Surrender Without the Fight – Blackie B.

My name is Jackie, and this morning I am a very grateful alcoholic. And if I lose that gratitude and quit living it in my life and showing it in my actions, then I'll have to change my birth date of sobriety from May the 20th, 1973, to the date that I fail to be grateful for what you and a very loving God has given me since I've been a member of this fellowship. That date's probably not important to anybody but me, and I don't know why in the world I remember it. Yes, I do know why I remember that, but the day that I was committed, hopefully, to my last nuthouse, and the first nuthous I'd ever been into, to where they didn't substitute the alcohol that I had on through these mine-authoring drugs that helped us to stay nutty. I want to thank the committee and those people who are responsible for getting me the invitation to come here and talk with you and share with you this morning. I enjoy doing that. I like to do it. I like if I had a different sponsor, I'd have probably had a soapbox on 4th and Main in Joplin, Missouri telling everybody about the recovery from alcoholism, and then I was told that wasn't the way it was done. when I first came in, I felt so grateful and so good at just being sober without any program that I've had to sober up a range line for my drinking strip in Joplin, Missouri. And those people didn't want to get sober. In fact, I just told somebody up here earlier that most of those people that I drink with are very grateful that I'm sober, that they finally got rid of me, you know. And most of them didn't follow me in, but there are a few who were my drinking buddies, who are now in the fellowship and doing well. I want to thank the other speakers that preceded me. Bob in particular took about fifteen minutes of my talk and gave it in his story. I've heard Bob before, and I didn't realize how the similarities of his particular life in early life, which changed a lot since then, and mine were a lot. I didn' t have a drink and get sick. I was very sick, and then I had a drink, and I got relief from what was bothering me. At age 12, I was on a Boy Scout campout, and we went down one day early. And this is not a merit badge in scouting, so don't hold us against the Boy Scouts of America. Somebody brought along a quart of blackberry wine, and it went around the campfire, and I had a drink because I had to have a drink, because there were people around me and they were going to make fun of me if I didn't have a drink, so I had a drink. Went around again and I had another one. And it weren't around the third time and I gurgled as much they had to grab the bottle. You see, as I told you, I was sick. I was mentally sick. I've got a history all of my life of going to psychologists, psychiatrists, and being committed to mental institutions. My real name is Laverne Brandon. And there was a girl in my class who I was madly in love with named Laverne. And to my knowledge, no one in that school ever accused her of having a boy's name. Not only that, but I stuttered, and not only that I was goosey. I don't know if you all know what goosey is or not. I didn't say goosey however I was up to, but if you would hit me in the ribs and suggest that I say something, I would oblige you by hollering it out. And if you hit me in a rib and didn't tell me, put that word in my mouth for me to say, then I'd say whatever was on my mind. And that can get to be embarrassing, especially on Saturday night standing on the corner watching the girls go by. Had that first drink of wine and it tastes terrible. And it's odd that I can remember wondering how in the world can people drink this stuff and just keep on drinking it. Surely to goodness that there must be some beverage that tastes better than this. Now, as I told you, the third drink they had to retrieve their bottle so they would have something. But I quit stuttering and I wasn't goosey. And they started making fun of me and I damn near drowned two of them in Wolf River when we were camped on the bank stop. And at long last, I had found the solution to what had bothered me for as far back as I could remember. I'm a fast learner in certain areas. When it comes to getting bad, I can learn fast. When it come to getting good, it comes a little slower. I noticed after I did that that if they knew that I had anything to drink, they didn't mess with me because they knew that I would defend myself and bullies just don't pick on people that get back. From that day, I would have done anything in the world to get a drink, and I did. Because whenever I would add just as much as I could stand, I was going to get drunk and I would do something to get hold of some blackberry wine and relieve that. And it worked, and it worked for a long time. Somewhere along the line, the alcohol became a major portion of my problems that it quit doing away with. And I can't blame my alcoholism on anybody. There's not any more alcoholics in my family that I'm aware of. I have a brother who drank until he was almost crazy, and he made his mind up he was going to quit. He's got a year's more sobriety than I have, but he's missing something that I haven't had to miss, and that's the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and the wonderful relationship that I have with the human race that he's missed out on because he's just dry. He doesn't have the type of sobriete that you all have taught me is possible for us to have in his fellowship. And if I get to wondering off and everything, there's some people here who can attest to you that I can't follow notes, that I really get in trouble when I try to follow notes and try to prepare for a talk. And if I get out on a limb and think of something and I switch over to something else and you wonder how the hell that ended up, you know, you might catch me afterwards or write me a letter or something and then I'll try to remember what I talked about down here and straighten you out on it. I followed the career of drinking. I came from a good home. I was not sent to church, I was taken to church in my mother's arms. And I was a member of a church and I had my soul saved when I was ten years old and dipped down into the water. And after I got in trouble by breaking into this church and stealing a dollar and eight cents, and drinking two quarts of grape juice and not getting drunk on it that I just knew was wine. I had always heard that they serve wine at these communions, and I guess I came from a poor church that could only afford grape juice. But I received two years' probation for that, and it ended my criminal career. I was breaking an interim before it was fashionable and accepted by society, and the punishment I got was far worse than anything they could have given me by sending me to our boys' home in my area. They released me in the custody of my father, and he was a hell of a warden. He was going to make sure that I changed. He was a loving father, a very successful businessman, not only in the way of material things but he was successful in the ways he lived his life. He had found a long time ago where the control of the universe was and he relied upon that belief that he had, too, and it worked in his life and it works in the rest of my family's But I just couldn't get it. I just didn't get it. They decided that I need to be re-baptized if the first one didn't take. Now this church that I went to was a small church in a small town in western Tennessee just out of Memphis, Tennessee. And I remember well that second baptism because he almost drowned me. He put me under the water and brought me back up and it was cold. They filled it up on Saturday night and in the wintertime and it didn't have a heater in it and he asked me if i had anything to say in a low voice when he brought me back up from immersion and i said god damn that water is cold he put me back under and he held me there And the second one didn't take either, because I had found out that I could not be the good boy that the community wanted me to be. I could no be the great loving son that my father and mother wanted me to be, and since I could be good as they, the people around me, wanted me to be, then I was going to be bad. I could get the recognition, the same amount of attention from being bad and more so maybe than I could have been good. I had a job in the movie pictures as a ticket taker in a theater. So I got to see all of the movies, and like Bob, whatever movie on, whoever the hero was in that movie was my hero. And for a day or two I could be that person. Now unlike Bob, I didn't spend the rest of my time reading, I spent the rest of my life in one of those fantasies. You see, I did not like who I was or where I was. I hated me. I disliked my mother and my father for putting a name like that on me that would carry such a burden. I have a lot of sympathy for Sue. I know what that is, but I was too much of a physical coward to make my name that way. I don't know how I did it drinking for as long as I did in the places I drink in. I've only had two fights in my life after that episode at Wolf River. Because, you know, I always got hurt when I fought. And I would see some of the winners later on in my drinking career when the winner of these fights was out back of the club, you know. And God, I didn't want to feel like they felt either. I didn' t want to look like they looked. It just looked to me like the peoples were fighting. Both of them were losers, so I decided to be a lover. Hell, I wasn't any good at that either. I got a lot of people that'll attest to that if they just had the opportunity. By the time it got ready to fulfill the commitment that I'd made to some beautiful or unbeautiful girl, as far as that goes, in the bar when it got time to go, I was drunk. I spent all of my life trying to get drunk and trying to over-being drunk, and not once did I realize that alcohol was a problem in my life. Not until the day that I came to in 1973 did I realized that alcohol was the stumbling block to me being happy and serene. time in my life, if you would have asked me what I wanted from life, I would have tried to tell you in my own words what's on the bottom of page 83 and the top of page 84 in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. That's what I want it to be. That is the way I want it to feel. And the only time I could feel that way was when I was under the influence of alcohol and, in my case, other mind-altering drugs. But when I was completely with myself in one of my fantasies, I couldn't feel that way on the street being part of you. I was kicked out of school in the eighth grade. I don't have any formal education because those nine years that I went to school to get kicked out in the 8th grade, I was not a good student. I was a slow learner because I didn't want to study. I had other things that were more important to me, and I couldn't see, as I can see now, that I needed a formal education so I could learn how to learn. I know that I could have made this program a lot easier on myself if I had known how to do it. Instead of doing the program as it says in the book, you see, I had to do it the hard way as if, as I'd had to do everything else in my life. I had trial and error and work awful hard to prove that this wouldn't work in order for it to work in my wife. I don't know how I stayed sober those first three years in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's another one of those miracles that God has chosen to put on me. I had a good teenage life. I didn't drink a whole lot. I drank regularly. Every time I could get it, I would drink some, but I didn' t get drunk much through my teen years. When I became of age 16, I left home and started making my own way on the street, and I wasn' t very good at that. And I became myself, and another man became the town drunk, a man in me as a young man. I thought a man became white notes. And I know now because I have a son who is a drug addict, and I've given him every opportunity that a father can give somebody, and maybe I gave him too many opportunities for material gain, and I gave them absolutely nothing spiritual. He doesn't have the benefit of the foundation that I had. And I know how much I hurt my mother and my father, my brothers and my sisters, and the people around me who love me. And I Know that I can never repay that to them, that the only chance I have of making amends to those people is to maybe make it easier for somebody else's son or daughter not to have to go as long as I did down this path. And because of that, I spend every opportunity. I don't wait to be asked to go into the school system to talk to young people about the disease of alcoholism. I make six or eight attempts a year to get into the schools systems and relay this message. And I know that I'm far too old and they're not going to pay any attention to what I say, but invariably when I do this, there's two or three people who have this problem in their life it may not be them directly it may be a brother or a mother or a father that has the disease of alcoholism and they're hurting and that's the reason i'm i i admire james i've been told that he's a works within the institutional committee and carrying that message and i it you know it's good to take the message to people that don't know they need it because that's the way that I have been able to maintain sobriety and is the way that I was able to get sober was people was bringing me a message not Alcoholics Anonymous but people were bringing me a message until and repeatedly until it long last I got bad enough that I had to listen to some help I want to tell you about my getting into my first mental institution. We were living in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and at the time I was engaged in an illegal operation that I won't go into because I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if the statute of limitations has run out on it or not. But I had progressed in my alcoholism right about then, to where it had almost gained total control of me. I was having what I called blankouts. Now, I'd always had blackouts, and that's where I would start out drinking in the morning, and I'd end up the next morning in bed and not know how I got there. I'd ALWAYS had those, and I thought that was part of drinking. I didn't know that everybody didn't do that. I just assumed that everybody, you know, got so drunk they didn't know what to do. And the fact is, my definition of drunk was when the blackout occurred. If I could remember everything I did the day before, then I hadn't been drunk. I'd been drinking all day and I couldn't stand up maybe. But I wasn't passed out, and passed out is what I call drunk. Anything short of passed out to me is not drunk. But I was having days. I would wake up and I couldn't remember days, and it began to bother me. And I woke up one morning and my mother, who lived at that time in Coldwater, Mississippi, and an older brother who was a colonel in the Air Force Station in Columbia, South Carolina, in my home. And I asked them, what the hell is doing there? You know, what are you all doing here? I didn't know you was coming. And they said, Mary's got a problem. She's got a bad mental problem and we need to get her into a mental institution and we're going to need your help. And now I was all for that. By the way, Mary is my wife. And she had begun, not very many times in my life did she interfere or complain or holler about my drinking. I married a very young lady and brought her up, and I was a drunk when I married her. She didn't drink then. Since then she has become part of this fellowship, and she thought, you know, this was it. And she was a good wife, a loving wife, and a caring wife, and she saved my life. But at this particular time, because of the pressures that I put her under in the business I was in and the pressure I was living under myself. We bottled her up or packed her up and took her to Little Rock, Arkansas. And we sat down in a little room there and had an interview, and I signed some papers to commit her, and everybody got nothing left but me. I'd just signed myself into my first nut house. Oh, I've got clever relatives. And I stayed in this mental institution for about five months, and they released me. But I was glad that I was in there, in that they were able to find out what was wrong with me. I began to have seizures and these blank-out periods. It is very simple. I was an epileptic. So they gave me, a full-blood alcoholic, an open prescription for phenobarbital. I don't think they write prescriptions like that anymore. But anyway, and they questioned me about my drinking. And I was much like, I wasn't as honest as Bob was. I said, yeah, I have an occasional drink. Who the hell don't? You know, there's no big problem with me. I can either take it or leave it alone. It doesn't dominate me if that's what they're wanting to know. So I took my phenobarb and drank. and it's okay to do that if you don't mind being depressed and I didn't mind being depressed because you see I had been a downer all of my life before I knew there were drugs that could put me there you see, I drank whiskey to get high not knowing that I was drinking whiskey and getting low and I became depressed and I woke up one day tied to a hospital bed in Fort Smith And I'd gone berserk in my favorite drinking oasis. And they had papers commit me, but I graduated. I went to a federal nut house this time in north of Rock, Arkansas, and it was just like, I tell you, if you've never been in a state mental institution as a full-blown nut, I think everybody ought to be committed for at least three months. It's an experience in itself. I slept on a pine floor with a sheet under me and a sheet over me because they were overcrowded. I saw a doctor one time in five months. Now, I take that back. I saw him twice when I was discharged. So I went into this federal nut house, and it was clean. And they gave you clean clothes to wear, and they fed you food. They gave you three good meals a day. And because I had been violent in this bar and destroyed it, I learned how to do the Thoacene Rock because, man, they kept me on that stuff for two or three months. I was ushered into my food and usherred back to that soft seat in the ward, and that's the way I spent my first three or four years. It was a long time. And I had troubles, mental problems. I had bad mental problems because of my drinking that let all of these character defects get complete control of my life. I had a lot of good times drinking, and I don't dwell on those. But I was a fun drunk. I enjoyed making other people laugh. And I wasn't a sad crying drunk or I wasn' t a mean fighting drunk. I was party drunk. I loved to party. I loved having a good time and make a fool out of myself. You know, it was okay. That was me. the party and the fun began to leave. And I made my mind up while I was in this mental institution that I was going to go back to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and to rejoin society, that I no longer wanted to be part of that world that I wasn't, that my childhood had lasted long enough, and I wanted to become a provider for my young son, and a provider to my wife, And I wanted to be the type of man that my mother and my father and my friends could be proud of. I wanted it to become successful in the eyes of the world. I was going to go home, and I dreamed about this, going back to Fort Smith. I was gonna go back to Ft. Smith on a Greyhound bus. I was gong to take the Grand Avenue bus out to my home, I was just going to stop a blackboard out there at the consumer's grocery store and get two of the biggest, juiciest steaks you've ever seen. I was going to barbecue those steaks, and we was going to eat those when Mary got home from work, and then I was gonna chase her around the house and make mad passionate love for two or three days. And I wanted to do that. When I got to Fort Smith and on the Grand Avenue bus at Greenwood and Grand, there's something that was called the 808 Tap Room and the Greenwood Lounge, and those were my homes. And I thought to myself, with no intention of drinking at all, even though they didn't know I was an alcoholic, I knew I was a alcoholic and I knew that I shouldn't drink. I went in to tell them everything is okay. Blackie the Great is back in town. He's sane now. I've got papers to prove it. And everything is OK. And somebody says, why don't you have a beer before you go home? And I think I shall. and I didn't stop at the grocery store and get those steaks and I did not make mad passionate love to my wife because I got drunk and I don't remember what the hell I did I woke up in bed by myself because my wife had already gotten up and gone back to her job and you see I saw then that once again I made my mind up that I cannot be as other people want me to be. I can't even be as I want to be, this is what is destined for me in my lifetime, I shall pursue it. And for brief times I could not drink too much. I could back away from alcohol whenever I got in too deep, too much trouble at home or with a job or something. I couldback away fromalcohol until it wasn't a major problem in my life. always to return and never intending not to return to excessive drinking again. Every day, without fail, I drank. Some days I got drunker than others. I know that I would stay home for a couple of weeks and drink at home. I was a go-out-to-the-club type drunk. I wasn't a stay-at-home drunk. And Mary began to say, You know, I'll call you at the bar and you'll say you'll be home for dinner, so I'll cook dinner and you never show up. And this makes me angry. She says, why don't you come home and eat dinner and then go back out? And I tried that and she got just as mad. But I would stay home for maybe a week or ten days without going out, just stay home and drink and we had a swell bar in our home in the den. So I'd stay home with her and then I would throw the bitch, you know, and I would go out and she would become angry about that. And I said, hon, I've been home for two weeks And she says, yeah, you know, you have. You've really been good for two weeks. I guess you deserve that. I don't know if she was a codependent. That's the word that I picked up somewhere out of treatment centers. But she wasn't a problem for me. I was a problem to her. She was a big problem for her. Sometime after that, I lost total control. I was in Athens, Greece on vacation. Mary wasn't there. And coming back from Athens, Greece, I remember being extremely angry because the charter plane we were on said that they weren't going to have a bar aboard, that they were going to give us five of those little bottles and that was to make us do until we got to New York City to Kennedy International. And I was extremely angry that all I was going to have was five one-and-a-half bottles, half-ounce bottles of booze to drink all the way from Athens, Greece to New York City. But there's a lot of people on there that knew that I enjoyed drinking and they didn't drink at all. I don't remember going from Athens to New York. I woke up at Kennedy in New York City, in a small room, naked. And I thought, oh my God, I'm in another nuthouse. And that's before I'd never go back. Pretty soon somebody come in and brought my clothes and apologized. They said that somebody had told them the Customs agents is the one that had me, federal authorities, that I was bringing in dope and that I was completely out of my head on dope. And they had taken my clothes and my luggage and everything and gone through it. They apologized and set me free. From that time on, I couldn't control what I drank. I didn't have a choice on whether to drink or not I had to drink. And once again, I became very depressed. I was going to a psychiatrist and became very physically ill, enough physical ailments that a normal human being would have died from. I was taking enough drugs and alcohol so that a normal human being could have built deed from it. When I was confined, hopefully again, to my last nuthouse on legal prescription, I was taking 37 mind-altering pills a day, and on my prescription I was drinking two plus quarts of bourbon a day. You can't do that and live. And the doctors told me that there wasn't any hope of me living. I had a Monday morning appointment with my medical doctor and a Wednesday morning appointment with the nut doctor. And as sick as I was, I knew that when I would tell the nut Doctor that the medical doctor had changed my prescription, one arm trying to hold me down and the other trying to lift me up. And I began to play these two doctors who didn't like each other against each other, and they kept giving me new and stronger and different prescriptions. And I kept drinking. And this one doctor, my medical doctor, whose wife was in this fellowship, I found out after I got sobered up and went to AA. I went back to him after I'd been out home from the Nuthouse for a six-month checkup at the request of the hospital I was in, discharged from. And he told me then, he said, Blackie, I think I can tell you this. You used to make this appointment for Monday. And I'd tell Bernice, don't write it down. There's no way that man can make it until next Monday. And he would tell me, Blackie you've got to stop drinking. And I say, okay, okay I will. And I go down to my car and I get the bottle out of the front seat a quart bottle of bourbon and I'd turn it up and drink as much as I could, and I would sit there a few minutes. And I wasn't dead, so I'd drive home. And then it got to where I couldn't do anything. The last two and a half years of my drinking life, I was complete vestibule. I could not communicate with the world. I couldn' t work. I couldn''t think. I couldn ''t reason. I was in deep depression, and I drank around the clock. It got to where Mary wouldn't even pick me up and put me to bed. She'd just leave me lay where I fell and when I got up, I would get my quart bottle and I remember one time I had the quart bottle in my hand by the neck and I was going to take a drink and I became angry with me and I says, I'm not going to drink anymore and I threw it. Ten minutes later, I had another quart bottle in my hands drinking from it because I didn't have a choice. I had to drink I didn't have a choice, that I was completely addicted to the drug alcohol. And that allergy was always triggered and my mental mind told me, you had to drink. And I hoped that I would die. I wanted to die. I didn' t want to be like I was. I would wonder sometimes, and that's who I was in, how in the hell did I ever end up here? You know, a person who had had as many opportunities to success as I'd had given to me. You see, one of the things that God gave me that was a curse at that time, he always gave me the ability to earn more money than I could spend on alcohol. And I've had so many opportunities and so many good positions and good jobs, and look at me now, what happened? And you know, I didn't know. I didn' t know I was an alcoholic. I knew a drink too much is a problem. And not once did it occur to me or my wife to call Alcoholics Anonymous for help, because she was thoroughly convinced that I was totally insane now and this was the way that I would be until death. And, not only was I looking forward to my death, but my wife was looking forward to her death, because then it would all be over with and she wouldn't have to hurt anymore. And I wanted to die and just not wake up, because I knew that at long last I just wouldn't hurt anymore, I didn't know there was a solution. I have a very good friend in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he saw what I was going through and he wanted to help and he didn't know how. He came to me one time after a lot of thought, and he tried to visit with me and lead into a conversation about what he wanted to see me about, and he found out and he told me, he said, that's not working black and I don't know any other way to ask you this except just ask you flat out, and I hope you say yes. And he says, if I can get you into the best mental hospital in the world, would you going. I said, oh hell yes. God, I want it to happen. At long last somebody had said something. Maybe there's a chance. Maybe. I passed the examination of being crazy and I was admitted to this nut house. And for the first time, I knew a fear that I'd never known before because I knew my history. I wasn't an epileptic. I had alcoholic seizures. And I had DTs. God, I had that I can't describe to you because I knew, my God, this indeed is the end. No way can I come off of this all at once like this. A strange thing happened to me when I was going into the building that I was going to be housed in for an indefinite period of time. A voice or a feeling, something came to my mind. Don't worry, Blackie, this time it's going to be all right. When I was admitted to that hospital, my nervous system was completely shot. I shook, tremoring, as Bob called it. I shooked violently to where I couldn't even write. Before I left that hospital they asked me to re-sign my admittance paper where there's just a crooked line across the place that they had asked me sign. Believe this if you choose, disbelieve it if you choose. Three days later, not only had I had no signs of withdrawal except the first day that my blood pressure went extremely high and extremely low to where they kept me in bed until that became in check. I had NO other withdrawal symptom whatsoever. In three days, I was sane. I could think, I could reason, I would laugh, and I felt great. I got up in the morning and I didn't hurt. I didn' t hurt mentally, I didn''t hurt physically. When I was having my physical given to me for a minute at that hospital, my blood pressure was 240 over 180. A man cannot walk around with that kind of blood pressure. took it four different times with four different instruments. I had it. I should have been dead right then, I should've had a stroke. I didn't. And they kept telling me how lucky I was and I agreed with them because for the first time since I could remember I felt good. And I truly thought that this feeling is going to be with me the rest of my life, that I'm never going to hurt physically, nor will I hurt mentally again. Because I found out in this hospital that probably alcohol and, in my case, some other mind-altering drugs were a hindrance to me and my life. And when they got me to realize this, you see, all of these other times I had been taken to mental institutions, I went so they could cure me. They were doctors. It's their responsibility to cure me. And I didn't give them anything to work with at all. Never did I go to a medical doctor or to a nut doctor and give them any medicine. I gave them anything at all to work With to heal me. This time it was different. I was just as truthful with them as I knew how to be at the time. And I opened my guts up to them and to the other people on my ward that was taking treatment with me. A man who was going to be in a mental institution complete, not the rest of his life, after eight weeks got his recommendation. And a strange recommendation it was, because not once in this place did they mention to me that I was an alcoholic, and not once did they tell me to go to Alcoholics Anonymous to learn how to live until the day that I would go before the board for recommendation. And I told this psychiatrist that I thought maybe alcohol and drugs were a problem in my life. He said, Blackie, that's great. We have done all we can do for you." Before they kept wanting me to come back, giving that fifty or a hundred dollars. He said we've had our recommendation for you drawn up for some time, and I can give it to you now, and we'll give it to you formally a little bit later in a little more detail. He said, Blackie, you can go back to Joplin, Missouri, continue to drink, and you will die from some alcohol-related accident, some alcohol related illness, or you be incarcerated for prison, getting money to buy alcohol and drugs with, or you will end up in another mental institution with no chance of ever coming out sane. And don't kid yourself, it won't be one this fine because by that time you won't be able to afford us. Or you can go back to Joplin, take the drug interviews, continue to see a local psychiatrist and affiliate yourself with a fellowship called Alcoholics Anonymous and do everything they told you to do. Tell you to did it. That's it. I didn't need AA because I had already made up my mind that I was never going to drink again. Now that I truly know deep down in my heart that alcohol is a problem and the success of happiness will come if I don't drink, I already know this because it has happened to me. I feel good right now, so because I feel so good that I'm going to have to drink, because I'm feeling good sober, I will never drink again as long as I live. And I believed that strongly until I came into this fellowship and they reminded me by asking me a question, have you ever felt that way before? Have you ever made that same promise to yourself or somebody else before? And sure I have. Hundreds of times I had made my mind up at long last since I know what's wrong with me, I won't drink again. I went back to Joplin and I saw the psychiatrist three times and I decided that I had taught him just about as much about working with a mental patient as I could afford to pay him to teach and I didn't go back the first visit to him he wanted to put me back on my own often drugs said Blackie you're going to have to take these the rest of your life and I said you write the prescription and I'll light my cigarette with you because I am not going to take any more drugs I'm not sick now he said you've got a lot of emotional problems that we've got to get down to. I didn't go back but twice more, and he kept tampering, you know, wanting to get in and me to find out who I really was and what was really wrong with me. And I didn' t finish the 60-day prescription of Pantrobuse. I don' t know how much it took or anything like that. And I did' n want to affiliate myself with Alcoholics Anonymous us, except while we were in Topeka, Kansas my wife realized that she too was alcoholic. And while we where in Topika, Kansas, she called Alcoholics Anonymous and was twelve-stepped. And we came back to Joplin. I knew that my wife doesn't have very much willpower. She's a weak willy something or another. no way in the world would that woman be able to stay sober by herself. And in order to oblige her so that she wouldn't have to progress in this disease as far as I had, then I was willing to go with her to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was down to his home and he said, Blackie, I want you to do something. I'm going to ask you two questions, and I don't want the answer to them. I want you to think about this. For one time in your life, I want you to be just as honest with yourself as you can be. And you don't have to be dishonest because I don't want to know the answer. You don't need to tell me anything. If you are completely happy with yourself, if you like where you are in life, if you Like the way you feel physically, if you like the way mentally, if everything is going good in your life, for God's sakes, don't even consider turning your life over to God, over to AA or anything else, because evidently you're a pretty good manager and you need to keep on managing. But he said, on the other hand, if you look at yourself and things aren't quite the way that you want them to be, if there's some room there, then what in the hell have you got to lose but trying something that's proven it works? And it dawned on me, this damn program's proven it works. Here is Bill W. sitting in front of me, and it works in his life. And I started thinking about the other people I knew in this fellowship, that this is working in their life. I don't have anything to lose. I can always go back to where I am any time I want to. I'm going to give it a try. And as smart as I thought I was, I was going to do this in a couple of days. I was gonna get okay and I was gonna get myself perfect and then I was gonna present me to God and say, here you lucky God, you is blacker than perfect. I had trouble in those steps. I took step one and I admitted that once I took a drink, my life was powerless. And I was powerless over alcohol. And I thought that's what step one was. And I didn't need step two because I had papers once again to prove that I was sane. And what he's talking about restored me to sanity. I'd pass the examination to be released from a nut house and they don't let nuts out. That's What they're for is to keep nuts. So that one didn't apply to me. And three was a snap. It was easy. All I had to do was just make a decision to turn my life over to God. And I said, okay, God, I'm going to turn it over to you. It's yours. Take it and do with it as you please. and I took an inventory about two pages of character defects and twenty pages of justification and rationalization of why I should have been just exactly like I was and if you hadn't yet taken your fourth step and you want to know what your character defects are they're listed in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous every one of them are down there all you got to do is just copy the things out and it simplifies a four step but it don't work that way it's easy to take the fifth step I found a Catholic priest who was a friend of mine told him I want to take a fifth step with him he says what's that and I said well it's where an alcoholic sits down and talks about his past to somebody and that's supposed to relieve me of all my guilt he says I'm an expert at taking confessions come on over and I went over And I handed him my fourth step, and he glanced through it. And he says, is there anything you want to say? And I said, I won't guess so. And he said, is that all there is to it? And I thought, and I said I guess so, I've never done this before. He says, I hadn't either, so I took my fifth step. It didn't work. I didn't feel like the book said all to feel when I got to that step. And I didn't need anything else, because I was willing to have those character defects removed. And I said, Okay, God, all it wants is just removal. And I hadn't really hurt anybody except my immediate family, and I'd already told them I was sorry, so I had eight and nine done. Every morning when I got up, I said, Please, God. And every morning when it went to bed, I'd say, Thank you. So I'd done 10 and 11. And believe it or not, from eight months of the time that I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous, I've carried a message. I've worked in service work in the Institutional Committee. And I was doing Step 12. I had the program. Now where in the hell would we go from here? And I'm just as miserable mentally as I ever was. I was at dis-ease and I was discontent. And I went to my sponsor and I said, this program don't work. There is something else that y'all are doing. I've been around long enough now to be let on the inside of this fellowship. Will you please accept me into the in-depth of AA and tell me what the hell the secret is? And he told me, Blackie, the one thing you're missing is belief. You do not believe and you must surrender. You must surrender and surrender is a nasty word to me and I didn't like it and I told him I didn' t like it and he gave me a definition that made surrender much easier for me when I really thought about it. All in the world we do is we surrender, and we don't have to fight it anymore. We just don't fight it any more. And I set out to work the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I bought every book written about alcoholism, both conference-approved and non-conference-approving. And I bought them because I wanted people to see me buying them. And I took them home, and I put them on the desk stand beside my favorite chair in the den, and there they were. I was using somebody else's idea of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am a slow reader, a bad reader, and couldn't get anything from it. And I told my sponsor, I do not understand the book. I need help. And he says, how fortunate. This weekend there's going to be two men doing a big book study. And I want you in that room with a pencil and your big book. And they will teach you how to understand the Book Alcoholics Anonymous. So I went to this little meeting, sat on the back row. and at that time I smoked big long cigars and I lit up my cigar, leaned back like this and I said okay to myself, you smart SOBs, you teach me something. You're what they did. At the noon break I was on the front row. Had my book open and I was making notes in the edge of my book and I would read it and I had some passages in that book. That book was simple. It was me that's complicated. That book tells me precisely what I must do, what I have to do if I want what the first 100 got. If I want for the people who have in life that use these principles in all their affairs, then I must—I do not have a choice—I must do precisely what the book tells me to do. And it works every single solitary time. The 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous is not a way to stay sober. That's a byproduct of the way that I lead my life now, just as much a by-product as the happiness and the sincerity that I have in loving and caring about other human beings, a byproduct of good health as a result of relying on the principles in the Twelve Steps. I thought that I had just as good a program as possible for a human being to have, that I was a righteous person and had a great understanding of a power outside of myself that I was choosing to call God, and I got hit hard. This past July I was told that I had cancer of the prostate, and this scared the hell out of Blackie. And I worried about this because I was passing blood in my urine and it just wouldn't stop, and the blood clots would stop me up and I I'd have to be drained and this sort of thing. So finally, working with the doctor who was attending me on that, decided we'd have the operation, and I was scared. I had fear in me because the word cancer scared me. And then he gave me some phone numbers of some men that had had this operation recently, and I called and talked with them, and he gave us some literature about it. And I can guarantee you that 85% of the men who are 60 years or older have cancer of the prostate. Some of it needs correctional work done on it, and some of it don't. It just happens to men that they have prostate problems. And if there's a very simple and corrective operation that can be done, It hinders the good times that I thought I used to have with sex, but everything else works just like it always did. And that's just not all that important anyway. I keep telling myself. So I consented to go in for this operation and I went in. And the doctor who was going to do the operation, and I made him full aware that I was an alcoholic and I could not take my inaltern drugs. And I'd had a heart attack and I'd have a blood clot on my lung before this and I've gotten through those without my inalter drugs. I did get a shot of liquid valium on my heart attack in the emergency room and, my God, what a beautiful feeling that was. Oh, it was great. Good. And I told that doctor I couldn't stand that feeling that I wasn't addicted to it and that he says, evidently you don't realize what's happening to you. You've got to stay calm. And I asked him to allow me the privilege of trying to stay calmed my way. And if that didn't work, they had me hooked up to their fancy machine and they could tell when I was in trouble. And if it didn't works, I would take the drugs because I did not want to die. I wanted to live. I didn't have to take a mine-altern drug after that. And I withstood the pain And if you've known anybody or if you're ever had a blood clot on the lung, that's the most painful thing that can happen to a human being. It's just constant, hard-hurting pain because when you have a blood plot on your lung, it cuts off the supply of moisture that goes in there and there's a little membrane around that raw meat of your lung and that membrane is gone. and it's dried up and gone away. And you've got just raw meat every time you breathe, like that rubbing against each other. And I always feel that pain. I won't do that again because I found out now that when it's necessary and under the right circumstances and with the right spiritual condition, I can take any medication that's necessary to make me healthy. Just be cautious, be in contact with God and know what I'm doing and realize the dangers that I personally face when I take a mind-altering drug. And I was okay with the world with this cancer then. It was going to be a simple thing. They gave me a local to where that I wouldn't have any of the things that we have when we're put totally to sleep. And I went to the doctor and I was wide awake all during the operation. And when he came, the doctor came into the operating room and he said, Blackie, we've got another little problem here that we'll look at later. He says, it looks like you've got some dark spots on your lungs and you've Got some cysts on one of your kidneys. And I says, okay, that's a hell of a thing to tell a man that you're fixing to operate on, but we'll look at it. And by the way, if you wonder what they talk about in an operating room, it's just like in the movies. They talk about everything except for what you're doing. And once I told him, I said, hey, would you mind paying attention to what you do? And that's my thing you're working on. He says, it's okay, everything is just going perfect. And it did. an hour after that operation I had to spend an hour in the recovery room even though I was recovered you've got to spend it there because that's procedure and it's okay because I got to see what went on in the recover room and they took me back upstairs and I immediately had people waiting in the room and we had a party for a week just really great and I went down for some tests and I had a CAT scan run And on Thursday he came in and he said, Black, I've got some bad news for you. And we doctors have different ways of telling our patients about this. God I knew what the bad news was right then, I was dying. He said these spots on your lungs and these cysts that we thought we saw on your kidney are much worse than we thought. You have one kidney that is completely involved with cancer. You've got about six inches of vena cava, which is completely involved with the disease. You've also got lung cancer, and we'll operate on these within about a week. And he said, you've also got lung cancer in both lungs, and we can't operate on that. And God, I knew fear again. All that week I was telling people That I wasn't afraid of dying I was afraid of living And once again Blackie was a damn lie I was scared to death of dying I didn't want to die And just the word cancer killed me It took away all the spirit And all the fun that I had in life And I knew this is at long last it This is what's going to take me out The next day at noon when he came by on his visit, he ensured that. He said, Blackie, we've looked at your case. We've looked at the involvement. We've look at your chances of recovering from an operation. And we have decided as many doctors do now, unless we can give a patient more good time than we take away from him by an operation that we prefer not to operate. If whatever time you have left we want that to be Same time for you. Now, a kidney operation is a simple thing. It's done daily and there's nothing to it. But a vena cava, and those of you who don't know what that is, that's the main blood vessel going back to the heart. And when you start bleeding in that area, there's Nothing Anybody Can Do For You. You bleed to death. That's it. The operation that they did on me, even though they said they couldn't and wouldn't, worked, and I'll tell you why it worked and how it worked. I know I'm running over, but forgive me for just a few more minutes. Oh, the PA system's out? I'm very sorry. Thirsty when I heard a killing cancer, a terminal cancer. I completely lost control and lost everything. I wasn't going to tell my wife about it, and thank God that the medical profession provides nurses, because one of them, just as soon as the doctor walked out, I held my composure, and just as Soon as he left out, I started crying, and I couldn't control it. I sobbed loud enough. And one of my men immediately went in there and spent two hours with me after that, consoling me and enlightening me on some things that I needed, and they convinced me to call my wife. And I called my wife, and she and my son came up there immediately. And we couldn't talk to each other. We only sat there and held each other and cried. The next day, Friday, after that news, it was somewhat better because I know now for sure that I am going to die, and I have to get my estate into condition. I have got some things done that need to be done because I haven't written a will in a long, long time. And I needed that up to date, and I had my attorney up there, and we redrew the will. And i told everybody how i wanted my funeral to be, that i didn't want my wife spending a lot of money on that, and that i wanted to be cremated, and whatever they want to do with my ashes, they could grow roses in them, whatever the hell they want, i really didn't care. But i didn' t want a graveyard. I didn't want that. They were going to be cremated. And that night, I'd begin to get some composure back, and my wife had begun to get Some composure back. And we were able to sit there and be talking with each other and make some definite plans of what we were going do for whatever time I had left. And two laypeople came in from a church, and these two people were going save my soul, I didn't even think it was lost. I don't guess it'll hurt to say that they were bad. They would not quit talking about it. My wife became angry and left before she did something she didn't want to do. And I listened for a little while, and I told them politely, I said, you know, I've listened politely. I've heard what you said, and I would really appreciate it if you'd just get the hell out of here. And he said, we'll go. And he showed me a couple more passages that he had underlined in his big book, non-conference approved. And then he said I want you to do something for me. I know that you realize that you don't need it, but I want you to do something for me. If you continue to have trouble with this, please read the book of John and that non-conference approved book with an open mind. Because they had asked me the question what I believed in, and I began to tell them what I believe in. I went to sleep that night, and I woke up at 3 o'clock Saturday morning. And that was on my mind, Blackie, what do you believe in? And I didn't know. And I was scared because I was dying, and I didn'T know what I believed in. And all of a sudden it was very important that I know what I believed then. And I heard bad enough that I rang for the nurse and asked her to give me the Gideon Bible. off of the ledge by my bed over there, and she handed it to me. And not wanting to, I opened the Bible up, and I read from those passages in John. And I was crying because I could not believe what was being said in those pages, and I wanted to believe, and I want to be saved, and I wondered what good people have after they die. So I blanked my mind, and I tried to as open-mindedly as I could read on. And I came to a passage that's probably not important to anybody else in the world except me. And forgive me for using the Bible in my talk, but it's very important to me. And if it offends any of y'all, please use the program to get over that resentment. I'm serious, it'll kill you. And this passage was after he had done his miracle of feeding the multitudes with fish and loaves, that the next day they had followed him over and wanted to see more. And he says, you know, y'all believe in the result of the miracle. You believe in it because you ate the fish and ate the loaf. Yet you don't believe in The Miracle. My eyes opened. That's where I've been. I've enjoyed eating the results of miracles. I've endured the happiness and the serenity of the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous. And as I look back over my life, God kept me alive many, many times when a normal human being would be dead. When I had those heart attacks. When he brought me back to life after a cold blue with that blood clot on my lung. All of these times, the wreck I had when I shouldn't have been found, and I was. Of all of these other physical ailments that kill people that he'd seen me through. When I was committed to that last mental hospital, that he gave me ease, he spoke to me saying it's going to be okay. and after every one of those bad things good things seemed to happen to me it got better than the time before and I asked the God of my understanding as of now because I realized I didn't know how to pray all of these superficial things that I'd been doing in my life up until then were just that and I told this power that I believe in now that I didn't know how to ask for what I wanted because I didn' t really know how I wanted. But I thought that I wanted, no matter what happened to me, to be an example, a good example, of his loving and his care and his message and to be able to use the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in all my affairs so that somebody else might benefit from whatever results comes out of my disease of cancer. I don't mean five minutes later, I mean that instant. I felt good. The pain was gone, the hurting was gone and I knew that everything was going to be all right no matter what happened. Everything was goingto be allright. They did the operation. They did an operation that the doctor had never done before. It's only been done a few times successfully in this country. My chances of coming out of that operating room was 90-10. Not one single solitary bad minute. Not one singe solitary bad minute. They did that operation and it worked 100%. I was in intensive care for two and a half days and they wouldn't operate on me this time unless I conceded to have my nalting drugs and that's why I know now that if it's necessary, I can have these drugs used on me. And he said, I will give you drugs when I think you need them for two days and from then on you can call for them. And they gave them to me in intensive care because I needed them, because it was essential to my recovery. And I called for them three times after that. The first time because it were the habit. But the next time I called for it because I had some pain and I didn't want to hurt. But I'd become sane enough now that I didn' t like the feeling that I got from that drug. I couldn' t think, I couldn't reason, I could' n't do anything. I would just move. And I told him, and he said, Well, we'll cut it down into half. And we'll change it to something they were giving me. Oh, boy, I'm a great drug addict. I don't even know the names. Anyway, they changed it to something else. And by golly, it did the same thing to me. And I said, the hell with this. I didn't take any more. The incision they made, and they don't sew them up anymore. They staple them up with metal staples, just like stapled paper. Just perfect. It healed up. And I was happy and I was joyous They tell me I was an inspiration to the whole floor About the great recovery and the mental attitude I had I thought I would keep this mental attitude from now on Just like I thought that I could stay sober by myself From now on and everything would be alright Today I live with cancer And I am not dying from cancer but i do have bad days sometimes when i start to play that game how much longer what am i going to do with my life you see because they told me i had nine months to a year to live this was in august and i've got a good portion of that gone now and i feel great there's not a thing in the world wrong with me today that I've got cancer in my lungs and sometimes when I exert myself I have trouble breathing and that's okay that's alright I've gotten severe bronchial infection because of the medication I'm on, I'm subject to get these and it's harder to get them cured up than it is otherwise but today I'm okay and I'm happy and that all in the world I've ever had to worry about is today I don't know when I'm going to die and quite frankly I don' t give a damn and you don't know when you're going to die unless you are sick enough that you put something to your head and pull the trigger and kill yourself then you know but I do know this that God will make good on his commitment to me to let me keep the mental attitude that I have so long as I rely on Him and don't think back in my own hand. I'm selling my business as of April the 1st, and I don't know what I'm going to do. Except I know that when I drink, I had my business in the bars and alcohol. And when I sobered up, I had My Business and Alcoholics Anonymous. And now I'm gonna have AlcoholicsAnonymous. God has blessed me with much more than I have ever earned. I don't have to worry about the financial things unless something happens to my insurance. He's going to let me live comfortably whatever time I have left. And if I hear you having a convention down here in southeast Texas, I may just get on a plane and fly down here and come to a convention. or if I want to go anywhere and do anything, I'm going to be free to do it. I'm gonna be able to enjoy these blessings. Had God been kind enough or mean enough to me to ask me 10 years ago, Blackie, all you've got to do is tell me what you want from life and it is yours as of that second. I would have cheated myself because I didn't know how great life could be. I didn' t know that there was a plateau in life to where a man could have peace and serenity and enjoyment. I didn''t have any idea, nor would I have asked God for the riches that He''s given me, both mental and materially. I didn ''t think it was humanly possible for a person to have what I have, so I couldn''t ask for it. And I hope I never forget that God knows what I need long before I know I need it and that all in the world I have to do to receive that is just one simple thing believe I now believe in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous I've made as much of a total commitment and surrender as I know how to make I know that it took me longer than it took you and i know that there are some things that happen in my life it's not near as bad as things that's happened in some of yours and some of them go the other way but i hope that every living human being whether they be a member of this fellowship or not out of these adverse situations that come up in our life no matter how traumatic they are to us that we can find out that these are learning situations that we have to that we can profit from them that we can be better off the next day because of what we endured and handled in a proper way today I think that's a message of Alcoholics Anonymous for it says in that book along towards the last the real reason for this book is to get us closer to God and to be a service to our fellow human beings. And that's the same message that the God of my understanding carried to me in that other non-conference approved book. God bless you for letting me come down. I don't know if you needed this or not, but black as sure as the hell did. Thank you very much.