Stop Doing What You Want and Start Doing What You Need – Jack S.

Thank you, Joe. My name is Jack Sullivan. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. I come from Louisville, Kentucky, and through the grace of God and this fellowship, a willingness on my part, a determination that you gave me, and the ability to listen. I haven't had a drink of alcohol since the 21st day of August of 1962. I used to tell people that I hadn't found it necessary to take a drink until I heard that story about the guy that said that one day and a guy got up and told him he was drunk last night he said well it wasn't necessary I'm sure there's a lot of us that got drunk when it wasn'T necessary I felt a little bad coming in here this morning I was the only guy smoking in the no smoking section And I had a chance to look over the crowd this morning, and it is an ungodly hour of the morning to get up. I don't know who's the dumbest, me getting up for talking or you getting up to listen. But compared to the crowd last night, I told Don he'd sure done a remarkable job. He's cured about half of them, and they've gone home. and I'm sure that when I'm through with you this morning that, Larry, you can hold your meeting in the hospitality room. This is my first trip to the state of Texas which obviously shows that up to this point one of us knew what the hell we were doing and i got in texas and martha was aggravated with me anyway for some unknown reason because she's sick the lower soul me and when i got up at six o'clock last wednesday morning and made it to the airport and got in here wore out that delores was assigned to entertain me he said what would you like to see i said you have any horse farms around here Where I come from, it's the state noted for beautiful women, fast racehorses, and smooth whiskey. And Dolores said yes, and we got in her car and headed out somewhere. I became quite suspicious when we got to an underground parking lot. You don't find too many of them on a horse farm. and I soon discovered that her and my wife had teamed to take me to the Galleria I haven't been shopping in 12 years until I came to Houston and then last night I ran into my friend John from Franklin, Kentucky in the lobby after a Thursday and I thought my God what a friend he was and my ego got to rising and I said well John what in the world are you doing down here I said you drove all this way to hear me and he said hell I didn't even know you was here and I haven't been to a nightclub in 15 years and John lured me to Gillies I got caught. I ran into Bud coming home. Bud Smith called me. He was out in the parking lot monitoring the speakers, I think. But I enjoyed Gillidge. It looks like a tobacco barn we have in Kentucky. They were playing a song over there that was really reminiscent of my drinking days. I had never heard it before. I'm not that much of a country-western fan, but the name of the song was, I ain't nobody this morning, but I sure was somebody last night. And I've just told you my life story. I might as well sit down and go on home. When I came into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, things were a little different in Kentucky in 1962 than they are today. Thank God for that. There really wasn't that many groups around. That's strange to some people at times because we're talking about a period of what? Some 27 years after AA was formed as David told us yesterday and yet it wasn't that well-publicized, or it was just something I'd never really heard of. I had never been called an alcoholic and had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you were lucky to really find an AA group—there was about 17 in the city at that time, I think. And as I sat and listened to Betty and, of course, I've heard David before, and Lynn and Don last night, I constantly become aware of the individuality of AA. And I constantly became aware that when you have a good feeling about yourself and about life and a desire to be somebody, it's okay to be who you are. And although maybe the introduction and the processes into the program of Alcoholics synonymous may vary and differ for a lot of us. The end result is the same. We move into a spiritual community in our life, and in any spiritual community I think good and evil are polarized. And, of course, anything that's polarized certainly has a sense of direction, and we find that sense of direction here. Power in any spiritual community is converted into principle. And in order to have a spiritual community it certainly has to be a community where self-interest cannot stand. And since I became involved with living within a spiritual community, I have certainly enjoyed life. You see, I drank to be somebody and I stopped drinking and found out I was somebody. And I began to pursue a career that was the most difficult time of my life. And I was telling Joel this morning it's very difficult to be someone. cop-out in life is to be nothing. It's not too damned hard to be nothing, sometimes. Sometimes pretty damn hard. I was a skid-roll drunk and I'll tell you about that in a few minutes, and that's easy drunk. The nice thing about being a skit roll drunk, you don't have to be a phony anymore. You don't have to pretend everything is okay. It's a hell of a lot easier to drink out of a wine bottle than it is a desk drawer, because you don't have to pretend everything's okay. The only difference is that you get a little cold and hungry and involved with a lot of stupid people at times, but that's okay. And maybe that is the route you have to go as an individual. I don't know. But if you do, I hope God is good to you as he was to me and allows you to live long enough to understand that when you reach a point in your life when you're sick and tired of who and what you are, you get well. You just get well if you to get well and you've got the people and the knowledge and the philosophy to help you and that's great you see a lot of young people in a today when i came in a uh in 1962 i was the youngest member of alcoholics anonymous in the city of louisville i was 33 years old and today i'm sure global is like houston there are literally thousands of people who've never reached their 25th birthday i think there's a reason for that those younger ones are weird people i mean they really are you know i'm serious uh talk to them you know we we used to set out to have fun and uh to some degree that fun was being involved in an environment were you able to do things so you tried to some degree and some of us including me were able for a while to have some ability to control the amount we drank and not get into drunkenness to where we didn't know what we were doing and where we were and if we had fun or didn't or how much we spent and you know and uh that that consisted in my mind of some degree of enjoying what it was you set out to do, but you just don't have that anymore. Young people set out immediately, let's go get stoned! They never think of anything, let us just go get drunk. And there are real weird people in a way—we've got one of them in our house right now, a young boy that's 21 years old been straight about a year but in his house sitting for it and he was amazed that we trusted him and I said told him you have to trust somebody sometime somebody trusted me once and I think he feels good about that but you know that they always get out of it but before they leave they say let's go get with it and then I've never understood that they say let's go get with it and immediately set out to get out of it. And I think that's about the story of my life. I always wanted to go where it was at. I didn't know what in the hell it was, but I wanted to know where it went. And when I got there it was gone, I think, because I don't ever remember finding it. And I'm not so damn sure that I know today what it was. But I knew it was there because some older people went there and they did those things. And when up to the time I was 13 years old, I never had any trouble. Not a bit. I graduated from a Catholic grade school. I'm one of them CIA members. I am a Catholic Irish alcoholic. And when I was 13 years old, I graduated from the 8th grade of a Catholic grade school as a valedictorian. I made my first speech at the age of 13. I haven't shut up since. When I was 15 years old they threw me out of a high school, a Catholic high school called St. Xavier because of my attitude and behavior, and my hostilities, my thinking. I don't wonder what I wanted out of life. What I wanted is what I wanted. I did what I want to do when I wanted to do it when I was 15 years old. I didn't want anybody bothering me or getting in my way. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and they simply asked me to stop doing that. To simplify Alcoholics Anonymous, I say to people, stop doing what you want to do and start doing what you need to do. I never did what I needed to do in my life, and I set out with that that undisciplined characteristic involving me. See, I lived and died all that time of my life with an I-Syndrome. I'll do it. I'll take care of it. I'll handle it. I don't need you. I don' t need God. I don''t need anybody. I know what I want. I'll find it, and I'll d o it. Alcoholics Anonymous was an extremely difficult program for me when I came here because the very first word of the very first step said we I'm not a we people nothing involved in my life was we it was I I'll do it, I'll do what I want to do when I want to and so at a very early age about 15 I went to a corner in Louisville at 4th and Central where Churchill Downs Road track is, if you have ever seen the Kentucky Derby on television, you have seen fourth and central or close to it because of the racetrack borders. And I found a fascinating life out there. There was bars and race tracks and pool rooms and bookies and a few other things. And it was guys with hundred dollar bills and Cadillacs and good looking girls and that's what I wanted. Damn right, that's all I had. And anybody that thinks that isn't all right is out of their trees. So I got over on that racetrack and began to work a little bit and gamble on horses. I got around that corner and began to drink a little with an older crowd and that was okay. I met a young lady out there and she took me from soprano to baritone and I found that a fascinating way to live just a fascinating way to life drinking, gambling and sex 15 years old and attacking them vigorously any one of the damn three will kill you. And I was right in the middle of all of them. Now, my father strongly objected to this. When I was 17 years old, my mother passed away. She'd been sick most of her life and I never really had good communication with my mother at all. I have one brother who is now vice president with General Motors Corporation. He was an idiot when he was young. I'm serious. That damn fool studied. he missed out on all the fun, you know. Things were popping and he was missing it. I have two sisters who married young and have the same husbands and four children who live quote-unquote normalized, whatever in the hell that is. And I was sort of the renegade. And my father didn't appreciate the way I was living. And I didn't particularly care what my father appreciated. And we went round and round and around. Now, again, up to this point I drank. But if I was drunk, I don't remember it. That environment and what was in that environment was my life. And I can't tell you to this day why. I was brought up to believe in the things that you're supposed to believe. I was taught the difference between right and wrong. You see, that part of AA wasn't too difficult for me because when I came into this program and begin to live in this spiritual community, I knew the difference between good and evil. I knew that there was a difference between right and wrong. And I could pick that up back where I left off, but I interpreted it wrong as I was a kid. I got it all confused and mixed up, and nothing seemed to ever bring it back to my attention. A lot of times reading things like that or seeing things like this sometimes snap and do bring it to me, but not in my particular case. I was telling John last night a story about a—he said, what are you going to talk about tomorrow? I said, being drunk, I guess, but you never know when you get up here, right? We had a preacher down home one time who lost his bicycle. Somebody stole it when Don was talking about riding that bike to the robbery, I thought about it last night. And the preacher was madder than hell. And he said, Sunday morning I'm going to preach on the commandment, thou shalt not steal, and maybe it will get to the person that stole my bike. And he'll bring it back. So that Sunday morning, his friend went to the services waiting to hear this great dissertation on Thou Shalt Not Steal. And the preacher talked about faith. So I asked him after the services, he said, What happened to the sermon on ThOU SHALT NOT STEAL in your bicycle? He said, When I got back to the parsonage after talking to you, I reviewed the commandments. And when I got to that one, it says, Thou shalt not commit adultery. I remembered where I left my bicycle. So you never really know what will happen until you begin to think about it. But when I was very young, at the age of 20 years old, after living in this type of life and finally graduating from high school—I think there were 160 kids that graduated, I was 159, and there was one guy there dumber than I was, if you can believe it. I stuck around home, and I never married during the course of my drinking. I have my wife here with me today, but we married after I came into AA. And I never wanted to get married, really. I don't know why. Most women I knew drank. I wouldn't want to be married to a drinking woman. I think about that today. I'm serious. I get chills thinking about that. today. To be married to a drinking woman, you get a hold of a half a pint, you've got to give somebody half of it. That don't sit well with me today. And most of the women I knew were not the marrying kind, and of course neither was my sponsor, so neither was I. They weren't going to get a jewel. And they were ugly. Most of them was ugly as hell. I used to go with this one girl. She was ugly. She went home one night and went in her bedroom and started undressing, and she didn't pull the blinds down. And a peepin' Tom came up to her window, and when she got about half undressed, he reached in and pulled the blind down. But when I was 20 years old, I went to work for a railroad in louisville it's called the lower nashville railroad company it was then today it's a part of a conglomerate called the seaboard railroad system which is a incorporation of a lot of railroads that are done across the country today so today i still work for the seaborg systems railroad and i have the pleasure and the privilege of working in an alcohol and drug abuse program for the railroad our company is very concerned about its people and we understand and realize the sickness and the nature of alcoholism and we do everything within our power to try to keep the people we have and and and reunite the families and and do the things that we can once we know that if we alleviate the ignorance in the lives of our people that we can help a whole lot of them and an industry is a fascinating place because they can really put the pressure on people to get help families beg and plead a lot industry says go or get out a guy will go it really don't turn you down when you're going to take away the source of their income a fascinating thing about alcoholics and alcoholic synonymous if you can make somebody do something long enough it dawns on a lot of this is what they've been wanting to do for a long time and when you can just make them stay long enough they see that but i went to work for this railroad and i was 20 years old and about the time i went to work with them i believe that i was an alcoholic and I say that because I was having serious problems caused by drinking. Now forget about the way that I was you know I was an insecure fearful small little brat or whatever I was a very uncomfortable person in life. I didn't fit where I was supposed to fit and that drink made me fit. I could take a drink and become somebody and about this time in my life I lost the ability to control the amount that I drank, and therefore I drank too much and became nothing. And it's sort of a sad situation when you stop to think about it because without a drink in me, cold sober, I was literally nothing. And with a drink in me I became less than nothing. And you can't win that way. You can't won that way, And yet for years I clung to the belief that I could overcome this, I could be somebody, I could do it, I'll take care of it, I'll handle it. I lived and died with an eye syndrome, and it damn near killed me. And it did get me to the point to where I didn't care if it killed me." But when I was having these serious problems caused by alcohol, I firmly believe today that a damn fool would stop drinking alcohol. I believe that an idiot would stop drinking alcohol when he wakes up and sees all of the problems that alcohol has caused. But we all know that fools and idiots may stop drinking. Alcoholics cannot stop drinking, as hard as you try. As difficult as it seems, even though you realize and know what you're becoming—what you're doing to yourself and what you are doing to the people who love you—it's an impossibility to leave it alone. Because without it I was nothing. And I always tried to convince myself that even though the beginning was going to be the same. I felt like the end result would be different. It never was, and by the very nature of the sickness itself, I was condemned to progressively get worse, which I did. It has nothing to do with alcohol. It may not even have anything to do with your life the way I went and ended. You know, a lot of lives in this program parallel each other you can hear people talk and you think they're living in your back pocket i was telling don this morning listening to him last night if i had my eyes closed and didn't know where i was and didn's know who was talking a friend of mine down home is his life story penitentiary and all but their lives parallel each other and has nothing to do with alcoholism Alcoholism is something that breeds inside out. Alcoholics Anonymous is a program of feelings. When you feel good about yourself, and good about people, and good about a God, those are the feelings that people acquire. And if you don't believe that, talk to somebody who's been sober in this program for an extended period of time. 27 years a personal friend of mine who got drunk because he didn't feel like he should feel the way that he did and after 27 years he couldn't tell you how he felt and he didn' t come here anymore and tragedy struck and he drank and he got drunk and he was in and out of treatment centers 27 years sober and I'd say to this friend well what is it you know the words You know the philosophy? My God, you've read the book a hundred times. You've helped so many. You have said the words of wisdom. Why? Why can't you come back and stay with us? He said, I have never been able to acquire the feeling I had about me and the feeling I had about you and the feelings I had about God I have never been able to acquire that again and that told me something it told me that you can know all the words you can say all the right things but you better feel good about what you are and what you're doing and what your saying and the sacrifice of a drink sometime is to surrender that and believe me my friend there is absolutely no assurance you will ever get that back again and all those kind of feelings i never had about me and as i progressively got worse with my alcoholism i heard nothing about a i was never called an alcoholic i was a drunk and i ran into the people who tried to stop me from progressing by scaring me to death over what was going to happen to me And how in the hell do you scare somebody that's scared to death? How do you tell a guy, take this folder on fear? You know, and he said, I don't need your folder on prayer, friend. I've got a library full of it inside of me. I'm afraid of things you haven't even heard of. And neither have I. All of the fears that we know, of loneliness and crowds, of gods and devils, of jobs and unemployment, of responsibilities and irresponsibilities, of being dependable and being undependable. of the things we fear are fears. So how do you scare somebody into not being what they are that's scared to death? For an example, as I progressed through alcoholism and just got worse, I encountered many people—my father for one—who got sick and tired of being the way that I was. And he said, get out! It's my house, it's my rules, and if you don't like my house and my rules get the hell out of my house! And go find your own Now, I don't have to tell you how difficult that was for my father. You heard Don say it last night. My friend John's having some problems that way. I'm sure many people in this audience are. And many of you young people in the audience think of what the hell your parents had to feel to do things like this if they've done it. And if you can't do it, that's okay too. Because I'm not a fool enough to tell you that I can tell you to do it and you'll do it because that's something we know. You know, they call that intellect. And if I tell you something like that my head's involved okay but my heart isn't involved and my emotions aren't involved and a lot of things in your life in this problem and in this field you will find that intellectually you know you should do something but your heart just won't let you you done, and that's okay. That's okay." But my father did it. Out, you bum! And I hated that old man, literally. He didn't want me to have any fun. He'd sowed his wild oats, that old so-and-so, and I didn't hesitate to tell anybody in any bar that wanted to listen. And the only thing that ever changed my mind about him was a squad car. Now, whether you believe it or not, the backseat of a squad car is the breeding ground of humility. And if you don't think it'll change your attitude about things and people, try it. Did you ever go stand in a bar and listen to some clown like me telling you what a rotten so-and-so his old man was? Dumb old man. That guy next to you telling you about that bitch he lives with? One red bitch I wouldn't even be around her. Lock him up. Give him a dime or a quarter now and a telephone call. and listen and that old bitch he talked to about in the bar he'll dial that number and she'll answer the phone and he'll say, honey and I dropped my dime in the slot and he came to the phone and I said, daddy he said what do you want I said I'm in jail and he said why did you call me I said well you know I thought you might get me out oh he said I wouldn't worry about that if I had you why he said anybody as smart as you are oh he said if you figured a way to get in there you'll figure a way out and he hung up and informed me later that if it happened again which it was through numerous times don't call me baby don't come in I didn't my father would have given anything in the world to help me not to support my drunkenness. My father was a very wise man and knew nothing of this program, and after I got sober and sat down to talk to him, I thought, My God, he's been involved in it for forty years! Every day went by, my father told me that I didn't say, God, please help that boy find some way to help himself. My father knew if you're looking for a helping hand, it's on the end of your own arm once you know where to extend it. And the only excuse I have or the justification that I have standing here this morning is that I did not know where to place it. When I look at young people sometimes I think, wished I had have known that's all I just would have liked to had the opportunity to say no to salvage some of those years and when I tell younger people in this program that you're lucky to be here I simply mean you don't have to throw away your life I'm not talking about where you've been and what you've done and all that crazy crap alcohol causes Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't treat alcohol very much we treat alcoholism you know and if you're young and you've come here young you've got the years that you've saved and I was telling Chris the other night you know he's got 11 years of his life I never had almost 12 years of His life I've never had for that to be eternally grateful I had to throw him away and get worse because nobody knew anything about me I ran into a Monsignor in the Catholic Church who was a family friend. They should know something about drunks, right? Wrong. He thought the solution to alcoholism and his infinite wisdom and uneducated ignorance, I guess, because he had no opportunity to know anything about it. He was about like a doctor I went to. And this priest or this Monsigneur thought that the solution of alcoholism was a pat on the head, a seat in the sanctuary, Bible in your hand, come back in an hour. You know, dip your head in the holy water fountain and you've had it, baby, you know. But that didn't help, and you know why, and I know why. When all you're walking around in this jungle with faith in is yourself, you're in a lot of trouble. And he surrendered to me after a while. When you come in there and they ask you to surrender, it's just about your turn when you stop and think about all of them surrendered to you. This Monsignor surrendered to me after all his infinite wisdom and his spiritual guidance. I came through the Holy Name schoolyard one day and said, Drunk, I couldn't lean up against a building. He came out of the Sisters' convent and saw me, and he surrendered. He walked up to me and said to me, My God, you are hopeless. informed me that someday him and I would meet on the way to heaven. And he said, you know when you meet somebody they're generally going one way and you're going the other. But he underestimated the egotism of a drunk because when he turned and walked towards the rectory I stood and looked at him and thought, my God, I wonder what he's done. He was such a well-thought-of man. I encountered a few policemen in my life and they were going to lock me up if I didn't quit drinking. We'll scare you, we'll tell you, will interject fear of the consequences into you. I ran into a judge in a police courtroom many times who got mad at seeing me, told me he was going to send me to jail where they'd never find me. He said the first thing he saw every morning when he got out of bed was his wife. He anticipated that he married her. The second thing he would see every day was me and he was damn sick and tired of it. You know those judges, they don't have any sense of humor. I worked for threatened me, don't do better, start working, come here sober, we'll get rid of you. If you don't stop this, we're going to do that. Fear. And it doesn't work. And I progressively got worse. And finally all these things came true. I went to hell came back I went to jail and came back the railroad put me in the unemployment line my father threw me out of his house and the only one that didn't come true was a doctor who told me if I didn't stop drinking I would die and he was the biggest drunk in town he's been in the program a long time and I'm sure he was afraid to see himself for fear or afraid to see me for fear of finding himself. But all these things came true. But I never ran into anybody that knew anything about alcoholism or Alcoholics Anonymous. I was called a drunk, a drunken SOB, irresponsible, undependable, one sick mess of humanity. You see back then doctors didn't think too well of us because of many reasons I'm sure but they knew that we were crazy because we violate apparently the very first law of human nature. See, the very first law in human nature is self-preservation and a rat has that. If you pinned a rat in that corner tonight with a broom handle as big as you are he would try to come up that handle and attack you in order not to die. The very first law on human nature, self- preservation which animals have it and alcoholics apparently don't we are bent on a course of self-destruction and anybody that gets in our way to hell with them and doctors would treat us it in treatment I mean get us sober and we'd be out a half hour getting drunk and they don't like failures and we were disruptive when we went to their offices or wherever we want you know it's just unethical to puke on other patients they want you around there. Plus, we had a horrible reputation of paying them. We're not too good at that. Make your decision, right? Stand in front of a liquor store with a $10 bill. Should I pay that doctor or go in there? That's damn short-lived, isn't it? And they didn't like drunks. And I think most of them honestly will tell you that. They didn't like drunk. So you just went on being a drunk. And I progressed from a nice apartment to a one-room place, and from a one room place to a flop house, and from a flophouse to the street. And I went to Skid Row because I had no place else to go. I had nobody to stop me along the way to some degree. I had no responsibilities to any degree. I had nothing in the way. I have no faith to cling to, I had not people to support me, and primarily because I was loudly professing not to doubt. And all that fun I was having damn near killed me. I got a friend back home who said he tried to commit suicides a damn many times began to ruin his health, and that's just about the way I operated. This time, this very day—21 years ago I lived on Skid Row in Louisville, and at that time Skid row was fourth and central in an alley that ran in behind a saloon and a large hardware store, and there was a big building on one corner of that alley, and it was sort of an L-shaped building, and therefore in behind it was an ideal place for a group of winos to live and hustle and beg and bar and steal and whatever. It's a fascinating life. There's really not a whole lot to tell you about it. It's just very degrading. You wind up there, at least I did, with nothing left. Alcohol, for some reason, you can reach a point where it doesn't do anything for you. You could drink all the alcohol you get your hands on and nothing would be any better, and you knew that. I didn't commit suicide because I think I felt like I didnít belong there, if that makes any sense to you. It does to me. I could just never envision that this is the way my life was meant to end. I just never felt like ìI belong thereî, and there I was, and here I was to stay, because after all, hadnít I tried everything? What else was left? courts, the industry, the family, the friends, the police, the doctor. What's left? Nothing. There was no such thing as prayer in my life. You know I would sit in that alley on Sunday and there was a church on 3rd Street and the school I went to was down the alley and you could see it and you could see the Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Church and I watched all the people get dressed up on Sunday morning to go and I would say to her and think, hypocrite. no hypocrite. You go in there and you believe that crap look at me. If there was such a thing as a loving God, why am I here? What has he got against me? I never thought about what did I have against him. I never taught about that from the day that I was born, God moved nowhere. I did. any distance put between me and anything in my life i walked away from it i put the distance between meand my father i putthe distance between me in my two sisters i put the distance betweenme and god i putthedistance between meinmy job i walked away but i thought you hypocrite and i got some sort of a justification out of that, because watching those people on Sunday and knowing what some of them did during the week, I thought I might be a drunk, but I'm not a hypocrite. And boy, that'll blow your cool. That really makes you feel good. Take my advice, if you're ever presented with a choice. Be a hypocrite, it's a hell of a lot easier. When I went to live in this alley with this pack of winos, you know, I'd like to say here now, I think it's an easy way out for a drunk. I didn't have a family and I didn'T have a wife and children to bring into my life and to take out of theirs. You see, I tell people all the time, I went out and lived in a gutter and believe me, it's better and it's easier than going out and getting a gutter and taking it home with you. I've seen people go out and get their own gutters and bring them into the living rooms of $150,000 homes. I've been to the hospital and I've had to go to the doctor and I have seen the sickness that I saw in that sewer right on a $750 couch. And I've see alcoholics who were so sick and so depressed and so lonely and so afraid and so out of touch with reality that they honestly to God believed in their own sick minds that the people who surrounded them and loved them the most were the very ones responsible for where they were. Instead of reaching out of their living room gutters for help, they reached out and tried to pull those down in with them that they cared about the most. they were incapable of loving and seemed to have built some kind of a wall that demanded that you not love me. And they created an atmosphere of sickness in a home that surrounded a family. It's a hell of a lot easier to puke in a sewer than it is to commode because really and truly, you're puking for yourself and sometimes you're puking for family I get amazed sometime when I hear people say that the only ones who know anything about alcoholism or alcoholic I would just imagine your wife your husband your children they know something about alcoholism if you don't believe me ask them ask them about the fears that they know. Ask them about the loneliness they know, ask about the insecurity that they know, asked about the responsibilities that sometimes they accept, ask them about the love they have that nobody wants, ask him about the barriers that are up to where they can't get through. Ask him why that you ever felt like you had a God-given right to sit back and ask somebody who loves you dearly to watch you kill yourself and not care. They know a whole lot about alcoholism, they get confused. Did you ever stand and look out the living room window some night and wonder where he was? And it's three o'clock in the morning and the skies are dark and you say, God, please don't let him get hurt. And you walk around to the kitchen and look out the window and you stand there and think, I wish somebody would kill that son of a bitch. My father knew a whole lot about alcoholism. Had a lot of fun in that alley, though. Run some dumb people in Wino Alley. We'd sleep in those cardboard boxes at the hardware store throughout. Hey, y'all see that segment on 60 Minutes Ed Bradley did about Skid Row in New York. He was talking to that wino sleeping in that cardboard box, and he had another piece of cardboard there he was going to cover up, and Ed Bradley asked him why he didn't go down to the mission. He said they had bugs down there and he wanted to get them all over. Oh, really? Yeah. It was a big segment of 60 Minutes here a while back. I got 12 telephone calls, people saying, Jack, we saw you on TV. Why are you sleeping, old thing? It's okay when you lay. You know, you adjust. Hell, if you got there early and got one of them big freezer boxes, you could lay down in them. And you could even be a snob boy and all if you're looking at some guy trying to sleep in them little TV console boxes. It's damn near a better neighborhood. You can look down on people like that. There was a poultry house there. Some of them crawled in there, that poultryhouse. If the wind was right, you knew you were better than they were. And I love policemen. There was people in our city getting raped and robbed and mugged and everything, still do. Them cops were riding down alleys hunting winos. Big blue suit, big blue suit and an ice car and a flashlight. They'd jump out of that car and shine that light in that box. What are you doing? nothing and they'd lock you up I'd love to have known something about alcoholism one night when that police there might be some car a burby car one night when that policeman rode down that alley and shined that light in that box what are you doing you could have stuck your head out there and said, Officer, I'm progressing. It probably would have blew his mind, but I was. I had a guy from a finance company hunting me. And I'd borrowed $500 from him eight or nine months, ten months prior to that, and they couldn't find me. That blows their... Larry and I were laughing this morning. That blows your cool, boy, when they like to dun you in Cain. They can't send you a nasty letter in the mail. You don't have a P.O. box or anything, and they can't find you. They can'T harass you, and this guy was snooping around in there hunting me one day, and a bartender told him I lived back there with that crew, and he was peeping around there very well-dressed, man. I didn't know who the hell he was until I heard the last. And I was sitting in one of these boxes that had the flap closed. It was raining. And I had a three-day oration for him and a pint of wine. And was really sort of enjoying life, I guess. And I saw this guy rooting through there, you know, looking and looking and finally he came over to this box I was sitting in. And he could see somebody in there, yeah. And he rooted around her and he walked up to me, knocked on my box. which was nice of him you know and i opened the flap and he stuck his head in there and he said are you jack sullivan it didn't really matter anymore and i said yeah then he said something that And, you know, I think the humor in AA, really, is because of our own damn stupidity. You know, like, I laugh at me because I thought I was so damn smart to be so damn dumb. But I don't know what the hell their excuses are out there. But this guy said, Are you Jack Sullivan? I said, Yes. And he said, I'm Mr. Whatever-the-hell-his-name-was-from-the finance company. He said, you know, you've had a loan with us for almost a year and haven't paid a quarter on it. And I said, yeah. Then he said something I didn't understand then, I don't understand now, and I'm not going back to ask. He said if you don't start making some payments on this loan, you're going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble. And I don't know to this day what the hell he had in mind. My father also worked in the Personnel Department of the Louisville National Railroad Company, and a man who was the Vice President of Labor Relations on the L-9 railroad was interested in the field of alcoholism. He devoted a lot of time—dead now, beautiful man—but he constantly searched for the causes. He was determined, I think, before he died, and he stayed in contact with every learned man in this country to find out why you and I are drunk, and never did discover it. I kept telling him, we don't give a damn. That's our ace in the hole, right? Why are you a drunk boy? I don't know. Don't care. But he had a friend who was a guy who was the governor of the state of Kentucky at that time, decided to open up some alcohol treatment units. Now remember, there was nothing there literally. So he was going to put an alcohol treatment unit in an insane asylum in Kentucky in a place called Western State Hospital in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Then he was going to set up branches of comprehensive care centers across the state, and he obviously needed somebody to do this for him. So he got a hold of a man by the name of Jack Dawes, who was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And Jack was a good friend of the vice president of labor relations on the El Nenrero, and when he was preparing to move to Frankfort, Kentucky, which is the state capital, he stopped by the offices of Mr. Shaw to tell him goodbye that he wouldn't see him very much, although he didn't see them very much at all. now this man was so tuned in to the causes of alcoholism he felt that people like me were just a waste of time so when Jack came by and my father working in the personnel apart he had to tell Jack about me and then he began to tell Jack about everything they had done for me and of course Jack said you haven't done anything for him so he said where is he and they said bring his father in here and they brought my father in that office my father didn't want to go with him my father had released me with love did not want to get emotionally involved with me again now i hope you understand that that is not a lack of concern but that is an emotional involvement he had been able to separate himself for me. My father simply got tired of me playing emotional yo-yo with him, and you play emotional yo-Yo with all of your people. You build them up and let them down, and build them up and run them up a damn string like you would a yo-YO, and he'd had enough of that. And his ability to release me was a blessing to him, but he didn't want to get that involvement again and he didn't hesitate to tell this man but this guy was able to convince him that nobody had helped me yes true they had given me hundreds of chances threatened me millions of times but allowed me to wander in society ignorant of what was wrong with me ignorant of What Was Wrong With Me and I think today that the you know as I tell people all time i have a tremendous amount of compassion for ignorance but i can't find too much when you know what's wrong anyway my father agreed to come it out they came to this alley and i looked up and saw my dad and this guy coming down this alley i could not believe it i hadn't seen my father in years talked to him on the phone once with a stranger i thought he was sure he must be an FBI man or something. I thought that guy from the finance company got him. They looked around and I saw my father point. Now you remember, this man does not know me. Stranger. And he pointed to me and I was sitting in the back room of a saloon at the time in a booth with a bottle of wine and it was raining and this guy let us come in here a couple of us. My father walked in and looked around, saw me, pointed me out to this man. And then he went over and sat on some stools that ran around the lunch counter. And this guy walked over and sat down in the booth. He said, are you Jack Sullivan? And I said, yes. And he stuck his hand out to shake hands. And I was filthy dirty, bloated from dehydration and malnutrition. An example, I wore a nine-and-a-half shoe. I had on a pair of 11-and–a–half tennis shoes that i had to cut the tongue out to get on my feet i had a long hair and a beard and that was a no-no in 1962. girls would look at you then throw up and nowadays it rings their bell or something i don't know what the hell it does and i didn't have any teeth i had four two teeth on each side of the upper lip i used think that's tough when I was drinking. And it was a horrible-looking sight, and he stood out. He said, My name is Jack Dawes, Jack, and I'd like to help you if you'll let me. And I said, Why? Why, stranger? Why would you want to help me? He said because I used to be like you are and somebody helped me and I'll assure you my friends that made absolutely no sense to me at that time in my life and now that it was unbelievable in the time of my life he used to be like I was and somebody help him that's not a reason for helping people Is it? But I was so damn sick, I didn't care. I didn' t care about nothing anymore. He said, Come on, Jack, go with me. And I got to looking at him and I thought, You know, he could have never been like me. And on the way to my father's car, he motioned my father and he said, Come on. We're going to take you to the hospital. on the way to my father's car he looked down and he smiled at me this stranger and he put his arm around me this stranger and he said you know in a way you're better off than I was he said when I was a wino in an alley I had no shoes and I said well they ain't much so they carted me off to a psychiatric hospital in Louisville called Our Lady of Peace Hospital and dumped me on a ward back there on the 21st day of August of 1962 at 10.30 in the morning at the age of 33, void of anything that's good, decent, or spiritual, void of any thing that was good. And they sent me back down on a war, and they'd done a terrible thing to me. They got me well. You know, it's dangerous to alcoholics. I wasn't sick anymore. That blows you cool. You ever take a drunk, drunk to the hospital? He said, help me, baby. Get him sober. I'm getting out of here. Now, once again, I know what's good for me. I've been making decisions all my life and look where I am. Well, I can quit drinking any time I want to. You know, just think what that idiot's saying. Hey, you know what he's saying? I woke up one morning and the birds were singing, the sun was shining, it was such a pretty day. And I thought to myself, I think I'll drink till I wind up in a nut house. But that's the way I was, but you know, that's where I was supposed to be. And I said, I want out of here, right? But a nurse came back that following Tuesday morning. She looked at her, stuck her head in the door, and I was sitting there. And she said, don't you go anywhere tonight. We're going to an AA meeting. I said what the hell is an AA meet? Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics anonymous? Are you insinuating that I'm an alcoholic? and this nurse said I'm not insinuating a damn thing I said I'll have you know that I am not an alcoholic and she looked at me and she said if you ain't one there ain't any now man that hurt I told that nurse that i believe today i without any reason back then the very word itself insinuates i've got a problem i can't handle and i've told you that it's not my nature nor is it most new people i've Got A Problem I Can't Handle That's Not True and the very word itself leads me into an arena somewhere that I have to accept to some degree the responsibility for everything that's been going on in my life and damn it, I'm not about to do that. I'll handle it and it's not my fault. I wouldn't even drink that stuff if it wasn't for them bastards out there whoever they are in your life they're out there as a matter of fact they still are I'm not an alcoholic and I'm going to be and I was on an open floor where you could roam the hospital and she jingled some keys she said we'll put you back over there where the doorknobs are on the outside. I said, I believe I'll go. You call that volunteering. But I was madder than hell that I had to go because they were having a square dance that night in the auditorium and I wanted to learn how to square dance. That comes in handy when you drinking. And I don't want to go to any damn day. I want to go to that square dance and they made me go and they took me down this hall madder than hell because I was well, you see, and I thought like I always thought. It's sick. Sick. You can't get much sicker. And that nurse had me by the ear, a 33-year-old macho man. And I wanted a girl and a drink and some music. I was ready to go again, and this time I knew the end result would be different over and over and again. I did the same thing and the result was the same and one more time I knew the result would be different I won't be in that damn day a meeting and I didn't care and I wanted to you know just mad and I walked down there with my big macho image wanting a girl want to dance wanting music wanting to drink her said some damned old woman at the door of that meeting god she was in her 60s and she walked up to me and put around my shoulder, and she said, hi honey. She said, would you, honey, would you like a cup of coffee and a cookie? I looked at that woman and, you know, I was a worldly person. You know, I had heard stories about old women and young boys. I knew what that old broad was after. So I went on in this room and sat down with some idiot who got up to talk, and I talked. And he'd talk and I'd talk. And they'd tell me to go shh, and then I'd keep talking. And he would say something, I'd say something and we'd rattle on back and forth. I don't know what the hell the other people were doing but I was mad and flying high on of them detox things and uh and uh one word led to another finally the meeting was over i came with a brilliant conclusion that by god if that guy wasn't lying and he wasn't sure about that well anybody drank like that oughta quit i had no association of him and me you know i didn't i didn t want to be there i couldn't understand he was saying i used to be like you are baby where you're sitting and I sat there. I got okay. I'll show you how if you want to see. I'll help you if you wanna go. I couldn't say that or hear that. All I heard was what he was saying about him. Didn't have any relationship to me. Made a ass out of myself at that meeting you wouldn't believe and went out that door and there stood that damned old woman. And she put her arm around my shoulder again and said, honey, you come back next week now. We need you. I thought they ought to put her in a home. They ought to get her off the street, you know, really. You don't invite people like me back that did what I did. Who the hell would want to join a club that had me for a member? I didn't. i went on back to my room and then they had one aa meeting a week in that hospital on tuesday night and i went back to fall in tuesday so they kept making me and i ran into an old man down who became a friend of mine who should became the worst enemy i ever had in my life by all things known to god or man i should have hated him i could have punched him out and walked away he questioned on numerous occasions that my mother and father were married when i was born on top of that they made me leave there and go to that insane asylum and i had to go down there for 40 days the court sent me there and i was sitting in an insane asylum in november of 1962 looking out the window with nuts that's not bad enough but when you would walk around the ground the nuts would complain because you were there. What do you think of that, Molly? Them putting them drunks down here with us. I have never liked it since they've been here. They're a bunch of damn troublemakers. Always were. I think they ought to separate crazy people from drunks. Go away and leave us alone. Thank God when you get to the point you're unwanted in an insane asylum, you're in a lot of trouble. It'll blow your cool, I'll tell you that. While I was there, I found the ability to listen. I found they both people listen. Now I was telling Larry this morning and listening to Donna last night, the only thing that ever came to my mind in that hospital was those people in that Louisville Hospital I don't recall whether I even read any a literature there perhaps I did they had a couple of meetings there they were speaker meeting and that was about it you know they didn't know whole lot about treatment things back then and it was bunch of green people trying to do a lot of green things they never got in depth into a whole lot of thing but it seemed like whenever I would stop and sit down and think i would think of those people at lady of peace hospital and when i got out of that hospital i came back to louisville and i immediately went back to that hospital i wrote my sister a letter and told her one time that the only grievances that we ever had was over my drinking perhaps maybe i had found some way to bring that under control at the present time and at least i was going to try and she said well you're always welcome in a home in my house so when i came back from that insane asylum i went to live with my sister and i had uh my father took me out to a clothing store and bought me some clothes and made me sign for him and he said he'd pay for him if i didn't and i got my dad to ride me up to our ladies peace hospital on tuesday night when i got back to their a meeting and a fellow i met there in a brought me home and i told them them I didn't have an automobile but I wanted to go to AA and they said we'll see that you get there it was a really small group of people in a small number of groups but any night I wanted to go sitting in my driveway with a friend from AA and I was fascinated by those people I fell in love with that old man who cursed me and he was the neatest old guy I should have hated him. I said to him one night in all my arrogance, I hear you read that stuff and it says in there if you want what we have what in the hell is it have you got? And he looked at me and he said well for starters a bed that's indoors I thought he'd done all the better than I was I stayed with those people I developed a good feeling about me through those people. I knew I had an unmanageable life and pilots over alcohol because they told me i knew that i was about as crazy as you could get with the way that i thought but i didn't have to think anymore because that old man wouldn't let me i told him one night i said here i was thinking he said quit i said there's a sign on the wall says thank you said ignore it he said you've been thinking for 33 years look what in the hell you got sit down and shut up i think you old and i wanted what that old man had and i stayed with that old man and those people and you know what i did i got a good feeling about myself i felt good about me and what i was doing I didn't drink liquor, and I went to AA. And I listened to those people and stayed with those people. And the influence and power that radiated from those people just surrounded me. Just surrounded me completely, and I never felt so good about me in my life. And it seemed like living there with my sister, and responsibilities weren't there, there was something kind of lacking, and I met Gay. and gay was like i was lonely and frustrated with a hell of a life she's not too smart she divorced an alcoholic married me and you know and we went together about a year i guess or so nine months i mean we got married and we brought that responsibility into each of our lives and we've been doing pretty good we'll be married 20 years in september now and uh so we've got long real while and all of a sudden it dawned on me that I felt good about you and I thought I'm sitting somewhere someday feeling good about me and I love you word words always come from where's that come from and I saw one day in a book that Bishop Sheen had written where somebody had asked him to define God. And Bishop Sheehan said, God, I didn't say this, he did, is the intangible spirit of truth. And somewhere in the Bible it says the truth will set you free. And all of a sudden, I knew that the spiritual truth inside of me was good, clean, and a feeling that I can't even explain to you. And I also knew that The Tangible Spirit of Truth, which was man and your philosophy, made me something I always wanted to be. And I didn't have to be phony about that nor impress you. and i looked up one day in my life a year or two down the road i believe and i thought my god i've been doing what they've told me and not even knowing i didn't drink liquor and stayed with you and i was doing what i was supposed to do and didn't even know and then i could start doing what I was supposed to this i never became analytical about a lot of people don't get a lot of trouble i feel i utilize it the hell with analyzing it i don't really need to know that much about it i need to know that much about me i know that if i have a desire to do what's good i'll have a desire to help somebody that wants to do good you see i don t live in a community of self-interest anymore i live in a spiritual community i am directed towards good i know that i am for somebody and i know that there's some people i'm not far and if you stay here whoever you need will be here you see if you start doing what you need to do and stop doing what you want to do you'll be okay and stop living the way we all live by pointing our finger at something or somebody we simply said to these people i'll show you i'll kill me and i don't do that today i don t react to those kind of idiotic things i have no intention of harming me and when I'm confronted with reality today whatever it may be I am wise enough from you to know that I can look at it and say yeah I'll take care of it I can handle that and I'll do it I look at it and I say hey that's behind me baby and I go get my friend 30 years sober you know and I said hey I got something here I'm looking at it you look at it see what you see i'll tell you what i saw and he says yeah that's bad we'll take care of it you and i can handle this then i go to my friend sometime and i say how about this and he said i don't think this belongs to us god grant me the serenity this is not ours just turn it loose and it'll be okay you don't have up to this point i'll close i want to tell you a story i try to close all my talks but i heard years and years ago and i think it has the greatest moral value of any stories i've ever heard it's about a guy who was walking down a cold and lonely road one night and in the middle of the road there was a snake laying there and due to the coldness of the weather, the snake was dying. And he said to the man, pick me up and put me under your coat and warm me so that I may live. And the man said, my God, you can talk. And this snake said, yes, and I need to live. Warm me please. The man said I couldn't do that. You're a poisonous reptile. Silly to God if I put you under my coat and warmed you, when you were returned to vitality, you would bite me. The snake said, I wouldn't bite you if you saved my life. And the man thought for a while and finally picked him up and put him under his coat, got him warm, and the snake got his vitality back and bit him. And then grabbed him and threw him out from under his cloak and back to the road. and he looked at the snake and he said I thought you promised not to bite and with a snickering grin on his face the snake looked and he said you knew what I was when you picked me up if you're sitting somewhere someday under a given set of circumstances and conditions and you feel like the time is either right or necessary when you order that drink look at it try to rationalize and explain it away to a lot of people that maybe don't know but if you know me if you no us if you've been here you know what it is when you pick it up thank you for having me in Thanks for watching!