From Hagerstown, MD – Part 1 – Jack C.

I met Jack first at my very first ILAA convention in, I believe, in Los Angeles, California in 1983. And I've known him ever since and seen him almost all of the ones that we've had. He's got a story that's going to knock your socks off. He's a gentle soul. He and I are the class of 1982 or 83, and he'll tell you all about his story. He is a former either Superior or Circuit Court judge in his years as a lawyer. He is also the, was it one time, the Attorney General for the Republic of Palau, which is a small island nation in the South Pacific, I believe. Big island. Big island, yes. And he will beguile you with his exit strategy from that particular job. But anyways, my absolute great pleasure to introduce my good friend and I'm sure to be your good friend, Jack. Thanks, John. Well, good evening, everyone. My name is Jack Quarterman, and I am an alcoholic. I come to you from Hagerstown, Maryland. I am a member of the cleverly named Hagerstown group of Alcoholics Anonymous we are the third oldest group in the state of Maryland last year we celebrated our 60th anniversary and I claim no credit for that I mean, I like you I'm here because of the action of others and we stand on the shoulders of giants but we didn't know that this thing was going to catch on. Otherwise, we'd have named ourselves the Golden Slippers or the Strange Camels or some such. So I'm just from the Hagerstown Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am a member in good standing of that group. By that I mean that I have a sponsor. My sponsor has a sponsor I sponsor people and I have a service position in our group. I'm currently the GSR and I love Alcoholics Anonymous. At the outset, I would ask you if you've got a cell phone or anything that makes noise, if you wouldn't mind putting it on vibrate. That way you can enjoy your incoming call and you won't disturb the rest of us. If you're expecting a liver transplant, then by all means put it on ring and we'll help get you to the hospital. I have my big book with me. I had asked Jim O'Rourke when he invited me to come to ask you to bring your big books with you. I don't see a lot of big books in hand. I certainly hope that you've got them somewhere. Scott told me earlier this evening that he figured he wouldn't need his tonight. Way too much thinking, Scott and I suspect that the rest of you have been doing the same thinking. Anybody got a big book besides Scott? Okay, there we go. No, right here, right now. It isn't going to do you any good in a room. Having a big book in your room is not going to be any good in this room. Well, you'll probably survive this evening without a big book, but I really, if you forgot yours and left it home, buy one from Terry because this is where the program of recovery is and that's what we're here to talk about. We're talking about the life-saving program, a God-given, God-inspired program that saves lives and it's between the covers of this book. I am not a spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous, nor am I an expert on AlcoholicsAnonymous. I'm just a guy who's been invited here to bore you to tears for the next three days. I think it's important that you know who invited me because if I do bore you the tears or is more likely if I say something offends you in the next three days. I was invited by Mike Sweeney. And as you look around the room, you'll notice he's not here. Now he told me he would be here because I told him I wasn't going to come if he wasn't going to be here. Because the last time he invited me to Oregon, he didn't show up either. So Sweenney is the one to blame for all of this. Now if I happen to say something that you agree with, Well, that's terrific, and I love those attaboys, so see me after the meeting. But on the very first page of this book, Alcoholics Anonymous, I think there is the greatest promise of this books. I know many of us in our meetings talk about the promises that are in the big book associated with Step 9, but they're kind of weenie promises when you get right down to it. I mean, they're okay for step nine. But this promise, I think, is the promise beyond that exceeds all promises. The story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism. You know, this is a great promise. It's contained within the covers of this book. And it's worth our consideration. it's my understanding that the program says next to my name it says AA history or some such and I guess that's supposed to be my history and so we'll try to tell you in a general way what I used to be like what happened and what I'm like now my dad was an alcoholic Mary picked me up at the airport when I came in and we had lunch and we were talking a little bit about our backgrounds my mom is 91 years old she's living right now with my sister in Jacksonville so I'll be going to get her shortly to bring her back to Hagerstown but I spoke to her earlier this evening right after dinner but before I came up here and she is really baffled as to why I get invited to do this stuff because she tells me I'm not alcoholic my father's alcoholic she's married to him for 30 years she knows what an alcoholic is and she tells me I'm a alcoholic she tells me I should start listening to my mom you know she thinks it's about time because I may have overreacted to the whole thing. I mean, there are some things in my background that cause me to have problems or questions myself or maybe so much as there are things that are not in my back. There's a lot of things in the background like I've never been to prison and I've ever been to jail and I'm never been arrested. I've never gotten a DWI or DUI or alcohol related driving offense I've never lost a job because of my drinking if I don't screw this thing up come August my wife and I are going to be married 41 years yeah and you might want to give her a chip for that before this is all over after you hear my side of the story actually what you're going to hear is she's been married for 40 some years I've had momentary lapses along the way which we'll get in touch upon in a little bit so I don't have any multiple marriages I don'T have any children born out of wedlock I DON'T even have a tattoo so you may be asking yourself why did Sweeney invite this guy what am I doing here and we'll see if we can explain that away I'm going to put a watch down here not because I necessarily can see it or I pay any attention to it but just think it gives hope to the newcomer and I know we got I know a couple folks here they're in their first year of sobriety and I think it's encouraging to maybe think that I might end at any minute But my dad, he was a decent guy. The longer I've been Alcoholics Anonymous and I meet people who knew him, I come to see my whole perception of my father changes. and primarily it's because my perception of myself changes and the perception of the world that I grew up in changes. And my dad was alcoholic and for those of you who grew up with alcoholic parents, you know the insanity of that. One time, I think I was 14, my father and I were home alone. My mom and my younger sister, my only sister, my only sibling, she and my mom were out. And Dad and I were engaged in a period of what I would call a periodof intense fellowship. He wanted me to do something that I didn't want to do. And believe it or not, even at age 14, I was somewhat stubborn and hard-headed. And so we were having this intense discussion about what it was he wanted me to do. And finally, in exasperation, he said, Look, son, there must be something that you want me to doing. And if you'll do this thing that I want you to do, then I'll do whatever it is you want me to go and I said, I'll make that deal. I'll Do that. He said, What is it that you Want me to Do, Son? and I said, I'd like you to stop drinking. And he said, well, he said it, your mom has been after me to stop drinking and it's really been causing problems in our marriage and my dad owned a clothing store and he said things down at the store are a little rough and probably my drinking has interfered with that and I know your sister wants me to stop drinking, so all right, I'll do it. I'll stop drinking. Well, I had been praying that my dad would stop drinking because I had fervently asked God to please help my dad. So when he told me that he would do this thing, This was an answer to prayer as far as I was concerned. And when my mom and my sister came home that evening, I met them at the front door and I told them our problems are solved. Dad and I have had a discussion and he has agreed that he's going to stop drinking and joy reigns supreme in our house that night because my mom too had been praying that my dad would stop drinking and my sisters had been crying. and I thought this is wonderful God does answer prayers the next day my dad got drunk and that was the day I closed the door on God because I didn't want to have anything to do with a God that would play fast and loose with the prayers of a 14 year old boy and 11 year old girl I didnít know what was wrong with me I didn't know what was wrong with our family. I didn'T know what WAS wrong with OUR prayers, but certainly SOMETHING HAD to be wrong that GOD would play such a cruel hoax upon US. And I DIDN'T want to have anything to do with a GOD like THAT. And so I determined that if I was ever going to BE anything in this world, if I WAS ever going TO DO anything in THIS world, if I Was ever going To ACCOMPLISH anything in This world, then I WAS going TO do it ON MY OWN. and me, myself, and I on my own. There was a, back about that time there was a fellow that was a popular rock and roll singer named Fats Domino and he had a song that didn't get a lot of play in terms of selling a lot of records but it was a song that resonated with me the song was called I'm Gonna Be a Wheel Someday I'm going to be somebody. And that's what I set out to do. It wasn't very long after that that I was introduced to beverage alcohol for the first time. And my guess is that alcohol did for me probably a lot of what it did for you. Now, I've heard a lot people talk about their first drinks and first drinking experiences. They are many and varied, as we are many and varied, but quite frequently other people have had experiences such as mine in that it removed inhibitions that I had. It kind of made me feel normal like I thought other people felt. It allowed me to fit in and to do things which as a 15-year-old boy I wasn't able to do. You know, it was the elixir of life. I was sorry that my dad was having so much trouble with this thing. It's too bad he couldn't control his drinking like I could. But clearly, I mean, this makes life a lot easier. As I look back on it, I could have probably used a drink in kindergarten. But the fact remains that when I found alcohol, I wanted alcohol again. I chased that feeling that sense of belonging that fitting in kind of thing and I chased it for a long time and it's the kind of thing that when you're 15 years old you can't drink as often as you can when you are older but certainly the thought of alcohol, the planning of getting alcohol, maybe we won't be able to get it this weekend but maybe next weekend and who is going to get and how much are we going to get and what happens if we run out and what are we gonna do there was a lot of stuff that went into it but it was all worth it so I drank as much as I could as often as I Could whenever I Could I'd like to tell you that alcohol drinking didn't cause me any difficulty growing up I didn't remember it causing me any difficulty growing up But once I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I recalled that I actually spent five years in high school. And I would like to tell you it's because I wanted to get a solid academic background before I launched out into the world. But in truth, it was because of my drinking that I spent five hours in high schools. Five years in a high school? In fact, one of the teachers who saved my ass back when I was a fifth-year senior in high school, just passed away a couple weeks ago. And I didn't know he was still alive, and I was amazed to learn that he'd just recently passed away. But I was having a good time. A series of bad breaks and misunderstandings, I think, led to that five years in high School. But when I got out, I went to the community college, and while I was in the community college, another good friend of mine was in the community college. We did a lot of drinking together and one summer it was determined that you know we needed to take a road trip. We needed to do something. I was working at a drugstore that summer and I quit my job and I had an old car and Bill and I decided we were going to drive to California and so we got 12 cases of beer and put them in the back of my car and we each packed an overnight bag. We had everything you needed to drive from Maryland to California and the night before we were to leave, the night bevor we were to leave his father said he couldn't go. I was crushed. Crushed. Well I'm not driving to California by myself. That's for sure. So what's a guy to do? You know, I've got a pocket full of money. I quit my job. I've Got 12 cases of beer in the back of my car. Some of you are probably familiar with the state of Maryland. We've got A little sliver of land. Our easternmost border of the state Of Maryland borders the Atlantic Ocean. We have a resort community there called Ocean City. So I drove down to Ocean City, and I spent a month in Ocean City living effectively as a bum. I had some friends who worked in hotels, and they let me sleep in the basement for free. And I had Some friends that worked in restaurants, and I'd go by there in the evening, and I'd eat leftover restaurant food. and so I didn't have to pay for room or board. I had 12 cases of beer to drink and a pocket full of money to buy beer with when that beer ran out. I enjoyed Ocean City so much that I decided that I wanted to work in Ocean City the following summer but I'm a pretty keen observer of my surroundings and in that month that I was in Ocean City I saw that it really didn't make any difference if you were a lifeguard or a waiter or a waitress or a bartender or a beach boy it didn't take any difference if you drank like I drank and acted like I acted sometimes over the course of a summer there was a real good chance you were going to get arrested and I didn't want to get arrested and I observed that there was a group of people working in Ocean City who were not getting arrested and these were the members of the Ocean City Police Force. So the following year, I became an Ocean City police officer. Now, I was a beat patrolman. They assigned me a boardwalk beat between 8th Street and 10th Street. The Beach Club was on my beat which was the most popular night spot in Ocean city at that time. very active place, and I'd been maybe walking my beat for about 10 days when it became real apparent that I possess a singularly unique trait that is very valuable to a police officer. And that is I could spot an underage drinker from 100 yards away. And I would approach these underage drunkers and I would engage them in conversation and determine, indeed, they were underage. And I would ask them what did they have in the cooler. And they would tell me that they had Coca-Cola and tuna fish and a loaf of bread. And I'd say, well, could I see you in the cooker? They'd say sure. And they'd open the lid and there was the Coca-cola all lined up in neat rows and, indeed., there was a container of tuna fish and a small loaf ofbread. and then I would reach way down in the bottom of that cooler and I would come up with the Budweiser. And when that happened, their lives changed immediately because they were now in serious trouble with the law. Now you may have been planning on going to college but you're not going to collage, you're going to jail. If you were thinking about going into the military, you can forget about that because the military doesn't want anything to do with jailbirds. We're taking you to jail. At 3 o'clock in the morning, I'm going to call your parents and I'm gonna tell them that you're in the Ocean City Jail and they gotta come down here to bail you out. Oh, you wanna offer an alternative perhaps? What might that be? Confiscate the beer. Well, that's certainly worthy of consideration, but you understand that if I take the beer, I'm going to have to take the cooler, and if I takethe cooler, I'm gonna have totake the Coca-Cola and the tuna fish. That's okay with you. Well, in that case, then I'm gonnahave to write your name in my official Ocean City police log. And don't you ever, ever do this again. You're free to go. Now it's hard to walk a boardwalk beat dragging a cooler full of beer around behind you. So I had to get the assistance of my lieutenant and my sergeant. And they agreed. They came. They would come with their squad car. And they would pick up the coolers as I accumulated them. and the deal was at the end of the shift, I would give them, if I got any whiskey or wine, I'd give it to them and I'd take the coolers and the beer. And I had a great summer. I didn't buy anything to drink the whole summer I was there. I drank every day. I didn'T get arrested. And that was my definition of a great Summer. And had you been an acquaintance of mine and you had come down to Ocean City and you were in need of a cooler, I'm your guy. I got a no-return policy. You know, you can have any size or shape that I got on my back porch, no problem. I enjoyed myself so much that summer I went back for a second summer. Now the second summer they gave me a squad car. And with a squad card, you could really expand your territory. It was one of those big old Ford Crown Victorias. And you can get like three or four bodies in the trunk of one of those things, or six coolers anyway. And so I really didn't need my sergeant or my lieutenant anymore, other than the fact that they kept close watch on me. And whenever my radio went silent, they knew that I was up to something and they would meet me at the end of the shift and I'd give them the whiskey and the wine and I kept the beer in the coolers. I drank every day, didn't buy anything to drink that summer. Didn't get arrested. I had a good summer. So I went back for a third summer. And again, I had squad car. And I'm going to tell you about an event that occurred that changed the course of my life. And maybe some of you have had one of these events happen in your life. I don't know. But I never saw it, really, for what it was until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. But I was working the midnight to 8 shift and it was about 3 o'clock in the morning and I stopped a car on a beach highway for drunk driving. The operator of the car was obviously drunk. I had him out of the care. I was writing up the ticket. I had his license and registration, and he said to me, you don't know who I am, do you, officer? I said, no, I don't. He said, well, I am the state's attorney for Worcester County, the county you're standing in right now. Well, I'm a college kid. I have no idea what a state's authority is. I've got no idea of what they do. So I told the guy, well good for you. Sign the ticket. So he signed the ticket, and there was a fellow in the car who did not appear to be drunk, and so I let him drive away. End of my shift, I pulled into the parking lot of the Houston City Police Department, and there Was the chief of police. And as I exited my squad car, he said, Quarterman, he said come up to my office and bring that uniform citation book with you. I said good okay yes sir and these were the first words that the chief had spoken to me all summer I thought I'm going to get some recognition here for a job well done. Long overdue recognition I might add and so I went up to his office and as I walked into the office there seated on the couch right inside the door was the guy that I gave the ticket to at 3 o'clock in the morning. The chief says, give me that book. I gave it to him. He flips it open to the ticket, hands the ticket to the guy on the couch. The guy reaches into his pocket, pulls out a pen, and writes across the face of that ticket, case dismissed, and signs his name. And it was at that minute that moment, that I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. And if I could be one of those state's attorneys, I definitely wanted to become one of them. Because if you drank and drove like I drank and drove, the ability to dismiss traffic charges with a stroke of a pen was going to come in mighty handy. So I went to law school. And as many of you know, there are smart people in law school. I wasn't one of them, and so law school interfered a bit with my drinking. I slowed it down some. When I graduated law school, I'd gotten married while in law school and my wife and I returned to Hagerstown. Hagerestown is where I was born and raised. I've lived there most of my life. Went to practice law with a firm there. Hadn't been doing this for about six weeks and I found out that they had a vacancy for an assistant state's attorney over at the courthouse. So I went right over. Hello, here I am. Answer to your prayers. When do you want me to start work? Now what I'm about to tell you is what I thought I heard them say. And I don't know if you've experienced this in your life or not, but I have come to realize that many things which I thought had been said to me were never said. I hear things that are not said.I also see things that don't exist or never were. My sister points this out to me frequently when we're talking about things or events that happened in our home where she and I were both witnesses to the same event. And I tell her what I saw or heard and she tells me, Jack, that didn't happen. It didn't happen that way nobody said that well i heard what i heard and so this is what i heard from the state's attorney for washington county what are you some kind of an idiot you just got out of law school you've never tried a case you've never picked a jury you've ever examined or cross-examined a witness you know nothing. We don't have time to train you. Get out of the office. That's what I thought I heard them say. Now upon reflection, I believe what they said in truth was, the position has been filled. But I heard what I heard and I was hurt. Also I was angered. And now I know having been an Alcoholics Anonymous that what I really left that courthouse with on that day was a resentment and in Hagerstown just like I guess here in Oregon we elect our state's attorneys so I went and found a guy who wanted to be state's attorney, I ran his campaign for state's attorney, he got elected state's attorney and he made me deputy state's attorney yeah, this is a good thing I found out when I got into that office that we had a serious deficiency. We didn't have any badges. So we had to design a badge, a very fine badge. And with the badge comes a badge case. And when you have a badge face, you have it clear glassy and thing. You put your driver's license in. And so when they pull you over and they ask to see your license and registration, you know, you exhibit the badge case, badge is up here, license is down there. They don't want to see your license. What kind of badge is that? Oh, the badge? Deputy State's Attorney, Washington County. Oh, no, officer. No, thank you very much. I only have a couple more miles to go, really. Sure, yeah, I can hold it down. Yeah, yeah. I'll be careful. Listen, no offense. I understand you're just doing your job, really? Thank you so much. I appreciate the professional courtesy. And you have a nice evening, too, also, officer. Thank you so much. Now, a couple of you may be getting some insight into why I don't have any drunk driving convictions in my past. But it gets better. Our community is a small community, and at that time we had two circuit court judges, and one of those judges retired. and so my boss, the state's attorney applied to be considered for the position and the governor had agreed to appoint my boss circuit court judge and that was going to be a good thing because if he got to be circuit court judge I was going to get to be state's attorney. Now I don't know nice badge John give those to judges do they? So my boss getting appointed judge would be a good thing. I get to be state's attorney, but I don't know how it is in Oregon, but sometimes in Maryland the state senator sticks his nose in where it doesn't belong and he screws everything up, and that's what happened in this case. Somebody else got appointed judge, and I didn't get appointed state's attornian. I was upset. Not so much that my friend, the state's attorney, didn't get to be judge. I mean, I was disappointed for him. But really, quite frankly, the thing that upset me the most was I didn't yet to be state's attorny. And I was offended and hurt. And I now know, of course, that what I really had was a huge resentment over this whole thing. So one night while having some adult beverages with some like-minded individuals, It was determined that somebody ought to show that state senator that you just can't go around doing this stuff. Somebody ought to teach him a lesson. Somebody oughtto run against him. So I ran for the state senate, and I didn't know the state senator was going to leave his wife and children and run off with the secretary from the Appropriations Committee and move to Florida, but he did. And I got elected state senator. now in Maryland when you get elected state senator they give you a license plate and that license plate says state senator now this is an aid to efficient law enforcement because when they come up behind you on the interstate and they got those overheads going and they get close enough to see that license plate, they turn those overheads off they comeup alongside of you They turn that interior dome light on, and they toot. Beep, beep. Hi, Senator. Hi, Trooper. Hold it down, Senator? Okay, Troopher. And that way, you don't have the Maryland State Police tied up with a bunch of members of the legislature on the side of the highway when they could be out dealing with real crime. I'd like to tell you a little bit about my legislative career but we have in Annapolis our state capital what you probably have in your state capitals a group of people whose sole purpose and being is to see to it that any member of the general assembly who desires to have a drink can get a drink at any time of the day or night. These people are called lobbyists, and I have a number of lobbyist friends. So anything that I were to tell you about my legislative experience would be purely rumor and hearsay. And I don't like either. So I just let it go and say I had a good time in the legislature. And that guy that got appointed circuit court judge, He did it for a few years, and he didn't like it. So he quit. I went over and saw the governor. I said, I'm a state senator. Why don't you appoint my guy circuit court judge, the state's attorney? The governor said he was the same governor in the dust-up before. He said, no, I am still smarting from all that adverse publicity was generated from that last appointment up in Hagerstown, so I'm not going to appoint your guy a circuit court judge. However, if you'd like to be a circuit court judge, I'll appoint you. Well, it's a 15-year term in Maryland and like I said, we only have two in Haggerstown so I became a circuit court judge and they don't give you a license plate and they don'T give you a badge when you're a circuit court judge, but I think they probably circulate your picture. I want you to know that during my tenure as a circuit court judge that Alcoholics Anonymous in my community enjoyed a tremendous growth spurt because my father was alcoholic. I knew what to do with alcoholics. I knew how to deal with people like you. So the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous were being populated under my leadership with a number of new recruits. And I tried to be cooperative with our bar. I'll give you an example of one of my, an example of my cooperation. They were doing a continuing legal education program on the prosecution and defense of drunk driving. and prosecutors were there, defense bar representatives were there. Sergeant Long was there with his breathalyzer and he needed a volunteer to drink the beer. Somebody who was fair-minded, impartial, unbiased. So I volunteered and they brought out a container with six beers in it all iced down and they put it down on the table next to the breathalyzer and I asked the guy from the hotel, what's that? He said, that's the beer for tonight's program. And I said, you do understand that this is a two-hour program and you've only brought out six beers? He said well we've got plenty more in the back. I said you better ice it down and bring it out now because I'm not drinking any warm beer. And so he brought out some more all iced down and the deal was that they began to program and I began to drink, and every 15 minutes I'd blow into the breathalyzer. And you know how you kind of start out at like a .04 or .05 and bump it on up to a .08 and then maybe up to an .11, .15, and then a .19 and a .23 and .26 and .29 and .33, and that's when they called upon me to put on my part of the program, which I am told was quite good under the circumstances. And after the program was over and Sergeant Long was packing up his breathalyzer, I asked the guy who had brought me, you know, who was the program chair. I said, who's going to take me home? He said, well, what do you mean? I said I just blew a .33 in Sergeant Long's breathalyzer. I can't go out and get in my car. He said we never thought about that. I said all right, I'll tell you what I'll do. I said i'll go in the hotel bar, and when Sergeant Long is gone, you come get me. So I went in the bar, and I had a couple drinks. And a guy came in and said the sergeant was gone. So I left that hotel and went down to the Broad Axe, which is one of my favorite watering holes. Had a couple of drinks down there. And then I went over to another bar in our town called The Cellar Door, and I got a couple drunks there. And then, uh, then I was gone for a while. Then I went home. And that was just an evening of social drinking for the judge. and I'm drinking alcoholically and I don't have a clue you know and anybody coming around telling me that I need to stop what I'm doing or that I'm making a fool out of myself or I'm embarrassing people all of which I was doing but nobody's going to bell the cat when you only got two circuit court judges, nobody wants to risk their legal career by coming by to confront the judge. So one night, an attorney and I were going out to dinner. That was our stated purpose. Actually, Irv and I had determined that what we were really going to do is we were going to go to dinner and we were gone out to get drunk. And you know sometimes you get drunk accidentally? This wasn't one of those times. We were going out to get knee-walking, snot-flying drunk. That's what we were going to do. And we did. We did. And we ended up in a cocktail lounge in Hagerstown, which was frequently by most of the recently separated, divorced, and single women of our community. And we just stopped in for a nightcap. and you know I loved drinking I loved everything about drinking I like top shelf I like bottom shelf I like domestic I like imported I love stemware love the glasses that go with drinking, the ambiance of it all those tall thin frosted Tom Collins glasses, those little short highball glasses. My drink of choice was Jack Daniels Black Label and Crushed Ice with a Twist. I mean that was to die for. I mean it was just marvelous. But the stemware for the martini glass, the fluted martini, I really had, I was very fond of the gin martini. But I do have to tell you I I had a really bad gin experience. And even to this day, it's hard for me to go into a pine forest. But if you came up to me with a brown paper bag and thrust it out to me and said, here, take a pull on this, I wouldn't ask you what's in that bag because you wouldn't have offered it to me if it wasn't good. And I'd take a pulled on it. Man, that's good stuff, you know? You know, sometimes you have people over at the house. You play poker or you have a barbecue or whatever. You're cleaning up afterwards and you're going around picking stuff up and cleaning up. And this one's got a little something in it. What was that? Cigarette butt. Yeah, I thought there were some cigarette butt drinkers in here. My people. I loved everything about it Loved it I didn't know that this was going to be my last drink So I didn'T know that I was going To be invited to Portland to tell you all about this You know trust me If I had known I would have ordered something else Because as I stand before you tonight It is with some degree of trepidation and embarrassment that I tell you that my last drink of beverage alcohol was Tia Maria. How do you think I feel? It's embarrassing. I know there are people in this room who don't. What the hell is Tia Marie? Believe me, you don't want to know. You don't wanna know. Now, in my own defense, however, I will say that it must have come from a tainted bottle. And the reason I know that it was probably a tainting bottle is because on the way home, I got sick to my stomach. And that's not part of my drinking experience. Now getting sick to, I understand getting sick to my stomach is part of drinking. I understand that because like if I'm down at the broadaxe shooting pool or playing shuffleboard or whatever on a, you know, on a drinking down there and it gets to be 10 or 11 o'clock and I'm getting a little full, just go out back behind a dumpster and throw up. And you come back in and keep on drinking. I mean, that's part of drinkin'. I understand dat. Or like Saturday morning after a hard Friday night, You know, and I'm kneeling next to that porcelain altar that so many of us have in our homes. Have any of you found anything quite like the feeling of cool porcelaine on a fevered brow while kneeling? There's just nothing like it. Whew. Well, anyway, I got drunk. I mean, I get sick driving home. So it had to be a tainted bottle. My wife is a school teacher. She teaches elementary school. And my guess is that here in Oregon, elementary school children are just as disease and germ-ridden as they are in Maryland. and they bring all these germs into the school and then my wife, the teacher, she gets the germs and she brings them home. And so the next morning I got up. I had flu. I'd gotten the flu. My wife brought flu home from school and I got it. Unbelievable. Well, I went to work that day because we go to work if we can get there. We show up. and tried a case that day, but I'm running a fever. I got home that night and took to my bed, and the next day was Good Friday, and I was developing or did develop the upset stomach that frequently comes with flu, and on Saturday, I developed that lower tract distress that you frequently get with flu. and if you've got upset stomach combined with lower tract distress I mean that will hone your decision making down to a fine edge it really will and I didn't know whether to kneel or sit or sit or kneel and at some juncture over that weekend my wife tells me I made the wrong decision but and if she were here you could talk to her about that but I'm going to go forward and on Easter Sunday I was feeling a little better but on Monday, because of all that kneeling and sitting that I'd been doing, I was real dehydrated, and so they admitted me to the Washington County Hospital. And that night my abdomen became distended, and so They performed an emergency laparotomy on me. When they opened up my abdomen, they found that it was full of peritonitis or gangrene. And while they were trying to clean that up, they determined that my liver function was out of whack and my pancreas was digesting itself and my kidneys quit and my respiratory system shut down so things weren't looking very good for the home team that day and at that time I was the youngest circuit court judge in the state of Maryland and so my being in a hospital rated a mention in the newspaper You know, judge admitted to hospital. And a couple days later it said judge has flu. And then a little while after that it said judge condition worsens. Now they did get me off the respirator but they couldn't get my kidneys started and my pancreas continued to digest itself and my liver was continuing to be out of whack. And so then they put judge on critical list and so I was becoming a public relations embarrassment for the Washington County Hospital because it would not be good to have a judge go in with flu and die. So they determined to send me to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Now, I was encouraged by this because I knew people who had gone to Johns Hawkins, and they'd lived. And I knew People would go into the Washington County Hospital, and they died. So this was a good thing, I thought, going to Hopkins. Well, they told my wife. They didn't tell me. They told my wife that, in point of fact, they were sending me to Hopkins to die. And they didn't know what else to do for me or to me, but maybe Hopkins could think of something. So I went to Hopkins, and I was three weeks in intensive care in Hagerstown. For two weeks at Hopkins, they did everything but hang me by my thumbs. And my belly button birthday is May the 14th. and on May the 13th, these two learned physicians who, one was the head of gastroenterology at Hopkins and the other was head of the kidney department, world-famous guys, big-shot doctors. They came in to see me, and before they could get a word out of their mouths, I thought, guys, I said, I just can't take it anymore. Can't take any more. You've got to give me a day of rest. Tomorrow's my birthday. you got to give me a day of rest I can't take it and they said well judge that's why we're here we can't figure out what's wrong with you we presented your case to the internal medicine department here at Hopkins we cannot get a majority vote as to what's right with you. We don't know of anything else that we can possibly do for you and so yeah we came to tell you that we're not going to do anything more to you and we'll just see what happens. And so on May the 14th, I turned 40 in the Johns Hopkins Hospital. And two weeks after that, on May the 28th, I was discharged from the Johns Hopkins Hospital my pancreas stopped digesting itself my liver functions began to normalize and my kidneys restarted. Now when you're in a hospital for seven weeks like that and they're going to discharge you i mean they like to talk to you about the do's and don'ts so that you don't come back but if you've got an undiagnosed illness they really don't have a lot to talk about and what they told me was is we suggest you don'T get it again because if you do it's likely to kill you whatever it is that you had DON'T GET IT AGAIN well i maintained then, I maintain now it's much better to survive an undiagnosed illness than to die of a known cause. And I mean, I think that's a good thing. So as I was, I mean I was just getting out of my chair to walk out of their office and the one doctor said to me, can we just ask you one more question, Judge? And I said, well certainly. He said, do you drink? Where that come from? I beg your pardon? Do I drink? Well, I'm a lawyer. I mean, well, I am a judge now but I was a lawyer and when I was lawyer I had to drink with clients, I had to drink other lawyers, I have to drink judges. And now that I'm a judge, I don't have any clients to drink with but I drink with other lawyers and I drink with other judges. I means it's a professional obligation. Why do you ask? Well, how much do you drink? Well, not very much. What's your point? Well, we would like for you to not drink for a while because alcohol really does a number on your kidneys and your kidney function is just recently normalized and we'd just like to give your kidneys a rest. And needless to say, alcohol just does a normal number on your pancreas and your pancreates to stop digesting itself and we would love for you not to drink for a while so your pancreas can recover, and not the least of which, of course, your liver, which is coming back to normal, and alcohol just does a number on your liver. Well, how long do you want me to not drink? Important question. They said a year. A year? A year! well I haven't had a drink since April the 7th this is May 28th I think okay I can agree to that and they said no no no judge you don't understand this is Memorial Day weekend we want you to not drink from June the 1st now I think there are people in this room who have already discerned the the injustice that these doctors were trying to perpetuate upon me i was getting no credit for my seven weeks of continuous sobriety and i want you to know that i fought for those seven weeks and an argument broke out between these two learned physicians and this knuckle-headed judge over this seven-week period of sobriety. And we entered into a compromise, and the compromise was that I would not drink until next April 7th, and then if I thought the pain, suffering, and misery that I had experienced was in any way related to drinking, that I Would Not Drink Until the First of June. And so I walked out of the Johns Hopkins Hospital on May 28, 1982, into the most insane period of my life. Not drinking and not changing anything. now I should say that when I talk to people who are not alcoholic and mention to them the fight over those seven weeks of continuous sobriety they don't laugh they look at me like I'm crazy and of course I am crazy that's one of the reasons I've been invited here this weekend is because I'm crazy the fact that you're here listening to me calls into question your sanity when I was drinking my wife and I were separated three times and there were women involved and when I stopped drinking my wife and I were separated three times and there where women involved I think that's pretty clear evidence that drinking had nothing to do with those six separations but alcoholism had everything to do with all six of those separations and we didn't know I didn't know you know it says in a doctor's opinion that when the alcoholic stops drinking, that he becomes restless, irritable and discontent. And I can tell you that that is an understatement in my case. I became pissed off in the spring-loaded position. I was a little bit on edge. The thing about not drinking and not changing is that my inability to adjust to my perception of reality becomes so uncomfortable and so unpleasant that I only have one of two solutions. One is I can return to drinking, which is slow suicide, or I can drive into a bridge abutment or shoot myself or jump out of a window fast suicide. Our book says those are the only choices for people like me. Our sheriff had shot himself to death in the basement of the courthouse in 1974. My office was on the top floor of the court house and I had determined that if I shot myself to death in my office that that would give symmetry to the building. a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but I didn't understand that. So my life was just unbelievable, unbelievably out of control. And as I said, my wife and I separated three times when I was not drinking I got a girlfriend, and I got a backup girlfriend just in case the girlfriend finds out what I'm really like. Got to have a fallback girlfriend. Had a girlfriend for special occasions. My wife objected to these girlfriends, and not surprisingly, my girlfriends objected to each other and to my wife. And I was managing all of this quite well. And if you're looking for a delusional thought, there's an example of a delUSional thought. A lie that I told myself, which I believe to be true and took action on it. So I had two friends who were active members of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bob and Ken. Bob ran the treatment program at our hospital. Ken was a lawyer that I had hired when he came out of law school I was a good lawyer but I hired him primarily because he drank like I drank and he and I tried cases together and we did a lot of drinking together and we enjoyed what we did and when I became a circuit court judge and Ken didn't have my leadership his drinking got out of control and he became an alcoholic And he ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous. Terrible thing. My dad, on July 3rd, 1968, was walking by a Methodist church in Hagerstown and the pastor had put on the board outside, don't buy a fifth on the third for the fourth. my dad went to Alcoholics Anonymous that night July the 3rd 1968 and never drank again and he died with 15 years of continuous sobriety in this wonderful program in 1983 and I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Alcoholic Anonymous for my father's life Alcoholics Anonymous gave back to my father all that was important in his life that he had lost Now, he had lost his 30-year marriage to my mother. He had lost His relationship with my sister. When she got married, I gave her away because she was afraid that He would come and be drunk. He did come, and He was drunk. He lost His Relationship with me. He lost that business that He had spent most of His life building, that menswear store that He owned. Filed for bankruptcy and then lost it all. But more importantly, he lost his dignity. He lost his self-respect. He lost His self-esteem. And Alcoholics Anonymous made him a man of integrity and gave him back his self worth and his self respect and self esteem. And so when Ken ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous, my father was his first sponsor. But Ken had a problem with the He was okay on the don't drink at meetings thing, but he had a little bit of a problem with the drinking between meetings thing. And my dad had a book that said, you know, if you're working with somebody that doesn't want what you're trying to give them, then go work with somebody else. So my father fired Ken as a sponsor, and Ken continued his drinking for a while. Then he got another sponsor, and then he got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. So here are Ken and Bob watching me die of untreated alcoholism. And so they came to me. Bob said, you know, we've got this book called Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe you'd like to read it and find out about your dad's illness. Pretty clever guy, that Bob. Because I think you know and I know if he had come to me and said, Jack, we'd like you to read this book so you can find out what's wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with me, okay? I'm not drinking. I haven't been drinking for a long time now. And the longer I do not drink is proof positive I'm nicht alkoholisch. Because everybody knows alcoholics drink. I'm niet trinken. Therefore, by definition, I'm kein alkoholoch. I might be a little edgy, okay, I might be just a little bit prickly, all right? But, you know, why don't you just mind your own damn business? Because, you Know, this is my life, okay? You mind your Own darn life, all Right? Leave me the hell alone, all All right? I'm fine. I'm just fine. But a book about my dad's illness, I'd be interested in that. So I read that book that he gave me. And my dad's in there. Not surprisingly, he's in there. And he should be in there, he is alcoholic. But the thing I didn't count on is I'm in there I didn' t count on that. You know that thing I told you at the beginning about closing the door on God there is a place in that big book it says many of us at an early age closed the door on God. I thought I was the only one. It's in this book. Book's written in 1939, before I was born. How'd they know this? And there's stuff in there about Bill going over, you know, going into a bar, not intending to drink, and then pounding on the bar, whiskey rising to his head. He says, how did this happen to me? How many times did I go over to the Broad Axe? Leave the courthouse, go over the Broadaxe. I'm not going to have anything to drink. I'll be home by 5, honey, no later than 6. And then somebody offers to buy me a beer. I'll have just one, no more than two. And the next thing I know it's 7.30 or 8 o'clock. I can't go home now. They've already eaten. If I go home right now, I'm going to be late. If I don't go now, there's just going to been a big fight. You know, she's putting the kids to bed. I might as well just stay here until closing time. How many times did I do that? I'd like to say it only happened once or twice, but in reflection of the truth be told, it happened four or five times a week, week in and week out, month in and month out, until I had that visit to Johns Hopkins. It's in that book. How did they know that? Well, I was willing to concede to Ken and Bob that maybe, possibly, I might have a very mild case of alcoholism. Caught it just in time, just in Time. And Ken and Bob started coming to my chambers on every Friday at noon. They bring a brown bag lunch and their big book. and I had my big book and they would read with me part of the big book and then they would explain to me the importance of what we had read and then I would explain to them how Jack saw it and needless to say we had some very interesting dynamic academic intellectual discussions You know, God bless Ken and Bob. They were persistent and they were consistent. I mean, as I look back on it now, I look back on it now obviously Ken and Bob knew something that I didn't know and not only did they know something that I didn't know they also knew that I didn't know what it was that they knew that I didn't know, and they also knew that if I had known that they new something that I did not know that I would have been upset knowing that they know something that i didn't now that I don't know. But they as I say were persistent and consistent and they delivered to me the program of recovery of Alcoholics Anonymous because they knew the fact that I do not know did not mean that they didn't have to continue to try to teach me what it was that I I didn't know that they knew that I didn' t know because they knew that once I found out what it was that they new that I did know that when I knew what it wasn't a new that i didn't now that it wouldn't matter to me that I don't know it if you followed that you're in the right place and if you found it to be somewhat confusing is still in the red place It just means you don't know. That's all. Because I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know when you know that you know and not a moment before. And Ken and Bob wanted me to go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous but I'm not going to go in Hagerstown because remember I'm populating the rooms of Alcoholic Anonymous in Haggerstown. So what are we going to do? Well, we can go up to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. We can drive down to Martinsburg, West Virginia. We can go to Virginia. We can ride east to Frederick, Maryland to go to meetings. And that's what I did. and I would arrive at these meetings. Well, of course, first of all, I figured out what's going on here. And I figured that at least where I'm from in that area, they begin these meetings with the serenity prayer, and they end them with the Lord's Prayer. So I got pretty good. I could figure out when they were getting ready to do the Lord'S Prayer, and I'd just leave. Now, I found out, and some of you probably know this now, colleagues synonymous, not all meetings begin on time. So I would come late, figuring I'd missed the serenity prayer, but end up getting there just in time for the serentity prayer. So the only real thing of any value that I learned during this period of time of auditing Alcoholics Anonymous was the serendity prayer Now, we're having these brilliant academic discussions in my chambers on Fridays and I'm skipping in and out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in three states and as I reflect back upon it today I would tell you that what I had was what I would refer to as cake mix recovery and by that I mean that if we went to your local supermarket and got ourselves a box of Duncan Hines red velvet cake mix I can assure you that on the back of that package Duncan Hines has put a three-step program for the production of a red velvet cake. Now, if I had a box of that cake mix here this evening, I could read it to you, I could give it to one of you to read back to me, or we could pass it around the room and read it together. We could read them to each other. But I'm the kind of guy, having read the back of that box, I'm looking around for my red velvet kick. I haven't done a darn thing but read the box but I'm looking for my cake where's my cake and here I am skipping in and out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous I am reading the big book AlcoholicsAnonymous and I'm not getting anything out of this I'm getting nothing I'm as bad off now attending Alcoholics if not worse than I was then before I began attending Alcoholics Anonymous, not drinking and not changing. December 22nd, 1989, we could not have our Friday big book meeting in my chambers because the courthouse was closed. It was the weekend before Christmas, and the courithouse was close, and so Bob and Ken and I, we went out to lunch, had a nice lunch together. We went our separate ways. I'm separated from my wife yet again. Got an apartment, went back to my apartment, propped against my apartment door was a mailman that carried up three flights of steps, a Hickory Farms package, you know, HickORY Farms, those sausages that you only see at Christmas and cheese logs, that sort of thing. And I thought, well, this is a good thing. Somebody sent the judge a sausage. This is nice. And I'll have a little sausage and maybe a little cheese this afternoon. I had plans, had plans that night for my girlfriend and I, and plans for that weekend, had plants for Christmas Day, had plans for New Year's, had planes well into 1990. And I'm trying to get this box open, and I'm listening to messages off my answering machine. I got this box, and I see where it's sealed with some tape, and so I got my car keys out and slid that tape and then I'm listening to the answering machine and I lift the lid on the box and boom! And I got blown back against the wall. And a federal appellate judge in Birmingham, Alabama had been killed ten days before that by a package bomb that had been delivered to his house and a lawyer in Savannah, Georgia had been killed five days before that by a package bomb that had been delivered to his office and I could smell the gunpowder and I knew that I'd opened a bomb and there was a fire and I tried to put it out and I couldn't so I went out in the hall and pulled the fire alarm in the building and my neighbor came and said he had a fire extinguisher And I went back in my apartment and went past the area where the fire was and went to another telephone and went on to call 911. And when I went to press the buttons on the phone, I realized that part of my right hand had been blown away. And when finished that 911 call, it felt like somebody was pulling my trousers down off my hips. And I looked down on the floor. I was standing in a puddle of blood and it was just going like this. and I knew I had a real problem. My neighbor had put the fire out and he asked if there was anything else he could do and I asked him to get me a towel and he got me a tile and I opened my trousers. I did not have the courage to look to see where the wound was. I just put the towel where I thought the wound was and put my back against the wall and slid down on the floor it was pretty clear to me that I was dying and I was alone and I was afraid and I was powerless and I didn't know what to do like I said the only thing of value that I had obtained in those months of going to those attending those AA meetings was the serenity prayer so I prayed the serenety prayer and I asked God to grant me the serentity to accept this thing which I couldn't change encouraged to change what I could and wisdom to know the difference and I prayed that prayer and i prayed that prayer and iprayed that prayer andiprayedthatprayer i can't tell you if it was the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th time through that prayer but at some point in the process of doing that God came and I was overcome by a sense of well being and peace and comfort the likes of which I've never experienced before nor have I experienced it since I did not know if I was going to live or die on that floor that afternoon I did not know if I would ever see our three children again but what I knew with a great deal of certainty was it was going