Living Sober and the Peace of Mind That Spills Out – Tom O.

Hi y'all. My name is Tom. They call me Father because I haven't any children and I'm not married. As the nun who stumbled into the confessional box in the dark one night confessed that she got angry with her children and the priest said, how many children have you? And she said, 40. He said, get out of here. I knew you were drunk when you came in. My grandfather on my father's side was named O'Connor. I'm dressed like this because I'm a Catholic priest and some of us still dress like this. I was born in a remote village in the backwoods of New Brunswick in Canada. My father, who nearly starved to death on a rock-infested farm Moved into the United States when I was a wee small baby And I grew up in the original prohibition state of Maine We lived just around the corner from the home of Neil Dow The father of American Prohibition And even as small children we were taught to spit over his fence When we walked by his house I went to school in Massachusetts. I became an alcoholic in Dixie, Maryland and D.C. I got my sobriety in Michigan—M's have haunted my life—Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan. So I call myself a Canadian-born, Yankee-bred, Dixie-educated, Democrat alcoholic. I think I may have been born to be an alcoholic because it seems to me that there was everything present in my life except alcohol. I've never baked a cake, but I watch cakes being prepared for baking and I see people adding this and adding that and adding something else. But it's never a cake until you've added one more thing, whatever that is, baking powder or something. And I think that's what I was as an alcoholic. I had everything it took except the alcohol, and when I added the alcohol there I was. I think a lot of my drinking I did in the beginning for the sake of acceptance I wanted to be loved and I don't know this may have come from a very early traumatic experience possibly even the day I was born I was a third son I've never been a mother but I think if I were one and I already had two boys I'd pray for a girl. My mother was a very devout, pious Irish ancestor, Catholic woman and I'm sure she prayed for a good, uh, a girl and I came awfully close to being one. I can picture my father walking into the little log cabin in which I was born and looking at my mother and asking her what is it and he always liked girls better than boys anyway he married one and uh i know he wanted a girl and when my mother had to tell him another boy i can just hear what he said i can't repeat it and i can hear him walking out of the room downheartedly and i i may very well have understood it there is a theory that says even unborn children are capable of receiving impressions i've read some learned lectures on that subject that prenatal influences play a very large part in a person's life and i suspect that this may have been a kind of rejection that I sensed even then, and probably resented it. I spent the rest of my life looking for acceptance. I had two older brothers who didn't accept me. They were stronger than they inherited most of the virility, I think, and then this babe girl thing played its part. I know they wouldn't let me play with them. Couldn't keep up with them. I used to stand on the fringes of their games looking on wanting desperately to be allowed And not being allowed Remember one day we played with a yarn ball There may be some of you old enough to remember poor kids who played with yarn ball They're not satisfied with anything now except big league baseball, but we played the tight little rubber center wrapped tightly with yarn until it was proper size and then taped I I stole the ball one day when they wouldn't let me play ran home with it and made sure they weren't going to play with it either because I cut it all to pieces with my mother's scissors already my little resentments my alcoholic resentments were showing up in my childhood I remember falling desperately in love with my second grade school teacher she was new in the town where we lived a little town in Maine and a very pretty woman I was seven and she was 22 too, and I decided that she was going to be the woman in my life. But there was a little blonde, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed kid in the class, and she preferred him. And I can remember hating him with a hate that is immeasurable. Again, rejection by the first woman in my life then on and on and if I had known what alcoholism is and could have seen the signs of my developing alcoholism I might have read them but who of us did or could later on in an adult situation now I began to drink I was ordained a priest already before I began to drink. I had a pledge not to drink there was an archbishop in Baltimore where I studied who used to ask us to take a pledge, not to drinking intoxicating liquor for five years at least after ordination in those days seminarians were protected behind high walls and strict rules and sometimes this liberation that came with ordination was an intoxicating kind of medicine And to help a young man keep his balance in the world where he was trying to find his way, it was suggested that he abstain from alcoholic beverages. I took that pledge and broke it. Once again, in a situation calling, in which I was trying to be accepted. I was visiting for the first time with some, I thought, important people. they had saved a bottle of champagne for an extraordinary occasion I was declared the extraordinary occasion they opened the bottle and handed me a glass of it and I didn't care whatever it tasted because I wanted them to like me I wanted to be accepted in this calm circle in which I found myself and I thought that drinking their champagne was part of the price I had to pay to be let in so at the cost of my place I never give pledges anymore to people, I used to, in fact I wrote a very beautiful one myself. I had it mimeographed and used to give it to some of my students when I was teaching seminarians. I've heard it described as a very dutiful pledge. I never took it myself but it was too late then. you know a dangerous thing to give to drinking people particularly if they're devout pious irishmen because you see they do have consciences and you take a pious irishman who goes up to the priest's house to take the plague he takes it honestly again each time for life and uh if he breaks it well he's committed a serious sin he thinks and uh he's going to hell now for sure and there's nothing to do in that case except to get blind drunk again because if you're going to hell you may as well go drunk you won't feel any pain for the first three days and then the guilt piles up and he's got twice as much guilt now as he had before so he's much better off drinking without a pledge than drinking with one so i never give any drinking people pledges anymore, for at least not for more than two or three hours. And the two Irishmen were going up to the priest's house to take the pledge and one of them said, let's have one last drink, Mike, for old time's sake. And Mike said, sir, you're the God, you wouldn't want to go into the priest with a smell of booze on your breath, would you? Let's wait till we're coming back. This is the typical duration of the alcoholic's pledge, so please don't give my suffering brethren pledges. With the pledge broken, there wasn't too much reason for not drinking anymore, although I didn't start drinking immediately. I was thin, underweight, always have been, and somebody recommended that two bottles of beer going to bed would put 30 pounds on me in 30 days. i hated beer i didn't like the taste of it when i was a boy my father we were raised in prohibition time made home brew he was a poor man and he couldn't afford a lot of it so he and three neighbors used to pool their meager resources and bought the makings of a five gallon keg of beer and they'd sit down the cellar listening to it uh working uh and i can hear them yet Mike says to my father, Charlie, I suppose it's ready yet? And Charlie'd say, gosh, Mike, I don't know. Mike would say, well, let's tap it and see. Well, they tapped it, and of course it was never ready. I remember I was given a taste of it, green, unready, or unripened beer, and I thought to myself, if that's beer, I want no part of it. And I didn't. Even I started drinking all these two bottles of beer religiously we were going to bed every night with my eyes shut and making all kinds of faces over it at first and after 30 days I hadn't gained an ounce but I had gained a taste for beer I never lost it and if I never have another glass of beer in the rest of my life I have had more than my share then a university situation in which I was studying again a group of young priests together relaxing on the weekend over a bottle of whiskey and a game of cards I hope there are no Methodists here laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter in this same situation we used to have a rule when we started drinking and playing cards on a saturday night no classes the next day we could relax a little bit we adopted a rule which i think is a priceless rule i recommend it to all of you that nothing said after 11 o'clock at night was to be remembered or repeated at any rate uh i wanted to belong to this little group and in order to belong I took my turn buying the bottle which was shared between six or eight young healthy Americans uh fifth of whiskey couldn't do very much damage in that situation and uh then I noticed if I had been able to read the signs I could have seen something here I began to be dissatisfied with one bottle of beer for the I mean bottle of whiskey for the and when it came my turn to buy the bottle I started buying two one for them and one for me mine stayed on the closet shelf but it was there it was my comforter in times of distress and after a while at these parties there was always some fellow you know who'd have his drink and the host would get ready to pour another and look around everybody ready for another oh no Jack hasn't finished his yet. Why doesn't Jack stay home? What's he doing here anyway? He looks at it and plays games with it on the tabletop, does everything but drink it. One of the most annoying people God ever put on this earth. Well, my bottle on the closet shelf was the answer to that problem. I knew then that if Jack was coming, I could have three before I went to the party, and then if things went a little too slowly, I had enough to last me until I could get back to my bottle in the closet. Even then, though, it was possible to leave it on the shelf and drink only for a reason. We used to have a rule not to drink alone. I tried to keep that rule. But then as time went by, I was a fairly intelligent, fairly healthy, fairly well-educated young American. And it didn't seem to make very much sense to me if at 3 o'clock in the morning I wanted to drink. He said, get out of my bed and go across the hall and knock on one of my friends' doors and say, Jack, would you mind coming over to my room? I want a drink, and I don't want a drink alone. Well, it sounded kind of stupid, and so that rule went down the drain. Then I found more and more excuses for drinking. Coals were a good one. I used to have a lot of cold in Washington and Baltimore I haven't had a decent cold come to think of it since I quit drinking and then there were other excuses uh there were bereavements in the family uh there was always somebody dying in a large family and I had to comfort myself my father used to tell the story of a friend who called on a friend and the wife answered the door and And she said, well, Henry's not feeling very well. He's back in his room. Jack said, can I see him? She said, sure, go on back. So Henry was sitting on the edge of his bed with a jug of whiskey between his legs and crying. And as the friend came into the room, the jug went to his lips, and he took another swig and cried some more. The friend said, what's the trouble, Henry? You're my poor brother. And he took Another Swig out of the jug A friend said, What's with the brother? Did he die? My sympathies, Henry. I didn't even know you had a brother. Took another swig out of the jug. A friend says, When did he die, Henry? He said, Fourteen years ago. I can remember drinking for my great-grandmother's wedding anniversary. I never met my great grandmother. I didn't even know her name at that time, but things of that sort. The alcoholic, if I had known then, here is the alcoholic drinking, I got to have a reason. And just drinking because I like to drink is not enough reason to be an alcoholic. I remember the place I was sent to get help, there was a little Ukrainian priest from Canada, and he didn't speak English too well, and I used to interpret for him and write letters for him, and we became pretty good friends. And one day he said, Tom, if we go to these AA meetings and we hear people talk about this and that and they tell us how they hate the taste of the stuff and they make phrases when they drink it, he says, don't anybody in America drink because he likes it? I drink because I like it. Well, this isn't a good reason for drinking in alcoholic circles. And if you say that, you drink because you like it, There's something queer about you, really. I mean, you can't possibly... The alcoholic always had to cover up, and I was doing all of this kind of covering up. Then came the other signs that we all would recognize one by one. The drinking to belong suddenly changed. I didn't want to drink with other people now. And one of the sad things that happens in the life of the alcoholic, he has to begin to conceal how much he's drinking I couldn't afford the drink with other people because I didn't want them to see how much I was drinking I wouldn't want him to know that I had drunk or I was drinking before I went to their party and they stopped asking me after a while because I kept saying no I remember friend coming to my room saying we're having a little party tonight why don't you come over and I cooked up some kind of an excuse and he said well just remember you've been asked i'm not going to ask you anymore well uh he was cutting me off in that way i'd be too proud then to go back but uh i had to hide now because while i wasn't ready to admit it to myself secretly deep down inside i'm sure you all remember this uh we're beginning to worry about that then hiding the supply getting it first of all i lived on the west coast during world war two and out there whiskey was rationed we had to go to state stores to get it and they gave us ration cards i don't know if they had these back east or not but they had numbers on them every time you went to the whiskey liquor store to buy a bottle they'd punch one of these numbers out of the card and when the numbers were all used up you didn't get any more liquor until The next card was issued six months later. I can remember. I still hate to see a conductor punch a hole Every once in a while, I'd run into a devout pious Catholic in the liquor store who would Very conveniently forget to punch my car. I'd say math for him the next day and go back to him until I wore out my welcome. He had a job to keep, too. But then all kinds of stratagems. It was wartime. Gasoline was rationed. We had to pool our trip to town to conserve gasoline. We lived way up in the country. It was about 10 or more miles to the nearest liquor store. and getting a car out of the garage to make a solo trip to a liquor store it was frowned upon and then it was awfully unpatriotic using all this gasoline just to buy yourself a bottle of whiskey I solved that problem though by buying four bottles instead of one that saved me three trips to the liquor store and I conserved gasoline for the war effort and the boys overseas actually alcoholic thing, I could think myself quite patriotic about that whole thing. I belong to an outfit that didn't pay me. We got an allowance and we never had... I wonder what would have happened if I had had money enough to buy all the liquor I wanted. Perhaps I would have got you sooner. I don't know. But I never could. I always had to buy it one bottle at a time. I remember in Baltimore one time out on Route 40. I know there's some Baltimoreans here. By the way, I meant to tell you that if you'd like to go across the hall and have your own meeting while I'm talking. Go ahead. You've all heard this before, right? I won't feel heard at all if you go on over and have you own meeting. But anyway, out on Route 40, you know, going towards Frederick, there was a liquor store. One day driving past it, I saw a great big sign splattered across the front of it, three-fifths for $10. And this is just glorious. When you don't get more than $10 once a month, or two. This became a shrine. I made many pilgrimages to that shrine. Later on, after I got sober, I drove up one late evening to a store in a suburb where my friend wanted to buy an early morning paper, and across the front of this place they had a great big sign that said 3 5th for 777. I thought to myself, thank God I got to AA before I saw that, right? I would never have made it. The stuff I was drinking toward the end, when money runs out, quality ceases to be important. Quantity becomes of the essence. I was buying something called Old Duke. I haven't seen it since. I think the pure food and drug people took it off the market. Even the labels were poisoned. But it was cheap. And glory be to God, somebody taught me that you could get quite a jolt out of putting loganberry wine if you have tender stomach block your ears logan berry wine in a glass of beer we had a name for it i've noticed a fancy cocktail called pink lady but that's the name we had for this thing logan very wine in beer uh it was quick but the hangovers were unbelievable and I opened our icebox at home the other day and took out a little red bottle I'd never seen in the icebox before and it was called Malt Duck and sorry be to God when I read the label that's what it was red wine in beer somebody's stolen the idea and is bottling it now. It wasn't my idea originally, or I'd be tempted to sue them. Then all of the other things started happening that happened to all of us who are alcoholics. The sicknesses, the absenteeism. I was a teacher teaching young men who were studying to be teachers, And we bragged in the office that I belonged to that we didn't tell our students, do this, go there. We bragged that we said to our students follow me. I was a poor guide when there were days when I couldn't find my own classroom. Some of you are probably school teachers. Picture this, walking into a classroom and finding somebody else at the desk. And you say, what are you doing in my classroom? And he, recognizing the signs, hurries down off the rock room and takes you out into the corridor and says, this is not your classroom. Isn't this Tuesday at 10 o'clock? You should know it's Thursday at 3 o' clock. For God's sake, get out of sight. Well, whatever happened to Tuesday and Wednesday? I have a lot of five-day weeks in my past. Then, of course, these things can't escape notice. Students, those of you who are schoolteachers know this, are the most notoriously disloyal and traitorous people God ever put breath in. We had a rule in our place that if the professor didn't show up, the absent-minded professor, A student, the chief or head student, senior student in the class went to his room and knocked on the professor's door. I suspect they knocked with foam rubber gloves once. If he didn't answer, the student came back and dismissed the class. Well, I didn't ask for more than once. And instead of tiptoeing to their rooms, you know, they'd go clattering up the stairs like a bunch of Budweiser brewery horses attracting a great deal of attention. the rector would stick his head out of his office door and say, Father didn't show up for class. Father who? Father O'Connor. Oh dear. Again. Well this doesn't escape notice of course so it was on the carpet and the remonstrances you've got to do something about this or we're going to have to do something about you and then the hiding the desperate attempts to stay sober the praying the desperation prayers and the enforced abstinence the heroic enforced abstinent a lot of these people you know in the old days who wore hair shirts and chains and all this sort of thing doing tremendous penances for their own sins and the sins of the world I wonder if half of them have ever suffered as much as an alcoholic under a period of enforced abstinence when he's trying to save his job and his life and his reputation and all the rest of it I don't do very much voluntary penance I have no sum up for it but I try to make up for it by accepting the things that are forced on me I have a strong suspicion that they're going to count mightily someday then the loneliness the fears living under threat and then I don't know I know it must be a very difficult thing for anybody to sit through a church service on Sunday morning with a hangover trying to stand up straight or hold the book right side up and not lean too heavily on the lady next to you in the bench and trying to stay awake. And it must be very difficult, especially when the sermon is long and the day is hot. I pity you. But have you ever thought how much more difficult it might be to preach that long sermon under the same circumstances? Think about it someday you know it never surprises me anymore that alcoholics leave god behind in the course of their thinking they have to anything that gets between us and our drinking had to go and that's true of a priest just as much as anybody else the only different fact is that we're stuck you can go away and nobody's going to miss you too much i can't Because if I'm not there, there ain't no church. The old lady said, angry because the priest showed up late for Mass one day. And what time does Mass start, Father? He said, it starts when I stop. Well, if you're not there to start it, it's chaos. So you have to go through the motions. And I don't know much. I know a little bit about your guilt because you've shared it with me. But I know what it means to run. But try it try if you can the picture the guilt of the man up front Outstanding they are trying to tell you how to do it unable to do with himself and then fleeing running He can't run too far Because he has to stay near but hiding nevertheless. I remember saying to a priest one day Father, what do you do when you don't want to pray anymore? When just the thought of going to the chapel makes you 60 or something they said keep right on praying and I said I don't believe you he said I don't care whether you believe me or not that's the answer I found out later that it was but this doesn't help the alcoholic in the middle of his trouble so we run too and hide with a mountain of guilt on our shoulders the kind of a kind and of a degree and of equality that I wonder if anybody but God can measure it so that this of course becomes unbearable and there is only one anesthetic that we knew about and that was more alcohol so we fled back to the bottle where at least we could blind ourselves or blot out the feelings of fear the terrors I could drink myself to sleep Of course the fears and the terrors were there When I awoke again And I could live with them for a little while Until they'd become unbearable again I developed a technique I don't know I've never heard anybody else say they've done this But I developed the technique Of drawing a curtain on yesterday I could have a rather dismal And wretched and unhappy day The day before I might have sat on the edge of my bed The night before drinking myself to bed and wake up in the morning with a recollection of what had happened and then draw a curtain on it. The only way I could live with myself, it was exactly what happens in this theater. Draw a curtain, the first act is over, wait a minute, open the curtain and start a fresh second act. And that's the way I lived. I was always starting the second act of the play, which was my life. With the first acts blotted out. there would come a day of course when I couldn't blot it out anymore when I became totally conscious of what was happening aware of the program I was living by and faced with the need for doing something about it those of you who are Catholics can guess what I did I looked for an understanding priest friend unburdened myself of the whole load begged for God's grace to start again and tried But because I was an alcoholic, it never worked. I was talking one night at a meeting, or I heard a lady talking one night at the meeting in Baltimore, and she said, I prayed and I prayed, and I prayed and prayed. Church didn't help me. And that felt like turning to her afterwards, it didn't help me either. Maybe you didn't get help because I was the preacher. But we kept making that mistake, you know, of carrying our problem to God. I prayed when we were kids, grandma was sick, we prayed and she got well my father was out of work we prayed, and he got a job we were used to having prayers answered and I couldn't figure out why my prayers weren't being answered and God knows I prayed I think probably the prayers of the sick alcoholic who is stretching blindly for help are some of the most servant prayers said on this earth and I don't think they always it and they seem not to be heard temporarily at least but when you came to a yes when you found the load being lifted off your shoulders do you think your prayers had nothing to do with it don't you kid yourself they had a very great deal to do with it so if there is anybody still drinking anybody here with the problem and worried and still praying keep on praying keep on praying and one day the crack will open and your higher power will get his foot in the door and help will come believe me so we did all of the things that people said to do I remember a superior once who insisted that I go to see a doctor so I went and he was a young doctor who didn't know anything about alcoholism I now know the only thing he had to recommend was interviews he described it I said can I continue to say mass if I take this stuff and he said I don't see how we have to use wine at mass as you know and I thought I'm not going to stop saying mass and that's all he had done nothing else so I went away I was never sent to a psychiatrist I was subjected to a lot of amateur psychiatry but the psychiatrists haven't had much more success than the doctors The doctors haven't wanted us We're a nuisance, you know The drunk staggers into a waiting room full of paying patients He takes out the prettiest woman in the room sits on her lap and wants to know where she's been all his life The nurse dashes into the doctor's inner sanctum and says, He's here again, Doctor. And the doctor says, Oh my God. Bring him in. It's one way of getting priorities in the office. You are carried in, filled with a shot of something or other, and then hurried down on the freight elevator to the alley entrance. And the nurse is instructed, If you ever see him coming again, lock the door or call the police. they don't want it we're a waste of time and money and medication and everything else they haven't known what to do I'm not now putting down the medical profession but this is no secret and the number of those who have had some knowledge and have known what to be able to do and have been able to help is very very small thank you to God it's growing but it's still small I took a pigeon of mine to a hospital in Baltimore some months back and he was new So I brought him a lot of things to read while he was in the hospital and his young doctor found the stuff in his Room, and when I came back to visit my friend later He said my doctor wants to know if he could have some of this literature for himself He says he has a lot Allocations and knows nothing about alcoholism. Could you get him some to read? You can believe he got a bundle the next day We need him they put me in a hospital they removed me from my job on the west coast brought me back to Baltimore and I was hospitalized for three months in the care of a very knowledgeable psychiatrist who was on the staff of one of our best psychiatric hospitals in Baltimore and he was chief of staff in another general hospital on several other staff a knowledgeable, well-known internal medicine man diagnostician par excellence he kept me there three months I told him my story as honestly as I could I said I was going to have to make a farther confessor out of him I did just that I told no puns I didn't know anything about fifth steps at that time but I took a fifth step as good as any I've ever heard of with him he listened believed this is true for three hours in my hospital room then went away and I didnít see him again for three months he waved to me as he walked by the door but we never talked anymore he sent me home after three months telling me that I was not an alcoholic just go home now and don't drink too much and you'll be alright sentence of death I was drunk within a week I didn't drink in the hospital who would I knew why I was there I knew my superior was checking regularly I knew they were checking Every once in a while, I didn't know anything about urine tests at the time. But every once in awhile there was a nurse who would come in with one of these little bottles and say, He's like a victim. No, he's not. Always took me by surprise. It was only after I got out of the hospital that I found out what they were up to. And I thought, what is this? At the risk of... At the Risk there was one of these motherly nurses one day nursing a sick man and she said and how did we sleep last night and how did we eat all our breakfast and so on and so On and one day he's getting pretty well fed up with it and one day she brought him the little bottle and said we'd like a snack and while the bottle was sitting in his breakfast can So he poured it into the little bottle. She came back after a while and picked it up and held it up, oh my it's a little cloudy isn't it? And he grabbed it from her and said, oh is it? Let's run it through again. They picked her up off the floor and she took three weeks vacation. That same doctor knows a little better now because I took one of my sick friends to him one day when we desperately needed a hospital room and by now the doctor knows I'm in AA and a lot more about it this is several years later and he did a very wonderful thing I thought my friend was very very sick he needed hospitalization but I've got a patient upstairs I'm going to send home tomorrow I'll send him home today and you can have his bed so he put my friend to bed and Ten days later, I was out there when my friend was distraught. The same doctor was present and this time he didn't pat him on the back and say, go on home now and don't drink too much and you'll be alright. He patted him on the bank and said, go home now, sit close to Father Tom and A.A. and you'd be alright He had learned something in the meantime. He's helped several of my friends since But in general, doctors haven't been of too great health Psychiatrists, well again, I believe in their health, I've used it. I work now in a mental hospital myself as chaplain, it's a good job for me, nobody notices me there. One of my patients said to me, I walked on the ward one day and she looked at me and What's the matter with you? Going to a Halloween party or something? Next day she said, did you win a prize? It's a good place for me. One of the psychiatrists from this hospital, this was before I was connected with it, was given a ride home from the hospital one night by one of my AA friends who had been out visiting one of his pigeons who was sick in the hospital. And my friend was well-dressed, he was driving an expensive car, obviously pretty well-heeled, and the psychiatrist was smart enough to notice it and said to my friend on the way into town, how long have you been in this AA thing, Mr. So-and-so? He said, going on two years, doctor. I said, you mean you haven't had a drink for two years? He said that's right. well don't you think it's high time you dropped all this AA nonsense and got back to living a normal life again he's a psychiatrist on the staff of this hospital collecting anywhere from eighteen thousand five hundred a year to twenty two thousand my friend hit the brakes and skidded to a stop on the gravel shoulder of liberty road those of you who know it and screamed at him normal? Doctor, for God's sake, don't you know I'm an alcohol? And the normal thing for me to be is drunk. He said, I never intend to be normal as long as I live, with God's help. Well, all right, here it is. And the non-educated or non-aware psychiatrist hasn't understood and the honest ones won't accept an alcoholic while he's drinking. A friend of mine went to one one time or was honest enough to say look as i can't help you it's a waste of your time and my money for you to be coming here as long as you're drinking when you stop drinking men come to me and i'll be able to help you perhaps my friend said i wasn't interested in his time but i sure was in my money so i didn't go back well he was an honest man and some of the greatest the menninger brothers dr kibu and the others who have been some of our best friends have said long long long uh we shall long long have discovered the causes and the cure of cancer before we shall have discovered because it's in the cure so they are the understanding people and as i've said the church hasn't done much better our average is only about one percent for years we've been rushing drunks to church you know praying over us is in the cure that has the Holy Spirit so they are the understanding people and as I've said the church hasn't done much better our average is only about 1% for years we've been rushing drunk to church you know praying over them giving them pledges and it doesn't work we haven't known that they are sick you don't take people to church do you most of the time there are these faith healers I know but in general I hope to heaven if you're on the way home tonight you have an automobile accident any of you and get some broken bones and sucks and bruises they don't rush you back to the first Lutheran church I hope they take you to a hospital where a doctor can patch you up my mother used to say when I was flying I'll pray for you every minute until I know you got there safely and I'll say mom don't bother praying for me pray for the pilot and if he gets there I will friends every once in a while say I'm going to the hospital for an operation surgery father please pray for me I won't waste my time I'll pay for your surgery I'll play that he gets to the doctor sober that he knows what he's doing i'll pray that god puts steel in his hands to do his work well then when he's got you sewed up and back in your room then i'll start praying for you that you make a speedy convalescent so but for years we've been making them we've Been praying for the wrong person you know and praying for the drunk and praying over him and praying on him and forgetting that he's sick with a sickness that God will help sure by all means pray pray to God that he'll find his way into an AA meeting someday or that he'd fall down and break his bloody neck in front of an AA club or that he gets run over by an alcoholic doctor. God can do things like that, you know. But anyway, here is the sick alcoholic, frightened, alone, worried about his sanity, threatened from all sides, filled with fear that he can't be found and abandoned by the world and everybody around him. And where did he go? Where did he do it? Well, thank you to God in 1935, two drunk men sat down last in Ohio and found out that by talking with one another and sharing what they had with each other, they could stay sober. And they found out that by sharing by word of mouth with one another, they could handle their sickness. A doctor was taught by a layman that he was sick with a killer disease. And the doctor for the first time in his life met somebody who was talking about his sickness And so on and so on down the line and little by little one day after a few years last gasper alcoholic who was saying so much, according to the little set of principles that they were gradually evolving and built a great vision open before their eyes. They had a history between reaching one day around the world, word of mouth from lips to lips to lip to ear, until a great change, a benign reaction within a circle of blood and pure consciousness that lived through your mind. Tonight, you and I are gathered in this place. Here am I, a little guy born in the backwoods of New Brunswick, Canada, or even a geese fly backwards, talking to a bunch of people in Durham, North Carolina. I had no more than nothing, you know, 40 years ago that I'd ever seen Carolina than I had of seeing the moon. And we were taught, as I was when I was delivered to AA, that my problem was alcohol. It wasn't that I was going crazy. It wasn'T that I WAS losing my faith. it wasn't that I was a moral degenerate it wasnít that I was a decaying priest who had lost his ideas and was on the road to hell in spite of himself it was that I was sick with an incurable disease that goes by the name of alcoholism and now I call myself an alcoholic just as proudly as I call myself a capitalist or a democrat you know or even up in Brauman, I will even take a new public and drink a very, very good. Don't give up hope! But I was powerless over this stuff. That it had me loose. And that the way to begin to get well was to surrender. success the fact to put my stop fighting looking for a way to deal with this uh this deadly poison that was killing me slowly and a great life gone then i remember the day i was offered help my boss who had learned a great deal about alcoholism when i had learned nothing said simply to me one day i've had visits from him before but never one like this A little short sentence, as I can still hear them. Tom, he called me Tom. I didn't call him Matt, but he called me Tom, and he said, you're sick. And I can remember, this may be hindsight, I'm not sure at this distance from the day, but I seem to believe, I've said it more than once, a great weight was lifted off my shoulders right there and then. He said, I'm sick. Nobody's ever told me that before. They said the same things to me they say to you, a little more politely perhaps, minus a few adjectives, but their meaning was the same. But nobody called me sick. They said, and this is the first time anybody in my hearing used the word, to me, alcoholism is a illness. You can't deal with it alone. You need help. Who would like to help you? and then the 64 million dollar question do you want help and i bless god here i think just where many of the prayers were answered my own those as many others i was able to say father i want help more than i want anything else in this world i could see my life going down the drain i was 50 years old i should look forward to not too many more years on this earth and I didn't want to die like this and I wanted help he said we'd like to send you to a place where you can get help, will you go and I was able to say father I'll be ready in ten minutes and that's that too it took a little longer than that but I ended up finally out in Michigan in a little place called Jeff House which was built for alcoholic teeth by a man himself an alcoholic a layman, who found that priests were not getting the program in this part of the country. He was sponsoring half a dozen priests at the time and they were all drinking. They couldn't seem to get the program. And he thought and thought and sought about it and finally dedicated his life to doing something about it. He thought if he could get a bunch of priests together under one roof where they had nothing to hide from one another that maybe this thing would take hold. And this is where it worked. And I walked in there, there were 16 others there ahead of me, and the minute I walked in, they knew why I was there. I had nothing to hide. He said, the director said to me one day, well, Father, I suppose you're here for the same reason we're all here. You're an alcoholic. It's just fearful life, you know? And I gulped and said, well if you say so. Is it if I say so? Anyway This business of Sneaking behind doors. I know priests even in AA who got to AA by hook or by crook Who dress in disguises and go to meetings 30 miles away from where they live For fear that somebody might find out they're alcoholic You know, he last Sunday stood in the pulpit and he couldn't even read the very, very... I had a friend in Baltimore who sneaked to his first AA meeting with his coat collar turned up in a far distant part of town where he didn't live for fear somebody might find out he was an alcoholic. Three days before at 3 o'clock in the morning he was out on the front lawn of his house in his shorts, singing at the top of his voice and nobody, he mustn't let anybody know he's an alcoholic. The whole bloody world knows. You know, priests worry about anonymity. Good God, I've got about as much chance of being anonymous as the Pope has. And I couldn't care less there's some groups there was a group that folded up in connecticut they were so anonymous nobody could find them they tell me there was a group of priests in dublin ireland don't tell anybody i told you but you couldn't get to their meeting unless you knew somebody it's just like for addiction days you had to know somebody who told somebody that you wanted help and who you've got secret directions in code well uh what good is anonymity if it keeps some poor shift from getting the help you need and one of the nice things about being a priest in aa is that a lot of people will come to us who won't go to anybody else they ran from god as i do and uh it's kind of nice to find a roman car at an aa meeting some night a little fellow saying one time a friend of his tried to get him to an a.a meeting he didn't want any part of it because he was probably one of these salvation army mission pictures and he wanted no part of religion has nothing to do about it with it it's strictly a bunch of guys and girls who are trying to help one another So the guy agreed to go, and he walked into a meeting and bargained to God there were two Roman collars sitting at the table. And he turned to his sponsor and said, You. But the guy said, All right, just wait, wait, Wait. There was one of these discussion meetings around a small table where everybody said, My name is Joe something or other, and I'm an alcoholic. Got to the first priest, and He said, My name's Father John, and I am an alcoholic, and the skeptic and the second guy said my name is Father Bob and I'm an alcoholic and after he says Jesus these guys have got problems I can worry about mine and he told me this himself at a meeting out in Michigan he said I never go to a meeting now and see a Roman collar at the table but it makes me feel good because for a lot of people you know it helps them over this hump of moral degeneracy. Thank you to God. Jesus, if I'm an alcoholic, then it can't be a sin. You see? You know just as well as I do, you wouldn't have laughed like that if you didn't get there, it was fine. Because it's true. When I was a kid in school, we had to read a book called The Scarlet Letter. I didn't know what it meant, but I had to reading it and write a book report on it. In the old colonial days, the woman taken into adultery had to go around for the rest of her life with a scarlet A embroidered on her breast. There's still a lot of people who'd like to have us walk around with scarlet As branded on our foreheads. an alcoholic. I remember one day at the school where I was teaching, the superior came to me and we were coming out of dinner and he looked around to make sure nobody was listening and he said, you're my father-in-law. And I said, no, why? He looked around again. This is my boss now. I'm an alcoholic." He's the guy that took me to the airport and kissed me goodbye one night in Seattle and said, give me your keys. We're friends now, and he's talking. I'm back from guest house. He looks around again. He's gone to guest house You mustn't tell anybody this poor, sick alcoholic has gone to a place where he's going to get some help but given an acre for heaven's sake what's the matter anyway out at guest house we had nothing to hide and we didn't hide it and then I found out that since I'm powerless I've got to have help and they taught me what the second step meant I had never lost my faith in a higher power I still believed in God I prayed to him constantly never missed my mass and the rest of it but that he should zero in on this sickness of mine and bring to bear special help to enable me to overcome it this said never I knew nothing about this so I found out how to take the second step in our program I came to believe I didn't have to come to believe in God I had never lost my belief in him but I came into believe in his power to zero in as I say on this particular sickness of mine and bring me the special help I needed to handle it. And then they taught me how I had to take this life of mine and turn it over to this power. Get out of the driver's seat, stop all the finagling and the maneuvering, the playing footsie with booze, and let him move in and take over where I was trying to run things. I didn't think I had anything left to give to God. I left home. I gave up all hope of any sort of marriage and family and the rest of it to dedicate my life seven days a week, 24 hours a day to the service of God and the priesthood. What else was there to give? On top of that, I joined an outfit that didn't pay me. I lived on a subsistence allowance. And I got a paycheck I never saw. Only when I went to work at this hospital did I ever see a paycheck. And even that one I don't keep. I put it in an envelope and mail to the society. So what else was there to do? Turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him? I've done that. Did it 40 years ago. But never in this particular department. My will is to drink because I'm an alcoholic and I will die wanting to drink. so I take this will of mine and put it on the shelf I know it's God's will for me not to drink because I'm an alcoholic and if I drink I'll kill myself and he doesn't want me to kill myself so I'll take his will for me not to think my will is up here and I'm going to ask him to give me the strength to leave it there my will to drink and I'll say your will oh Lord not to dream alright I've done that now what do I do next he says alright here are some things you've got to do to make that stick I thought I knew myself every day of my life in my particular outfit we'd take examinations of cops examine mostly the disorders in my life I thought I knew who I was my AA program said you don't you're a mixed-up confused lying alcoholic we built walls and walls and rules and rules around ourselves to protect ourselves against the people who would rob us of our drinking. I was drinking now because I had to drink to live. Anybody that came near me to threaten my drinking was threatening my life. So I built walls around myself to protect myself. My friend comes to me and says, Gee, Tom, don't you think you're overdoing the drinking thing a little bit? I go, What do you mean? This is more like last night. What about last night? I don't remember. Telling the archbishop you thought it was high time he resigned I've got to deny this You're dreaming You feel you're not drinking too much, buddy? He becomes an enemy now I have to avoid him He knows something He doesn't even get a Christmas card this year I've lied to myself and lied and lied and lied, and I've persuaded myself that the things I've lied about are true. And they're lies. So this program tells me strip yourself of the lies. Find out who you are, the four-step inventory to discover the true nature of your own. And do it day by day and step by step. I had no problem with it. I was working with a clinical psychologist who insisted on a day-by-day diary of my life. I had to go back over it, and I had it all written out on pages and pages and pages and papers of single-stage typewriting. I had 120 pages out there about this size when I finished it. And I went to a priest to take my inventory, an old flea-bitten alcoholic whom I didn't like. I'll never know why I chose him. I know now. Because this pride of mine And, you know, even in our efforts to become sober, we're all Barrymore's. We've played the actor so long that we... And weren't they smart? To God, to yourself. Some people think that's easy. I didn't. But to another alcoholic, another human being, I mean, perhaps a human alcoholic, but to another human Being. Because, okay, I can lie to God in the dark of my room. i can lie to myself here it is all written out and i signed my name to it but i've got to carry it now to another human being and level with him all of it well i thought i was the worst sinner that ever lived i was afraid to take this inventory to a priest for fear that that, well, it might cause him to lose his faith. How could the Church be the true Church of God if it tolerated a person like me for so long? But then I remembered he was an alcoholic and that if he was doing what he should have done, he had taken this step and therefore he has to understand it. And God wouldn't be asking me to do it if it was going to hurt somebody else. And even if it does then maybe it's fit and proper that one should die for the sake of me Maybe he was expendable, and I was not All these things were running through my head when I went to it made my appointment And I started thumbing through my pages picking out the things that were proper for the inventory Without daring to looking in the face the fear he was having apoplexy or something Finally when I did have the courage to look up at him He was found at the tomb. Here was this horrendous story that was going to end all stories, that was gonna make Barabbas and Judas look like peckers, and it bored him to tears. So I apologized, said, Father, this was after lunch. He had hadn't lunch. I said, do you usually take a nap after lunch? Yes, I do. I said well why don't you take your nap and I'll go for a walk and come back later that's a good idea so here it was God knew that this little hide lump of pride and conceit and the rest of it was there threatening to destroy this whole thing and he took this means it seems to me now of handling that and then came the construction steps the six and seven the becoming willing to have these things change and then because i couldn't change them myself begging god come back lord as you did in the first step to help me accept my powerlessness and in the second step when you helped me to find you and the third step when he helped me make this decision to turn my will over to you come back Lord now i need more help to get rid of these things that are standing between me and perfect sobriety and then of course the necessary amendment the list of people I've offended and the courage to go to them where possible and make a restitution and these things done then I could take the tenth step which had me keeping a watch on these things lest they stick their ugly heads up again and knock them over the head before they get too big It's not letting the sun go down on things that need to be repaired immediately. The ongoing inventory after the big one in four and five. Then, because this thing all depends on the grace of God, as we say, we've got to keep the line open and then the 11th step, keep the conscious contact alive. We have a lot of unconscious contact with God. You know, I hit my thumb with a hammer and say, God, help me. What? Well, that's unconscious. What God is asking you to do now is look, take a few minutes every day. If you can't do anything else, dive down to the A&T parking lot. There's nothing lonelier than a big shopping center, you know, and park in a remote corner of the shopping center and be alone. Just you and your higher power and let him reach you. You reached out to him but let him do to keep that line there'd be no light in that lamp if it weren't tied into the power line that comes to it from the generator that is making the electricity and that's the way it is with us there'll be no light there'll not be no heat there will be no warmth there will be no power in our lives unless we keep this line open between us and our higher power with this daily conscious contact through prayer and meditation he can now not my will but thine be done I heard a lady say, I used to get up every morning with a list this long of things I wanted God to do today and now she said I get up to him and I have no list at all and I just look at him and say what do you want me to do one of my prayers every day now is dear Lord help me to stay out of your way I think that's desperately important because we're always getting in his way things will get done if we let him do it let go and let God but so often we can't or won't so I pray Lord help me to stay awake let me see the lights when they flash when your signals come help me be listening when the bells ring because he comes to us in strange, strange ways and in strange disguises and unless we're alert unless we listen unless we watch him We can miss the time I pray every day for that. No if all of these things have happened then we've had an awakening and experience something has happened a Miracle has taken place a new man has evolved out of the ashes of the old We talked about rehabilitating alcoholics. I don't like the word We have dilating means making over making something again what it once was I don't want to be what I once was the man I was is a man that got drunk I don' t want to become him I've got to become a new man I've go to acquire things I never had before new capacities new powers new virtues if you want to use the word so I beg God that this awakening it will take place the program guarantees this having had a spiritual awakening as the result it doesn't say a result but the result the one thing the program promises we tried to carry the message to other alcoholics who still suffer and we can't help doing that because if all of these things have happened then our cup runs over truly my cup runneth over and there is a peace of mind and the joy of living that they're simply incomparable and it's got to spill out. I've got to share it. And unless I'm doing so, then I'm in trouble because unless I've got enough to share with somebody else, then my cup is not running over and I'm In Trouble. But thanks be to God, it seems to be and I shall pray all my life that it will continue to be. And my prayer for you after this happy meeting with you will be that your cups run over too and they will spill out over and onto other suffering alcoholics and this number in not too far distant future will be doubled and trebled and you'll need three or four conferences instead of two. God be with you.