Building an Arch a Free Man Walks Through — I’d Been Mixing Mortar Out of Sand – Whit W.

All right. Hey, everybody. I'm Julian. I'm an alcoholic.
Let's have an AA meeting.
Welcome to the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the Nava Club,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells us of her story.
We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste.
Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight
and listening later on abluchipspeakers.org, desperately in need,
will hear our speaker, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves
and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say,
yes, I am one of them, too. I must have this thing.
All right. I have the privilege tonight of introducing our speaker.
I've just recently started to get to know Whit,
and I can tell you that I find him to be a kind and gentle and loving human being.
And I'm interested in his story because not a lot of us start off as kind and gentle
and loving human beings, so maybe he's going to tell us a story of transition.
But here it is, Whit.
All right.
Hello, everybody. My name is Whit, and I do qualify as an alcoholic.
My sobriety date is August 17, 2003.
Somewhere I've got my notes in here.
I'll reveal a little bit about my age.
I was born in 1944 and spent the first 18 months of my life up at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
My dad was head of the tank gunnery school during the Second World War.
And then we moved down to a little town south of here called Griffin, Georgia,
down in Spalding County.
Great, great, great little town.
I'll qualify myself from a heredity standpoint.
It'll come out later in my story.
But I found out much, much later on that my daddy's mother,
who I never knew, she died in 1943, was known as a hopeless alcoholic.
I held my father's hand.
I held my father's hand in 1987 when he died of alcoholic cirrhosis,
but I never would have called my father an alcoholic.
But later on during my story, you'll see why,
because a huge amount of our interaction was during the drinking process.
Spent my early childhood down in Griffin.
Always, I would say I'd qualify as somebody that was born with a silver tooth.
I was born with a silver tooth.
I was born with a silver tooth.
I was born with a silver tooth.
I was born with a silver tooth.
I was born with a silver tooth.
I was born with a silver tooth.
I was born with a silver tooth.
spoon in my mouth. I never wanted for anything. One of my best friends down there's daddy was a
dairy farmer and a chicken farmer. He had a terrific farm north of Griffin and grew up
hunting and fishing, doing great, great things all the time. No issues. As a matter of fact,
they had their first private swimming pool built in their backyard. So we always had a pool
to go swim in. I can't ever remember wanting anything and not really having it at my disposal.
You probably could say I was probably a spoiled brat and I might have qualified for that.
Grew up in Griffin. We used to go down to the Atlantic Beach Hotel. My grandfather,
my daddy's father, started taking his kids down there by train. My daddy grew up in Birmingham.
And we went to the old Atlantic Beach Hotel. And I remember as a kid,
and I'm talking about a kid kid, shuffling around on the big old deck patio they had
overlooking the ocean and always being able to run up by a table and having a sip of whatever
they happened to be drinking. And never tasted anything I didn't like. And most of it was alcohol.
Later on, I remember growing up, my daddy's best friend was an attorney down
in Griffin. He didn't drink whiskey but he loved, y'all never remember little Country Club malt
liquors. I think they came in like six ounce or eight ounce cans, Jim was a Country Club malt
liqueur guy. And daddy always had Country Club malt liqueur available for Jim. And Jeff was struggles
with those. Grew up in Bentley. Then he started drinking whiskey, whiskey, whiskey. And I still
like Kimberly. And they were like,يم dad and jim brought me margaritas and things like that. To me,
it didn't really matter that much. Grew up inShow and went to Especially Bethel Ferryוח. And now, I'm
a mindful man. Then there's a little concierge doing their stuff. But I want to see you all. I want to long live another lonely life at your house.
I love you. Jim was Donna ghost.
And I remember being able to, as a toddler almost, being able to go to the refrigerator
and occasionally get a country club malt liquor out and have a drink.
No questions, no problems, no issues.
In my early teenage years, it was not just occasionally,
but I could go probably three or four times a week and actually have a beer and just sit down.
And I was doing this in front of my parents.
It was never an issue.
I wasn't denied any of that.
We moved.
I went off to my freshman year in high school wound up being a terrific event for me
because the twin sister of one of my best friends who's father owned all the lakes and the farm
started dating a senior football player as soon as we got to,
a freshman year in high school.
And the beauty about that was all of a sudden us guys and her new boyfriend became best friends
because he liked the same thing we did.
He liked to hunt and fish and play and do all that stuff.
But we had wheels.
He could drive.
We all drove, but not legally.
But he had a car, a 1951 Ford, if I remember correctly.
And we would go out.
We'd go to the farm.
Just the guys.
And do whatever we wanted to do.
But there was always beer involved.
By that time, I was just a regular old beer drinker.
Later on, I went off to a little school.
There was some issues going on, not to insult anybody,
but back then George Wallach was raising hell about immigration over in Alabama,
but the governor of Georgia quietly put out an email.
He said, if they tried to integrate any public school in the state of Georgia,
he would close every public school in the state of Georgia.
So all of us out of fear, not of integration, but out of fear of the schools being closed,
went to a private school.
A lot of my friends came up here to Marist and other places.
I wound up at a place called the Sewanee Military Academy up in Sewanee, Tennessee,
and spent my three years in high school up there.
Didn't drink there because it just wasn't available.
On occasion, we'd go to a bar.
We'd go to the Grand Ole Opry up in Nashville
and sneak out and have a beer or two while we were up there.
But every summer, we went down to Ponte Vedra at that particular point in time,
just south of Jacksonville Beach.
And I remember going up to the surf club,
which was the club foot of the Ponte Vedra golf course and all that stuff,
and sitting by the pool and ordering a vodka.
And you couldn't pay for it.
You had to sign the ticket.
And I never had a question from my father or my mother on who was drinking up at the pool with me
because they just didn't care.
And I could go back and get a beer out of the refrigerator.
I was still a beer drinker in front of them, but drinking vodka on the side.
Finished up high school and went down to a good old place.
A place called Auburn University, War Eagle.
And went through Rush and joined a fraternity down there.
And that's when the hard liquor really hit me.
And I became a constant and consistent Jack Daniels drinker.
Loved Jack Daniels.
Studied architecture for two years until calculus decided,
I wasn't going to be an architect.
I was a very, very, I won't say a good student,
but I took calculus, took algebra.
The first quarter I had to take algebra,
and it was the same course I had as a senior in high school.
And I made an A in it, and I don't really remember even looking at the book.
I just took the final exam.
And then I took calculus one, and I made a C in it.
And B.
And I was a very good student, I thought.
I decided I really didn't know what calculus was trying to teach me,
so I took it over again and made a D.
And so I decided to move on to calculus two,
and I took it twice, and I flunked it both times.
And decided I wasn't going to be an architect
and transfer it into the school of business.
But I spent, because of that transfer,
I went from a first quarter junior to a third quarter freshman
as far as quality points go.
And so I wound up going to Auburn for 15 quarters.
I went three straight summers and graduated.
But it was, I was a constant drinker.
I was an every night drinker during college.
I would come home from school like a lot of people do when they were working.
And the first thing I'd do is have a cocktail.
It was cocktail time every day.
I never recall.
I never recall ever honestly being drunk.
But I know I probably was.
Nobody just called me on my stuff.
After, between my freshman year,
or my senior year in college,
I mean senior year in high school and freshman year at Auburn,
we moved from Griffin to Birmingham.
My daddy took a new job.
And when I went home for the first time
after,
going down there for my freshman,
start my freshman year,
it was the annual Auburn Georgia Tech football game.
And that game back then was played in Birmingham
when it was a home game.
And I remember coming in the door and daddy welcomed me
and asked me how school was and everything else.
And he looked at me and said,
you want to get a beer or would you rather go to the bar?
And I'm 17 years old.
And I said, I'd rather go to the bar.
And from that time on, the bar was open.
I could go get a drink anytime I wanted to.
I'm not blaming my parents for anything.
I'm just saying it was available and I took advantage of it.
Had a great time in college.
Got my pilot's license my senior year
and just used to go out and play,
fly the airplane around.
There was no issue.
And two of my,
my two brothers,
my two roommates who were fraternity brothers,
both were in the Air Force ROTC program.
And we had an agreement that the night before we went flying,
we would not drink.
I don't think I adhered to that very well,
but it didn't make any difference.
I don't ever recall being drunk while I was flying anyway.
Graduated from Auburn and moved back to Birmingham.
Got my draft notice, went down.
And believe it or not,
after passing the flight physicals to go into the Air Force,
I flunked the draft physical down to Montgomery
and went back,
called my Air Force recruiter and said,
what do I do?
And he said, get doctors' opinions on all this and so forth.
I had a little kidney problem that shouldn't have kept me out.
But got all the information and went back to report
from my doctor.
And I went back to my class state to go to Lackland Air Force Base
to become an Air Force pilot.
And I said, I should have been reclassified now from temporary 1A.
And he said, you have.
And I said, well, great.
I'm ready to go.
He said, no, you've been reclassified permanent one way.
You're not eligible.
So I went back and got a job.
Went to work for a little bitty bank in Birmingham
called Exchange Security Bank.
It was the first largest.
It was the fourth largest bank in Birmingham at that particular time.
They had just celebrated going over $150 million in deposits.
And you think about what kind of deposit structure banks have today.
That's a posted stamp deposit structure.
That little bank's a region's bank now,
and it has gone a little bit.
But went to work for them.
And a couple of years after I went to work for them,
I started their real estate and construction lending division for them.
And then started building houses on the side.
Several of us in the bank became real close friends.
And we would meet up about three or four times a week after work at a bar,
a restaurant bar across the street, and have drinks before we went home.
I used to meet my daddy for lunch, and we would have martini lunches.
And then I'd go back to work.
But it was just an ongoing, continuous thing.
And again, I don't classify myself at that particular point in time as an alcoholic.
And I never would have classified my father as an alcoholic.
But we were drinking buddies.
Our social interaction was always involved whiskey.
I stayed with exchange security, and then got an offer to come to go to work for a little bitty bank
right down the street.
And the guy that hired me or was asking me to come to work,
I said, well, why should I come down here?
And he said, well, I'm going to move up to chairman of the board.
The chairman's going to retire in two years,
and I want you to come down here and start a, not a construction lending,
but a commercial lending division like you have at the other bank.
And then when I move up to chairman, I'm going to make him president.
And I was 29 years old, and that sounded pretty darn good to me,
that a 29-year-old could spend two years to be president of a little bank.
So I started their commercial lending division,
and one of it was putting in a loan review process.
And when I started the loan review process,
I discovered some horrible, horrible loan situations
and had to get the FDIC.
And they came and made the board raise additional capital.
It was a horrible, horrible situation.
And they fired the president that had hired me,
brought a whole new management team in,
and I said, what about me?
And they said, well, you're not going to be president anymore.
And so I had started building houses and developing real estate on the side
while I was with the other bank.
And so I went and,
I guess, did my building company stuff.
And that's a huge opportunity to continue to drink
because I carried it around in the car
and go and look at my houses and see what was happening
and always had my cup with me.
It wasn't quite this big,
but it was always by my side.
And the bottle was always under the seat.
There was no issue.
Excuse me.
Continued to do that.
And then we, a group of us,
five of us were bought out,
a little-like-a-dormant mortgage company in Birmingham
called Leedy Mortgage Company.
Leedy had actually made the first FHA loan ever made in the United States.
And the owner of the company had retired down in Sea Island.
He was just living off the servicing income.
And we cranked that thing back up.
And I hit the road traveling, calling on investors.
And back then, the mortgage business was truly a mortgage business
where the mortgage company made the loans.
They sold them in packages to the investors,
but they collected the payments.
They got a little percentage of each payment as their income.
But I used to travel up to New York
and go drive all the way from Buffalo over to Hartford, Connecticut,
and so forth, calling on a little SNL and so forth.
And I don't know whether this fueled drinking or anything else,
but driving and being by myself and so forth
continued to increase that.
While I was with that company, I got married.
I married a girl that had been married before
and had gotten divorced.
She had three children.
The husband, her former husband,
was an attorney who was a friend of mine.
And I went to Ken and I said,
Ken, would you?
Allow me to adopt the kids.
I want to create a family.
And he just said, why, sure.
And I looked back at that.
He was getting out of three child support payments
and an alimony payment.
And he knew I wasn't going to keep the kids away from him,
but he was awfully agreeable to do that.
And we did create a family.
And then my son, my biological son,
was born shortly after that.
And I was continuing to travel.
Every week.
Where we sold Lady, Lady was gone.
And I was doing consulting work
all over the Eastern Seaboard.
Spent four months doing consulting work
for the largest Swedish hotel firm
building their landmark in New York City.
They furnished me a suite on the 53rd floor
of the Helmswood Palace Hotel.
And all of that continued, I think,
to increase my consumption
because there was no reason not to drink.
I was always on my own,
could do what I wanted to do.
I didn't have to make any real appearances
and be somewhere where I didn't have to drink.
My wife said, you've got to stop traveling.
You're missing your son, grow up.
Come back, settle down, get a job.
So I went to work for the largest SNL.
It was in the state of Alabama in 1985.
And that, we, right after I went to work for them,
we became, we went from a mutual SNL
where the shareholders owned the SNL
to a stock SNL.
We went public, sold stock.
So we had a good net worth.
And about six to eight months after I went to work for them,
the SNL crisis hit.
And I'm sure a lot of y'all remember
when the SNL crisis hit
and SNLs were being closed down all over the country.
And since we were a stock SNL instead of a mutual,
we were probably one of the first that FISLIC,
which is the FDIC or was the FDIC of the SNL industry,
called to go look at other SNLs to take over.
Suddenly I became head of the quote,
due diligence committee to go analyze
these banks they wanted us to buy.
And I was on the road again.
Spent four months in the same hotel
I spent my honeymoon in down in New Orleans.
We bought the largest SNL in Louisiana.
Bought some in Alabama, bought one here in Georgia.
And it just progressively, progressively got worse.
My drinking.
And again, I never admitted I had a problem.
I just was enjoying what I was doing.
Working, finding.
So, quit that.
Came back to Birmingham
and I had met
while I had Leedy Mortgage Company.
I hadn't met a guy over here
up in Flowery Branch, Georgia.
And we had put together a deal
with some property across from Amicaloa Falls.
And we're going to build
a bottled water plant up there.
We're first going to develop a property.
and sell real estate, but we discovered some pure, pure artesian water,
and we're going to build a bottled water plant and sell water.
He screwed the whole deal up, and I hadn't seen him in years,
and all of a sudden I was over here with a soccer tournament in Atlanta
and ran into him, and he found out I was working for this S&L in Alabama.
And brought me some business, and I was stupid enough to do some business with him,
knowing what had occurred with our joint venture years ago.
And found out that he had supplied me with some fraudulent appraisals,
some bad paper, and so forth.
This is after I left the S&L.
And had gone back into business for myself.
And all of a sudden the FBI came knocking on my door one day,
and they decided that I was a co-conspirator of him in this bank fraud situation.
I entered a...
The attorneys told me I could be found innocent.
They didn't think I had anything to do with it,
but it was going to cost me about $150,000.
And I was going to have to pay for it myself.
And so I did what Mr. Johnson might know as, called an Alford plea.
And it's an A-L-F-O-R-D.
It's named after some guy in New York City, from what I understand,
the first one that ever did it.
And what I did is I said, I don't admit any guilt,
but I understand the government's case,
and I will accept what they have offered as far as the...
the...
What do you call them? The charges.
And I went up in front of Judge UW-Clemens there.
He's one of the great federal judges.
And fortunately, I knew him personally.
Which probably was a bad deal, but he sentenced me to five years probation.
And I was fortunate enough, but...
I went from being a neat guy that had a terrific reputation,
and could do anything in the business world,
to being on the front page of the Birmingham News with a picture with...
And the way the newspaper said it is, I pled guilty to brain fraud.
And after that, everything I did in my life,
continuously after that, became all about me.
All I wanted to do was be a superstar success,
and get my name back.
And boy, did I start hammering and hammering and hammering the bottle.
I would probably drink...
I have a saying called,
white whiskey in light and dark whiskey at night.
And so I drank vodka all day and bourbon all night.
Again, I never recalled being drunk.
But I never...
I probably was constantly drunk and never recalled actually being sober.
Maybe looking back on it, the way things were going.
Continued to do all kinds of crazy things with my finances,
trying to make a big hit.
It's almost like playing the lottery here in Georgia,
except instead of buying a dollar or two dollar ticket,
I was buying $100,000 and $200,000 tickets.
And lost everything I'd made over a long period of time.
But the only thing successfully I'd done,
or smart I'd ever done,
is when I'd sold my little house before we got married,
I took all the equity I had in it,
and bought a half interest in my ex-wife...
Well, she wasn't in my ex-wife yet,
but my wife's house,
and paid off the mortgage so the house was free and clear.
But I never recorded that deed,
so she was the sole owner of that house
in the lot next door, which I had bought.
Uh...
It had gone all the way down to where that was the hit.
That was really the only asset I had.
I had no money or anything else,
and I didn't even have it anymore,
and thank God I didn't.
Uh...
She found out that I had forged her name
on a deed,
not a deed, but a mortgage,
and borrowed money against the house.
I was fortunate enough to grab, get some money,
and pay that off.
She didn't press charges,
but she kicked me out of the house
and said,
We're through. Go.
So I left and moved out,
stayed in Birmingham trying to
peddle around,
and we started a company.
I had some friends that had known me in the banking business
and gave me a second chance,
and we started a little company called
Regional Nuclear Pharmaceuticals,
which was to do, uh...
uh...
a diagnostic routine called
PET scanning,
positron emission tomography.
And during my research,
I decided the only way we could do it successfully
was also build the plant that made
the radioactive isotope that this scanner was reading.
So,
it wound up being about a five and a half,
six million dollar project.
They, uh...
It went real well.
I got the financing form,
put it together,
but the issues, uh...
came out that I was calling on doctors and hospitals
and was noticeably
reeking of alcohol while I was making presentations and so forth,
and they fired me.
And, uh...
So I walked away from a $150,000 a year job
in 25...
20% of the company.
And they took it all back,
and they were smart to do that.
Uh...
Met a gal online
and moved down to Columbus, Georgia.
And, uh...
She, uh...
She was known as my drunk girlfriend
long before I was known as her drunk boyfriend.
So the two of us got together
and merged real well with each other.
Uh...
And stayed in Columbus.
Never could get a decent job.
Uh...
And really lived off her.
She had a real good job.
And...
It got downhill, downhill, downhill,
and finally,
she kicked me out.
Because I came in, I...
The only time I've ever had this happen,
and it only happened once,
is I was driving around
the Lake Bottom area of Columbus,
which is where Columbus High School is,
and the public parks, and people jogging,
and, uh...
softball fields and all that stuff,
taking down phone numbers of...
places to rent.
Rooms to rent.
And the last thing I remember
is writing the phone number down
about 7.20 that afternoon
and waking up
on the kitchen floor at 9.30 that night,
driving around Columbus in a total blackout.
Uh...
And I was laying on the kitchen floor
because she had pushed me when I walked in
when they drugged me out of the car
and I fell over.
And...
And the next morning,
uh...
She was on the phone with my sister
saying,
You've got to come get him.
He can't stay here anymore.
He's out.
My sister has a master's degree in addiction counseling
and, uh...
got me on the phone and said,
Do you have a problem?
I said,
I don't know.
I think probably I do.
And...
And so she recommended a little place here in Atlanta
called MAHR,
Metropolitan Atlanta Recovery Residences.
And had me call them
and I did an interview on the phone
and they accepted me.
And, uh...
But they didn't have a bed opening.
Uh...
This was on a...
I think it was on a Tuesday or something like that.
They didn't have a...
No, it was on a Wednesday.
And they didn't have a bed opening
until the Friday of the following week.
And, uh...
I said, Okay.
And, uh...
Then the heavy warning was,
And you cannot have a drink
uh...
72 hours before you arrive
or else you might have to go to detox
and that costs extra money.
I said, Okay.
So, uh...
I...
uh...
made plans to stop drinking 72 hours before,
but that meant I could drink for about 10 more days,
which was great.
Next day I got a call and they told me
they had an opening that Wednesday.
And if I would come right up,
uh...
that would be great.
Uh...
The hardest thing I did at that particular point in time
was to say, Okay.
Because I was going...
My mind was set to say,
Okay, heck,
I'll just wait until the following Friday,
like I originally told.
But I finally admitted it
and, uh...
headed up to Atlanta
and checked in tomorrow on a Wednesday afternoon.
And it's a 90-day program.
And my thought process was,
I can quit drinking for 90 days.
That's not a real issue.
Excuse me.
Got up to Atlanta,
went through the check-in process,
and...
Excuse me.
Maura has a little thing called
community meetings on Wednesday afternoon.
And I got taken over to the apartment
that I was going to move into.
And you have to introduce yourself.
Tell them a little bit about yourself.
The guys,
four guys that you're going to be living with.
Or three guys,
three other guys.
And, uh,
four guys from an apartment next door.
And so I introduced myself and so forth.
And then a guy named Ben
from Raleigh, North Carolina.
He was an attorney.
When they opened it up
for people to talk,
Ben said,
I have something I want to talk about.
And they said,
Okay, Ben.
What you got?
He said,
Well, I've been here 87 days.
And I said,
God dang.
I'm just going to move in.
And he's going to move right out
three days later.
The morning you get to get to know the guy.
And, uh,
he said,
I've been talking to the treatment team.
And he said,
I really don't feel like I'm ready to leave.
And they're going to let me stay in halfway
for 30 more days.
I'll share.
Well,
what do you want?
Isn't that the whole purpose of being here?
Get the hell out in 90 days?
And everybody laughed at me.
Uh,
so,
I went ahead,
settled in.
Uh,
next night I was at Tucker Turtles,
uh,
where I met my sponsor.
Didn't meet him.
I met him that night,
but he didn't become my sponsor.
One of the things Maura made us do
is in 14 days to get off Buddy,
you had to get a sponsor.
So,
I did that.
When I was in Columbus,
I went to AA meetings.
Uh,
I never heard
anything about the program.
I never had a big book.
I never heard anything about the 12 Steps.
I never even had a big book.
Uh,
never got a sponsor.
Never did anything.
Uh,
then I would go drive around Columbus
and go back to home.
I was drinking the whole time
and tell Marcia what a wonderful meeting it was.
And,
uh,
uh,
so,
this was a new deal
to me
to,
uh,
really get involved.
When I was leaving,
uh,
in Columbus to come to Maura,
my sister said,
now be sure you take your big book.
And I said,
my what?
She said,
the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'd never heard of the big book,
even though I went to AA meetings
in Columbus for a while.
But anyway,
uh,
after that meeting,
I secretly walked over to the door
and circled November the 19th
on the calendar
because that was in my 90 days.
And I was going to be gone in 90 days.
Uh,
something happened along the way
and I checked out on October the 5th of the next year.
So I spent 13 and a half months there.
Uh,
only 90 days and a half way,
but I stayed in three quarters quite a while.
The,
uh,
my awakening occurred
when I was doing my,
uh,
uh,
getting,
working on my fourth step,
getting ready to do my fifth step.
And one of the best things that happened to me
was,
and my sponsor said,
uh,
here are your worksheets for the fourth step
and I've got you penciled in to do this.
And I think it was 10 days away,
uh,
on this Sunday afternoon.
And I said,
okay.
And I started working on my fourth step.
And,
uh,
went to Bill the next time I saw him
and said,
I'm gonna need a little more time.
And he said,
no,
you're not.
You're already penciled in.
We're gonna do it on Sunday afternoon.
You be ready.
Uh,
so,
I continued to work on that
and I cheated
because I went and got my big book out
to see
what kind of wonderful stuff
this thing,
this thing is gonna do for me.
And,
uh,
went
and got to,
uh,
page 75
if I can find it.
What was gonna happen after I did this horrible fifth step?
And instead of returning home,
we find a place where we can
be quiet for an hour,
carefully reviewing
what we've done.
We thank God from the bottom of our heart
that we know him better.
Taking this book down from our shelves,
we turn to the page
which contains the 12 steps.
Carefully reading the first five proposals,
we ask,
have we,
um,
omitted anything?
Or,
we are building an arch through which to walk.
A free man at last.
Is our work solid so far?
Are the stones in proper place?
Have we skimped on
the cement
and
we put into the foundation?
Have we tried to make mortar out of sand?
And that's when I realized I had.
Uh,
I never had picked up a white chip.
Because I had no intention
of never drinking again.
I went back to the first step.
And I admit,
I never
admitted
my powerlessness.
I admitted
that my life was unmanageable.
But I had never admitted I was powerless over alcohol.
And I finally,
finally
did that admission.
Knowing,
heredity-wise,
my grandmother had died of alcoholic cirrhosis.
My father had died of alcoholic cirrhosis.
While I felt his pulse and his heart stop beating.
And I'm sure I had alcohol.
I had alcoholism.
Thank God I didn't have the cirrhosis part of it.
Uh,
so,
what,
uh,
I came up with my three A's
for the principles behind the first three steps.
Acceptance.
I had to accept the fact that I was
an alcoholic.
Acceptance was for honesty.
I had to get honest with me
with you're an alcoholic.
And there is a way out.
You just gotta do the work.
Uh,
attitude
for honesty.
Uh,
I mean attitude for hope,
excuse me.
And the hope was that I could
do this work
and have what you people in the room
had.
The people that I saw
that I admired
have what you have
by doing the work.
Walking these steps.
And then,
for,
uh,
faith.
Uh,
acceptance
and attitude
uh,
with the first two.
And,
uh,
then,
for,
uh,
faith,
it was a transfer
of trust.
And,
uh,
a lady named Paula,
she spoke here not too long ago,
uh,
gave me that
as a definition
of,
uh,
the,
the,
the,
uh,
of,
uh,
faith
is transferring trust.
And that was the process,
again,
of getting out
of me.
And depending on the people in the room,
my sponsor,
the counselors at Marl
that were working with me,
and so forth.
It was a great,
great
upheaval.
So,
that was the action part
of my
three A's.
Acceptance,
attitude,
and action.
For honesty,
hope,
and trust.
Honesty,
hope,
and faith.
Uh,
I got involved heavily in the program.
Uh,
became,
uh,
a servant in my home group.
Uh,
first served as secretary of the Log Cabin Club.
Uh,
later on,
um,
uh,
after I got out of Marr,
uh,
I checked out on a
October,
Wednesday on October the 5th,
I was back in my same apartment
on Wednesday,
October the 12th,
volunteering in the same,
uh,
uh,
uh,
uh,
uh,
community meeting that I had introduced myself
in 13 and a half months before.
Uh,
now,
I didn't have any of the same roommates,
but
I had done that.
Uh,
go to meetings,
and I'm a constant,
uh,
I,
I have two meetings I go to
continuously,
uh,
a little,
and it's been a great experience for me.
Uh,
I,
uh,
uh,
I'm involved in service work,
uh,
with Mack Eye.
Uh,
and I'm a pure alcoholic,
but my home groups are Cocaine Anonymous,
and Mack Eye is Metro Atlanta Cocaine Anonymous Center Group,
and,
uh,
happen to be treasurer of that little organization.
Uh,
have sponsees,
and look,
working with them.
Uh,
I was fortunate enough to be elected and served as president of the Marr Alumni Association
for a couple of years.
And then the,
uh,
uh,
Marr Board of Directors,
uh,
honored me by asking me to serve on the board at Marr for three years.
So all of a sudden,
I,
I say the inmates are running the asylum,
and it was kind of a interesting experience.
But I think the big things was coming in,
getting a sponsor,
getting a home group,
and continuously,
continuously going to meetings,
and working the program.
And,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and working the program.
Uh,
just some wonderful,
wonderful friends here.
Uh,
it's,
I,
I can't think of any time,
I remember,
uh,
uh,
we were having a little meeting at the log cabin,
at the old log cabin before they tore it down.
And a guy was up there,
and he said,
I gotta call,
well,
there was only five of us at the meeting.
He said,
I gotta call my sponsor,
I can't talk to him.
He's out of the country,
I'm just going crazy,
I need to talk to my sponsor.
And I looked at him,
Talk to your sponsor.
He said, what do you mean?
I said, you're here.
Talk to us.
And that's the way the program has always worked for me.
So if you give yourself to the program, the program will give it all back to you.
And I thank you all.
I appreciate you offering me the chance to speak.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Whit.
That is quite a story.
I saw you foreshadowing the saving some loan thing there.
You are definitely an example of the program in action, how sobriety can change your life.
I have asked Chris to come up and give that chip.
My name is Chris Ward.
I'm a grateful, recovered alcoholic.
At the Blue Chip Speaker Meeting and most places in AA, they have a chip system to denote the time away from your last drink.
But if you're willing to come in and give this way a try,
put down the drink and come in and try this new way of life, one day at a time, come on up and get a white chip.
Thanks.
After 30 days, we got a silver chip.
30 days.
All right.
After 90 days, we got a red chip.
90 days in a row, red chip.
Yellow chip, six months.
Green chip for nine months.
And we got a silver chip.
And we got a blue chip for years or multiple years.
Yeah.
Number 20, I'm coming up with 21, so I have 17.
Okay.
We offer the white chip twice.
I got blue chip.
Oh, gosh.
There you go.
Let's meet up after that, brother.
My name is Mark, I'm an alcoholic.
Hey, Mark.
I'm an alcoholic.
It's 13 years.
Thank you for your story.
I guess over the same year, 2003, I gave myself to the program and started helping people.
I see some good people here I haven't seen in a while.
And Larry is still alive and I'm going to give it to my friend Larry.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Larry?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Anything else though?
Any other blue chips?
I'll always have boxes with a blue chip next to me, just in case I can get needed.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you so much, Larry.
So you key is a gold watching it.
We might actually have one more in place.
Yeah.
Say hello to me, Sarah.
Come on in, Sarah.
Any other blue chips?
Are we off?
Yeah?
Nice.
All right.
Fivezent track is ten years.
All right.
Woo.
Uh.
We have just 10 years.
Oh, wow.
All right.
All right.
Again.
All right.
All right.
Any more blue chips?
No problem.
All right.
to reconsider? The applause woke
you up, maybe?
Alright, thank God for the
chips you hold.
Thank you, Chris. Thank you, one
and all, for joining the Blue Chip Speakers meeting tonight.
Thank you.
Well, I'm out here
getting so depressing
I need something to
take the edge, you see
I've got nowhere
to hide
An empty hole inside
It's the Bible,
the book, or the gun
for me
Seems like
everyone's out
taking me
Trouble always
following me
Feeling like I just
can't outrun
Demons that are
all around me
I'm out here
trying to go
attend a meeting
Had a problem
with honesty
What you see
is my heart
bleeding
My bed is
from the sun
I never see
I'm a victim
of life's
circumstances
I take every pill
from A to Z
I try to
blot it out
That feeling
of self-doubt
It's the Bible, the book, or the gun
for me
It's the Bible, the book, or the gun
for me
It's the Bible, the book, or the gun
for me
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.