because I'm 6'8", 300 pounds. And I had numbers. And it wasn't .8 or .0. It was .021. I couldn't have gotten a ticket out there on the road. But I'm in a nuclear plant. And I hadn't even made it in the protected area. I don't know why I was racking that gun. I lost my job. I came home. Boy, it was a fine time. I'm lucky I still got a life. But my wife shifts, and I went back to work later, two years later. I'm running out of time. I went back to work two years later for a contractor for Georgia Power. I had to fill out this paperwork. It was something called the bar web. And they sent my name and Social Security number in. And I knew, I knew, because my brother still works there, that I wasn't going to get on because of what happened at Hatch. Well, they said I came back clean. They ran my name through the bar web, but they didn't run it through the nuclear bar web. So I got the best job I ever had, making the most money I ever had. And I went to work in Rome. I had two people working for me. On the yard. We had a $10 million inventory of electrical equipment. I got here on this road. And it's called the Georgia Power Grid Project there. Redoing all the power lines. They even made commercials about it. I was over in that yard up there. I had a girl in Texas and one in Kentucky that worked from home. And we got along great. And we were really killing it. And one night I woke up, and I had a heart attack. It was my second heart attack. I was laying in ICU when I got off from the job. I said, boy, this is going to be good. They said, our dude is laying in ICU. I said, yeah, I want the job, but what am I going for? I can't be there Monday. So I went through a rehab treadmill for about 400 miles. Went through that. It took them about 40 days to get me through the process with the company I went to work for. That was my first heart attack. I went back to work. The next year I had a cancerous tumor put out of my stomach. Then the following year I was in Rome. Woke up in the middle of the night. Went to the hospital. But I was out of work for that second heart attack. And I got a call, and this lady on the other end of the phone, her name was Myra. Myra said, she said, Joel? I said, yeah. Who is this? 10 o'clock in the night. She said, my name is Myra, and I got your daughter on the phone. And she's in crisis. And I knew she'd been talking to a counselor, but she didn't talk to me about nothing. You know, she still had this memory of that dude that drug her back from Carrollton. That was her, that's who she remembered. So I got the call. Myra said, she's in crisis. You need to go get her. And she said, we're trying to get her in a facility in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And she said, we can't find a place that takes the insurance. Long story short, I didn't go to Fort Lauderdale. I had to drive all night and a half the next day. I took her to a place in Tennessee called The Ridge. Anybody ever heard of that? That's where I took her. And when that phone rang, her mama was in Memphis with her sisters. And it was nobody but me. And I was sober. I was sober. And that's what this program will do for you. It will do the steps with a sponsor and commit your life to this program. My daughter was about to, she was about to shoot herself. And Myra, and I knew exactly what to do. I went straight over and grabbed the gun, unloaded it, and took her to Tennessee that night. She cried most of the way up there. And she knew enough about me. And all the others had wives or husbands that drank. You know, you give them that hug. You give them that obligatory sniff to see if they've been drinking. Well, I picked her up. She'd come up and I heard it, you know. I wouldn't whimper and laugh in tears. She wouldn't know if I'd been drinking. That's my story. I was sober the day my daughter needed me the most. And I don't know if she'd be here if I hadn't been sober. And I've seen the good. I've seen the bad in Lawrenceville. I've seen the ugly. When it's my daughter calling me, wanting me to go to Tennessee in the middle of the night, somewhere I've never been. I said, we're going to Tennessee. Let's go. And then I woke up the next morning and she left something in the car. I had to go back out there. Thank God I had to go back because I was on the phone with her mom all night. And she was okay. She hugged me and said, I'm okay. That's my story. I've been sober since October 17, 2017. That's it. Thank God she's okay. Now you had a lot of us in tears. Bob will be handing out the chips tonight. We have a white chip who wants to start a fantastic journey tonight. It'll never, never die.