Dr. Silkworth, the Medical Foundation of the Spiritual Program – Bill C.

So, George, it's your turn. Thank you, and hi. How y'all doing? You know, this is an unusual thing. It's the first retreat I ever went to. I retreated a whole lot of times, but it's the best time I've been to a retreat. treat, really and truly. I told the boys if they'd come with me tonight, and I got four of them with me, that I wouldn't make the same talk I made the last 35 or 40 times they heard me, and maybe it'd be a little bit different, and i hope that it will tonight, but really and truly it's wonderful and I thank you each and every one of you for allowing me to be here. My name is Bill White, and I am an alcoholic. Now, a lot of you have suspicioned it, I know for a long time, but I'm one of the judges that will admit being an alcoholic! I've known a lot them, and the first name was different things all the the honorable like the dark he came into the court one day and he asked him said uh what's your name he says Major Smith the judge said well that's fine I'm glad to always glad to meet a military man he said no sir you got me wrong judge I ain't no military man. He said what do you mean your name is Major Smith? He says where do you get that major from? He said I don't know judge unless it's the same place they get that honorable in front of your name from. I don't know. You know, we as alcoholics live in a more or less state of confusion. We want something. We don't have what it is. We're not satisfied with what we've got. We don' t like what you offer to us. And we all really want to be made comfortable. None of us want to put our life in order, particularly. We all want to be made comfortable, we always want to be a little better off than we are. Now I didn't care too much about the comfort. I wanted to be a big wheel. And Alper Harmon gave me the misconception that I was a little bigger wheel than I actually was. I thought that a drink would make a better speech. I could meet the public better, and I could do a lot of things with alcohol. And I tried it, and did it until the public found out that it was all a farce. And later on I found out that that liquor did not make me make a better speech, it just made me less ashamed of messing up the one I made. I didn't do you that way. You know, I read Tommy Levin's book, and Tommy Fletcher wrote it, God is our understanding. Tommy is a great member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I don't mind breaking his anonymity. He's a Methodist minister in the state of Virginia, and he came into the ministry by the back door, he said. But in his book he wrote, one little part of his treatise was, there are three things that are necessary for you and I to maintain in our life if we would achieve some measure of success. If we would receive that feeling of security and peace of mind and serenity that we all want. And one of those things was, or the three of them are, to have a faith worth living by. A faith in Alcoholics Anonymous program. A faith worth leaving by. A mission in life worth living for. That is, to help one another and to help the responsibility part of our program to carry the message of AlcoholicsAnonymous. And that is a wonderful mission, isn't it? And then the third was to have a self worth living with. In order to do that, I had to get alcohol out of my life. I had an old Negro preacher one time who made the most powerful sermon I ever heard. I've quoted it millions of times, it seems to me. Of course, there are not quite that many, but being an alcoholic, I like to exaggerate. I've quote it quite a few times. He told me, and he was standing in the pulpit in a little neighborhood church down in Orlando. And he pointed his finger right at me and I was sitting outside in an automobile. But he could see me out there. I know he did because I talked to him later in the mirror in the ballroom. But that night he said, Can I say to you, brother, if you want good water, you've got to clean out your well. Because what's down in the well will come up in the bucket. And you know, it must have made a tremendous impression because later in life, the night I walked out of a ballroom, he was standing in the mirror pointing at me again in my hallucinations and I could see him then and he called me Mr. Bill and he said, I can see him now He said, and I say to you, Brother Bill, that if you want good water, you've got to clean out your well. So that night, that's another part of the story. But that was a part of my life. I'm kind of like the girl that had been Eric in her life. She hadn't been an honest, sweet, virgin-type girl that she was supposed to be. she'd been a little slipshod in her morals and the people in the neighborhood tried to help and they got her down to the church one evening she became filled with the spirit of the affair and she walked down to the altar and she asked for admission into the church and the People were so surprised and so delighted that this good sister she was a charming girl but a little loose morally out morally. And they had all hoped that someday she would straighten out. They came in and the preacher asked for a vote on her acceptance into the church, and he said this is baptism day, and they all voted to accept it. They carried her out behind the church to a little creek, and she'd never had any of this experience before, had never had a lesson in it, never been briefed on the subject. They carry her out and they started, the preacher waited out into the creek. She said, what you going to do? He said, we're going to take you out here and baptize her. Just follow me. Well, she had gone whole hog of nothing in this thing, and she walked out into the creek with him. And then he took his hand, one hand he put it behind her head and the other one over her face. She said, wait a minute, what are you going to do? He said, I'm going to duck you in this creek and wash away all the black sins of your life. She looked at him, she said, and that little old Shallow Creek? You know, there are times when we wonder about the Shallow Creek of Alcoholics Anonymous, whether or not it's deep enough. I say it is, and this crowd here tonight shows that it really is, that AA is deep enough to wash away and take take care of all of us. One of my boys here tonight dreamed one night that he was attending church and the preacher was exhorting to them and telling them that if they were good people they'd go to heaven when they died. And when they got to heaven they'd sprout wings and they could just fly and float like an eagle all over God's heaven and fly over this old earth and see all this old center down here below. and he said you'll enjoy it you know you'll sit on your laid on your back as a child and looked up into the heavens and seen birds flying around with their wings just spread with the wind and he says you can do that and just enjoy life after the service was over my old buddy went up to him and said preacher did you mean that thing by sprouting them wings he said yes I did boy he said well I got a problem preacher he says how am I going to get my shirt down over them wings He said, that ain't your problem. He said that ainít my problem. What is my problem? He said your problem is going to be getting your hat down over them horns. You know, we have a lot of these things. A lot of us in here tonight, and I know some of you are guilty. I know that from experience. Iíve been guilty. i haven't taken a drink since i walked into the first day a meeting but i've been guilty of having evil thoughts about it and i know some of you have had not only the thoughts but some of you have took a drink and you've adopted an attitude that a woman had in my office one day and this isn't an ugly thought it's a clean thought if you take it that way and i mean it this way. This lady came in and I knew her by reputation. She wasn't a nice lady. She was a married woman. She didn't know the boundary line between marriage, a pledge of affinity and loyalty to her husband. But anyway, she came into the office one day and she shut the door and tears were pouring from her eyes and her face was contorted with pain and suffering. And I said, my goodness, honey, sit down. What's the trouble? She said, girl, the most terrible thing in the world happened to me last night. I said what on earth was it? She said I caught my husband with another woman. I say sure enough. She said yes I did. I caught him in the car with her. I says well honey, ain't you been tiptoeing around with at him, son? But I, well, the other man? She said, yeah, but he didn't catch me. Now, how many of us have had the urge to take a little drink when we know it won't work? And you know, we try to rewrite the old good book as it's originally written there's only ten commandments and we try to write the eleventh commandment. Thou shalt not get caught Now, how many of us have tried to follow that old concept? We can take a little nip and not get caught. And how many have ever done it and didn't get caught? Every man I've known fell off the wagon, got caught in his own web of guilt, in his own conscience. And let me tell you something here now as I settle this little talk. Now, not an alcoholic in this crowd would have become an alcoholic if he had not or she had not had character enough for your conscience to hurt. Do you get what I mean? if you were not innately annoyed with enough decency and morality deep down in your heart and mind for your conscience to hurt you would never have become an alcoholic because that fear of guilt and that feeling of guilt is what drove you to take that drink the next morning it drove you back to hide behind the old body so you could face the world because you yourself knew of your wrongdoings yes that's what creates and makes and maintains the alcoholic these things we know about you know I was up in Milledgeville not too long ago talking I'll tell this and then I'll get into a part of my story won't tell much of my history tonight night. But I was up at Milledgeville in a therapy class. We'd go up pretty often. I used to go real often, about two, three, four nights a month on Wednesday nights. I went pretty regular for a long time, 10, 12 years. And I was out there one evening and I got on the elevator. And you know there's a little placard placed on every elevator where you can put notices on the wall of the elevator. On this one was a little sign written by one of the patients. And then I thought to to myself that this patient truly has more dedication and more intelligence than I. Why should they be here? You know what was written on that little pasteboard card? If you die on this elevator, press the up button. So I thought that patient had good sense. And And I went up and I made what I thought was a crackerjack good A.A. talk to those faces. Oh, I thought I laid it on the line. And they gave me a good hand, and after the meeting we walked out in the hall and about five or six, maybe eight or ten gathered up there in a little group at the elevator. And I started down there and they said, Judge, we want to talk to you a minute. I said, all right, boys and girls, what's on your mind? They said, we just want to tell you something. says, we like you more than we like any other man that comes up here. Oh, I said, I did make a good talk then. And you know, I kind of buttoned my coats so my shirt buttons wouldn't pop off. I kind straightened up and got a little straighter and swelled up a little bit and talked a little. Finally, I made a mistake. We all will. I said why do you like me more than you do anybody else? They said, because you're so much like us. And, you know, it kind of knocked me off my feet. You know, whenever we'd get our old balloon blowed up too tight, instead of busting, somebody would come along and ease a little needle in it and let it out, you see. And you'd come back down to earth, and then you'd be back to your own self again. But I thought about it later, and I realized then that I had been able to communicate with those papers. They had listened to what I had to say if they didn't hear anything but the jokes. Of course, I could hear the same jokes they'd tell one another and remind me of it four or five years later. They had carried on the tradition of those jokes right on. They were Judge Bill's jokes. You know, I wish to God they had been. I picked them up from some of you all. I don't know everything I've got for me. AA. I don't have anything that I didn't get out of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I found out something about AA. AA is the crossroad where alcoholism and sobriety meet. It's where force and love meet face to face. It'S where we either accept or reject the sober way of life. I started out in life rejecting sobrietry. Yes, I rejected it. Let me give you an an illustration. I was drunk one Saturday night in front of my office building. I fell flat on my face trying to get to my car. I had a quart of corn liquor in my hand, and I busted my head, but I didn't bust the liquor. I turned so my head had hit, but the liquor held up. I'd had two terrible experiences that way, and that was one of them. Two boys came by, picked me up and carried me home and put me to bed. It was on Saturday night. The next morning I had to get up, shave, dress, doctor that knot on my head up there, put enough powder on it to try to cover the bruise, and shave, go down and teach Sunday school. Yes, I was a member of the Jevenin board at my church. I was Sunday school teacher. I I had about 20, 25, 30 boys, 14 years old. And two of them had carried me home. That was a long, long time ago. And there they were sitting on the front seat. Those two boys had carried my home. I resigned, told them I was no longer worthy to be their teacher or their leader and asked their forgiveness. And I said, someday maybe I'll come back. But now I'm gone. And they said, wait, Mr. Bill, we love you. And that's the last time I heard that word for many years. They said, please stay and teach us and just dross the liquor. And I said, you don't understand. And they did. They understood that I chose alcohol in preference to them. And it hurt those boys. It hurt them deep. Yes, an alcoholic can perform some of those things. Oh, I went through hell on high water. I started out in the district attorney's office. I used to be called a solicitor general. I worked there eight years and drank two bosses out of a jar. The third man wouldn't hire me, and he died in office three or four years ago. And that was from 33 to 40. And I stayed in that office prosecuting people, Taking a drink of liquor just before I walked in the courtroom to make one of those great explosion speeches, you know, that would sway a jury thinking I was doing some good with it. Asking for a man's life or his liberty because of his past misconduct and I was guilty as hell myself of worse things than the man I was prosecuting. Yes, I did these things and all I had to do was to walk out of the office and suggest yes to somebody on the street that the district attorney didn't have any liquor and run out, stay gone 30 minutes and come back in and look under the desk and there was a case of it. And I accepted it. Yes, you've had suspicions of those things, haven't you? They happen. Yes, they do. They happen to people. Alcohol does not discriminate between the dumb ones and the smart. It simply works on them both until you can't tell them apart. And it worked on me, I'll tell you that. I met and married a beautiful young lady. Had a fine life for five years. The last four or five years was hell on earth for her and the heaven for me. She went to work and I quit working. Full-time liquor drinker. And I could get it. I could hold her. I didn't have to have a job. For nine and a half years I stayed drunk without working. Four and a half or five owed at her expense, and the balance owed to the general public, and I was a general nuisance. The people in my town became very disgusted with me. I left and went down to Orlando, embarrassed my sister-in-law to death by embarrassing her and a big crowd of ladies there. I won't go into those details. I bulldozed my way into the courtroom in the old courthouse in Dublin, blowed up the jury room with a gas stove in there and blowed all the windows in, even the case of myself. Tore the seat out of my britches and walked through town the next morning with nothing but me from here down to my knees. Now you've heard of alcoholics showing it? I learned a few of life. I learned that wet sand was hard. My brother was a mayor down in Bradenton, Florida. And I went down to see him, and I got drunk. That's the only time in my life I ever wore a top hat and tails. And patent levels. I walked out, or I wrote his speech, a presentation to give Miss America the key to the city. And he didn't give it to her as quick as I thought he ought to. So I walk out on the floor and take that lovely lady by the hand and hold up this hat, you know. Stop the music! music. They stopped, and the spotlight swung. I reached over and got the beautiful key, and I made a good presentation speech. I did that all right. Then I said, Strike up the band! And they did, and I grabbed this beautiful girl, and we both hit the floor. Miss America! And those two gorillas down there, they called them bodyguards. Any one of them could have Joe Lewis, Joe Frazier, and about four more, just like them. Even Cassius Clay all throwed in with his talk. And they had a banister around the old pagoda. And they threw me over that banister. And I sit right on my posterior, not on that sand, and it was wet and tired. It had just gone out. That's the hardest lick I ever had in my life. But I had a beautiful red-headed waitress with me. And she came around, and we crawled up under the corner of that place, and we drank a pint of four of those. And we discussed the cruelty of the human race. And the next morning my brother said, Son, don't you reckon you could make it better if you went back to Georgia? I said, Maybe I could, and so I would. Those things happened to me. The boys and girls that were in school with me, married and went off into the different fields of endeavor trades, occupations and I walked down the streets in my hometown after my wife and I separated and the girls would take their children by the hand and walk way off around the curb to keep them walking too close to the man that was meeting them on the street The men that had been welcome in any home in downtown town were now not welcome in the common pleasantries of the day I didn't have anywhere to go. I drifted from the hotels to sleep in the flop houses, from the flophouses to the hobo jungles. I had walk racks all under those big warehouses down there where I got my bald head. Opened up down there one night and I struck a match and it was about five of them looking at me just like that you know. And I come out and there were two by or twelve that held a warehouse up, I never missed one of them as I went out. I skinned every hair on my head. You know, it's a funny thing. I fought. I fell down one night and I looked up into the heavens. It was raining that night. Blood was all over and what little hair I had was matted up there in blood. I looked up into heaven and I said, God, what in the hell have I ever done to you to deserve this kind of treatment? ashamed of it yes I am but proud of one thing even in my drunken stupor I recognized that there was a God even then in the utter despair and disregard for human love and kindness and of God's love I cursed him later on I questioned him later on I begged him. And when that kind of a prayer left my lips, I found help. I won't go into all the details. The gradual disintegration of a man in position down to a hobo, bumming drinks. I'd ask you to buy me a meal and you'd give me 50 cents or a dollar and tell me to get one. You knew darn well I wasn't going to buy a meal. I wasn' t going to waste 50 scent on hamburgers that might kill the effects of the drink of liquor I just had. I was going to stay drunk if I could and I bought liquor. You know, I found out a lot of things about life. It was rough and people are cruel sometimes. I came back from Orlando and I think it was about the first day of January right after Christmas in 1949 I got off of the bus and I walked around the street with the only clothes I had I didn't have a change of clothes I lost my little suitcase that my brother in Orlando had given somewhere I got in jail three times between Orlando and Dublin trying to get home that's a separate story it takes a long time to tell that part but I got there and I went uptown to the courthouse just one block up to the court house and I tried to raise the price of bread. And I couldn't get it. No, Bill, you put the bite on us too much. We can't handle this. I said, fellas, but I'm home now. I want to get sober and I want to go back to work. I can make it if I can just get a meal or two and a place to sleep for a night or two, I can makes it. I'll hang out at Shingle and I can maketh live. No, we can't trust you any further. I don't blame those people but that was the attitude they took. Look, I went to businessmen. I went to the church farm, my great Methodist church, and I asked the same men I served on the board with. I asked some of the kids I had taught in that long. They were grown now. Can't do it. I asked the business men around town to buy me a meal to just go pay for the meal and tell the lady or whoever was interested to feed him and don't give him any money or say that's just give him food if he wants it. No, they wouldn't do do that. At four o'clock that afternoon I walked into the 20th century. You know what that was. That sounds too good not to be a bother. I walked in and I opened the old screen door and I heard a shout, lookie on, the old Bill's come home. I'd been gone three months. That was January 10, 1949. They said, come in, brother, and have a drink. I said, boys, maybe I'd better not take the drink. That thing was hitting me pretty heavy. I couldn't even raise the price of a breakfast. And there it was, four o'clock in the afternoon. And I had walked those streets over. Not on Skid Row, not where I had lived so long, but downtown. The people had been brought up, raised up with. And I couldn't get it. And there they wanted to buy me all these things. Finally, I said, well, one meal won't hurt. So I drank a beer and I drank another. And then we drank a little wine and a little shine and a littler red liquor. Finally they said, Bill, where are you eating supper? I said hell, I ain't had breakfast yet. So they said come on. We went across the street and they bought me a steak supper. And they And they said, Bill, where are you staying? I said, I haven't got a room. They said, well, come. Here's five bucks. Go get you a bed upstairs in the same, right underneath the old hotel. Say, you can get a bed for a dollar and a quarter. Go around there and register. I said I can't register. They won't let me. He said, why can't you register? You got the money. It don't cost but a dollar a quarter? I said yeah, but you see I've been there before. And we got drunk. And we sang. And we fought. And then when the money gave out, I'd walk down the halls at night. The old-fashioned hotel. And they had trance rooms over every door. And as I walked down the hall, I finally found a room I didn't hear any noise in. I knocked. Nobody answered. I pulled up to the trance room and looked in. No suitcase. Bed's all clean, made up fresh. Pushed the trancemote and go in and go to bed. They caught you. You had a bed at the city hall. If it didn't catch you, you had a nice clean bed. Get a bath the next morning and leave for the meeting. come out. And I did it many, many times. And I knew I couldn't register to get in there. So they said, well, we'll fix that. Surely the difference between sober people and alcoholics, they go around and register and say, let me keep the five dollars. They pay for their room and bring me the key and say get up any time you get ready. Well, I already had those two or three drinks and so I figured I was pretty smart. The best thing for me to do was sell that key to somebody, buy me a pint of wine with that dollar for it, if I could get a dollar or quarter for it. And have my five dollars tomorrow morning when I woke up, because I was going to sleep in the woods anyhow, where I used to be. I'd go right around, find the man with the dollar bill and sell him the key. Bought a pint out of an Italian Swiss colony sherry wine. Then Then I go down to the warehouse, lay up on the loading platform, freezing January 10th now. Cold as blue billy. And it started sprinkling rain. Didn't make any difference. I slept there that night. Woke up the next morning, somebody shaking me. And I tried to bend my leg. I couldn't bend it. I had to break the ice in the pants leg. And I wasn't worried a damn bit about that. It was refreshing. I was worried about what happened to that other half pint of that sherry wine I had. And I thought them boys done stole it and I started giving them the devil. And they said, we ain't bothered, we got a drink if you need one. And they had a half gallon of shiny liquor so I took a drink with me. And then for ninety days and ninety nights I didn't sleep in the bed. Only bath I got was where I stole soap out of the toilets downtown town and filling stations in the bar room and the depot. And I go to a flowing well between town and the river. I take off all my clothes, I wash half of them. I couldn't build a fire. It was in January, February, March until the 10th day of April. And I'd get a bath by once a week like that. I'd take off half my clothes and wash them then put them back on when they dried and hang up the other half and I washed them and wash myself a little bit. And I found out that you don't smell like poop cake even after that part of the bath. I didn't have any, any intensified tide or life buoy or, or any right guard or anything like that. I just had to take it all natural. I'd come back to town the next day and I'd pass them same girls with them children there. Mmm! You know they had an awful sour look And I imagine I had a sour smell. But I went on, and incidentally, fellas, let me tell you something. Don't ever try to shave with a Gillette razor with lava soap. Don't never try it. It won't work. It won' do a thing but give you a good grip to the blade in there, and it'll swing off. I don't care if you try to pull it back up. It won''t go either way. You got to pull out. And I learned down in Orlando one little thing I wanted to give you, a fundamental principle too. I hid my liquor outside of the wonder that night and I reached down to get it and I couldn't reach it so I hung my feet in the wonder cell and let myself down and I got the fifth of the liquor I broke the cap because I knew I couldn' t go in the house with it and I tried to take a drink and I learned a great secret you know Archimedes and those boys they found some great scientific theories I found the basic fact you can' t drink liquor upside down you can't do it I tried But I wasted two big mouthfuls of good old poros. Finally, I got a big mouthfull, climbed back in, and then swallowed it. But those things happened. And finally, one afternoon late, the afternoon of April 10th, 1949, I was sitting there. Oh, I'd been chased by all my dealers. I'd be tied in bed. They didn't have the decency or the dignity of a straitjacket. They'd tie you with one wrist over here and one over there and one foot down there and one other there and stretch out as tight as you could do it. Because when the DTs hit you and the contortions and the convulsions hit, they were afraid you'd hurt yourself. And they didn't care whether you hurt yourself or not. They didn't want you hurting them. That was the main trouble. And I wasn't man enough to hurt anybody, but they didn' t know that. I could talk pretty big. So I got really scars on those lovely legs and hands now. Now, I had them quite a few times. I wasn't as bad as Charlie Lindenwood was. Charlie said, somebody asked him if he ever had the DTs. He said, boy, I heard them when they first come out. I wasn' t right that bad, but I wasn''t living that long. But anyway, this night I was sitting there talking and this little black preacher got back in the mirror and he and I had a conversation. My friend bought me a pint of lefty and he poured half of it in a beer mug. And he said it and pushed it to me and said, here boy, take a drink. I said, I can't drink that stuff. I'm out of this world right now. You've got to forgive me for a few minutes. He said, all right. He said I'm going to drink this half and then you go home with me and you're going to get something to eat. You're goingto get a bath and clean up and I'm gonna give you some clean clothes to wear and I'll have your doctor see you tomorrow. heart. I said, man, you really fool with me. I ain't going home with you. Your wife won't even let you go home drinking. He said, yeah, but she'll let me come home drunk even if you go with her. I says, what in the hell are you talking about? He says, Bill, you saved our home. You was drunk, but you represented my wife and I. And we were losing our home and you drew a petition, filed it and tried it and won it and don't even know it and he said I've never paid you and I don't have much money now but I can look after you and you need it and you know that was the first expression of brotherly love that I had had in 15 years if it wasn't I hadn't heard anything like that for nine and a half years of absolute out of this worldism with alcohol alcohol. And I said, I can't do it. He said, well, here, take a drink. I said well, let's wait. I went back to the bathroom and I turned the water on in the little lavatory in the bar room there that had a pool room in the back. Three tables there. Turned the water on and stuck my hands into the lavatory and somebody had been sick there. And it took me five minutes to wash my hands in to get them clean enough to wash their face. Finally I got my face washed and it turned out, I went to look out and I didn't see anything. I said somebody has turned off the lights. I reached up, felt the light go and it was hot. I reached over and I felt the mirror and I could feel it but I couldn't see it. I opened the bathroom door and I heard pool balls, like sex balls in the side pocket. and I didn't see anybody and I know they don't play pool in the dark and I said my God I've gone blind I rushed back and felt my way into the bathroom and I turned that cold water on again and I swished that cold weather into my face and finally I pried my eyes open and I could see and what I saw I didn' t like my God what a man I didn''t like him I cussed him. I low-rated him. I told him just what he was and what I thought of him. Finally, I staggered out of there, and I walked up into the ballroom, and I pushed that drink of liquor back, and I said, I'm not going to drink it. Nobody said a word except the liquor. The liquor said, oh, yeah, you're going to drank me, because if you don't, you just visualize what's going to happen to you. You're NDTs, and you know it now. Now, and if you drink me, your nerves will settle down. He said, look at your hand, my. And I was trembling all hurried. I was a tremendous heavy man. I weighed 111 pounds, 6 foot 2 inches tall. I don't weigh but 80 pounds more than that tonight. But I stood there and I looked at that thing and he said, now, you can drink me. And if you must die tonight, you go out in the alley or wherever you find your bed dead, and you lay down and die, you will die comfortable if you drink me. But if you don't drink me and you go out in the alley or to the hotel or wherever you go and you lay down, and the snakes begin to crawl and the ants and the fleas and the bugs and the spiders and the roaches and the lizards begin to crawl in your eyes, nose, mouth, ears and all, and And you start screaming for help. Don't fall on me, because here I am now and you can accept me. Stop all that. And you will die in horror and in terror and in physical pain. But drink me and all that will go away. And if you die, you'll be comfortable. And that began to make sense to old Bill White. Started over to pick up that glass to take one little drink, just one little smidgen. And about that time the hand of Almighty God appeared on the scene. The God that I had cursed, criticized, disgusted, and then asked for forgiveness sent three men into that barroom door. A barber, a painter, and a carpenter. Those three men, Bill, Ed, Casey, see. They didn't come tell me what to do. They didn't even suggest how to do anything. They said, Come Bill and let's go together. Let's walk through life from this day forward. Come be one of us. Don't do this or thus but just walk with us. I walked out of that bar room on the night of April 10, 1949 and by the grace of an almighty and loving God I haven't had a drink since that night 24 years and a few days i got my 24th chip last month oh yes in april it was a wonderful experience the man sitting on my right on the front over there next to the front row was there he has shared with me the wonderful pleasure and privilege of god's love through these years. And it's just been a wonderful life. Now that's so much for my alcoholism. From that day forward, things began to go in the right path. Oh, don't get me wrong now that I didn't sit in my office for many a day and have belly cramps because I was hungry. I sit in an office and you know how I got that office? I went to the man that owned the building and told him I got to have an office. he said alright don't get so upset about it I was upset, I was nervous I knew he was going to tell me no let's go to hell he didn't tell me that he said go up and pick you out one I said done got it picked out got another lawyer to punch in it he done told me I could use part of it he had a desk and a rug and that rug smelt like a wet dog on a damp day when it rained but it was a rug had a disc in it had one chair I saw some old broke-down chairs out in the hall, and I got that cotton to. And we fixed up some of those chairs and I rented an office. Yes, I sat in that office, them four walls with a roof over it, many a day, and go across the halls to the bathroom and get a cup of water to kind of ease the pains of hunger. And when late in the afternoon come and I hadn't made anything, I'd go to one of the boys and they ate, and they fixed me up for supper and me a full belly so I could sleep that night. I'd go to the hotel, that same hotel where the people had refused to allow me to run and tell them I haven't got any money this week. You want me to move? No. When you get some come and pay us. We're not worried about it anymore Bill. My landlord never done me in his life. Those things work out that way. I don't owe him anything thank God. He lived in there a long time. I stayed in that office 19 years. It was a wonderful experience. I didn't have anything he gave me when he had no opportunity or chance to get back what he gave him. Things began to turn. They took me to the city hall and got a job where I paid money in every week, $5 there on Monday morning for 130 cases in the city mall in my hometown. Started back out and they said, Bill, you can't make it in Dublin. You've got two strikes on you and the best pitch in the league is pitching. and you're already not too striking. I said, well, I might strike out but you tell him to throw it in the duck because I'm old swank. I must have dribbled out of infield yet because I got on base. But anyhow, it worked. AA works, folks. It really works. I didn't have intelligence enough to accept AA as a principle of life. I accepted it as a savior. I was hungry and they fed me I was naked and they clothed me I was shelterless and they gave me a home I was without love, friendship or understanding And they gave Me all three They gave Me above all The undying friendship and ability To have gratitude in My heart One morning after the second morning and I was up there. This lady comes in and brings a dish of groceries. There was a plate of steaming hot grits and I were still sick on my stomach. And the steaming hot gruts and eggs scrambled and bacon and toast and coffee and I tried to reach over and get some of it and I slung grits from the top of my head down to my lap. Some of you know what I mean. She said, wait a minute Bill and she reached and I'd reach over the screen and I would get some of that and I got that steam off them groceries and I'm working Well, the job I had to hold back. And she says, yeah. And she spoon-fed me every mouthful of food on that plate. I would have given you odds of $100 to one penny that I couldn't eat a mouthful. And yet I ate it all. She washed and rinsed the little plates out, put them back in the sack she got them from, started out. I said, honey, why do you do this for me? She looked me straight in the eye and said, because I love you. Somebody said they loved old Bill White, that drunken bum. And I had done everything in the book to get a drink of liquor. Do you name it? I'd done it twice or more. She says, come here and let me show you something. She opened the door and there was her husband and four or five boys, men, NAA, out in the hall working on the old rough floor out in in the hall and getting it smooth so that I wouldn't trip and fall when I shuffled out to look out the window. And she says, come here boys, Bill wants to know why we do these things for him. And they said, hell boy, we love you. We want you to amount to something in God's world. Not in the world of alcoholism. No, they didn't mean that. They wanted me just to be a sober alcoholic. I couldn't get that through my head. I tried to think, what do they want out of me? And then when I took a little inventory of what I had, I didn't wonder what they wanted out of Me any longer, but I lacked $5,000 of having a nickel. And it was a tremendous thing to me. I walked out of that place. I couldn'T go downstairs for six weeks. any of y'all ever been stoned so long? You go to look to one side, your eyes flap. You go to look up and they'll flop up. They'll flap down. And I'd start down them steps with my eyes. I'd try to look down to see where the steps were, and I couldn't see nothing but my belly button. That's all I could see. And I couldn t look out there. Your eyes won't turn, you know, like this. They'd flip. And And I stayed up there to keep from falling down stairs. And those boys brought food to me. Yeah, and they came up every night of the week. We had an AA meeting. They made me chairman of the group there for a while. For six months I had to talk every Monday night or get somebody to talk. But I didn't know nobody except the boys in the group. And I'd call on them. I'd say, Harold, how about talking a minute? He said, well, 24 hours to do it. That's all I've got to say. Called on another one. He said easy dungy. And that's all I've gotta say. But hell, I had 45 minutes left out of that hour to talk. And I talked about diamond mining in South Africa. I talked about the Constitution of the United States, the unwritten Constitution of England and everything you can think of. Of course, I didn't know nothing about alcoholic synonymous. I couldn't read a book that wouldn't stay still. Still, I couldn't do the things that others did. Finally they got me the job. People showed concern and love for me. Time passed and I didn't get rich in a hurry. I'm still on my first step up the ladder of richness. I got a good job. I got respect. Those people... I went on tax work. I went to every house in my hometown and every place of business And believe it or not, not the first door was shut in my face. The town drunkard, they wore me down, a young man who had been so promising in his career in the law profession and who had gone to the bottomless pits of hell itself, walked up to the doors and knocked and said, said, how are you, Mr. White? Or Bill? Or Mr. Bill? What can I do for you? And I'd ask the most embarrassing questions. Who owns this house? Who owns the furniture? Who owns the car park out there? I had to find out. That was my job. And nobody, they laughed at me sometimes. And they all moved to me. It wasn't none of my business, but none of them ever told me that. I went on one old lady's porch and she said, Bill, sit sit down. Then I realized I'd played the dickens. I had took some money from her, and I didn't think I'd ever done the job to work for her. Found out later I had, but I didn't know it right then. And she said, wait a minute. She went back, and I was wet with sweat. I'd had a little khaki suit on, pants and shirt. That's all the change I had. But I'd wash it, you know, all along. Every now and then I had to wash it. And And that thing was plumped, wet, spots all over it with perspiration had run all over me. She said, wait a minute. She went back and I heard a chip in the ice, you know, and the next thing I know she came out with a pitcher of lemonade. And she didn't cut a slice. She cut a slab of lemon cheese cake, big old layer cake, like four big layers. Covered a half a plate. She brought it out there, turned it on a little paper napkin, and I spread the napkin so carefully across my lap. and I ate that cake and I drank that lemonade and I was going bread-dogging house to house and I got to talking with her what I was doing and she said well I'll help you she says in this house right over here on the left-hand side going east she told me who lived in every house who owned the furniture who owned the car every house on that block on both sides of the street then she went up this way and this way this way and thisway thisway and thisaway and she told me which men was going with whose wives. Everything down there, and you know I made a whole day there in an hour. I had enough work to turn into the city, you know, and they said, Bill, you had a good day today, hadn't you? I said, sure have. And I found some good leads, but I didn't have the pencil and paper at that time that would write down the women's names and telephone the number. But anyhow, you know, I was kind of like the boy that walked in the courtroom not too long ago and the judge asked him, he said, Boy, do you ever work? He said, Yes sir, Judge, I work. He said when you work, where do you work? Oh, Judge I work here and there. He said well when you worked and you worked here and that, what do you do? He said oh, I do this and that. Judge said well wait a minute now, when do you go to church? When do you say you do this or that? He said, oh, Judge, I worked nine then. Judge said, Sheriff, take him out and put him in the cooler a while. Sheriff started out with me, old boy, hard as I said. Judge said when did I get out? Judge said sooner or later. We have to be evasive sometimes in our job. Oh, it might have been like the old boy that went to the doctor and he said, Doctor, I'm sick. I want you to examine me. The doctor examined him thoroughly. And he says, how about it, doctor? He said, well, boy, you're going to need an operation. He said no, no, anything but an operation, doctor. Give me a prescription, put me in the hospital, do anything you want to, but I ain't having no operation. The doctor said, why, have you had an operation before? He said I sure have. He said what for? He said $300. The doctor says no,no, what did you have? He says $250. He said oh, no doctor, the doctor said no no, I don't mean that. He said if what was your complaint? He said the bill was too darn high. So you see, we have evasive things. We alcoholics know how to do these things. You know what? I ran for an office and the folks gave it to me. And can you imagine what office and what I ran for? And I had to run against the powers, political powers in the county. And Bill White didn't get elected. Surprised he did. Yeah, that's what died. Oh, I took by storm. I got a few votes more than the other fellow did. That's by storm, you see. And it was prosecuting drugs. Four years later, I ran for re-election and without opposition. I got it. I stayed in there eight years and I sent three to the chain gang and I got them out in less than two weeks after they went in. I couldn't stand the idea. Then I decided that they needed a judge in that court, so I ran for that and I was elected. And I still ain't sent no boy, no alcoholic to the public work camp. And I wouldn't today if I had the same job. I don't think they belong there. I think they're sick people. I think you belong to be treated, not soft-soaked, federated with any human treatment. Four years later, I ran for circuit court judge. And I got elected. So Friday, got elected, I didn't have anything to do with him. I ain't smart enough to be judge. But I'm a judge. Four years later, I ran without opposition. The first time in the history of our county that I was certain that a judge ran without opposition. And sobriety walked right back in. And I got it now. It's a wonderful feeling. It makes you stop and wonder what did God see in me? Without God's help, I could never have achieved any part of it. By myself, I'm a drunk bum, a nobody, or no good human being. And that brings a question. Does that drunk alcoholic, a creation of God himself and in his image, deserve Christian moral rehabilitation? I think he does. I'm sure I did. and I thank Almighty God in Alcoholics Anonymous and nothing else. Oh, I went back to church. I went to Sunday school. One Sunday they asked me to teach and I said, what age? They said, 14-year-old, and I'll take it. I walked in there and I studied for a month before I went there that Sunday to teach. I was loaded up. I was going to give the greatest Sunday school lesson ever been taught in the history of our country. And I walked into it and guess who sat on the front seat? The son and the daughter of the two boys that carried me home drunk. And you know where my speech went? Right under that lump in my throat. And I couldn't get it out. And the tears poured from my eyes and ran down my cheeks. Unashamedly, I cried. And the little girl and the little boy knew because their daddies had told them about Mr. Bill. And they said, Mr. Bill, our daddies say you are a wonderful man now that you have accepted them instead of liquor, that you've accepted a sober way of life and our daddys love you too. One of them from the doctor, one of those two boys, and the other one is my florist. He lives one block from me today. Those two men are the men that had a great part in the transfiguration of this old boy. What I was had to die in order for decency and morality and sobriety to live. There had to be a rebirth, a regeneration of a human being in order For that cross to survive. life. There had to be something done and it had to been done in a hurry to get this old boy safe on the road home. And you know one of the first things I learned we sow an act and we reap a hazard. We sow a habit and we leap a character. We sow a character and we reap our destiny. We might like what we reap or we We might not like what we read. But regardless of whether you like it or you don't, it's a heap easier to accept with sobriety than it is with drunkenness. Sobriety won't give you all the things in life. It won't remove all the ugly hardships of life. But it will make you able to withstand them and able to figure out a way to live through what you've got to do. I found these things out. Not in a darn book, I learned it from life itself. And I found that people are the finest things in the world. Those same people that refused to let me have the price of a breakfast that morning, one group of them since that time loaned me $14,500 for one clip. Yeah? Well, I'm worth more in debts now than I ever made my life for that soon. they can't afford for me to get drunk it wouldn't do we'd bankrupt Lawrence County getting drunk it just wouldn't work you know one of the first things I've heard in AA I'm not the man I want to be I'm nicht der Mann I ought to be but by the grace of God I'm NOT the man I used to be and thank God for that thank God and alcoholics are not I found out some things in life that I want to pass on to you hurriedly. I know it's time for me to hush and go. You take a man or a woman, where you find them, and from there help them. You don't seek the plateau that you think you're on. You find people and take them from there. whether it be the gutter or one step out on the highest pinnacle of success if they are alcoholics you can't tell them if you can' t smell them you take a person from where you find him and from there help him that has been my philosophy of life AA is not a philosophy of light it is a relationship with almighty God A.A. furnishes a motive power from on high to me to reach out and to help. And instead of pointing the finger of scorn and criticism and condemnation at my brothers in A.E. and in alcoholics or who are alcoholics, I always want to extend the hand of friendship and fellowship and tell them as those three men told me that night to come. Walk with me. That was the secret of it all. Come, walk with me." Folks, I tell you, I could talk from now until eternity without and never get through praising the love I have for Alcoholics Anonymous and for your doctor, Ben. The man who told me one time, told a part of his story, I was in Jordan Town, a county of mine, the first time I met him. Many years B.A., before alcoholism in his life, and it was A.A. with me after alcoholism. He told me, he said, Bill, I marvel at the miracle that you boys do, but I don't need it. I can take a drink. he had a big blank Cadillac a beautiful brunette wife and the biggest darn dog I ever saw in my life sitting in that Cadillach to be sure I didn't get any and then later old Ben what a guy I love him with all my heart because he brought me closer to the realization that there but for the grace of God am I I could tell you some hair-raising experiences since I've been in church with alcoholics some things that make me shudder and scare me to death and sometimes I'll come up and share those with you and if I if you, if you young people in AA if you want to find out what lies ahead in life for you you ask somebody that's coming back from up that road you ask some of these AA members us. Your life, your future is spotless as of this moment. Yes it is. What you do with it is up to you. And this old trite saying, today is the first day for the balance of your life. Let that forever remain in your mind. None of these things are original with with me, but I carry them as part of my message to you to try hard and to keep going. And people will say, well, how do you folks work with this thing? The doctor in Milledgeville asked me, he said, Bill, how did you get that man to stand up and talk? And I've had him for eight years and he wouldn't open our mouth. And all you had to do was call on him and he got up and talked for 45 minutes. You had to ask him to stop. I said, Doctor, have Have you ever been wallowed and drunk, disowned by your family, thrown aside by society, disarmed by decent people? And no. I said, well, Doc, how are you going to give away something you ain't got? You can't do it any more than you can come back from where you ain'T been. He said, Well, Bill, I'll tell you what. Well, I don't know anything about AA. But whatever it is, for God's sake, keep it up here in this institution because you've done more tonight. Eight years later, I went back and I saw that man sitting out there and it broke my heart. And I didn't have to talk that night. I introduced him to people. I walked over and sat down by him after the meeting and he busted out laughing and said, Yeah, during your time you thought I got drunk, didn't you? I said, It sure did and it broken my heart, didn' you? I had to ask him. He said, hell no, I brought my brother to hear Bill White talk. And you know how cheap I felt. I wanted to crawl under them seats and go out in the back door because it was a part of my life. You know, there are a lot of things here I could talk about. Hour after hour after hour. When I got through with those, I got some more than the other part. Just little experiences and thoughts about AA. I won't even pull them out and show you. I'm not lying about it. I have a lot of stuff there. It's wonderful. You know, people drag the outsiders, the people who may be alcoholics but not admitted alcoholics, the people qui live on the outer world from us, oftentimes mistake what they see. and they dispute the miracle of Jesus Christ and say this man cannot be saved he's gone too far he's got a wet brain he's grown over the hill into insanity he can't be helped thousands of them no doubt said it about old Bill White they dispute the miracle of Jesus himself that man can die and be born again and again And the issue that the Master had to face in Pilate's story. And false and love meet face to face. And the question, what shall I do with the alcoholic, must be raised. And they who do not know or do not understand echo the answer that was echoed 1,900 years ago, that they be crucified. They do not knows and do not understands. day. Thank God that they do, are beginning to learn through the wonderful fellowship of AA. They can't be too stupid that they can't learn that look at this crowd of people here tonight who are seeking sobriety and some are finding it and going out into their walkways of life and when they find it and they walk up with their heads held high that is carrying a message brothers and sisters and it's getting over to the the American public, and they love it once they learn it. We are, after all, our brother's keepers in America. Learn that better lesson once and for all. You know, I was in court one day. I heard a federal court judge make a statement to a jury as he discharged the jury, turned the man loose. He said, I want to tell you all this, that this man is not guilty. Not by reason of intoxication, not by reason of insanity, but by a basic fundamental principle of morality and decency. And he said, a principle that is as wide as the universe as high and principled as the heavens as deep as eternity and as well settled as the salvation of almighty God and I thought to myself there is the principles of alcoholics and non-alcoholics they are as high as the heaven as wide as the university and as deep as eternity and they are based upon the salvation of almighty god thank you so much for letting me talk to you