Materialism Without a Spiritual Foundation Creates the Perfect Setup for an Alcoholic Career – John V.

Thank you, Dr. Lodge, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to be very formal tonight.
My name is John Van Dyke and I'm an alcoholic.
I've said it now, I don't know how many thousands of times, but one more doesn't matter.
And those of you who are new in AA are probably rather astonished that you see a fellow here
with a black shirt and a white collar addressing an AA meeting.
Well, there is a hymn, an old Methodist hymn, I was not always good.
I am here as a priest in the church through AA, and when any one of you are brand new,
when you stop drinking and you stop coming to meetings and keep it up,
you'll never know what's going to happen, believe me.
I didn't know either.
Thank you.
It's always very interesting to me, again,
to recall my own story, and I haven't done this for years now.
I've always been philosophizing on AA, but I think in a meeting like this,
and I haven't been in Florida for quite some time, and very few people know me well here,
I'm going to tell you little bits about my own story, which generally is parallel to most of yours.
I believe when we are young, we want to be good.
We want to be happy people.
Well, I asked my little boy, who is now, and he never saw me drink, by the way,
who is now about 16, then he wants to be happy, and he is just like his father.
He thinks that happiness sits in things.
He has a motorcycle.
For an Oklahoma, where I'm living now, they can drive a motorcycle.
They are 14 years old.
And this motorcycle means a great deal, and he fusses with it all the time.
And now he is 16 about, and now he wants a car.
And when he has a car, then he will be all right.
His marks stink, but that's another story.
The next thing what he wants to do, and I can predict that already, is he wants a girlfriend.
And then he's probably just as bad as his father.
That he wants a girlfriend who is built like a cathedral, you know.
Well, there is an old proverb that a fruit does not fall far from the tree.
And this was my story.
I came and was born in a little village in a very small country, in Holland.
You still can hear it, I'm sure.
I never will get any better, so forget about it.
Either you understand me or you don't.
Some people get accustomed to it, they tell me, in church.
Well, anyway, I was born in this very small village, 875 population,
and about 1,000 chickens and 200 or 300 pigs and what more.
And my father was a schoolteacher.
I hope there are no schoolteachers here.
For that's a hell of a job.
To make men out of monkeys.
And you know, schoolteachers are a race by themselves.
They never have any money.
My father didn't either.
But they have great ideals.
They want their children to be on the mountaintop.
My father wanted that too, but he didn't have the money to do it.
So we went to school and we had to take from time to time some fetched up pants
and some books which had been used by other people, and I resented that.
The character of a person is made from the time that he is about a year old, I believe.
And I started, when I was five, six, and seven years old, to resent those fetched up pants.
And I started to resent those books which were half torn, and we had to study in them and we had to go to school.
When we had a bicycle, it was always secondhand, never new.
You know, in the country I came from, bicycles were known by their trade name.
I knew names of bicycles the same way as you know the names of cars.
And my bicycle didn't have a name.
And you start to resent that.
For none of us wants to be that way.
We want to have things which we, as it were, can identify.
And so when you have these things, you start to already develop a drive towards materialism.
We want to have things.
And I remember when I was a small boy, I made up my mind that someday, somehow, I was going to have these things which I never had.
And I remember the time that we were living at the railroad which passed some, I don't know,
the Hague to Paris.
And you saw the people sit in these beautiful dining rooms in the railroad cars with these little red lights on and having all this beautiful silverware.
And I was jealous.
And I wanted to have these.
And someday I was going to get them.
Well, this is all very well, and it makes for a career.
For only people who want to have things.
Those things will succeed in life.
But we can ask for the wrong things, too.
Then there was something else to trouble, and I think we overlooked it.
But I have to start to realize this, the more I have to be living in the Southwest.
My parents were Bible people.
You know, the Bible is a very dangerous book.
For you can find all the answers.
You can find all the answers that you want in it.
And my father and mother were Protestant.
And in Holland, to be Protestant was approximately the same as Jewish.
For they had, all commandments were negative.
Thou shalt not do this.
Thou shalt not go ice skating on Sunday.
That was one of them.
And thou shalt not play cards.
And thou shalt not leave the home after nine o'clock.
And thou shalt not read a book on Sunday.
And thou shalt not read a newspaper either.
For if you go ice skating on Sunday, then the ice is so bad that you'll sink through it,
and you'll be in hell forever.
Well, this is a negative religion, you see.
This is no religion at all.
Of course you can dig it out, simply.
And therefore, when you grow up and you have this kind of negative approach to life,
that you may not do things,
and that God has become a policeman instead of a father,
then you start to rebel.
And I did.
Well, now, where did that lead to?
Almighty God has given us, in my family,
all very good brains.
The village I came from was about a thousand years old.
And I was one of the first two to ever go to high school.
To go to high school, we had to go by bicycle an hour and a half,
and an hour and a half back.
They were the good old days,
that you were willing to give something for your education.
And I did that.
And then we moved to
close to Rotterdam,
and it was much closer by.
And so we got a very good education,
thanks to the government,
for in Europe,
Western Europe,
when you have good brains,
the government takes care for everything.
And if you don't have good brains,
you don't get any education, period,
even if you pay for it.
Well, I came out of high school,
and my father said,
are you going to study?
I said, no.
I'm going to make money.
There it began.
You see?
I wanted to have things.
I didn't want to have a quarter pocket money a week,
and a quarter that is exactly six and a half cents in American money.
And so I went in business.
I'm a little older probably than you think I am.
I'm quite over 50.
And the time we went in business in Europe,
it was that you had to start from the very bottom.
And the moment you get a BA in business administration,
you start as vice president.
But, you know, we didn't do that those days.
And so I had to become an office boy.
But you work hard,
and you start to find out a few things about yourself.
I don't think it is a bad idea for a lot of young men and women
to go for a year and learn what they are,
instead of going to school,
and not know what they want,
for that's the trouble today.
So I went in business,
and I started to make 25 guilders a month,
which is six dollars and a quarter.
And my shoe repair bill did cost ten dollars a month.
For you know, Holland is very thrifty.
When you would live, let's say, in Miami,
then the head of the office would say,
at the very moment that there is any letter
to go to any place in Miami,
it is not going in the mail.
You're going to bring it.
He saved three cents.
And this is how they got millionaires.
And they did.
And I don't blame them.
But after a year, I had enough.
And then I knew I was a businessman,
but now I had to make more money.
For just to be a businessman,
I had to go very slow.
I had to be a junior clerk,
and then a coming clerk,
and then finally,
when you are gray and old,
you are vice president.
And that was going too slow for me.
But I wanted those nice dinners
in these big trains and what more.
Well, as I had become a newspaper reporter
in my spare time,
I have always had the capacity to work very hard.
I think most alcoholics,
they don't have.
And I had become a newspaper reporter,
and now I enrolled in the university,
which was the closest by,
for I couldn't afford anything else,
to become a doctor of chemistry
and chemical engineering.
And you see,
I haven't talked about alcohol yet, have I?
I didn't drink.
Never.
It wasn't necessary.
I had something to work for.
I worked very hard.
After about four and a half, five years,
I became associate professor
in chemistry and engineering,
and the future looked beautiful.
And after I got my degrees,
I met the man who was the head of the office
where I had worked,
who happened to be
the largest grain importer of Holland.
And he said,
when do you have your degree?
And I said,
I will have my degree in about six weeks.
And he said,
I want to see you.
And they made me president of the company.
Simple.
You see,
no drinking,
working hard,
getting someplace.
And now I had arrived in Holland,
for I was now president of a company,
and I started to make,
for the first time,
good money.
And now the tendency comes out,
you see.
For the fox gets old and loses his hair,
never his tricks,
and his tricks are all there.
For they could have diagnosed
what I was going to become in a hurry.
The first money I made,
I bought an ivory-colored open Buick.
Holland has roads for bicycles.
Now why did I do this?
You know why?
This is typical in alcoholic trade.
I wanted to show people
that my God,
here was Johnny Van Dyke.
You see?
See this fellow
who comes from this small little village,
he's taken out of the clay
by about eight horses,
and you see where he is now?
There is where he goes.
When you see anyone driving
one of those crazy sports cars
around here,
and he is young,
you can bet your boots
he's going to be an A.A.
some of these days.
Well, I had arrived,
and things went fine.
No drinking.
Well, a few things had happened,
and I think you should know those,
but it is not complete without it.
When I was 18,
I went to my father,
and I said,
Father,
I never will go to church anymore.
And he said,
Why?
I don't believe in all that nonsense.
And my father was the wisest man
who ever lived.
Bless his soul,
he is dead now.
And my father said to me,
Son, he said,
you are not 45 years old yet.
That's all he said.
He didn't say,
you must go,
you have to go.
He knew,
you are not 45 years old yet.
And I never will forget it.
And so I didn't go to church anymore.
I was now completely out
to make my own happiness.
So,
and there is where it sits.
I was self-centered.
I once upon a time wrote on a card
which was over my desk,
as far as my future is concerned,
I will not go out of my way
for anyone,
nor anybody,
nor anything.
And this is how my career began.
No drinking.
But you know,
when you are this kind of a go-getter,
then you take two jobs instead of one,
isn't it?
When you want money,
then you take two jobs.
So,
during the day,
I was president of a company,
and at night,
I was chief engineer of another company.
And I made so much money,
oh,
I lived fine.
And from time to time,
I even had time to have a girlfriend.
That happens too.
But I shouldn't have,
for you see,
in Holland,
we get engaged when we are seventeen,
and you stay engaged for seven years,
and then you finally marry the girl.
But I had been engaged for five,
and I didn't marry the girl.
Well,
this card was a great help to that,
for you know,
the girls like,
in those days even,
they liked ivory-colored open Buicks.
Well,
they said,
don't go into that further,
for otherwise they say,
well,
well,
why is he in the church?
But anyway.
Finally,
a year later,
I made as much money as the prime minister of the Netherlands,
and the country became too small.
And so,
I wanted to come to a country where you really could make money.
And of course,
there's only one country in the world where you really can make money,
and that's the United States of America.
And they always had told us that in America,
the dollar bills are green,
and they hang on the trees.
And if you really work hard,
and you're not too lazy to pick them off,
you can pick them off.
And my idea was,
I come to the United States,
and I'm going to make as much money as I can,
in the greatest of hurry I can,
and then what I do,
is I go back to my home country,
and take a nice rocking chair,
and rock.
So now the trouble began.
For I was sent out from the Netherlands,
to come to America,
right after repeal,
and become the head of a liquor company.
Now,
take care now,
I was not drinking.
I mean,
I think any man should have the privilege of getting drunk,
so once or twice a year,
I don't see anything wrong in that.
But I was with the liquor company,
I came to the United States,
I left everything I had over there,
and I started to work hard here.
The small company,
which I was connected with,
however,
right after repeal,
was taken over by a larger company,
and again by a larger company,
and I grew with them,
and finally,
I wound up to be
Director of Research and Development
of the largest liquor company in the world.
Headquarters in New York,
I had offices in London, England,
in France,
in Spain,
all over the planet.
And I made the money I wanted to make.
And according to any kind of calculations,
I should have been now
the happiest man in the world.
I had,
not only that I had a house,
I had two estates
in Morristown, New Jersey,
and there are some friends of mine here
who know that,
who have seen those deals.
I even had my own plane,
and my own chauffeur,
and my own butler,
and my own farm.
Things went fine.
I had become the great successful man.
And people who saw me drive in the streets,
and in New York,
for I know New York better than I know any other place,
they probably put their finger and say,
Boy, what a successful guy he is.
Well, pay you something.
You have to pay for success.
And from time to time,
the price we pay
is too high.
And I had become
a great man in the business world,
but the price I had to pay
was too high,
and I had become an alcoholic.
Now, this is very simple.
But I'll tell you why people become alcoholics,
and I only can talk about myself.
And I think
you may have had this question in your mind
for a long time.
In the first place, as I told you,
I was completely a materialist.
That means I wanted to have things.
The world revolved about things.
Secondly, I didn't have anything to fall back on.
I didn't have any kind of a religion or philosophy,
but specifically not a religion.
I didn't know God.
And I thought God did not know me.
And secondly, I think,
I had a tremendous inferiority complex.
And you may say, why?
That is very simple.
You see, an inferiority complex
is not that we are
good at a lot of things
and don't show it.
No, it is deeper than that.
I traveled in circles
which were far in education above mine.
There are people,
specifically when you come
to the very high circles,
who are not only well educated,
but who know by infusion so many things.
I speak and still do seven languages.
But there were people who spoke languages
I did not speak.
And there were people who had
been able to learn so many things in their youth
which I hadn't the chance to do.
I had studied all my life.
I had worked all my life.
And they had, well,
some of the kind of qualities.
I remember that how I was in Scotland
and lived there for a while,
that they asked me to go grouse hunting.
Have you ever been grouse hunting?
Well, I didn't know a grouse from a canary.
And you have to be on a horse on top of that.
And I didn't know how many hands
a horse was supposed to have.
But when I took a bottle of scotch,
and then I drink it in a hurry,
then I can talk about horses and grouses
and all these things.
When I was speaking in foreign countries
and I didn't speak the language quite correct,
then when I did take a bottle of liquor
and I did drink it before the meeting,
I could speak Arabic and what more.
You see?
Inferiority complex.
It all depends on what kind of setting
you have there.
I remember how I was skiing one day in Switzerland,
and I just had learned to ski.
And there was a very pretty girl there,
and she asked me if I would go skiing with her.
Now, of course, you do that.
And we climbed up the mountain,
and she happens to be a champion,
and she ran down,
and I was standing there.
But I always had, you know,
my tranquilizer with me.
Or my pepper-upper,
I don't know how you call it.
But anyway, I took a few good big slugs
and I ran down, too.
How I ever did it, only God knows.
But you see, there we are.
We use this in order to overcome
our inferiority complex.
And the last place,
I didn't have any humility whatsoever.
Johnny Van Dyke was number one.
And I didn't care what happened to anyone else
as long as I got my way.
And I think here are the traits of an escape artist.
And we are escape artists.
Some of us fall better away by alcohol,
another by sex,
another by dope,
another by pride.
It is all the same thing.
It happens to be that we become alcoholics,
and that is really a disease which can be healed yet,
or it can be cured,
or it can be arrested,
while other people,
they cannot arrest that disease
as easy as we can.
Well, anyway, I had become an alcoholic.
And that wasn't too bad, I think.
I didn't know it.
I did drink too much.
But my job was drinking.
See, you couldn't expect anything else.
You know, in the liquor business,
there are two kinds of analysis.
One is chemical analysis,
and the other one is organoleptic analysis.
Now, you know what organoleptic analysis is?
It's to taste the stuff.
And I was an expert in that.
But you know, it is very hard to taste just here, you know.
That's bad.
Generally, you have to taste here, too.
So I did drink the stuff.
All over the world.
My job was to buy new plants and new laboratories,
and I changed the production.
Well, in the beginning it wasn't too bad.
I was drunk.
But I think I could have stopped.
I believe that even if I had been a Christian at that time,
I would have been able to stop during Lent.
No, no, no.
But now we laugh about this.
But these weren't the reasons
that people made that rule, you know.
Uh-huh.
When you still can stop for six weeks, brother,
you have a chance.
But when you don't,
then you better be careful.
Well, anyway, I never had any Lent.
So I didn't stop.
Then comes the time that you start to need it.
First you start to need it in the morning.
Well, you can get it.
I mean, the trouble with me was that I had too much of it.
Can you figure out that if you could get drunk
and don't have to pay for it,
how many of you would probably still be drinking?
Uh-huh.
The only thing that I have to do is to write a slip.
And they would send me a case or ten cases to the house,
and they would send me to the office and what more.
It didn't cost me a nickel.
And the finest of stuff.
I never used any good.
Oh, no, sir.
The finest of it.
The finest champagne and the finest wines
and the finest whiskey.
I made the stuff.
And I knew what was the best.
Well, things are not too bad yet.
And then comes the time that your health goes.
And your thinking goes.
Especially if you don't have to pay for it,
there is no limit to it.
Then comes the time when you're completely alone.
Lonely.
I don't think that anyone knows,
besides an alcoholic,
what it is to be lonely.
To be in a room full of people.
And nice people.
And feel yourself completely alone.
That people come to you
and they want to start a conversation.
And they do.
And they really seem to like you.
And probably do.
And you still feel completely alone.
I think only an alcoholic
knows that better than anyone else.
Then comes the time that you think you get crazy.
That the little wheels in your head start to spin.
And you have to call someone.
For you don't want to be alone.
I've had many times that I had to call someone
from one of the plants and say,
will you please come over.
I think I get off my rocker.
And then you are in a bad shape.
But still it is not the end.
You see, the time that I came into AA,
there was not much of AA around yet.
This is long ago.
Then comes the time that you become a zombie.
You see those people from time to time.
You have been drinking for so and so many years.
And then finally the alcohol content in your blood stream
is so high that you really only need
one or two double martinis a day
to stay on that same level.
And you do things automatic.
But you don't know why you do them.
And you can't recall how you did them.
This is what I call the last stage, zombie.
Drink is just now a medicine.
And you can't stop.
For when you are without a drink for a half a day,
you start to shake not only inside and outside.
And then comes the time that you start to shake
and to shake
and to shake.
And then you want to pray and you can't.
You start to shake and to pray at the same time.
And you don't know what to say.
And you say, God, please help me.
And then that goes away too.
Then it becomes a matter of not praying at all
but just hoping that it will be the end.
And that is where you wind up.
And that is where the choice sits.
And that is not your choice
and that is not my choice.
That never was.
Well, when you get to that stage,
then you're not good in business anymore.
And so you lose your job.
And when you lose your job
and you can't hold down your own job anymore,
then it is logical there
that you lose everything you have too, isn't it?
I had, when I was 35,
I had enough money to retire.
I have made a very,
I have become a very successful man.
I had all the things.
I was now an alcoholic.
I couldn't stop.
I lost my job.
And I lost
my health.
You know, one day I was called in
to the chairman of the board
with two others of my friends.
One was my boss
and the other one was a friend of mine.
And we were some of the highest paid people
in the United States.
And we were told that they had checked
with the insurance company
and that our health did not allow them
to keep us on the payroll
for they couldn't get any insurance
on us anymore
and that the doctors had told
that we had half a year to live.
It's quite a verdict to hear that.
That your drinking has gotten you now so far
that you have half a year to live
and no more.
And of course you don't believe it, do you?
But then things start to happen.
Three of us were called in
and within two months my boss,
one of the greatest men ever lived,
tremendous brain,
this country is greatly indebted
to what he did for the war effort.
He called me up one night.
He said, John, how are you doing?
I said, not good at all, boss.
He said, I am not either.
Did you stop drinking?
I said, no.
Did you?
No.
And the next morning I got another
telephone call that he had,
during the night, he had bled to death.
Acute alcoholism.
Hemorrhaged.
And that was the first one to go.
And a month later,
another head of the department,
who also was one of the three,
he also died.
And now I was alone.
And the verdict had been
all three of you have a year.
And two of them have gone now.
Now you would think that anyone
who has some brains in his head
would stop drinking then, would you?
Not John even Dyke.
Mm-mm.
And then I lost every dime I had.
You know, I think only alcoholics
can understand this.
I had moved to a beautiful estate,
and we had about eight,
I had about 18 rooms.
And there were eight bedrooms.
And I slept in one bedroom one night
and the other bedroom another night,
you know, to make it easy.
And then I had to sell it.
And there were beautiful furniture
and beautiful rooms
and so many grand pianos.
And I had to sell it,
and at the day when I sold it,
I had to move.
I was unable, physically and mentally,
to take anything out of that house.
Have you ever been that way?
That you couldn't even pick up a towel
and put it in a barrel.
I left everything as was.
Didn't have the strength anymore.
And so I lost everything I had,
and I had to move back
to an eight-dollar-a-week room.
Well, now you save on that,
when it is so far,
now you're certainly going to quit,
aren't you?
No.
You can't.
You can't.
Then came the time,
and I think most alcoholics
through this special event
they get that far,
they just think about suicide.
Not only think about it,
but that you really want it.
But what is the use?
You have had everything.
What is this road back?
It's difficult.
Hardly possible.
And you want to give it all up.
You really surrender then.
Your back is against the wall,
and you can't stop.
You can't live without drinking.
You don't have the money to buy it.
You can't think anymore,
and then you want to give up.
And the day came for me, too.
And you know,
this is the most remarkable,
that when you come so far,
that you, as it were,
are willing to blot out yourself,
which it is,
then help is there.
I believe life is something like a tree.
A person is something like a tree.
We have to be pruned.
And the more selfish we are,
the harder the pruning has to be.
Some people are so little bit selfish
that, you know,
a little bit of the outside of the branches
has to come off.
And some of us are so self-centered
that whole branches have to come off.
And some of us are so damn self-centered
that the whole tree has to come down
and only the roots left.
And that was Johnny van Dyck.
For I gave up.
And help was there.
And now comes AA.
I had bought a book of AA
about seven years before.
I wanted to learn
how to drink like a gentleman.
But the trouble was
that I bought that book in the morning
and I had a luncheon engagement.
And I had a luncheon engagement
with the sales manager
and he had trouble in his drinking, too.
He told me.
And he was married
and he had some children
and I was not married.
And so we had lunch
and he bought from me the book
for two double martinis.
But I had seen it.
I had carried it under my arm.
And lo and behold,
one evening I come to my one-room apartment
and there is a book laying on
that little nightstand
and it is that yellow book.
Alcoholic Phenomenons.
And I didn't know how it got there.
The next day I found out
that an old lady had brought it.
And she had come to the landlord
and asked if he or this young fellow lived
who seemed to have so much trouble in drinking.
And they said, yes.
She said, I have a present for him.
Will you please put this next to his bed?
And they did.
She didn't come in as my sponsor.
She didn't come over and say,
well, now I'm going to talk to you.
I didn't like old ladies anyway.
But she just put the book there.
That's all she did.
She didn't hold my hand
and didn't come babysitting.
She just did what she thought she should do
and leave her book.
And she left the book
and the next morning, of course,
I woke up and I started to read some of it.
You know, when you are in that way,
your story is the same as in the book.
And so she also had left some information
and that is where A.A. met.
And A.A. met in an Episcopal church.
And so I called the director of that church.
Bless his soul, too.
I have met many saints in my days.
When they are not saints yet,
I'll make them that way.
And I called him up and I said,
Mr. So-and-so,
Mr. Ettridge, by the way, is his name.
He was in Morristown, New Jersey.
I said, I understand that there is a group of alcoholics
meeting in your church.
Now, take care.
Now, this was 9 o'clock in the morning.
And he said, yes.
I said, when do they meet?
He said, next Sunday.
This was Thursday morning.
He said, are you in trouble?
I said, no.
Well, he said, you know,
you may not be in trouble,
but I'd like to see you anyway.
How about coming over at 5 o'clock?
Now, that's a long time,
from 9 to 5 o'clock, by the way.
And so this is how I got acquainted
with Mr. Ettridge and A.A.
At 5 o'clock, of course, I was drunk.
I didn't understand.
Yeah, you can't be sober from 9 till 5.
I mean, being an alcoholic, that's impossible.
And he expected it fully.
And there was one man who put his arm around me.
He didn't know me.
And he talked me sober.
Have you ever had that?
He loved people so much that he was able to put his arm
around you and just talk.
And my God, you got sober.
This is a trick.
He loved people.
And I'll never forget him.
Never in my life.
And he told me when the meetings were.
And the meetings were on Sunday night.
And I promised him that I wouldn't take another drink.
Well, you understand.
I mean, that is, you know.
Well, anyway, I promised this holy man.
And I hadn't talked to a minister now for 18 or 19 years, you know.
So I promised this holy man that I wouldn't take a drink.
But, of course, the next morning I was drunk.
What happened between Thursday and Sunday, I don't know.
I had very bad blackouts.
The only thing that I remember is that I woke up in New York.
In a hotel room.
What I did in New York and how I paid for it, I even don't know to this day.
And I remembered on Sunday morning that I had made the date with this holy man
to go to the meeting.
And I drove from New York to New Jersey.
And all day long I tried not to have a drink.
But you know you need a drink in between.
You know that.