Didn’t Cross Any Invisible Line — I Leaped Right Into Alcoholism at Fifteen – John H.

About This Speaker Tape

John H. from Atlanta tells the story of leaping straight into alcoholism at 15 — blacking out on his first drink, shifting friend groups overnight, and coming home drunk one snowy night to find his father waiting with a cup of tea and the question that broke him: 'Where have I failed you?' To get out of the Pennsylvania coal town, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, went to Parris Island at 141 pounds and came out 175 pounds of spring steel, then saw Korea, Japan (where he drove a staff car for a major and regularly passed out in the back seat), and Southern California. He went shopping in Los Angeles for a wife, had children who ran and hid when he came through the door, and held on to a sales job at the Los Angeles Times until he couldn't.

Whiskey quit working, beer quit working, and he turned to Ernest and Julio Gallo — a red-faced Irishman drinking sweet wine. He got fired, came home to find a moving van and his wife taking the kids back to her parents, and ended up living in a Renault Dauphine in an orange grove off Valley Boulevard with a puke streak on the inside of the back window. One morning he fell out of the car onto his knees throwing up blood and cried out to Higher Power for the first time in ten years. A message came through crystal clear: call Alcoholics Anonymous. A phone operator connected him to Sybil; he drove to the Southwest Alano Club on a street he had worked a thousand times without ever seeing the place, and Joe Motes met him at the door. Sobriety date: April 9, 1959.

His sponsor Howdy Don't took him out of the car and into his basement, sent him back to the LA Times to make amends (they gave him his old job back), and made him pay child support before rent. The Big Book at the Alano Club was chained to the wall; he bought his own from a woman with biceps the size of his thighs, and he read it. Career success followed — Wisconsin, Atlanta, more money than he'd imagined — but so did wreckage in sobriety: a selfish second marriage built around a job offer, a horrible divorce inside the fellowship, and a business partner who committed suicide. He went back to California for a month and worked the steps all over again.

The man who once cared only what other people thought of him came home caring what he thought of himself, with sobriety at the dead center of his life and everything else arranged around it. In 1980 Higher Power brought Mary into his life; they married in 1982 after he courted her for two and a half years because he was terrified of repeating the past. Nineteen years later he stands at the Great Plains Roundup grateful — and grateful, he says, is an action, not a word.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Thanks Omaha committee; Thanksgiving dinner with Terry and David's three-generation family
• 3:30 Molly Maguire coal-mine dynamiters — his Brennan great-uncles rode the rails to Omaha
• 7:00 Functional Pennsylvania family — mother and father who didn't drink; four brothers still close
• 11:30 First drink at 15, blackout out of the box, immediate friend-group swap
• 14:30 Age 16 on the back steps in the snow; father's 'Where have I failed you?' over a cup of tea
• 17:00 Parris Island 1952 — 141 pounds in, 175 pounds of spring steel out
• 22:00 Japan — drives staff car for the major; Friday nights the major drives, he passes out in back
• 27:00 LA Times sales job, kids running and hiding, switching to Ernest and Julio Gallo
• 34:00 Fired, moving van in driveway, living in the Renault Dauphine in an orange grove
• 38:00 Throws up blood on his knees, cries out to Higher Power, calls AA — Sybil, Joe Motes, Southwest Alano Club, April 9, 1959
• 45:00 Sponsor Howdy Don't — basement bed, amends at the LA Times, child support before rent
• 52:00 Wreckage of sobriety — second marriage built around a job, divorce inside AA, partner's suicide, month in California redoing the steps
• 58:00 Mary enters his life in 1980; married 1982 after two-and-a-half-year courtship