One-Sentence Third Step — If You Take This Drinking Problem I May Do a Little More Business with You – Jerry J.

Thank you.
I'm Jerry Jones, and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, Jerry!
I've been sober through practicing the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous
and going to its meetings since January the 1st of 1973.
Over to you, Jerry.
I want to congratulate you on AA and this area.
It has a great commodity, the commodity of enthusiasm.
It cannot, you know, you just can't have enough of that.
That's what drives us.
That's a real force that pulls us in,
and it's the individual responsibility of everyone to have that enthusiasm and practice it.
I really think it's marvelous that you have that,
and I've so enjoyed being in your meetings and visiting with you and sharing that with you.
I am one of you, you see.
I'm an alcoholic, and I'm a lot of other things.
I'm a lawyer.
Some of you will leave now.
I'm the adult.
I'm the adult spouse of an Al-Anon.
I'm not real spiritual for a spiritual speaker, but I'm going to talk to you this morning.
I really want to tell you, too, that I've enjoyed the speakers we've had here.
I enjoyed hearing Karen.
Thank you.
I've enjoyed hearing Karen, and I always enjoy hearing Billy sharing her view of our life.
I didn't, and initially, I didn't care a lot about hearing her point of view.
I didn't like to hear Al-Anon's talk at all, initially.
I had an illusion, you see, that had to be shattered,
and the illusion was that if I hurt anybody by my drinking, I hurt myself.
And I didn't like to hear that anybody else was affected.
And it was good for me to hear what it was like to watch me.
And sometimes I heard that through Billy, and sometimes I heard it through other people.
But I came to know that the impact of this disease is very great.
And it's good to hear the viewpoint, the different viewpoint of Al-Anon.
Do you know one time, only once, I think, but one time when Al-Anon died and went to hell?
It's true.
And they got there.
And there was a lot of people milling around in the reception area.
And the guy with the long, pointy detail in the horns was sitting over in the corner,
checking people in, and he was giving them a little test.
Everybody there had a reason why they shouldn't be there.
And some justification and a plea that if there was just one more chance, they could do things.
And the guy was hearing those pleas.
And one guy came up and he said,
I was just about to invent a vaccine for...
to cure cancer.
He said, could you let me go back for just a little...
No, no deal.
Sent him right off to the pitch, you know.
Another guy had some other kind of problem where he just needed to fix things a little bit,
and they sent him on.
They came to the Al-Anon.
And he said, okay, lady.
He said, what is your story?
She said, no problem.
It's not hot, and I'm not here.
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yeah!
And John and Heather and Tom made my job a lot easier, because they really told you
everything you needed to hear.
They really did.
I agreed with all that they said.
They talked about the big book and its principles, and it takes a lot of load off me as the anchorman,
you know, to not have to carry the load.
And they really lightened my load.
So, you know, I can just play around.
I can have fun this morning, I think.
I did disagree with one thing that, well, Tom created a sort of a misimpression.
Tom said he was a high-priced lawyer, and I want to tell you about that.
Once upon a time, there were three people in a room around a table.
There was a high-priced lawyer, the Easter Bunny, and a low-priced lawyer.
And right in the middle of the table was a ten-dollar bill.
The lights went out, and when they came back on, the ten-dollar bill was gone.
The question is, who got the ten-dollar bill?
The answer is, the high-priced lawyer.
The other two are simply figments of your imagination and were not there at all.
All across this country this morning, two people, two of our speakers mentioned the
fact that every man, every woman, every child has the fundamental idea of God.
You just have to be around a little bit to look around and to know that something big
bigger than me, than us, created all of this.
It's existed so long.
Everything that science teaches us, the order, the balance, all of the laws that make this
universe work, tell us that something bigger than man is involved in all of this.
That's not really very hard to come to grips with.
What's difficult to understand is that that power could apply.
It could apply and have meaning to me.
That's what's hard.
One of my favorite stories is, I'll bore you with it, you've probably heard it, but it's
a story about a little boy who lived next door to the Baptist Parsonage in a small southern
town.
And he was riding down the sidewalk on his tricycle one day, and he hit a little chug
hole in the sidewalk.
And he bent the wheel on his tricycle.
It fell over.
He tore his pants.
He tore his pants and skinned his knee.
And he didn't realize that the Baptist minister was standing behind a bush and could see all
this happening.
And the little boy hopped up and said, Son of a bitch!
He grabbed his knee, and the minister walked out there and said, No, my child.
Oh no, my child.
Do not speak thusly.
When adversity comes upon you, say, Praise God.
He patted the little boy on the head and sent him on down the sidewalk, dragging his tricycle.
Well, his dad got the tricycle fixed, and as luck would have it, about a month later,
same kid riding the same tricycle down the same sidewalk hits the same chug hole.
Same result.
Bends the wheel on the tricycle, falls over, tears his pants, skins his knee, and the minister
is again, where he can see the little boy.
And the minister says, What's the matter?
And the little boy stood up and took a deep breath, and his lip quivered a little bit,
and he said, Praise God.
And it got real quiet, and the wheel on that tricycle just straightened up.
And his pants were mended, and his knee was healed, and he swung on that tricycle and
rode off.
And the minister said, Son of a bitch!
So, you know, we talk about it, but when it happens to us, we don't really read it.
Do you know that recovery from alcoholism today is just as much of a miracle as it was
in 1935?
It's just that the miracle happens more often today than it did in 1935.
Two weeks later, I recall that night.
I remember the day.
My friends and family, I say to them, Father, I know that you don't believe in the miracle.
Do you believe in the miracle in 1935?
Do you believe that the miracle in 1935 is more likely to happen today than it did in 1935?
And as it has occurred, it has become more commonplace.
And so everybody thinks, well, we could do that.
Everybody gets in the act.
In 1935, doctors didn't think they could fix alcoholism.
Treatment centers knew they couldn't.
Dr. Silkworth, I'm told, had something like a 2% recovery rate in Towns Hospital where he worked.
But psychologists, ministers, everybody knew when you got a drunk, find someplace else to send him
because there's nothing much we can do for him.
And we had a miracle happen.
A power greater than man came along and provided a way that alcoholics can lead a sane and sober life without drinking.
And then everybody loops around and tries to get back in front of the parade again.
And today, everybody's in the act.
But the fact is, they all say one ingredient is essential.
And that essential is Alcoholics Anonymous or Al-Anon.
And the real truth is that those two programs are simply ways to find and make contact
and enlist the aid of a power greater than ourselves.
One-on-one.
Your contact, your experience, your receipt of power is what works in these programs.
It's personalized.
The great power has come to us.
Thank you.
We must never forget that.
And thank God they wrote that book.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Because by now, we would have had this thing screwed up and you couldn't believe it.
We'd have had more bells and whistles on this thing than you can imagine.
And we would have lost it.
Man's been finding the truth.
You know, the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous are not new.
They're not new.
They're as old as man himself, as the earth itself.
They were created the same day the rest of the earth was created.
Great truths, great principles at work.
And we just have to find them.
And I think all men start out.
I think all men start out lost in the sense that they don't have the principles initially.
I started out with some ideas.
I started out in West Texas, a little town.
I guess it's part of the Great Plains, Dick.
I'm not sure.
It's way the hell down there.
And I don't know whether our grass was eight foot tall or not.
I don't know how you'd mow that crap.
I don't know.
We had some buffalo.
And I thought, let's hear it for the bison.
Anyway, I started out down there, and I developed some ideas as a kid.
I developed some.
My folks both homesteaded, both sides of my family homesteaded down in that part of the country.
And we were self-sufficient.
You can do anything you have to.
That should have been our family motto.
And we had to do whatever we had to do to get along.
And I grew up with that.
That was my job, to do what I had to do.
I had some other ideas.
I had an idea that I had to be a man.
They told me that one day you're going to be a man.
You'll grow up.
You'll grow up to be a man one day, Jerry.
It wouldn't matter if I wasn't one yet, but I was going to be one.
I needed to be a winner.
I deserved that myself, you know.
Everybody liked winners better than they did losers.
Winners were the ones who were important.
Winners were the ones who got attention.
Winners were the ones who had fun.
So I wanted to be a winner.
I wanted to be accepted by you.
And that means whether you're a winner or a loser,
I want you to like me.
And my idea of that was you do whatever you're doing.
You know, when you're around other people,
you do whatever it takes to make them like you and accept you.
And so, you see, I began to get some internal conflicts going in my life.
I felt like I ought to be a man, but I wasn't one.
Men didn't hurt.
Men didn't have pain.
Men didn't experience fear.
And I knew that was true.
I watched men.
I went to the movies and saw John Wayne.
Hell, you never saw John Wayne.
You never saw John Wayne get up and say,
I don't feel like fighting Indians today.
I'm a little insecure.
And I never did see that.
So I, because I didn't feel that way,
I felt a little insecure, and I was a little nervous about life.
And I didn't quite like the role cut out for men sometimes.
I got off into this thing, and I had to fake it.
I remember when I went out for football.
I was,
6'1", when I was in the 8th grade.
The coach came through, and I was in the last half of the 8th grade,
and he was looking around, and he said,
you and you and you, and I was one of the yous,
can go out for the high school summer, I meant the spring football.
Girls seemed to think that was important.
Got a lot of attention when you were a football player.
Sounded like my kind of deal.
And I, they showed me how to put on all that contraption
and got me out there in that field,
and I loped around, you know, for a while.
And, and,
then we began to do a thing called scrimmaging.
And, you know, there's some really interesting things.
I thought you put all that stuff on so you wouldn't get hurt.
Surprisingly enough, when they hit you,
even when you got all that stuff on, it hurts.
And there's stickers on the ground out there in West Texas,
and I got lots of stickers in skin places.
And in two hours, just two hours,
I had a lifetime supply of football.
I didn't give a damn about the attention.
I didn't care about the acceptance.
I'm getting out of this deal.
It's hot.
I'm hurting.
This ain't no fun.
And I went in the dressing room,
and I began to try to get that junk off of me so I could quit.
And two other guys in my class got it off first,
and they went to the coach and turned it in and said,
we ain't playing with that no more.
And the coach then began to talk about,
well, some people had it and some people don't.
Some people have a yellow streak down their back.
And they turned to me and he said,
Jones, how do you like football?
I said, I've been going to play football all my life.
And I played it just as long as I could drag
my poor old skinny body out there on that field.
And anybody would let me play.
Play on a team, you know.
And I guess I got to liking it,
but I was motivated by the wrong things is what I'm trying to say.
And I, somewhere along the line,
about the time I got to college,
this great responsibility I felt to be what you wanted me to be,
to be a man, to be a winner,
and to hide what I really was,
all that pressure building up inside of me,
I needed some relief.
And I found it.
And I found it where you found it.
I found it.
I found it by chemically altering reality.
I found it with alcohol.
And I loved it.
God, I liked irresponsibility.
I had been responsible so long
that I really got off on irresponsibility.
I could get so excited about getting ready to get drunk.
We're going to get drunk Friday night.
Oh, boy, is it going to be good.
We're going to buy beer and whiskey and all kinds of crap,
maybe some peppermint.
No telling what we'll buy.
We'll put it in a car.
There's no telling where we'll be Saturday morning.
There's absolutely no guessing what we will have done Friday night.
Oh, it's going to be great.
It's going to be great.
And it was.
We'd sit around the next morning and try to figure out what did we do.
How did we get here?
Why am I beat up like this?
Does anybody know?
Have I offended somebody?
And we all just thought that was marvelous.
Just, oh, it was so good you couldn't hardly stand it.
And I lost friends.
A lot of people told me I was making a mistake.
They said, you know, this doesn't meet your values.
This is not the kind of person you are.
You're a responsible person.
And there was a yeah, but.
And I watched them go away
knowing that that's just a price I had to pay
for something that I had found,
that I was never going to give up.
Oh, I kept my responsibilities too.
And by now, you see, I got guilt.
And so I went on with it.
And I think recovery requires a great failure.
I think it requires a deep,
significant defeat
before you have a chance to recover.
And it took me a long time to get mine.
I tempered my defeat with a lot of victory.
I went along.
I got married.
I married a lovely woman.
You heard her talk.
We had great kids.
I got through law school.
I got a good job.
I went through the Navy.
I had lots of success.
I got lots of little certificates
that you hang on the wall.
I got promotions.
I got position.
I got money.
I got things.
I got all of those things
that they said would make you happy.
If you watched,
if you watched television
and say,
what does it take to make you happy?
And you start watching what they show you.
Don't get any better than this.
This is the gusto.
I had all those things.
But you know,
it was always a little off.
Always needed a little more
or a little better quality
or a little different kind
than I had right now.
And so I chased more better and different.
And there was no fulfillment in my life.
Oh, I looked for God.
Yeah.
From the very beginning,
I looked for God.
I always wanted this power.
But you see,
I was also very skeptical
and very cynical now.
I was not sure about this thing.
I wasn't going to be sold a bill of goods
by the preacher men.
I was a man who worshipped logic and reason.
And when the preacher men talked to me,
they better be prepared
to answer some damn tough questions.
What did God stand on
when he made the world?
Heavy stuff like that.
I had a whole string of these things, you know.
And just as soon as they convinced me
that this power was there,
just as soon as the bicycle wheel
straightened up for me,
then it's going to be,
I was going to believe it
and then it's going to do what they said.
But until somebody showed me
there wasn't much reason for me
to change my way of doing things,
was there?
And so I got, you know,
I tried all the things they said.
I got dedicated, rededicated, saved,
you know,
all of those things over and over again.
And I became convinced somewhere,
along the line,
you know,
or what happened.
One of those times
when I was down there
having been saved,
everybody came around
and hugged me and said,
Jerry, Jerry,
this is marvelous.
Don't you feel different?
And you know what I told them.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I feel different.
I did.
I was more disappointed than ever,
but I couldn't tell them that
because nothing had happened to me
that I wanted.
God wasn't proving himself on my terms.
And I wanted,
I wanted proof on my terms.
And then I would live on his.
But he's going to have to prove himself
on my terms.
Let me tell you something.
He can last longer than you can.
So, you see,
from then on,
when people ask me,
have I had an experience,
have I been saved,
have I been all those words
that they use in those churches,
I said yes.
Oh, yes.
All the time knowing
I was faking it again.
And finally I got to the point
I couldn't fake it anymore.
I just couldn't.
I couldn't go there anymore.
I never quit wanting it.
I kept reading about it.
I kept looking for it,
but I could never find it.
I kept drinking.
My drinking progressed slowly and regularly
over a long period of time.
And finally I became virtually a recluse.
I quit going out into society
because I didn't want to be caught out drunk.
And I recognized
that there was something going on with me.
I couldn't understand
why I drank the way I did.
But I thought it was because
I wanted to drink the way I did.
I didn't understand alcoholism.
I had no appreciation at all
for what alcoholism is.
I didn't have it
when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous
and it was a while after I got here
before I fully understood it.
One of the things that helped me remember it,
my own experience,
an analogy.
As a kid I had a dog.
His name was Patches.
Patches was mostly a bulldog.
And he was
a hell of a dog.
He, uh,
one time he whipped a badger
that weighed a pound more than he did.
Know how I know?
He killed him.
It took him all morning to do it,
but he got it done.
And we weighed them both.
And the badger weighed one pound more than he did.
And every day for a week,
just to give you a little insight into his character,
he would go up there to the field
and pick up that old badger
and just shake hell out of him
just to let him know
he's still there.
Laughter
This morning though,
I'm telling you about it,
we had a boar-hog
that got out of a neighbor's pen
and he came down to our place
and walked in
and Patches made a decision
to go out there
and get hold of the hog.
Now, that's not a casual decision
for a bulldog.
When a bulldog gets hold of something,
he gets hold of it.
And he went out there
and he got hold of the hog
and it created a problem
in our barnyard right away.
The hog was squealing,
the dog was barking,
my dad came running out of the shop
and he was out there cussing
and kicking hogs and dogs
just as hard as he could,
trying to get them broken.
And I was out there
because I saw my dog go out there
and he was in trouble
and my mother saw me
go into this fray
and she knew her kid
was about to get killed
and so the whole family,
everybody was out there
and everyone knew the solution.
Patches turned loose
that damn hog.
Well, he didn't turn loose
but he came off.
And we caught him
and we held him.
We stopped him.
And as he came off,
that old hog had wheeled around
and cut his throat.
And we held him under the water hide
and stopped the bleeding
and patched him up
and turned him loose.
And he went right back
and got ahold of that damn hog again.
Same problem.
Instantly we had the same problem.
Squealing, barking, cussing,
kicking, crying.
Everybody knew the solution
to the problem.
Hog knew it.
We knew it.
Everybody knew it.
Patches turned loose
that damn hog
and he came off again,
got cut up a little more
and this time we recognized that
I believe the psychologists would say that
Patches' emotional nature
was in control of his intellect.
He was not himself.
And so we committed him.
We tied him to the water hydrant.
And I guess I was his counselor.
I was given the job
to sit there with him
and help him remember his life.
Think about the important things.
Have you ever had a good day
getting ahold of hogs?
Does your family and friends enjoy it
when you get ahold of hogs?
Do they taste good?
Did you ever get hurt
catching ahold of hogs?
And I worked on him well
for quite a while,
a couple of hours.
And after a while
he got that grin that dogs get,
you know,
and his tongue's lolled out
and his little tail's about that long.
It's working a little bit, you know.
And he's healed.
We have healed the dog.
And so I go tell my father.
I said,
Dad,
looks like old Patches is okay now.
And he goes out and looks at him
and said,
Yeah, it looks okay.
We've run the hog all the way off
so he won't be tempted, you know.
And we turned him loose.
He had to go two miles
to find the hog this time,
but by God,
he's got him one more time.
Does that remind you
of anyone you know?
Does that describe alcoholism?
I know it describes Al-Anonism
because I was a charter member
of Hog-Anon in West Texas out there.
Everybody thought the problem
with the old dog was
catching hold of the hog.
Solution?
Turn loose the hog.
But that wasn't the problem.
That's only the immediate problem.
That's like the physical reaction
we have to alcohol.
And we have one
that's different than other people.
If you're an alcoholic
and really look back on your life
and go through your life
and read those first
two or three chapters of the book,
you begin to see that there is
something about me
that's a little different.
When I drink alcohol,
I'm going to drink some more.
Something happens in my body
that sends a message up to my brain
and says,
I believe we'll have
another one of those.
And another and another
and another.
It's like pouring gasoline
on a fire, you know.
Get them to go out that way.
And there's the other side of it.
There's the other side
that was the problem with Patches.
And that was
what made him go get hold
of the hog in the first place.
Why do we go back to drinking?
Why do we,
after we get chewed up
and beat up
and everything bad's happened,
we go right back again?
The obsession.
The one big thought.
A drink will make it better.
Whatever it is, by God,
a drink can make it better.
A great wedding,
fancy balls,
whatever.
A drink would make it better.
And that got to be
the story of my life.
A drink would always
make it better.
And I lived around alcohol.
And I didn't understand
that when I had that first drink
it was going to carry me away.
And I progressed downward.
My solution
that got me free
of the pressures I felt
in my early life
ceased to work for me
and I began to go downhill
very rapidly.
I became a recluse.
I stayed at home.
I drank a quart of whiskey a day.
I was a hell of an example
for my family.
I brought my disease home
and let them look at it,
by God.
And I practiced
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
on a regular basis.
I could walk in there
and sit down in my chair,
pat them on the head,
love them,
ask them about their schoolwork,
have a good day, darling,
have about three drinks
and begin to reminisce
and think about those people
who had done that to me.
It was their damn fault.
It was their,
it was a rotten damn world
and I sat there
and had a few drinks
and the kids come back up to me
and want to talk to me
and say,
Daddy,
and touch me on the arm
and I'll lash out and say,
What the hell do you want with me?
What do you want with me?
Leave me alone.
Can't you see
I'm carrying the damn load
for this whole family?
Can't you see?
Don't you know
I need some peace?
And the kid's confused.
He didn't know what the hell.
This is the same guy
who just a minute ago
was actually asking him
about his schoolwork.
And it all took place in me,
in my mind.
In my mind.
And I had to break free
of the thing,
the illusions that I had.
That it was not,
I thought you were the problem.
I thought the world was the problem.
I thought it was
sons of bitches and circumstances
that were the problems.
And I had to be taught differently
and Al-Anon helped me there.
Billy went to Al-Anon.
I'm a big time lawyer
and she is going to a public meeting
about my problem.
Some of you have used lawyers in this room.
Did you ever look in the yellow pages
under alcoholic lawyers?
No.
Not even drunks want alcoholic lawyers.
She was fronting my disease
in my community
and I was going to,
my partners were going to hear about it.
We already had two alcoholics
in my law firm.
And I knew,
I knew what we were going to do with them.
I heard them talk about it.
They're going to get rid of them
just as soon as they can.
And they were much more powerful,
much more important than I was.
And here she was,
my gosh,
I remember talking to her about this thing.
I remember explaining to her,
Billy, Billy, think, think.
Somebody is going to see you there.
There are thousands of people in Dallas
who could see you there.
Lawyers' wives,
lawyers, judges, judges' wives.
My partners, their wives.
Jurors, witnesses, clients.
There were thousands of people,
any one of which
who would send the word back
to that law firm downtown,
and I'm history.
And when I'm history at that law firm,
the money, M-O-N-E-Y, stops.
There is a mortgage on the house,
the cars,
everything that's loose.
When you don't pay the mortgage,
they come and get it.
You don't get to use it or stay in it anymore.
We are on the street,
clothes on our backs,
hungry, cold, and alone.
We're not talking about monies now for college,
we're talking about bare survival.
You must not,
you cannot go back to those meetings.
And she said, I need to go.
I said, please, please do not go.
She said, I need to go.
I said, if I ever hear you going again,
I'll kill you.
She said, I'm going.
And it drove me crazy.
I couldn't leave her alone.
Not a day passed that I didn't think about that.
Not, every time I saw her,
I thought about,
I didn't even know what Al-Anon was
at the beginning, you know.
I thought it was a kitchen utensil,
Al-Anon or something.
Found out it had to do with Alcoholics Anonymous.
I didn't want nothing to do with none of that.
She's always, would you like for me
to have someone come over?
No, hell no,
I wouldn't like anybody to come over.
And I'll pick fights with her.
I'm pretty good at this.
I'm kind of sneaky when it comes to picking fights.
I kind of ooch into them, you know,
just a little bit at a time.
I start off with the easiest,
I need to get some facts together
so I can win my arguments, you know.
And I get a few,
a few easy admissions
before they know I'm in a fight.
And when they know it's too late,
you see, I got them.
And this day I started a fight with her.
I said to her, Billy,
you think I'm an alcoholic?
Easy, huh?
And she said,
I don't know whether you are or not.
I said, well, that's damn funny.
You've been calling me an alcoholic for years.
And she said, yes, but I was wrong.
It's real difficult to start a fight
when they're acting like that.
She said, it didn't matter what I think.
It didn't matter what I think.
It didn't matter what the doctors think,
your partners think,
anybody else in the world except you.
You've got to decide,
are you or aren't you?
And I made a basic mistake
that no good trial lawyer ever makes.
I asked a question
when I didn't have any idea
what the answer was.
I said, well,
if I wanted to find out,
how would I do it?
Have they got an answer?
Try some controlled drinking, Jerry.
What do you mean controlled drinking?
Drink two drinks every day for six months.
And if you can do that,
you're not an alcoholic.
And I said, do I understand?
You, who have been asking me for years
not to drink anymore,
want me to drink six more months?
She said, that's right.
And I realized I was dealing
with a demented person.
And I had to get the hell out of there
because nothing was going the way I understood it.
And so I broke it off
and I began to think again like I do.
And I realized that in a week or so
that somebody's going to have to make
the supreme sacrifice to save our family
and my profession
and all the things that I've busted my ass for
all these years.
I'm going to have to take the damn test.
And I'm smart enough that I don't tell her
that I'm going to take the test.
And I'm realistic.
I have to change the test a little.
You don't understand.
Two drinks don't do me any good,
but three drinks,
I've got a good-sized glass of wine,
three drinks,
two big martinis before dinner
and a big brandy after dinner,
and that would be reasonable.
Nobody could fault me for drinking that way.
And I started trying to do it.
And then I found that alcoholism
centers in the brain,
plus that physical thing.
I would have two drinks
and I would put the glass up
and I would think,
well,
that's all the martinis today.
And then it would happen.
A thought would come to me from somewhere
way out in left field
and it was something like,
what are you doing?
What are you doing?
Are you over 21?
Are you a man?
Who supports this whole damn bunch around here?
Are you going to let a bunch of little old ladies
in tennis shoes tell you how to drink whiskey?
And the answer was,
hell no,
I'm not going to do that.
And I'd go to the bar
and I'd drink the rest of that bottle with a vengeance.
And I'd wake up the next morning
and wonder,
why did I do that?
Well,
it's important for me to get that woman out of Alamon
and I'm going to have to pass that damn test for a while
until she notices it.
And then she'll quit.
And I had another thing happen.
I would go to the bar
and start to take the test
and I'd think I've had a bad day.
I'm just not going to take the damn test today.
I'd drink the bottle that day too.
And then I was real good.
I could just forget the damn test entirely
for, say, a couple of weeks at a time.
But every time I remembered
that I was supposed to be taking the test,
that I had imposed this on myself,
that no one in the world knew I was taking the test,
I was defeated again.
I was defeated again.
I couldn't understand it.
I had exercised and demonstrated a lot of willpower
and a lot of drive in my life.
Why can't a grown man decide
he's going to drink three drinks a day
and stick to it by God?
Is there something wrong with you?
Are you some kind of a moral leopard?
What's happening to you?
Well, today will be different,
only it wasn't different.
I gave that test a pretty good run,
about a year and a half.
Never passed her one time.
Didn't always get knee-walking drunk,
but did a lot of days.
And always, always the morning after,
I was defeated.
And finally on January,
on December 31st of 1972,
I had a bad December.
I had a bad December.
We'd had a Sunday school party at my house.
This group that Billy told you about,
the kind of,
sort of a loosey-goosey Sunday school group,
came over and I thought I'd just serve a few drinks
to the Sunday school class.
And you know not one of those turkeys
would have a drink with me.
Not one.
So I decided to hell with them.
I won't be gullible.
I won't be governed by their damned attitude.
I'll drink what I want to drink.
And so I played like I was having one brandy
all night long.
I had a bottle back in the back.
I'd sleep back there and stuff.
I did some kind of bizarre things.
I taught them the words of some Christmas carols
that I'd learned in the Navy.
A little different.
Hard to explain.
I, uh,
made Billy let me drive home
when I'd had about another fifth at another party.
Nothing in the world scared me worse than
to have a sober Al-Anon drive my car
when I was drunk.
So I drove 35 miles an hour
on one of our major freeways.
This car's passed me at 70.
You know, one eye closed,
trying to keep her in that lane, you know.
Not much excuse for that.
But the last day,
I need to bring in January the 1st right, you know.
We haven't got many friends left,
and we're going to go out and eat dinner and come home.
And I know why we're coming home.
We're coming home so if I get drunk,
they won't have to bring me in some way.
But I ain't going to get that drunk this time.
I'm going to bring the new year in right.
And I started pacing myself through the day,
not drinking too much.
And I remember waking up
and looking out the window,
and it was dark.
And Billy, I looked over,
and there she sat in her chair.
And I said,
Billy, shouldn't we be getting dressed?
And she said,
Aw, Jerry,
don't you know what time it is?
And I looked at my watch,
and it was 10 o'clock at night.
The last time I remember
had been 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
I'd missed.
I'd passed out at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
I had no excuses.
And you know what I felt like.
I was sick of me.
I was sick of me.
I'd had a lot of success in my life.
I had things.
I had lots of things.
But I'm sick of me.
And I'm sick of what I have become.
And I have no hope for me.
I am out of control.
And I got up and had one more drink
and went to bed.
And the next morning I woke up
to the sorriest looking world
I guess I've ever seen.
It was just gray.
No hope.
Deep depression.
And I went out,
and there was one thing
I had sworn I would never do
that I decided I would try.
I had to try something.
And I told Billy,
I said,
I'm going to try to stop drinking.
And she said,
Would you like for me to call someone
from Alcoholics Anonymous?
And I said,
Hell no.
I got myself in this mess
and if anybody gets me out,
I'll do it.
And she said,
You may find these helpful.
And she handed me a copy
of the 24-hour-a-day book
and the big book.
I don't know why she happened
to have them there,
but she did.
And with all the graciousness
and dignity I could muster,
I threw them against the wall
near her head
and told her,
I said,
You stay the hell away from me
and keep the kids
and the dogs
and them damn DAs
out of my life.
Because I'm going to do this thing
if it can be done,
and I'm not sure at all
it can be done.
And she said,
You got it.
You got it.
And I had it.
Strange kind of condition
I was in.
You know,
when you're doing something
that's real bad for you
and you stop,
wouldn't you think
you'd get better?
I didn't.
I couldn't stop thinking
about a drink
or wishing
I hadn't had a drink.
I walked the streets
and looked at people
and they were happy
going about their lives
and I felt,
I'm eating up with,
all I want to do
is a drink.
Just a drink.
Wishing I'd never
heard of whiskey,
wishing I had a gallon of it.
And I'm walking the streets,
I can't be in the right place.
Have you ever been
in the wrong place
all the time?
If I'm sitting down,
I ought to be standing up.
If I'm standing up,
I ought to be walking.
If I'm walking,
I ought to be laying down somewhere.
If I'm downtown,
I ought to be out in the house.
I've just got,
I'm just zooming around
and I got the yippies.
Did you ever have the yippies?
It's when you get real quick.
You know,
you're sitting down
and all of a sudden
you look over there,
yippie.
I got the yippies.
And I,
God,
something's happened
and I'm coming apart.
And I lived through
two days of this,
two days.
And I decided,
I caught her out of the kitchen
and I decided
I'd sneak,
read the book
and I'd read it
and I'd read a load
of those damn books
that they had there.
And I ran in there
and I thought she'd leave
before I could find them.
And I found them in there
and there was a,
I'm sorry I didn't read
the conference-approved literature
but I just didn't have time.
I snatched up
that little 24-hour-a-day book
and opened it up
and there was a date
in the cop,
upper right-hand corner,
in the upper left-hand corner.
And with a keen,
alcoholic mind,
I thought I should go
to January the 2nd
and read what it says that day.
And I switched over there
and it was perfect.
It described exactly
what was going on.
It said
I was sick of myself.
Alcohol had dominated
and ruined my life.
On and on like that
for that little paragraph.
And then it says
this year we're going
to give our drinking problem
to God.
Oh my God.
Goody, goody two-shoes.
Here I am
with an industrial-grade problem
and they're giving me
Sunday school crap, you know.
I've never been
as disappointed in anything
in my life
is what they said.
And if I'd had anything
else to do,
any other idea
at all,
I wouldn't have done
what I did.
I threw the little book
out in the middle of the table
and said,
God,
if you're there
I'm going to give you
this drinking problem.
And if you take it
I may do
a little more business
with you.
I guess it was
the best prayer
I ever said.
It was totally honest.
It came from great need.
I recognized that,
you see,
I wasn't going to be able
to stop this
on my terms.
My terms,
my way,
I was not going
to stop this
on my terms.
My way has run out.
I have hit the wall.
The next morning
I knew something.
Did you ever just know something?
I knew something.
I knew I'm not going
to get well by myself.
I'm not going to be able
to stop drinking
by myself.
I'm going to have
to have some help.
And I need some help
with skin on it.
And I called a thing
called Alcoholics Anonymous
and began to tell them
why I couldn't do
what they told me to do.
Of course,
you see,
that's not my style.
I can't go to a meeting
every night.
I'm very busy.
What do you do?
Well,
I drink.
Well,
you stopped drinking
so you're going
to have a little time,
aren't you?
Well,
yeah,
I guess you're right.
Someone will see me
at those damn meetings.
We have a policy
of anonymity.
I didn't trust it.
So I finally wound up
with a little home group
and I was not getting
much better.
And a guy
walked in there
from the treatment
center one night
who had literature
sticking out of every
damn pocket,
you know.
He had six glorious
months of sobriety.
His name was David.
And David
was the smartest man
I'd ever heard
in my life.
He looked like a drunk.
There was a lot
of people in that
little home group
who had 15 years
of sobriety,
20 years of sobriety.
Their baby had
a year and a half.
I couldn't think
30 days in a year
and a half.
They couldn't have
had much of a problem.
Not like my problem
was.
And my gosh,
I followed David
out of the room.
And I said,
David,
what do you think
about this AA thing?
He said,
oh,
you mean this little group?
I said,
I think it's fine
for those people.
But it ain't what
you and I
are going to need.
I said,
what are we going to need?
He said,
you're going to need
a lot of alcoholics
and almonds.
You're going to need
to go to a meeting
every night.
We're going to have
to change the way
we think.
We're going to have
to take steps.
We're going to have
to work with newcomers.
We're going to have
to be involved.
And I said,
where are we going
to go?
And he set the hook.
Where are we going
to go?
Me and you.
And I went to AA.
And I didn't like it.
I didn't like
what you did there.
I didn't like
the hugs
and the pats
and the corny
way you did things.
You know,
God,
an old man
would stand up
and say,
my name is Jerry.
And everybody says,
hi, Jerry.
Oh,
that's some kind
of high school
fraternity or something.
I expected him
to come up
and give me
the grip
any time,
you know.
Had a lousy
attitude.
But it was
the only place.
And David
kept going.
Kept going.
And he brought
another person in,
a gal named Jean.
And we began
to do the steps.
And we got
sponsors.
And I got
caught up
in this thing.
And one day,
one day,
I don't remember
the day
I realized
I'm going
to a meeting
and I don't
need to go
to the meeting
to stay sober.
Why am I going?
Well,
I'll tell you
why I'm going.
I'm going
because
I enjoy
what's happening
there.
Because I like
being a part of.
I see people
getting well there.
I have seen
people by now
come into
Alcoholics Anonymous
who had
no chance.
You knew
they didn't
have a chance.
If we had thought
about it,
we would have
taken a picture
of them
so you could
have a before
and after.
They couldn't
make complete sentences.
Just gibberish
came out of
their mouth
when they tried
to talk.
And by gosh,
you watch them
in just a little
while,
they turn
into college
graduates,
professional
people,
tradesmen
with excellent
skills.
Miracles are
happening
right there
in our
lives.
We have
seen
a miracle
and one
had come
to us.
One had
come to
us.
I was
beginning
to have
my own
miracle.
I was
beginning
to find
the power.
Because,
you see,
the steps
of Alcoholics
Anonymous
are exactly
what we
need to
do,
to make
people look
at life
and say,
where am
I powerless?
Where am
I unmanageable?
Can I
believe
that there
is a
solution
to this
problem
if I
will let
it go?
Will I
commit?
Will I
go for
it?
Will I
decide
I'm
not
going
to take
the
next step?
Will I
choose
the
path
that
I
believe
in?
Will I
choose
to
live
my
life
in
the
most
peaceful
way
possible?
Will I
choose
to
live
my
life
We engage in self-examination.
We learn what's going on in our minds.
We find out that thoughts have literally dominated us.
Memories have controlled us and ruined a thousand days.
They're called resentments.
Somebody's flunked the test of being what they ought to be.
If it's me, it's guilt.
If it's them, it's resentment.
Fear.
God, what's going to happen tomorrow?
Another thought.
What's going to happen tomorrow?
And I'm not immune from those things today.
I still have them, but I've got a way to do my part.
God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
That's our message.
That means you've got to do your part.
You've got to do what you can, and you're an integral part of your recovery.
You've got to get after it.
If I did anything right, it's I gave the hardest effort I ever gave to anything in my life
to Alcoholics Anonymous the first five years.
I learned more than I have ever learned in any period of my life, in my entire life.
About living.
And I had, they told me, the book says it three times,
that when you remove this thing called self-centeredness,
when it's gone, you will find the power.
You will see and experience the power in your life, not in my life.
We don't have to watch for little kids on tricycles.
We get our own.
And that's marvelous.
I didn't have self-centeredness.
Of course.
Well, unlike a lot of you, you know, Heather said she wasn't selfish.
I wasn't either.
I wasn't self-centered.
My God.
Look at what I was doing for that wife and kids.
I skipped that page.
I don't need to read something that's a bunch of, for you, why should I?
It's a selfish program, don't you know?
Hogwash.
One night I was sitting in a meeting and I heard somebody talking and I, once again, remembered something.
I remembered my fish.
I remembered my fishbowl.
When I was a kid, or not a kid, when I was in the middle of my drinking,
I got tired of watching television.
As I was taking the test on a nightly basis, I grew weary of watching television.
It's not much good sober either.
And I bought me a fishbowl and I put it right beside my chair.
It was my fishbowl.
It didn't belong to anybody else in the house.
It's mine.
It's the size I want.
It's got the kind of gravel on it at the bottom I want.
It's got the kind of plants in it that I like.
And I put water in it.
I put the kind of fish in it.
I put the kind of fish in it.
I put the kind of fish in it.
I put the kind of fish in it.
The kind of fish I like?
Slow, swimming, pretty fish.
It's got a light on it.
I can make it daylight or I can make it dark.
I feed my fish if they are to be fed.
Sometimes it's a land of plenty and sometimes there's a famine up on the land.
And I watch my fish.
I love to watch my fish.
I just watch them sail around in that water and, God, I just get off watching them.
I'm thinking how pretty they are.
If I could just live in a world like that.
And this night in the meeting, I was remembering my fishbowl.
And I remembered there was always one damn fish.
Always one.
Generally an ugly, bowl-cleaning kind of fish who would get after the pretty fish.
Just when I was in the middle of my reverie, thinking of all the wonderful things,
he would start nipping the tail of the pretty fish.
And the pretty fish would begin to swim fast to get away from him.
And as he passed other fish, they would speed up.
And the first thing, you know,
I remember the whole damn bowl was just going back and forth with fish.
It drove me crazy.
And I'd reach over there and slam the side of that bowl.
Boy!
Let them know there's a power greater than they are that is displeased.
And they'd stop.
And I was fair.
I was fair.
I practiced the mystical rule of three.
I gave them three chances.
Three times I warned them with great claps of thunder.
And then there are some fish you would know that some just don't get well too quick.
So I went and bought me a little dip net.
And I decided I would give some of them a real hands-on experience with the power.
And I would catch the offending fish, haul him out of there,
hold my hand over the top of the net.
And have a drink.
Salute.
And I let them get still.
Timing is very important.
If you put them back and they float, you've held them out too long.
But, you know,
we practice.
And I got them back most of the time.
And I gave them three days.
Three dip-net treatments.
And then if they'd flunked, three claps of thunder and three hands-on experiences with the power.
I recognize that there are such unfortunes.
They seem to have been born that day.
And I took them to the toilet and flushed them.
There I sat in that meeting feeling like my life wasn't unmanageable.
I'm not self-centered.
Lots of grown men worry about what fish are doing to them.
Lots of grown men try to train dumb animals like fish, you know.
Not a soul in the world knew I was doing that.
It was my deal.
First time I heard it, I was doing a 12-step call and told a little girl about that one night.
My son had called me to the hospital.
He's a doctor.
To see her.
And I told her about that.
He heard me talk about flushing the fish.
He said, my God, I wondered where all those fish went.
I said, I don't know.
And the results.
When you have done these things, when you have engaged in self-examination,
when you have shared your life with another person, God and yourself,
when you have committed again to do God's will in your life
and try to become of maximum service to God and your fellow man,
go to a meeting to be helpful, to be a part of the solution,
rather than to get lost.
That's what I need.
When you do that, and when you have cleaned up your side of the street with people,
remarkable things begin to happen in your life.
You have great thoughts sometimes.
My first great thought came when I was at a retreat.
I was hunting God.
I decided I'm going to find him this time if he kills me.
And I was out with a Baptist, to tell you how serious I was.
Billy and I had gone to a little retreat with a guy in Dallas who was kind of an avant-garde,
a minister, and we were out there.
It was a couples retreat.
We had some work to do on our relationship.
And I went out there, and there were about 20 people there, 10 couples,
and none of them were in the program except Billy and I.
And the first thing we did, right after dinner on Friday evening,
they sat down in a little room, and I've been a long way from the door,
and they say, well, let's just share what God's doing in our life today.
And I thought, oh, my God.
That's testimonial time.
I knew I couldn't trust these Baptists.
I am not doing no damn testimonials.
I've got to get the hell out of here.
And I couldn't find a graceful way to get up off the floor and get out of that room.
I'm stuck.
And I think, oh, surely somebody will say I don't have anything to share.
I pass.
Something.
And they began to go around the room.
And I began to notice that the civilians didn't have many problems.
The civilians had little wimpy problems that they were talking about,
that one of them couldn't raise their kids without God.
Well, I'd done a pretty good job with that.
One of them couldn't go to work without God.
One of them couldn't drive the expressways without God.
And I began to think, listen to these people.
Listen to these people.
If they knew that there was a real alcoholic in their midst,
who for three or four months now hasn't had a drink of whiskey
because he said that little old prayer and started going,
I guess that's God's will doing that, isn't it?
I ought to tell these Baptists about that.
I would really make an impression.
I would make an impression on the Baptists if I told them about that.
Probably they would want to counsel with me all weekend long.
Probably I'll never see any of these people again.
They wouldn't tell my law firm.
I think I'll just tell them.
I'll blow the socks off the Baptists.
And I didn't hear anybody else for a while because I'm rehearsing my speech.
Did you ever do that?
I was doing the same thing in the A, you know,
until they called on me in the circle.
I couldn't hear anything because I was planning what I was going to say.
And anyway, I got my speech pretty well prepared.
And about that time, an old boy got up two down from me.
His wife was here and he was right there.
And he was pathetic.
I'm telling you, he began to blubber.
Did you ever see a grown man blubber?
Just big old nose running and crying.
I've never been embarrassed for anybody as I was in his life.
I just think, God, the pretty thing like her to have to be married to some sissy like that,
just amazing to me.
And finally, he just sat down.
I never did know what he was talking about.
And she got up.
And I liked to look at her.
She was pretty.
She was slender.
She had dark hair and dark eyes.
And she said, I don't know what I'd do without this power.
I said, I don't know how I could do this without this power.
And she said, the remarkable thing and the great thing is that my children are ages two and three.
And you know,
And they're going to have this power too, even though I'm not going to be here to show it to them.
This power is available to all men.
Everybody gets a chance to find it.
I'm glad my husband's got a good policy of insurance so he won't be handicapped by my last illness.
And God heals.
God heals and he's going to be able to go out and find someone else to share his life with.
And I came to recognize that I was hearing a young woman, 32 years of age,
children aged 2 and 3, talk about dying in the next couple of months.
She had cancer.
And she stood there with a little smile on her face and those quiet eyes
and looked death right in the eye and talked about gratitude.
She had an incurable disease. I identified I did too.
Alcoholism doesn't get any better.
But she didn't have the solution I did.
All I had to do was go to those meetings and be with those people
and I could go anywhere and do anything that I'd ever been permitted to do or was supposed to do in my life.
And I had a great thought.
It was, ain't you got it tough, cowboy?
Ain't you got it tough?
You've been feeling sorry for yourself.
That you're giving up the bright lights and the white tablecloths and those long-stemmed glasses
and that good booze and the deep-diluted screen.
All these pies that I call martinis and all that stuff.
I was giving that up.
I really felt like I was losing a lot.
Ain't I got it tough?
You know that's the last day I ever felt sorry for myself for being an alcoholic?
You know something else?
I'm not sorry for you either.
Because the solution is so much better than anything we ever had before.
It changes your life.
It does things for you.
That are just phenomenal.
I've got to tell you though that life keeps happening.
This is not a one-shot deal.
You know, we're one-shot players.
Short-distance runners.
This is one that lasts forever.
Life keeps happening to us.
It keeps coming to us.
There are going to be deaths.
There are going to be divorces.
There are going to be jobs lost.
There's going to be sickness.
There's going to be all kinds of things.
There's going to be all kinds of things.
There's going to be all kinds of things.
There's going to be all kinds of things that come to you in sobriety
that you are going to have to apply the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous to on a daily basis.
And know with certainty that you won't always remember what the solution is
and that you will need a sponsor and a group to carry you.
You help me today and I'll help you tomorrow.
And together we are perpetuated.
Together we function.
Together we function.
Together we work.
Together we live life.
That's what it is.
Don't be deceived.
This is my personal view.
I hear people say that the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Big Book
are a good, sort of a basic kindergarten spiritual program.
If there's any more than what we have here, I don't know it.
Every religion, every great teaching,
every principle for a good life that I know of is involved in these steps.
And you keep applying them over and over and getting more and more out of them
and you deepen spiritually and you mature as a spiritual human being.
And you go on to do things and to live life in ways that we cannot imagine today.
That is our gift.
And the way we get to do it,
the way we get to do it is right up there.
We get to give rather than to get.
We take a self-centered life and switch it through these steps into a God-centered life
where we are of maximum service to God and our fellow man.
And when we live that kind of life, everything else,
if that's our highest priority,
everything else falls in line in a good, logical order.
The day I flip my work first,
I am in trouble.
The day I put my relationship ahead of trying to be of maximum service to God and my fellow man,
I am in trouble.
But that's the highest and best for us.
And if we live to that goal, it will carry us through anything and everything.
I believe that the universe is self-correcting.
I believe that this universe is designed so that when we get off the base,
we begin to have pain.
When we as a race begin to use drugs and alcohol to chemically alter reality,
we begin to have lots of failures.
And the program of Alcoholics Anonymous came along at a time
when that was just really beginning to roll very strongly.
And it exists today around the world.
It may literally change the world.
Can you imagine a world that practiced the program of Alcoholics Anonymous?
Can you imagine a world where every person in it
was responsible for his own actions
to be peaceful,
to be loving,
to be his brother's keeper,
in the highest sense of that word,
to be of service to God and his fellow man?
If we're ever going to have peace, that's the way it will happen.
We won't be able to have a legislature that passes a law that makes it peaceful.
And we won't be able to ever build enough.
We won't have enough guns, tanks, and nuclear bombs to keep peace in the world
unless we have this thing.
And I believe that the rash and the great epidemic of addiction
is going to be followed by another epidemic,
another great blessing,
a wave of good
called the program of Alcoholics Anonymous
and all the other programs that are patterned after it.
If.
If.
Do you know the greatest teacher,
the greatest principle of our society?
It's the principle of experience.
What man has done, man can do.
When I was a kid in West Texas,
I watched the town kids.
We got to go to town once a week,
and I saw the town kids,
and the town kids rode bicycles.
And I wanted a bicycle.
And I talked to my dad about it,
and my dad said,
okay, you can have a bike.
And he got the Sears and Roebuck catalog down
and ordered one.
And he put it together,
and he gave it to me,
and I went out on our driveway to ride the bicycle.
Never occurred to me that there was anything to learn
about riding a bicycle.
Town kids rode them real good.
I swung up on that bicycle
and fell right over to the other side
and busted my tail.
And I got up and tried it again,
and it's the same thing, same result.
I went in the house and told my mother,
I said, Mom,
I can't ride that bicycle.
You're going to have to help me.
So she came out for a day.
She trotted along beside me
and helped me up and gave it a shove.
And I fall over and bust my ass.
And at the end of the day,
I came to know a great truth.
I've been sold a defected bicycle.
Ain't no living human can ride this bicycle.
And I told my folks that.
And my mother looked at me.
She was a spunky little Irishman.
And she said,
Jerry Jones,
I've never ridden a bicycle in my life.
I think maybe one time as a little girl.
And I could ride that bicycle.
And I said,
you can not.
The next morning,
she put on,
a pair of slacks
and went out in the driveway
and got on the bicycle
and I'm out there watching it.
She gets on and,
just like I told her,
she fell over,
busted her tail.
I didn't even feel real sorry for her
because I had wandered.
But the next time she got on it
and she rode it about 25 yards.
Wobbly,
not too pretty,
but she rode it.
She got off and laid it down on the ground
and she said,
okay, Jerry,
it's your bike.
If it's going to be ridden,
you'll have to ride it.
And she went in the house.
Do you know that,
do you know that
I rode that bicycle an hour later?
What man has done,
man can do.
You are the message of alcoholic science.
You are immensely important
in this whole scheme of things.
If you don't discharge your responsibility
by passing it on to those around you,
those who need it,
by living the life
and by showing them how you do it,
do it.
You have not practiced gratitude.
You have not practiced thanksgiving.
Don't tell me about it.
Show me your gratitude.
It's up to us.
My time is up.
And I thank you so much
for letting Billy and I come here
and share this with you.
I want you to know that
I think we're among all people
the most blessed.
And we got it tough.
Thank you.
Thank you.