Built a Fantasy World in a Green Chair Because Real Life Kept Proving I Was a Fraud – Jerry J.

Thank you, Rancine. When I came to AA, you told me that it would get better. And I came back, and it did get better. And I came back, and it did get better. And about a year ago, you asked me to chair one of these meetings at the 28th Georgia AA Convention. And I had the privilege of introducing to many of you in this audience tonight what I thought was one of the finest AA speakers I've ever heard. His name was Jim W. from Fort Worth, Texas. But I came back, and Alcoholics Anonymous does get better. As living proof of the fact that it's getting better, I've again been given the privilege to introduce the speaker to you tonight. This man is the one that keeps Jim W. straight. This is Jerry J. from Dallas, Texas. I have been set up, but never like that. I tell you what, nobody keeps Jim W. straight. I promise you that. I'm Jerry Jones, and I'm an alcoholic. I am delighted to be with you this evening. I never have been on the same program with a preacher and a mayor before. It just never has happened to me. And I want to tell you it's exciting, because I thought I was going to have to change my whole way of life. And I'm kind of relieved a little to see them kind of slide off somewhere, because I didn't know what I was going to say. You see, I'm one of those who slid into decay, or whatever he talked about. I got away. I got down in it. And I didn't have much hope. But I have a wife who is an Al-Anon. Her name's Billie. She's right here on the front row. And I'm a victim of Al-Anon brutality. She arrived at this fellowship, or sisterhood, or whatever they call that thing, a while before I did. And so she began to practice some of that stuff they call tough love, but we all know what it really is on me. I remember one night I was in my den having a few drinks, and she had been out to one of those meetings trying to ruin me in the eyes of the community. She came in, and I was sitting there with my dog, and I was feeling kind of bad. And I told her, I said, Billie, it's just not right. It's just not right. I said, everybody ought to have at least two to love him. And this dog is the only one that loves me. And she said, just a minute, I'm going to call my sponsor. And she came back in just a couple of minutes and said, my sponsor says you're right. We're going to get you another dog. So then I had two dogs, you know. And what's happened to me? And all of this is what I'm going to try to talk to you about tonight. You know, you're running out of another thing I might as well fess up to. Now I'm a lawyer. And I've got to overcome that sooner or later, so I might as well start right up front. I've got more time that way. I heard a story the other day about a fellow. Two of them were riding these hot air balloons across the country, and one of them said that the other one, they were lost. They were in a fog, and they said, what are we going to do? We don't know where we are. And so they finally, they drifted low out of the clouds and came down over a fellow who was standing out beside a road. And one of the balloonists leaned over the side of the balloon and said, where are we? And the guy looked up at him and said, you're in a balloon. And they floated back up in the clouds. And the other fellow said, what do you suppose that lawyer's name was? And the other one said, how did you know he's a lawyer? And he said, well. First of all, he articulated very well. He spoke clearly. Secondly, he precisely answered the question I asked. And thirdly, I didn't learn a damn thing from what he told me. So you run a risk that way, you know. And we're from different parts of the country. We have cultural problems transferring, you know, people shifting back across the country. It's always been that way in this country. I understand. Isn't there a little town nearby here called Sylvester? I heard a story. It's surprising. Surprisingly enough, my friend Wino Joe told me this story about an opera company that came from New York down to Sylvester to give them culture one time, to help them. And they brought all the leads, those who really had the singing parts, you know. And they took local townspeople and they were going to work them into the non-singing roles. And some of the better ones, they let say a few lines, you know. And the female lead, as a matter of fact, was one of those roles. And they got a local girl and they trained her real well. And they gave her, you know, one of those helmets that's got the horns on the side of it and them hubcaps and all that kind of stuff that they use. And the tenor, who is always the hero, ended the show. He was supposed to kill her. And he had a rubber knife. And the first night of the show, they got all set there and got to the final of the thing. And he pulled out his rubber knife and stabbed. And he stabbed her with it. And she did flips and die-dos and die-in-quivers and all sorts of things. Did a real good job of dying right there on the stage, you know. And the tenor knelt over and he said, Oh, my love. Too late, my love. What have I done, my love? And the local drunk stood up in the back room and said, I'll tell you what you've done. You killed the only whore in Sylvester. To a lot of people, you see, that was just a show. To him, it was his whole way. His whole life was going right down the drain. All of his social activities were gone, you know. We don't see things the same way. And I was interested in our mayor's remarks tonight because I think sometimes that we begin to see things a little differently than a lot of people do. I believe today that in every failure, there is the seed of success. That happened in my life. I believe today. I believe today that if you and I continue to practice the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous as they're set forth in our steps and our traditions, that we will effect a monumental change in this country if we practice those principles in all our affairs. I think we undoubtedly already have had a very substantial impact because where once we were problems, and society, I think today we represent a form of a solution to society. And it happens one at a time. It's just exactly like the AA program. Nobody in the world can work it for you. And you don't get any good out of it sitting around thinking about it and not acting. It's a program of action. But when we act, we affect those around us. You know, the negative side of our disease is that we harm our families. I witnessed the Al-Anon and the Alateen. We hurt those people. But when we get well, and when we practice these positive principles in life, I believe that we undoubtedly must be a positive force in the lives of many people around us. I think it is our great blessing that we are here. And all I have to talk to you tonight about is my deep convictions of what happened to me, what I've learned, that I truly believe that there's nothing wrong with me. There's many things happening in the field of alcoholism today. And I'm not opposed to anybody helping an alcoholic any way they can. I really am not. But I really do feel very strongly that you and I, as we go back to our home groups, and as we practice this program, must stay very close to the book of Alcoholics Anonymous and our AA literature and the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of my favorite coaches, Darrell Royal from the University of Texas, says, you know, he's going to dance with the one that brung him. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep dancing with the one that brung me to this way of life. And that's what that book is. And that's what those steps are. Alcoholism is a disease. I didn't believe that when I got here. I thought alcoholism was a condition brought about by lack of willpower and moral decay. I didn't think I had any willpower, and I knew my morals were no good, and I didn't believe that. But I've come to believe it. I believe today that it is, as the book says, a physical allergy or a physical ab reaction to alcohol, coupled with an obsession to drink. And out of my growing up in West Texas, I lived through an old story that's come to mean a lot to me in trying to explain what I mean about my beliefs about alcoholism. I had a dog named Patches. Patches was a bulldog, mostly. He was always great. He was a great dog. He just did everything right. He'd fight anything walking around. He was good with kids. He just had every characteristic you'd want in a good dog. And he had no problems. We fed him well. We scratched him. We played with him. We took him hunting and let him fight, whatever he'd get hold of, you know. And everything was nice. Until one day, a boar hog got out of our neighbor's yacht lot and came down to our place. For reasons obscure, Patches saw the hog and decided to get hold of the hog. And he got out there and got hold of him, and he made pretty good noise. The dog was barking, and the hog was squealing. And my dad heard it, and he came out of the shop, and he began to kick and cuss. And my mother was out there, and I was crying because I knew my dog was going to get killed. That old hog had to toss that long. And just a real Donnybrook going on out there. And everybody knew that the thing to do was to get Patches to turn loose that hog. Then everything would be all right, you know. We'd get back to normal. And finally, finally, the hog helped us out. He drug him up beside a barn, and he fell off and turned around and cut his throat with one of those tusks. And we got him in. And we took him up under the water hydrant, and we ran cold water on him and stopped the bleeding and petted him and loved him and turned him loose. And Patches went right back out and got hold of the hog again. Now... The hog knew that the solution was to turn loose of him. We knew the solution was to turn loose of him. Everybody there knew that everything would be all right if Patches would just turn loose of the hog. But we had to go through this whole routine again, you know. And finally he got off, got knocked off again, and got cut up a little bit more. And this time we committed him to the water hydrant. We took a rope and we let him think about his life. You know, gave him some time to cool off and review his conduct. And to recognize that this stuff was harmful to him. Hogs are harmful to you, Patches. You know, some people can play with hogs, others can't. You just happen to be one of the dogs that can't play with hogs. And we turned him loose. And after two hours, when he was, you know, himself again. And this time he had to go about two miles to find a hog. But he... That's a perfect story for us, isn't it? Perfect story for us. Al-Anons, we were the first hog-anon chapter in West Texas, you know. My dog was getting carved up and I couldn't make him leave that hog alone. And time and time again he went back and hurt himself when he knew it was going to do that. And everybody thinks that if you would just turn the hog loose, if you would just stop drinking, the problem would be resolved, wouldn't it? That's what I thought. But that's not so. You see, that old dog had problems, had another problem that nobody thought about. And that's what made him go get hold of that hog in the first place. That hog really represented no threat to him. But to him, he was something, a threat. And it's life, the wrongs of others, real or imagined, that get the alcoholic going. I don't know what Patch's problem was. It wasn't hogs. It turned out because just a little while later he did the same thing with a cattle truck and he just caught one of those. And that was all. That was my life. That's the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous to me. Powerless over alcohol. Our lives were unmanageable. My alcoholism started long before I took my first drink. I was raised in West Texas in a nice little community, 1,500 people in the town, and I lived about 10 miles north of there. I was a happy kid. My folks were two-generation Texans, and you didn't go much further back in our part of the country than two generations because everybody had moved from the east and didn't leave any forwarding address. So we just kind of got along. My mother and dad were good parents. They loved me. They cared for me. I was raised in that good Christian home everybody talks about. And I was liked by all the people in the community. I was on all the ball clubs, did all those things you know, and everything seemed to be good for me. But I knew, by God, there was more than this. There's got to be more than this. And I saw it in the television. Not in television. They didn't have it then. I saw it in the movies, and I heard the veterans coming back from World War II talking about it. And it had to do with a fast life. It had to do with things taking place. And this drowsy, sleepy little place I lived in just wasn't going to cut it. And I even remember alcoholism. My grandfather didn't drink, and my dad and mother didn't drink, and somebody gave my granddad a bottle of wine one time. He didn't have any idea what to do with it. It made him uncomfortable to have it in the house, so he gave it to my dad. My dad didn't know what to do with it, so he hid it in the basement, and I found it. Now, unfortunately, it was one of those kind that had the cork in it, you know. And I couldn't take the cork out without him finding out I had taken the cork out. Now, I knew mother didn't drink and he didn't drink, and there were just three of us in the family. And if I took that cork out, it was going to be a lot of trouble. But I'd take my friends down there and show them the bottle of this forbidden substance, this stuff that made you do funny things, this stuff that was, you know, the exciting thing. And we finally got a hat pin, and we'd stick the hat pin up through the cork and try to get a drop out of there. Couldn't ever get a drop out of there. But one day, one day I got my chance. But I didn't get my chance for a little while. And in that little while, I picked up some ideas about life that seemed to me to be real. That seemed to me to be real. I saw life as kind of threatening, like that old dog saw the hog. I recognized pretty early that I wasn't what I was supposed to be. People kept telling me I was going to grow up to be a man. Well, I wasn't a man yet, was I? But right away they began to tell me things that men did and didn't do. For example, they told me little men don't cry. And so I had to stop, or I had to try to stop crying if I was going to be a man like my dad was. And I knew that men didn't hurt. I watched my dad one day working on a plow, and he was trying to chisel a head off a bolt, and he hit the chisel two or three times hard with a hammer, and then finally it slipped, and he hit his hand with that hammer, and just blood went everywhere. And he stood up and cussed real good. And of course I knew right then it was okay for men to cuss. That was a good thing. And it was okay for men to be angry. I could tell that was all right. And I asked him, I said, Dad, did that hurt? And he looked over at me and he said, Hell no. And he went right back to hammering. Well, it wasn't but a little while, just until one day I was playing the hammer, and just what happened? I hit my hand. Didn't hit no blood, nothing. Just hit my hand. Hurt like hell. Not only did it hurt, but I cried. Not only did I cry, but I was afraid to pick the hammer up again. And hit the chisel again. I flunked being a man on three counts out of one little old tiny thing. So I didn't feel like I measured up. There was something missing about me. And since there was something missing, and I didn't want anybody to know it, I decided, I guess, that I had to act like a man. I had to do the things that I thought men did. And so I began to try to be what I thought you believed a man would do. I had to do all those things that men did. And I had to act like it didn't hurt. And I had to not cry. And I had to stuff my emotions. And I had to be somebody that I was not. I knew I needed some strength somewhere along here. And I was raised in the church, as I said. And another thing I did was, very early, I wanted the religious experience that I heard other people talk about. And I remember the preachers and people that give testimonials would talk about this magic moment when this supernatural, supernatural kind of event would take place. And lights would shine, and they would hear voices, and music, and all sorts of things would take place. And I really did want that to happen. And I went to the revivals, and I went to the churches, and I listened, and I waited for it to happen to me. But it didn't happen. It didn't happen. A lot of my friends were going up to the front of the church and shaking hands and saying it happened to them. And finally I decided, well, maybe it's not going to happen until I go to the front of the church. So I went to the front of the church. And I shook hands with the minister and everybody was really happy. I'd done the right thing, obviously, because everybody was loving me and it was all so good. And they asked me, they said, now, don't you feel different? You know what I told them, don't you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I feel different. But I didn't. I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel anything, except kind of confused and kind of like I wish it had happened. And it didn't happen that way for me. And you know, I became convinced that it didn't happen to anybody. And all those who said it did were hypocrites and not to be believed. And so I began living my life with the conviction that I ought to be a man and was not, that I ought to have contact with a God, and I did not, but I was playing like I did. And I began to try to please and to get people to like me, to be important, to be acceptable, not to be rejected, to not be unimportant, to get attention, to not be ignored, to do all the things that I wanted that I thought were going to make me happy, to win. Gosh, I wanted to win. But even more than that, I wanted not to lose. It seemed to me like I had to do something to be somebody. And that conviction drove me into all kinds of competition from the very first grade on. If they were doing it, I was competing in it. I didn't care what it was, tossing pennies, spitting at cracks, playing football, singing. I did it all. I would have done anything that they tried to do that was competitive, I was involved. And I won a lot. I was successful because I had a deep, deep conviction that I didn't measure up and I had an enormous fear that you were going to find out that I didn't really measure up. My fuel in life was fear. I remember once I went to school. I had torn my shirt. I hadn't torn my shirt. Howard had torn my shirt. Howard was a kid two years older than I was. He was in the third grade and I was in the first grade. And Howard had a cute hobby. Every day at lunch, Howard threw me on the ground and sat on me until he got tired. And a teacher had said, it's not nice to fight. And so I didn't fight. But one day, Howard got carried away with himself and threw me down and tore my shirt. And my dad saw it and my dad said, what happened to your shirt? And I said, well, Howard did it. But I didn't fight him. And he said, what? And I said, Howard did it, but I didn't fight him. Why didn't you fight him? Well, the teacher says it's not nice. He said, cowboy, let me tell you something. If you ever come home to this house again with your shirt torn or you're messed up or I even hear that somebody's been running over you at school and you haven't got some skin off your knuckles, I'll give you a whipping you never ever will forget. I didn't care a whole lot about going to school the next day, I'll tell you that. But I went. And I didn't want to go to recess either. I just didn't care whether I went out at all that day. And I said a sincere prayer that Howard wouldn't be there. And I said, and he was. And I walked out on the porch of the school and looked out across the little schoolyard and Howard saw me and here he came. And I had a decision to make. I was afraid of the teacher who said it wasn't nice to fight. I was afraid of Howard because he was bigger than I was. And I was afraid of my dad. And I wasn't going to have a long time to think this thing over. And when Howard got about three feet away from me, I made a decision that lasted and went with me all of my life. I reacted out of the thing I feared the most. I hit him in the nose because I was scared to death of my daddy. And his nose bled real good. And he went and told the teacher who grabbed me up and was going to whip me and I said, don't you whip me because my daddy told me to do that. And she knew my daddy and she didn't whip me. So I started off through life with an idea that I didn't measure up in a lot of places. The idea that I was a fake and that I was a good kid and that I was a good kid and that I was a good kid if I was a fake. And I thought a fake if you liked me I thought I'd fooled you and I felt kind of like a fraud and if you didn't like me I thought you found out someway. Now that's tension, when you're operating under that condition when you've gotta win and you feel like a loser you've got some pressure going on inside of you and you need some relief. It's kind of like the story they tell about the old hunter had his nephew out hunting coons and they got one out of a tree or they thought they had a coon out of a tree trying to see up there and the uncle said i'm going to climb up there zeb and and shake him down and he climbed up the tree and the boys down on the ground with a flashlight and a shotgun and uh they got he got up there and found out to his uh dismay that he didn't have bakun up the tree he had a bobcat up there and the bobcat got hold of him and he got hold of the bobcat and the top of that tree was flopping around pretty good and there's a lot of lots going on up there and the old man began to call out shoot him zeb shoot him and the kids down on the ground looking around he said i can't uncle i'm scared i'll shoot you and he said it don't matter either one of us can use some relief man i needed some relief i couldn't be anywhere and be comfortable and so guess what i found i kept moving out too i kept moving from a little town to a little bigger community and a little bigger community and the competition got heavier and i hit college and they had a commodity there known as beer and i want to tell you it was uh is okay first of all i was moving that fast lane you see this is what those guys at the service station had been telling me about when they came home from World War II. You know, this was the big life. They drank. And I was going to get to run with the big boys when I did this. And so I began to try to run with the big boys and I didn't like booze much, but I drank it. I drank it for acceptance, to be a part of it. And then, surprisingly enough, it began to do something for me. It began to let me take some deep breaths and relax a little bit. I liked the ease and comfort of those first few drinks, like it says in the doctor's opinion. I liked to quit caring. I liked to say to hell with them. To hell with them all. The long and the short and the tall. And I liked to drive fast and drink beer and run with the fast crowd and I thought I had found it. Man, I didn't want any more. This was good enough for me. But right away I began to have some trouble. I began to lose friends. People that I'd tried to get to like me. People that I'd worked on getting to like me. They began to drift off because they didn't like the way we drank and the way I drank. And I just had to sacrifice those people because I had found something that was terribly important to me. And I remember watching one or two of those guys walk down the street one time when we'd all been invited to join the same fraternity. And they said they weren't going to join it because they drank too much in that fraternity. And that was the reason I was joining the fraternity. And I remember wondering, what in the world is wrong with those guys? Why wouldn't anybody want to do... what we're doing? And I was mystified and I started off through life. And that's what I did. I got on the merry-go-round looking for money. That's going to make me all right. And I was going to status and position. I wound up going through law school. I got a wife and kids. I knew and kept knowing that if I got the right things, I was going to be all right. You know, I just knew that when I got out of law school, everything was going to be all right. And they gave me that piece of paper and I didn't feel much better about myself that day than I did the day before. And I knew if I ever made it to law school, $10,000 a year, I was going to be okay. And I made $10,000 and that wasn't it. And I thought, well, when I make partner in my law firm, that'll be it. And that was just another day. Always exciting for a minute. And it wasn't all a veil of tears, you know. What I'm describing is a long inventory that I got out of step four where I began to understand myself. I had some good days and some good times. Married a lovely woman. And I had some great kids. But I couldn't get any satisfaction out of life. Couldn't. Couldn't find what it was. I knew there was a secret to life and I couldn't figure out what it was. And what I looked for was more, better, and different. More than I had, better than I had, or something a little bit different than I had. And I fought for it. I tried to achieve it. The only way I know was to just scrap hard and when I got all the load I could handle, I drank. And the scraps got harder and the drinking got harder. And it got more frequent. And I drank more and more and more. And for a long time it was the party type of drinking but I began to make mistakes when I was out in public. And it began to make me look like a loser. So very slowly and surely I quit going to places where I'd made a damn fool of myself, where I had committed a social mistake or whatever it was because I didn't want to see people there again. Dallas is a pretty good sized town. But when you drink as long as I drank and as much as I drank you can wind up with no place to go pretty quick. And where I wound up was in my house. I wound up in my house with some interesting projects that I did. I tried everything. I tried helping the poor people. I went down into Dallas and wandered around down on the streets and drank wine with the brothers and learned to do them handshakes and told them about problems they didn't know they had and gave them solutions they didn't want. Finally they told me, well, why don't you just not drink when you come down here? And a couple weeks later they told me, why don't you just not come down here at all? And I got a big resentment about that, man. I was doing all the good in the world, you know, and calculated what kind of bill I was going to send those people for all that legal advice I'd given them. I just sat there in my green chair and hated them. Just hated them. I took up art. My wife bought me a box of art, a couple of paints. And I got, she got me a teacher to teach me how to paint. I have to go to class once a week and I'd get tanked up pretty good and I'd go to take the class. Of course, I did some pretty stuff. I mean, it kind of takes your breath away when you see something like that. I had to go to abstracts right away because I couldn't do anything that you could recognize, but I just globbed that stuff around. Something happened to my paintings, though, between midnight and six or seven o'clock the next morning. I'd have something that just looked really good about midnight. And go to bed, and something happened between that time and the time I woke up the next morning. It just looked like a bunch of mush the next morning, you know. Then my wife bought me a welder. She was trying to fix me just as hard as she could. And she knew if she could get something to keep me occupied, I wouldn't drink. And so she bought me a welder so I could sculpt. And I began sculpting with my welder and I'd stick these pieces of metal together. I really wish you all could see some of that stuff. If I'd have thought about it, I'd have brought some of it. Just, oh, it's really exciting. It really is. The thing I had trouble with there, though, is I could never remember which piece of metal was hot. But I solved that. I'd reach in there and I'd get the hot piece of metal and I had a great big glass that I kept my whiskey in. And I'd reach down in that big glass and I'd get all the ice I could hold out of it and I'd take that out of there and then I'd take the glass and drink the whiskey. Then I'd put the ice back in there and fill it up with whiskey again. And you know, most of the time I'd go right on work and not notice it at all. Just cured by modern science. But it didn't work. It didn't work. I... I... Finally, I got around to just sitting in my chair. My days consisted basically of drinking about a half a fifth or half a quart of Beefeater's Gin before dinner and about a half of a fifth of brandy after dinner. And then I got up and went to work the next morning and I didn't drink because nobody wants a drunk lawyer. And I stayed there and shook and sweat and was mean and nasty and... angry and irritable as long as I could stay there or until I got through and then I went home and I drank again. And that was my life. And I watched television a lot. I just... The tube was always on. And I got tired of doing that so I took up fish watching. Now, I want to tell you that fish watching is a wonderful thing. I couldn't get life to work quite the way I wanted it to. I had better luck around my house than I did out in the world. And I bought me this aquarium that was just the size I wanted. And I put the kind of shells and the color of coral in the bottom that I wanted. And I put the kind of plants in it that I liked. And I put a light on it and I put the water in it and I got the kind of fish that I liked to watch. And I could turn that light on and I could make it daylight or I could make it dark. They ate or didn't eat depending upon the way I felt that day. They swam in clean water or dirty water just as I saw them. I saw a fifth. There was good times and there was bad times in the fishbowl. Let me tell you that. And I liked to watch them swim real slow. I liked to watch them just kind of glide through those ferns and leaves down there. Beautiful fish. And I could just get caught up in my reverie and my thoughts and my wild dreams about what I was going to do to them and how next time they said this what I was going to say to them. And I'd just watch those fish and remember those good old days. And I'd just watch those fish and remember those good old days and how it was going to be. And never, never did focus on right now. I was just always out there and I'd watch the damn fish and the fish would swim by. But you know, even in fishbowls, there are rogues. And in my fishbowls, there was always some damn fish that was trying to swim too fast and he was always nipping at the good fish. Just by God nipping. Bothering them. And he wasn't right. I didn't like that. If I'd have wanted fast fish, I'd have bought fast fish. I wanted slow fish. So I developed a system in my fishbowl. And when the fast fish got after the slow fish, I'd reach over the side of the thing and just whack the side of that tank like that. Scared the BGBs out of all the fish. But you know, it rains on the just and on the unjust alike. And sometimes they'd stop. Now, I was fair. If they got after it again, I wrapped it again. I gave them three chances. Three chances. After the third chance, I had a little dip in it. And I'd catch the fast fish. And I'd take him out in my lap and I'd hold him. And I'd have a drink. And I'd let him get real still. And then I'd put him back in the tank. And if he didn't float, he had another chance. If they float, I'll just tell you this, don't waste time with them. And I gave them three more chances. Three knocks. Three knocks. Three knocks. Three knocks. Three dip-net treatments. That's about as fair as you can be, right? And if they persisted after three times, they were hopeless. And I just had to get them a dip-net and take them in, get them out, take them in and flush them. That's all you could do for them. I could never get the right kind of fish in that dam. I could never keep them. I could never get them all happy. I couldn't even run a fishbowl. And I talked about my life being unmanageable. Do you know I have never yet told that story to an AA crowd, no matter what? No matter how large or how small that somebody didn't come up afterwards and said, I had some fish too. I was in Oklahoma City and there was the prettiest little girl you ever saw. About 25 years old came up to me and looked both ways and she said, those fish are fast, aren't they? And I said, yeah. She said, we had a big one that was bad and said, I didn't have a dip-net but I got down in there and I finally caught him in a corner and I caught him in my hand and I just squeezed him real tight. And I've never told anybody in the world about that until just now. She said, I lived in a fantasy world. I lived in a world that wasn't there. Nobody in the world knew I was doing that. Nobody knew I was playing that game. Nobody knew that I was having those wild thoughts about hating people, about killing people, about wanting to maim people, about how I was going to change things. Nobody knew that. I lived in a world that was totally fantasy. When I got that bottle, a bottle of booze in my hand and I got in that green chair and I sat there and I drank. And you can believe when the family came up and disturbed me when I was having, I might have been a pretty nice guy when I came in. But by the time I got about three drinks in me and got to thinking about what I was going to do to them, those people who let me down, those people who wouldn't do the right, the fast fish out there in the world that I'd like to got a dip-net on. I had a bunch of them. And I was thinking about them and one of the kids had come up and asked me for a quarter for ice cream. I went off just like Mount Vesuvius. I was angry and I was mad and I said, what the hell do you mean you want ice cream? And the kid didn't know what was wrong. His dad had loved him and hugged him or patted him on the head when he came in 20 minutes ago and now he had a raging maniac on his hand. And he hadn't done nothing and he didn't know anything had happened. And that's alcoholism, friends. That's alcoholism. And then you feel the guilt for what you've done. And you know you ain't worth killing. And into that lovely, lovely scene a ray of happiness came. It was in the form of my wife. My wife, as I was getting lower and lower and lower, began to get happy. She began to do the strangest things you ever saw in your life. She said new things. She said things like live and let live. One day at a time. Easy does it. And she wrote a lot. And I was asking her, what she was doing. And she said she was taking inventories. And hell, you know, we didn't take inventories in my house. And I didn't much care what she was doing but it was just a matter of casual curiosity. And she kept getting better and better. And one night my daughter, I asked my daughter one afternoon where her mother was and she said she's gone to a meeting. And I said, what kind of meeting? And she said, I don't know, Daddy. A family meeting. Well, that's kind of suspect. And so when Billy came home, I liked to cross-examine her anyway. So I just sat her down in the chair and began to cross-examine. And she was ducking and diving pretty good. You know, I said, where have you been? She said, out. And I said, out where? And she said, out in town. And I said, what town? Dallas. Okay, what part of Dallas? Preston Center. What were you doing in Preston Center? Oh, sharing my experience, strength, and hope with some of my friends. What kind of friends? Friends who have common problems and who are now in a common solution. You know, all this tripe. And finally I got the word Alamon out of her. Now I'll tell you, that's serious business. Here I am doing everything I can to keep anybody from knowing I've got a problem with alcohol. And my wife is going to public meetings which have as their purpose helping those who have a family member or a friend who has an alcoholic problem. We didn't have any friends. She didn't have any family for 2,000 miles. I was the only candidate for the alcoholic. And I was being convicted and tried without even giving a chance to say a word. Everybody was going to find out. A judge would see her. My partners would see her. A client would see her. I couldn't think of any good thing that could come out of that experience. And I explained to her, if anybody finds out, I'm going to lose my position in that law firm. And when I lose my position, they're going to quit paying me. And when they quit paying me, we're going to lose this damn house. And the cars. And the kids aren't going to go to college. And you and I are going to get real hungry. Now that's as clear as you can explain anything, I think, right? And I waited for her to quit going and she quit going and she wouldn't quit. She kept going back. And I couldn't leave it alone. I simply couldn't leave that alone. Every time she got close to me, I'd hit her a lick about Alvin. I was on her day and night. And one night I decided I'd pick a fight. Did you ever just decide to pick a fight? I did. And the way you start a fight is you establish the facts that you know are true and nobody can't argue about them first. And then you take off from them and convince them that they're wrong or whatever you're going to do. So the first thing I said to her, I said, you think I'm an alcoholic. And she said, I don't know whether you are or not. Well, I said, that's the damnedest thing I ever heard. I said, you've been telling me for years I'm an alcoholic. And she said, that's right, but I was wrong. Now what do you do with that? And I tried, you know, and she said, well, it got me so damn bum-fuzzled that I just said, well, if I wanted to find out if I was an alcoholic, if I was an alcoholic, if I was an alcoholic, how would I do it? I want to tell you, if any of you here want to drink anymore, don't ever, ever ask them that question because they got an answer. And she said, the way you do that, Jerry, the way you find out, they say, there's a lady named Marty Mann who was the first woman who made it in Alcoholics Anonymous and she wrote a book called The Primer on Alcoholism and it says that and all the AA literature says that what you should do is is try some controlled drinking. You ought to drink two drinks a day for six months. You have to drink two drinks every day but you can't ever drink any more than that. And I said, that was about the dumbest test I believe I ever heard in my life. Drink to prove whether you're an alcoholic or not. That doesn't make any sense. And I broke off the conversation. It just wasn't going anywhere and I just walked off and left that mess but it stuck in my head. And I began to think about that and I had been meaning to cut back a little. I recognized that I might be drinking a little more than you ought to. And so I decided what I'd do is I would not tell her that I was going to take that test but what I'd do is I would start taking the test and I'd get that test going real good maybe for two or three months and then I'd tell her one day I'd say I've been taking the damn test for four months. Not one day have I failed the test. And then I'd let her watch me maybe another month and then I'd be all right and I could go back watching my fish and live in a normal healthy life. But I had a little problem. First of all two drinks just wasn't enough. You know two drinks didn't do anything for me and I didn't want a drink if I didn't have if it didn't do something for me. So I had to convert that to three and I had that big glass you remember that I used and I thought I'd have two big glasses of gin before dinner and then I'd have a big glass of brandy after dinner. And that's what I'd do. And so I started trying to take the test and I'd take the test and I'd get all set and mix my first drink and I'd take the test and I'd mix my first drink and I'd take the test three drinks. I'd drink the first drink nothing to that. As a matter of fact I'm feeling a little easier now it's going to be easier in just a moment I'm probably going to have enough. Take the second drink and about halfway through the second drink it began to happen the thoughts began to come back always about the same and they went something like this what what are you doing? Is is this your house? Are you over 21 years of age? Are you a man? Is that your bottle of whiskey over there? Is this your body? Are you going to let a bunch of little old ladies from Al-Anon in tennis shoes tell you how much of your whiskey you can put in your body? And I promise you every time the answer was the same it was always hell no. And I'd drink the bottle. Now another thing happened to me and I'd come in after a bad day and I'd drink the bottle. And I'd walk over there and I'd start to mix that first drink and I'd think boy boy you've had a rough day. You're really strung out tonight. I don't know if we can get you back in shape for tomorrow or not. I don't believe I'll take the test tonight. And I drank the bottle. Now whether I took the test or didn't take the test I drank the bottle. And I took the test or didn't take the test for about a year and a half at the end of which time I was without hope. It's totally illogical not to be able to drink two or three drinks a day. It was very important. My profession, my livelihood, my family everything depended upon me getting this thing pulled together just passed the damn test. I never passed it once. Not one time in a year and a half. And I was so frustrated and so confused all I thought about was drinking. I wished I hadn't had a drink. I wanted a drink. I wondered if I had enough at home. I wondered if I could sneak some in without Billy seeing me do it. I was caught up with this thing totally. Totally. I had focused on the problem for the first time in my life. I recognized that I had a problem drinking. And the only thing I could think of is to see if I could stop drinking. And by now I had lots of doubts about that. Because I knew I needed a drink. But on January of 1973 I stopped drinking. And I told Billy that morning that I was going to try to stop drinking. And she said, do you want me to call somebody from AA? And I said, hell no. I got myself in this mess I'm going to get myself out. And I'm not sure I can do it and it may not be too pretty and you and them damn kids stay the hell out of the way. And she did and they did and it wasn't pretty. After about two days I was really beginning to come apart. And for the first time for the first time in many, many years I did something that I knew I needed some help. I knew I wasn't going to hang on if I didn't get some help. If I didn't do something. And she gave me the 24 hour book and the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. She said these might be helpful and I threw them across the room. But I found the little 24 hour book and I sneak read what it said on January 2nd. And it said to give your drinking problem to God. Give your drinking problem to God. Isn't that something? Isn't that some solution to a guy who's shaking inside and out sweating in the middle of cold weather walking the floor. That just doesn't make any sense. That was no solution. But, but I didn't have another one that morning and I didn't have a damn thing to lose. And so 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. Best prayer I ever said. I was totally honest. I was greatly in need and I knew it. And the next day for the first time in my life I knew I had to call and ask for help. And I did that. I called Alcoholics Anonymous like ever drunk when they told me what I needed to do. I told them I had a problem I couldn't solve and they said we can solve it and here's what you need to do. I said no I don't need to do that. I don't need to do that. That's too much. I just want to do a little bit. Just want to get through. You know just stop drinking. I'd be alright if I got to stop drinking, right? And I started going to they wanted me to go to a meeting every night and I wouldn't go. And I just barely hung on. And a little home group I called the central office and told them I'd like to have a place where you know very discreet, very quiet. I had a bunch of clients very important clients that would not want to know that I was an alcoholic. Wouldn't want anybody to know I was an alcoholic. I'd like to meet with college graduates if you had somebody like that. If you had a place near a country club or out in my part of town that'd be nice. She said I ain't got none of them and I knew I was in trouble right there. So I started going whatever she gave me to do. And it was a little home group and they were nice people and they sustained me for about a month. And then I ran across a guy who attracted me. He had veracity. I could believe him. He looked like a drunk. All those people in that home group had years of sobriety. He had six months. And I said what do you think about this AA thing? And he said well have you seen anything but this little home meeting? And I said no. And he said well you ain't seen much AA. And I'll tell you what you and I are going to need a whole lot more of what it's got to offer or we're going to get drunk. And I said what should we do? And he said we should go to a lot of meetings. And he led me out of the darkness of alcoholism one step at a time to where other alcoholics were being themselves. You know that seed of success that failure. This failure you know there's a seed of success in every failure. And I needed an environment. I needed a soil in which I could grow. I needed the anonymity of Alcoholics Anonymous. I couldn't tolerate the idea of anybody finding out and you gave me that. You treated my anonymity with respect. You were yourselves around me. You told the damnedest things about yourselves I had ever heard in my life. Wild stories like me and that damn fish tank you know. And they laughed. And of course my old competitive spirit came welling back up after just a little bit and I got to thinking well I did a couple things I could try. I could tell them what I did. And finally I decided I'd tell them. And I did tell them. And they put their arms around me and laughed with me and said great. You're beginning to open up. They began to focus me like you would focus a camera. You can focus your mind on the present the past or the future. Most of the time I either thought about the past or was looking way trying to look way out in the future. I hardly ever looked at right now. They told me what to look at right now. And they began to let me know I had feelings. And to let me know it was okay to have those feelings. That I didn't have to be some kind of superman. That there weren't any of those things. That not one of them had been any kind of superhuman. And that we were not much different that way than anybody else. They let me know it was okay to be an alcoholic. That it wasn't the end of the world. And they began one step at a time to attract me back out of this deep dark self-centered cave in which I had lived. I wondered about the God Squad. I kept waiting for those guys to come tell me what I was going to have to believe about God. I'd been to lots of churches and I'd cross-examined lots of ministers and they had all flunked. They could not convince me. It was by God their obligation to convince me that's the way it was going to be. And finally nobody came. Everybody talked about their God. And finally I got one off the side and I said what do I need to believe about God? He said whatever you can. I said no, you don't understand. What does AA believe about God? He said we believe it's an individual preference. You don't have to believe in it at all if you don't want to. But you need to believe in something greater than yourself. By then I began to see that there was something in Alcoholics Anonymous that was working. I knew something was happening to me. And I knew that I was going to be in the room of people like you. I felt the comfort of that group. And I said how do I find this thing called God? He said well our book says to make a list or says to start with whatever you believe in. He said I think you ought to write down what you believe and what you don't believe. But he said you can't write down what you believe in because you're just stuck. You couldn't act on your own beliefs because of your disbeliefs. So throw them away. You don't have to believe them. All you've got to do is be willing to be honest, open-minded and willing to grow in spiritual ways. You may have to go to those events and those people to say that God had something to do with those things. Be willing to give credit where credit's due. So I started doing that. I went to retreats with my wife, to Baptist retreats. I'm a Methodist. I was looking for God high and hard. They were going around the room giving testimonials. I just made my skin crawl. I could not stand to hear people give testimonials. They were coming my way. Nobody was saying pass. I began to think, what am I going to do here? I began to listen to them a little bit. I thought, well, I've done a pretty good job with that God. Another guy said he couldn't run his business without God. Well, I'd done all right that way, so I thought, you know, that don't amount to much. Then it came to me, I said, well, I'm going to go to church and I'm going to go to church and I began to think they deserve to know. They really do deserve to know. I can see her face tonight. She had a little smile on her face. Her husband had tried to talk just before she had and he got all choked up, did a very unmanly thing, he began to cry. I felt a little sorry for him. And she said that her children, ages two and three, would be raised in a Christian home with people who loved them, about being grateful for a policy of insurance that would keep her husband alive. She told what it was like to have made contact with a power greater than herself that allowed her to face whatever life brought her happily and comfortably. And I had one of my great moments. I had a great thought. The thought was, Ain't she going to be a man if she could have your solution, old friend, and it also involved taking off both of her legs, she would take it in a minute. I was sitting over there in that chair planning on how I was going to impress people, and something broke through that with a great thought. God to me means whatever it is that works for me. I had to get myself out of the way if I was going to make contact with God. I had to do a fourth step and a fifth step, and I had to share myself with another person so I could see what God really was, and surprisingly enough, I found you liked that better than you liked the phony Jerry Jones who was trying to be something that he was not. I made amends to those people around me, and my life began to turn upside down. I had to get myself out of the way I was. I had to get myself out of the way I was. I had to get myself out of the way I was. I was not going to see God directly, but I am going to see a lot of evidence. I am going to see a lot of evidence of God in my life. I am going to get myself out of the way I was. I am going to get myself out of the way I was. I am going to get myself out of the way I was. I am going to get myself out of the way I was. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to get myself out of this way. I am going to tough because God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Thank you. Thank you, Cowboy. Those of you who will, join hands and let's pray together the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.