Nobody Asked What You Want to Do — We Asked What You’re Going to Do – Jim W.

About This Speaker Tape

Jim W. from Fort Worth, Texas tells his story at the 1983 NCCAA Fall Conference in Stockton, California. Raised Southern Baptist in a dry county in small-town Texas, he describes the rigid religious environment that left him terrified of his own impulses but with no tools to manage them. His first drink at a honky-tonk did nothing for him, but he quickly progressed to blackout drinking every time he picked up. He chronicles a cascade of failures — flunking out of jobs because he couldn't show up on Mondays, marriages destroyed by dishonesty and blackout violence, and an escalating pattern of geographic cures that never worked.

The low points are harrowing. He describes sitting on the toilet cutting both wrists with a razor blade, then stopping to answer the phone because he couldn't stand not knowing who called. His wife pulled a loaded .45 Magnum on him in bed. He drove blacked out across Houston routinely and never questioned how his car got home. In Fort Stockton he added Librium to the beer and bourbon, taking 25mg capsules at the same rate as 10mg because they were "just a different color green." By the end he was vibrating so badly a pharmacist could see it across the counter.

On Christmas Eve 1965 in Houston, he called a number under "Alcoholics Anonymous" in the phone book. A small, sad-looking man named Watson took him to an old house with a bar in the back where they served him milk and honey. He went to meetings every night for three months, got drunk, came back, and his sponsor laid it out: do exactly what we tell you, the way we tell you, or leave. The instructions were brutally simple — morning prayer on your knees, call your sponsor before you go to the bathroom, go to work whether you hate it or not, evening prayer whether you mean it or not. After about a year of grinding obedience, Higher Power moved into his car on the 610 loop and he knew he would never need to drink again.

The second half of the talk covers the harder work that came after the obsession was lifted — learning to live with another person, surrendering his compulsive sexual behavior in an agonizing all-day prayer session, going through a divorce without bitterness, and eventually building a real marriage with Eloise grounded in Higher Power, AA, and Al-Anon. He closes with a powerful message about Higher Power choosing alcoholics as His special children, emphasizing that the fellowship itself is the secret — "You're the one I was looking for. When I got with you, that's when it began to happen."

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction at NCCAA Fall Conference — Jim W. from Fort Worth opens with rapid-fire Southern Baptist comedy about the five commandments and dry-county Texas
• 8:00 First drink at a honky-tonk at age 18 — spots the church deacon inside with a beer and a woman; learns to blackout drink immediately
• 15:00 Job hunting in Houston — shows up vibrating, can't fill out applications, gets drunk after every rejection
• 18:00 Suicide attempt — cuts both wrists with a razor blade, stops to answer the ringing phone; police call about the previous night
• 23:00 Marriage at 10am in the First Baptist Church so there would be no drinking before the ceremony; longest bet on the marriage was three weeks
• 28:00 Wife pulls a .45 Magnum on him in bed; preacher tells them to go look at the fruit blossoms — he detours to Mexico, switches to tequila, blacks out
• 33:00 Fort Stockton — 536 people, Librium daytime and beer at night, driving with double vision and a stripe that always drifted right
• 38:00 Christmas Eve 1965 — calls AA from the phone book, Watson arrives and takes him to the old house; first AA meeting that night
• 48:00 Sponsor lays down the program — prayer on your knees morning and night, call before the bathroom, go to work whether you hate it; 'It's your thinking that's wrong — all of it'
• 53:00 Spiritual experience on the 610 loop — Higher Power moves into the car as a friend; Jim knows he will never need to drink again unless he insists on it