Take the Last Twenty-Four Hours and Ask What You’d Do Different — My First Fourth Step – Ed H.
About This Speaker Tape
Ed H. grew up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts in the 1940s and 50s with a father he never saw take a drink and a mother who was a raging alcoholic — he hated being around her and hid out at his dad's clothing store. He was a decent student at Boston College, got hired by Arthur Andersen in New York City in 1961, and discovered happy hour two weeks in. It was love at first sight — the camaraderie, the BS, reminiscing about the future and embellishing achievements. His career climbed: New York, then Puerto Rico where he had a live-in maid and gardener and a home that later became a consulate, then a transfer to Atlanta and a house in Sandy Springs.
The wheels came off. Nine DUIs between 1973 and 1983. Real estate jobs that stalled. A marriage that failed when he moved out into one of his own Marietta apartments. By the end he was drinking between the box spring and mattress just to get vertical, too drunk to make a phone call by 10 a.m., and writing "deceased" on IRS notices. The moment that broke him: sitting in an office warehouse on Jimmy Carter Boulevard on a Friday afternoon, watching his girlfriend's son unload his golf clothes, bowling ball, and executive chair onto the front lawn — "my mother says she never wants to see you again." He slept in an empty warehouse bay that night with a Mustang, $200, and a car the police were trying to repossess.
Labor Day 1991 he called a buddy, stalled three hours, and finally made it to his first meeting at the 81-11 club — blown about 2.3 and missing the chip ceremony entirely. He stumbled into NABBA next, intimidated by Larry K., Tim B. and Harry the Hobo, and started stacking meetings. His sponsor told him he had too little dry time for the steps and handed him a simpler assignment: every day, review the last 24 hours and ask what you would do differently. That became his introduction to inventory.
Recovery was slow — he calls it being "mocus," moving slowly out of focus. He worked Color Tile warehouses in 120-degree trailers at 52 years old. He walked into the IRS with all his back taxes; they cut $125,000 in penalties to $75,000 just because he showed up. He eventually became CFO of a real-estate and nursing home company, signing $35 million wires while remembering the warehouse address he never put on his resume. He remarried, lost his second wife, reconnected with his daughters, and chaired the AA hotline for eight years. His ex-wife has dementia now and doesn't recognize him — his daughter joked that meant he could skip the amends. Today he goes to four or five meetings a week not out of fear but to see the good things happen.
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Full Transcript
All right, let's have an AA meeting.
My name is Julie, and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more sobriety tells his or her...
My name is Julie, and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more sobriety tells his or her...
All right, let's have an AA meeting.
My name is Julie, and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more sobriety tells his or her story.
Hey, everybody, I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic.
I'm going to read something from page 29 of the big book.
Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language, from their own point of view,
the way they establish their relationship with God.
These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives.
We hope no one will consider these self-fulfilling accounts in bad taste.
Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight
and listening later on aabloochipspeakers.org, desperately in need,
will hear our speaker, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems
that any of us shall be persuaded to say,
Yes, I'm one of them, too. I must have this thing.
I love our speaker we have here tonight.
I wanted to get him for a long time.
He had some health issues and things, but I was thinking about it.
I think as much as anybody I've ever heard in this program, when I hear him, I hear the joy of sobriety.
And that joy is not necessarily contingent on what's going on around you.
It's just he has an infectious sobriety.
That's the best way I can describe it.
I hate long introductions, but he knows he's at home here.
So please.
Help me welcome him in.
Ready to go?
I'm Ed Hart, and I'm an alcoholic.
When I got here tonight and I saw the podium, I said to Jim, I said,
I have problems with my waist.
I don't know if I can stand while I tell my story.
He said, well, I got a school bar stool here.
We can put it behind the podium.
I said, I've fallen off so many bar stools.
Let's put me in a stable where I can sit.
Sit down like a normal person.
I want to thank Tim for asking me to speak tonight.
And I want to thank Tim R. for walking me through the vetting process that they have here.
You know, these guys are tough.
You know, I can see asking me in my home group and data sobriety.
But when they start asking about, do you have a valid license for what you fight for school and that, you know.
I don't know if I was telling my story here or auditioning for an episode of Cops, you know.
But anyways, you know, NAB has been a big part of the AA.
AA in Atlanta for a long time.
And for me, it's really a privilege to be able to speak here.
You know, when I first came in, I spent a lot of time in these rooms.
And NAB was a great place to get so everything was who's your sponsor, what step are you on, you know, what work, what service work are you doing.
Everything was wrapped around it.
A lot of good old-timers that were willing to spend time, you know, guys like Jim.
Joe P. and Bill R. and Bob Carver.
I'm trying to stay away from the last name.
But Dick H. and Larry K.
And just a whole raft of people that are really there to help.
Newcomers coming in and giving you, you know, a helping hand, you know.
And it was a great place to get sober.
I'm originally from Massachusetts, a town called Chumstead.
It's outside of Lowell, just north of New Hampshire.
New Hampshire is right on the Massachusetts border.
I have my father.
I never saw my father take a drink.
And I have a brother, younger brother, younger sister.
He didn't want to have, she didn't have a problem with alcohol.
My mother made up for the rest of us.
She was a raging alcoholic.
And, you know, this was back in the 40s and 50s.
And you didn't hear much about AA at that time, you know.
You know, I understand, you know, there's a group now in Sandy Springs and they're starting to redo the 12 steps.
And the first step is now we're admitted we were alcohol.
How it's over alcohol that allows you to become unfashionable.
And, you know, it's kind of, you know, today is kind of a mark of honor to go to any boy clinic.
You know, you're a status symbol, you know, but that wasn't the case when I was growing up.
There was a boxing camp in the next town called Dropkick Murphy's.
And it was where the fighters worked to train out.
And every once in a while you'd hear about some businessmen, they would send them up to Dropkick Murphy's for drying out.
No AA program.
Just keep them off the booths for a while, do some road work, work them out, sort it out, and then put them back on the street.
And Joe P., who was a longtime member of Skyland and a very active here at NAVA, we were talking one night.
And I said to Joe, I said, do you ever hear of Dropkick Murphy's?
And he started to laugh.
And I said, well, it's so funny.
He said, that's where I met my wife.
He said, my wife's family has some connection to Dropkick Murphy's.
And I was up there getting dried out when I met Elaine.
Probably the worst.
The worst thing that ever happened to Elaine.
But anyways.
But anyways, my mother was, you know, off the rails as far as drinking.
And I couldn't stand her.
I hated to be around her.
And my father had a little clothing store.
When I wasn't active in school or sports or whatever, I hung out at the store.
I did everything possible to stay away from her.
You know, growing up, I didn't do a lot of drinking through high school.
And not at any of the guys I ran with.
We all were active.
We were all decent students.
We were all played ball.
All had girlfriends.
All had a set of wheels.
You know, that kept us pretty busy.
I got out of high school.
I was a decent student.
And I got accepted at Boston College.
And I nearly flunked out the first year because there was nowhere I could get any study and done at home.
And even though we only lived 30 minutes away from Boston College, I convinced my father to let me live on campus.
And things changed right away.
My grades picked up.
I ended up being dean's list.
I was a good student and all that.
Had a lot of good friends.
And again, none of the guys I ran with did a lot of drinking.
You know, BC was like most colleges.
There was a lot of drinking going on.
We just...
None of us were really into it.
You know, we drank once in a while, but drinking was not a big deal.
In fact, you know, most people when they get to A, they stop drinking.
When I get to A, I started drinking, you know.
Now I should explain that.
When I got out of college, I went to work for Otter.
Arthur Anderson Company, and it was a major international accounting firm.
And I went to work for them in New York City.
And in the business circles, it was referred to as AA.
You know, who do you work for?
I work for AA.
And I was only there about two weeks, and the guy said to me,
do you want to join us for happy hour?
I don't know what the hell that was, but it sounded okay with me.
And, man, it was love at first sight.
I mean, I loved everything about it.
I loved the camaraderie, the BS that went on, the babes in there and everything else.
You know, we'd sit there reminiscing about the future,
embellishing on our achievements, minimizing our failures.
We were all hot shots.
We were all going to set the world on fire.
And, you know, at that time, drinking was not frowned upon at all with companies like that.
It was English.
You were supposed to be able to hold your liquor.
You know, getting drunk was not a good idea.
We had booze at most company functions.
And you just didn't want to be the first one there or the last to leave.
You know, you went and kind of martyred your drink.
And when you left it, you went out and got smashed.
But you didn't in front of the rest of the people and all that.
And I went to work for Andre Anson in 1961.
And I did real well with them.
I got a lot of, you know, promotions and all this going up, moving up the ladder.
And it was kind of up or out with those companies.
Either you got promoted or you hit the street.
And.
I lived in Manhattan, the Upper East Side.
You know, I had a nice, you know, what do you call it, high-rise apartment with the doorman and all the trappings and all that.
And it looked like I was doing pretty good.
And I get to a point, you know, no matter what I'm doing here, I couldn't see myself raising.
I got married when I had my first child when I was in New York City.
And I couldn't see myself raising a kid in the city.
And Connecticut and Jersey and that, they didn't turn me on.
So I went to these.
Human Resources.
And I said, I like to think about making a move.
And they said, would you consider going to Puerto Rico?
Well, nice climate, sounded good.
So I went to Puerto Rico, sight unseen.
I just moved the family down.
I'd never been there before in my life, not even on vacation.
But that didn't stop me from making the decision.
You know, wouldn't doubt do it, you know.
So I moved.
I go to Puerto Rico.
And it was a great opportunity because it was a small office, 100 people.
I think there were like 15 Cubans, 80 Puerto Ricans, and 5 gringos, 5 Americans.
And we took on a lot of responsibility.
So it was a great chance to take on a lot of responsibility.
And I did well down there.
You know, I continued to perform well with the company.
I was getting the record promotions.
And it was another added benefit to Puerto Rico.
All your stateside clients somehow.
And I found a reason to come to Puerto Rico in January and February, you know.
Just the fact that they were located in Chicago and they ended up in Puerto Rico in January and February, you go figure, you know.
And what they really wanted to do was get a company-paid vacation.
And to make it cheaper for them, they came and expected us to entertain them.
Well, I mean, how stupid of them.
We bought them drinks, put it on a bill, built it back to the company they were working for with some kind of a carry charge on it.
Okay with me.
I was getting a drink for nothing.
The company was paying.
It was fine.
It was the same thing with Puerto Rico as in New York.
You know, drinking was okay.
You just didn't want to make a fool of yourself in the working environment.
So, again, I got good promotions.
I had a nice home in Condado initially.
Then I bought a home and by a moment reappeared in this area of Puerto Rico.
Really a nice home.
We had a live-in maid, live-in gardener.
I mean, a gardener, live-in maid.
In fact, when we sold the house, when we moved back to the States, the house became a consulate for one of the, I think it was San Salvador or somebody like that.
So, we were living the good life, you know.
And I would have said, we got it knocked.
My wife might have thought differently.
We had two more children when we were in Puerto Rico.
And I was constantly gone.
If I wasn't working, I was drinking.
If I wasn't drinking, I was golfing.
If I wasn't drinking or golfing, I was working.
I really had no time to be.
I didn't know how to be a husband.
I didn't know how to be a father.
It was terrible.
I mean, I...
So, I mean, I thought things were going great.
She might have been different.
But anyways, after a while, it was time to come back to the States.
So, I took this transfer to Atlanta, Georgia.
So, we moved from San Juan to Atlanta.
Moved into the Atlanta office of Andre Anderson.
And we had bought a nice home in Sandy Springs.
New cars.
Great school district, all that.
You know, a lot of optimism in that.
And then things started to kind of go sideways.
I got my first DUI in, I think it was 1973, and I had nine DUIs over the next ten years.
Now, this is when you could still buy them off.
You know, today you'd be in a slammer.
In fact, my attorney said to me, if you get another DUI, don't even call me
because mothers against drunk drivers sitting in those courtrooms looking for somebody like you,
you're going to slam us.
So, don't even call me.
So, I knew you'd tell me how I drank one from 83 until I got in the program in 91.
Kept drinking without a DUI.
Let me tell you, a lot of enablers and a lot of cabs and pins picking you up
because, you know, I just couldn't afford to get another DUI.
But anyways, my career at Andre Anderson started to stall, and I ended up leaving that.
Over the next 15 years, I worked for a series of real estate companies.
You know, some major ones.
Cousins Properties was one, if you might have heard.
It was an Atlanta-based company.
Sam Zell was out of Chicago.
He's the guy you see in the top.
Shows with the Fortune 500s and all that.
And with another guy, I built the Valley Apartments over in Sandy Springs
and redeveloped Hidden Liner and stuff on 41.
And I was, you know, I was still drinking up a storm, but I was kind of hanging in there.
You know, I'd get in a little trouble, and I'd bounce back.
I always just seemed to be able to pull myself together and all that.
And things at home were just at the tank, you know.
I was never at home.
And when I was, I was...
I was half in the bag and all that.
And then, to get to the point, I moved with my wife,
and I tried to get the kids back together again, and it didn't work.
So I moved out.
I moved into one of the apartments that I owned over in Marietta.
And...
So I get here.
And then I joined the work for Zell,
the guy out of Chicago in the Atlanta office.
And he decided to close that office because he decided he didn't want to be in...
He wanted to be in the office buildings and apartments, not retail.
I was buying shopping sets for him.
So he decided to close the office.
So like everybody else, I decided to go out and, you know,
went over to Office Depot, get business cards and let it head,
and I'm an entrepreneur, you know, you know how bad it is.
Not self-employed, you're an entrepreneur.
There's a big difference between the two.
Anyways, but things, I just couldn't pull it together.
And I was living with this girl that used to work for me,
and things weren't going there.
She was the same, you know, and I could see why.
I was still spending like I used to spend.
I still belonged to a golf course.
I was still playing golf three or four days a week,
spending money like I had it, and I didn't have it.
Things were just going down and down and down.
And, you know, I'll be high.
I'll be out of my mortgage payments, and I'd get, I'm a CPA, right?
And I'd forget to file tax returns.
You didn't file.
You don't forget.
How do you say it?
I didn't get noticed from the IRS, you know, and I'd write deceased
and put them back in the envelope, you know, like that was.
If anybody wants to use that as a tax planning strategy,
let me tell you, it's not a good idea.
But, I mean, I just couldn't pull it.
I just couldn't get it together.
I was going downhill and downhill.
And the girl I was with, she was sick of me.
I was sick of her.
And I said to her, why don't you say, I'm going to get out of here.
I've got to get out of here.
I think you'll hold me back, you know.
Hold me back.
I was supposed to, I was trying to broker some real estate deals,
and I made a few deals, believe it or not.
But the problem was I was drinking around the clock.
I used to keep a bottle between a box spring and a mattress,
but I needed a few pops just to get vertical, you know.
I mean, I couldn't get up without a little bit of help.
And by 10 o'clock,
I was too drunk to make a phone call.
When you've been working an hour a day,
you don't make a whole lot of money in the real estate business.
So, anyway, so I had a buddy of mine,
and he had an office warehouse thing over on Jimmy Carter Boulevard.
And I was working out there and using his phone and, you know,
thinking if I get out of the house early in the morning,
maybe I could stay so early.
It didn't really go down.
I just put to work with a jug in my car.
So, anyways, I'm there one afternoon, Friday afternoon,
things are quiet, and all of a sudden I see this truck pull up in the front of the building.
Everybody else had gone for the weekend.
It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm still hanging out there.
All of a sudden, this guy, I see he's putting stuff in the front of the building we were in.
And I'm in good golf clothes, and bowling ball, and clothes, and a couple of chairs.
So, I walked away and said, what are you doing?
He said, my mother says she never wants to see you again.
She had downloaded all the stuff that I had.
You know, his truck, and dumped it on the front lawn of this office warehouse complex that was there.
I'm walking around saying, whoa, man, this is bad.
I've got to make some moves here.
So, I'm driving a Mustang convertible at the time.
You know, that's not the most vehicle when you're going to move.
You know, that's not your vehicle of choice.
So, I dump everything I can into the Mustang.
And I get at the end, and I get this executive chair.
You know, the ones on the rollers and all that.
And that was the last thing I had.
And the only way I could get it into the Mustang was put it upside down in the back.
And I said, I've got to go over and talk to her, because, you know, something's wrong here.
So, I start going over there, and I see all these people looking at me.
And I can't figure out, why are they staring at me?
Well, as I'm driving, the wheels on that chair were going like this.
It looked like somebody with a homemade helicopter was flying in off the ground, you know.
And I'm thinking.
And I'm thinking, man, this is not a way to keep a low profile, you know.
And so, I get up to the, into the apartment complex.
And the cop says to me, I knew all the cars by name, because I wasn't in DUIs.
I was having papers served to me, you know, warrants and all this crap.
And he says, Eddie, he says, you know, Judy got a restraining order on you.
You can't be within, I don't know, 15, could have been 15,000 miles.
But all I knew was this was how it could have worked.
So, I went back to the warehouse, to the office warehouse complex I was working out of.
And I knew they had some empty bays.
Not the office portion, but the warehouse portion that they were baking.
They never locked those up.
They locked up the office portion.
So, I go in, and I find an empty bay.
Overhead door.
Pull the Mustang in.
Hey, I got a new place to live, you know.
I mean, you know.
So, I'm sitting there, and I'm going, hey, this is pretty bad.
At that time of day.
At that time, I probably had about $200 to my name.
I mean, that's all I had.
The car I'm driving, the police are looking for it because I hadn't made payments on it.
And they cleared it.
My ex called me one time.
She said, the cops are looking for you.
I said, what for?
Oh, which ones?
She said, all of them.
I said, what do you mean all of them?
She said, you know, Cobb County, Fulton County, everything in the metro area.
They were trying to track down the cars so they could repossess it.
And what I would do is, you know, I would change the license plates.
You know, I would go to, you know.
Grocery store.
Nobody would take it.
I'd put it on the back of my car, you know.
And it would never match.
It would never match up my car with that license plate.
You know, as long as I don't get stopped, I'm getting away with it.
So, anyways, I moved into one house.
And, you know, and I'm thinking, you know, I've got to do something here.
I pawned it.
You know, we pawned for a while when we were drinking.
You know, I pawned this for a while.
I don't know if I got a moment of clarity or what.
But I said, you know, I've got to do something here.
I pawned it.
You know, we pawned for a while when we were drinking.
You know, I pawned this for a while.
I said, you know, maybe this drink will get the best of me.
So I called a buddy of mine.
And I said you have a problem with drinking.
What are you going to do?
What did you do?
He said, I went to AA.
I said, really?
This was like, this was a Tuesday morning.
A Monday morning.
It was Labor Day.
It was in 91.
I said, really?
Is that work?
He said, yeah.
I said, I was able to stop drinking.
I said, maybe I should do this.
It was like 10 o'clock in the morning.
Maybe I should do that.
He said, well, if you want, I'll take you to a meeting this afternoon.
He said, call right up for me at the 81-11 club.
Well, meet me there.
Okay, that sounds good.
At 11 o'clock, I called back.
I said, Bob, I take a vote.
We're reacting.
I don't think I'm already here.
1 o'clock, I called back.
Bob, you're still going?
This was on for two or three hours, right?
Finally, he said, look, I don't care what you do.
If you want to go to a meeting, I'll take you.
If you don't, that's up to you.
I'm not going to do any more.
So I went to my first meeting at the 81-11.
I missed the whole thing because I was probably blown about a 2-3.
You know, white chip.
He said, how can you make a white chip?
I said, who are the chips?
I mean, I missed the whole chip ceremony.
I mean, at that time, the 81-11 had a metal blind going across on Roswell Road.
I'm trying to keep a low profile again.
Every time I turned around, I banged that metal blind.
It was like cymbals going up.
Boom!
People would turn around.
I said, oh!
Boy, you are not doing a good job of keeping a low profile.
You made more noise than all of the other people combined.
So anyway, so this buddy who took me to my first meeting, he called, contacted the girl who threw me out.
He said, you know, Ed's in bad shape.
He's got no money.
He's living on the street.
Can you give him help?
So she got me a room in the Claremont Lodge.
Let me tell you something.
That warehouse was safer than the Claremont Lodge.
I blew it in the Claremont Lodge.
The whole night long, you could hear the cars going, there was diaries going, and the flashing blue lights going on.
Guys coming to my door going, boy, kid, kid, who's there, who's there?
You know, I thought I was in the suburb of Mexico or something.
I mean, there was nobody speaking English in there, and I'm trying to get, you know, trying to get my stuff together and all that.
So one of the guys at the 8111 said, hey, you're right around the corner from a clubhouse called Nava.
You ought to try Nava.
So I said, it's okay.
So the first time I pulled to Nava, let me tell you, you talk about intimidating.
I pull in the driveway.
I look at the building.
This looks like something out of a John Gaudi movie.
I figured they're down there eating pasta and talking about who they're going to knock off in that low-slung building, you know.
Who were the first three people I see, right?
Larry Kay.
He has the glasses, and he doesn't know how to use the bipod.
So you cook and dine, you're like this.
Tim B., I don't know if anybody remembers Tim B., tattooed up.
He looked like some kid who had forgotten to take his riddle, and Jim was all, you know.
And Harry.
Harry with the satin jacket.
Harry the hobo, I think we used to call him.
We used to ride the rails.
And I'm thinking, man, if I have to hang around with these guys to get sober, I'm in deep doo-doo.
And I really was in deep doo-doo.
I didn't know any better.
But, yeah, they became great friends, you know, and all that.
And I started, you know, initially I was going to one meetings a day, and then I went to two and three meetings a day.
And I'd go to a meeting here, and I'd go to the 81.
And I don't know, that car I had had to run on fumes because I know I didn't have enough money to put gas in for the trips I was taking.
But I was, you know, but I gave, you know, I was able to stop drinking the first time since I can remember.
And I was credited with that to go into meetings.
And that was all I heard in the beginning, was don't drink and go to meetings.
So my recovery was, I stayed mocus for a long time.
People are not familiar with that.
It's moving slowly out of focus, mocus.
I was mocus for the first two or three months.
I remember I would text my swan, so I'd say, hey, I'm going to meetings at Nava.
They want, they think you ought to work the steps.
He said, Eddie.
He said, I hate to bust your buckle, but there's some people see you at meetings, they're not even sure you've stopped drinking.
You need more dry time before you start challenging the steps.
But he said, I'll give you a suggestion.
He says, take a certain time every day.
And I don't give you a morning, noon, or night.
So just review the preceding 24 hours of your day and ask yourself, if I had those 24 hours to live over, what would I do differently?
If I did something well?
Could you have done it even better?
If you did something you're not so proud of, what would you do the next time?
That was his introduction to me for taking inventory.
And even today, I tell new customers that I work with, I say, read those pages, 85 through 86 of the big book.
You don't have to have any time in the program for that periodic, that little float on it, that little period of quiet time to help you go.
But anyways, you know, and so I went to a lot of meetings.
And I made sure I went to either a speaker meeting or a big, big meeting or a step meeting.
And I avoided BB meetings.
And when my daughter came in, I said, make sure you don't go to any BB meetings.
She said, yeah, what's a BB meeting?
I said, it says it's an AA meeting, but they don't talk AA.
They just talk BB.
And it's a, you know, BS is what there is.
Make sure that when you go there, you get the AA message and don't waste your time.
And on AA meetings.
So, but anyway, the other thing we didn't be getting, and I don't see it as much.
Tapes were a big thing.
You know, you swap tapes, you know.
There's so many tapes out there with good speakers like, you know, Sandy B. and Clancy.
There's 50 guys out there that are all good speakers.
And we swap tapes back and forth.
And some are on step studies and some are on just their story and all that.
Everything was, you know, what meetings you go to, what steps you are, you know, a list of the tapes and all that.
You know, so I get, you know, get into the, get into the step work and all that after a period of time.
And finally started to click in.
My, my work life took me forever.
You know, I watch people watch.
People would say, oh, I'm doing the four step.
And I was, I was still trying to figure out how to, you know, we think.
Not at the end of the promises, you know, how do they know to say that?
They go, it's the same every meeting.
Really?
I couldn't make the dots.
I thought somebody was up to go.
We think not.
And I was missing it, you know, but I just wasn't connecting the dots and, and I really struggled.
I made a few deals with the real estate, got a few bucks.
I just couldn't get it together.
In the meantime, I had moved into a apartment up in Sandy Springs and somebody made some money.
I paid a little bit of the bills.
But I was still struggling, you know, and I'm working, I had one of these sponsors who's so encouraging, so gentle and kind, you know, I'm working, here I am, I'm 52, three years of age, bad health, you know, just not in good shape.
And I'm working at color tile.
I don't know if you know color tile, it was a ceramic tile and laminated floor in place and the tractor trailer would come in, in the summer.
It would be $120.00.
It would be 20 degrees inside that tractor trailer and up there, schlepping ceramic tile and pergo and laminated wood and all that and it was just killing me.
I called my sponsor and I said, Matt, I said, this job at color tile is going to kill me.
He gave me that smarmy shit, pardon me, smarmy, he said, yeah, but then you die sober.
I said, yeah, this man, if I come over to your office this afternoon, you're going to die sober.
I don't want to hear that crap.
I want to find me a job.
He said, give me some money.
That is crap about you're going to die sober and all that.
But anyway, so, I mean, I didn't have time for that crap.
Go do that somewhere else.
Don't do it with me.
But I was, you know, still trying to pull it together.
And, you know, bit by bit, I get involved with the service work.
You know, I always had a home group and even today.
And today, you know, I used to go to a meeting because I was afraid what would happen if I don't go to a meeting.
And now I go to meetings.
to see the good things that happen.
I still go to four or five meetings a week.
It tells you what my social life must be like, right?
But anyway, it's a great way to, you know, deal with friends and all that.
But by getting active, you know, if you look around and you look at PTA or Boy Scouts,
you're going to find that 10% of the people do 90% of the work.
And you're just going to make up your mind you want to be part of the 10% of the 90%.
And that's the way I look at it.
I'm an intergroup rep, GSR, treasurer of the Marietta Roundup for about four or five years.
And I've just taken that job on for the new Marietta Roundup, which is coming up in May.
Hint, hint, take flyers when you leave it and sign up for it.
And I see Mary tonight.
She says, oh, Ed, Hotline Ed.
You know, that was, you know, I like to be called Handsome Ed.
She calls me Hotline Ed.
And because I chaired the Hotline probably for eight years out of an over 12-year period.
And that was a great service.
You know, people don't realize that if Willie Nelson had been on the Hotline,
he would have had much more material than he did by hanging around with those cowboys.
I mean, some of the stuff that comes on, it's funny.
I got a call one night and the lady says, when is the A going to have an opening?
I said, I don't quite understand that question.
She said, well, my husband says he knows he needs to go to AA.
And there's no openings.
I said, what?
I said, let me, tell me where you live.
But she gave me, I said, oh, we're back out of, just down the street from you.
There's an opening tonight.
It's been, before it's open enough.
Make sure you get in there at 730 before somebody takes it.
Get him over there.
I'm sure that guy came in that night with a little buzz on him.
Come on, Eddie, we're going on AA meeting.
Well, I ruined his drink.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I had another girl call up.
We had a good talk.
And she'd been in and out for a while.
And I said, were you a friend of Bill W.?
She said, more like a passing acquaintance.
You know, hey, there's some funny lines at AA.
You know, the hotline can give you some fun, you know.
Anyway, so my father says to me one time, he says, what are you going to do about the IRS?
I said, I'm not going to do anything about the IRS.
They're not bothering me.
I'm not bothering them.
He said, you're going to get to a point where things, when you're at your lowest, the IRS will come up.
You've got to go see the IRS.
Well, I, you know, got all my paperwork together.
And I made an appointment to get out of the IRS.
I walk in.
And the lady says, oh, Mr. Hart, so nice to see you.
It's not often we have people come back from the dead to visit us.
I knew this was going to be a long day.
But I've got to tell you, if anybody's got any problems with the IRS problems, I can go straight up with them.
I told them exactly what happened.
I got wrapped up in the booze and lost control and all that.
They were, nobody could have been treated any better by the IRS than I was.
I went in there.
I wrote them $125,000.
The very fact that I showed up with all the back taxes and that, they cut those penalties and interest and that from $125,000 to $75,000.
White, $50,000 just by me showing up.
And that's progress.
And I'll bet on the $75,000.
I'll bet on the $75,000.
I'll bet on the $75,000.
If I paid them $30,000, that would have been a lot.
The thing was, my daughters would say, damn, we just came with the IRS.
I said, I don't want to know.
A dog be discouraged.
And I would file and I'd have tax funds come and the refunds would say, we applied this balance.
I couldn't even keep track of it.
I had so many years open with penalties in there.
And then one day I had a refund coming and I got like $14.
I said, holy mackerel, I have paid off the IRS.
That's the only reason I got it.
And I never went back and tried.
And on it, dear work.
Whatever I got was, I was glad to have it behind me.
I was delighted and all that.
But anyway, so, I mean, you know, I ended up, finally I started hitting some licks.
And, you know, I started doing some pro bono work, you know, guys, work guys in a program.
I was doing a lot of tax returns for guys up at the 81-11, you know, just for nothing.
I'd just throw it and throw the numbers together and help them.
Until they heard my story about, you know, me dealing with the IRS, they wouldn't give me the work to do anymore.
I wasn't even paying for it.
But they said, you're as wacky enough to file a deceased notice.
I don't want you to do my tax return.
So, I mean, that's all right.
But anyways, I started to make some connections and I started, you know, I started to get some decent jobs.
And, you know, and I ended up having actually a pretty good career.
I think it was really funny.
I became a controller, a major.
Real estate company mostly in nursing homes.
We owned a lot of nursing homes.
And I had unlimited power to sign checks on the account.
I was the chief financial guy.
We had gone through a major refinance sale of several of the properties.
And we were sitting there with all the suits, you know, with the wingtips and the, you know, the button downs and all.
Everybody flashing the cross pen and pencils and that.
And I'm executing wires for, you know, 35 minutes.
And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, these guys only knew where I was about 15 years ago living in a warehouse with no money.
Would they be trusting me with $35 million?
We think not.
But I never did put the warehouse address on my resume.
I have a philosophy.
Never let honesty.
Get in the way of good judgment.
You know, there's certain things that's best left unsaid.
But anyways, I mean, AA has been great with me.
I mean, I'm having a great life today.
You know, I'm having some health problems.
I just, you know, I had some back surgery done.
And I guess it's supposed to be PT.
But PT, it seems to me, has just taken too long.
You know, I don't talk much about my ex and my daughters in my story because I was a terrible father and a terrible husband.
And I didn't help.
I didn't have time for them.
I didn't know how to be a father.
I didn't know how.
And I didn't even want to try.
You know, I was more interested.
I would rather be drinking or playing golf than I would be spending time with them and all that.
And when I got sober, I realized there was no way I could unring the bell.
The damage that was done was done.
There was no way to go and undo that.
The best I could do was try to be a decent father and a husband going forward.
And I actually remarried and he died a couple of years ago.
And he left to be just in a mess.
And I was able to go in and kind of work with my daughters and work that all out and all that.
And, you know, I was telling Miriam, my ex has got dementia now and she's now completely with it.
And we had gone out, my two daughters and my ex, and went to some kind of a show.
When I was robbing the loft, my ex put her head back in the window of the car.
She said, you seem like a very nice man.
And she has no idea who I am.
And my daughter, who was in the program, said, Dan, that means you don't have to do any one nice step.
She doesn't even know you did anything.
I said, that's not quite the way it works and all that.
But anyways, today I have a good, you know, but I say a good relationship with my daughters.
I mean, I don't know how you have a great relationship.
Everyone should be, oh, I'm my child's best friend.
I never thought I was.
My daughter's best friend.
You know, I want to protect them, you know, and they don't go hand in hand.
But, you know, getting them back in my life has been a learning experience.
You know, one of the things I've learned since, you know, getting sober, when a woman says to you, we need to talk, that means you need to listen.
You know, and I always thought they wanted an answer.
And my daughter said to me one time, Dad, don't you realize when I ask you a question, I don't want an answer.
I want a bet.
I said, well, call your mother.
She's a child.
I can't handle the venting side.
But I've got to tell you, you try to do the right thing.
Thank God for caller ID.
I mean, just sometimes that phone goes off and I look at it and go, oh, not tonight.
I can't handle it.
So I make the police all work and I put it on buzz and silence and go to bed and worry about, I'll wait till tomorrow to worry.
But I'd say A has been a great run for me.
You know, I come in and I'm really wiped out.
And, you know, to have this.
If I have today, I mean, how can I not be grateful?
How can I not give back to this program?
And, you know, you take any situation, you go from where I was in 1991, broke into a house, car is trying to be rescheduled, everything's gone to where I am today.
That only happens in three places, TV, movies and AA, because it's just you look at it and it's incredible.
And I don't sit there saying, yeah, look what I've done.
You know, I just kept plugging along with the, you know, took things as they came, worked, you know, suggestions I bought.
If anybody said to try this, try that, I tried it, I tried it, I tried it.
I had a lot of help along the way.
I'm more than willing to help.
You know, the newcomers come in, I want to reach out to them, encourage them, stick with it.
Things will get better.
And, you know, it's a great deal.
You know, all you got to do is stick with it.
And I appreciate you giving me a chance.
I talked tonight and everybody was kind of polite and not many people walked out.
Last time I told my story, people walked out at 820.
So either their hearing is better than yours or you're more patient.
I don't know.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ann.
I'll just keep going from here.
How's that?
You want to set me up?
All right.
All right.
You guys can hear me.
And thank you so much.
That was very entertaining and very enlightening as well.
And I'm so glad I did not miss that.
I have asked Julie to come up and hand out the chips.
Hey, y'all.
I'm Julie and I'm an alcoholic.
I'm really grateful to be here, grateful to be sober.
Ed, thank you so much for your story.
That was awesome.
Here at NABBA, like so many places in AA, there's a chip system.
And it denotes your time away from your last drink.
If you're just coming in or just coming back from experimentation or you're sick and tired of being sick and tired of being sick and tired,
we offer a white chip.
It's the international sign of surrender.
If you just want to surrender just for today, come on up and pick up a white chip.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Anybody else for a white chip?
All righty.
After 30 days and nights, 30 long days and 30 long nights without a drink, international symbol of handcuffs.
You don't have to wear them anymore.
Anybody want to come pick up a silver chip for 30 days?
30 days?
Okay.
If you make it to 90 days, you're blushing.
Blood's running a little bit redder without the alcohol.
And we offer a red chip.
Anybody at 90 days?
Right on.
Right on.
Right on.
Right on.
Anybody else for 90 days?
All right.
Cool.
Six months.
A little sunshine starting to show up.
Six months.
Awesome.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Anybody else for six months?
Nine months gets you a green chip.
Anybody for nine months?
Come on.
We're on a roll.
Anybody with nine months?
Okay.
How about 10 months?
Nine months.
All right.
Anybody with an AA birthday, years or multiples, gets a blue chip.
Anybody got a birthday?
Oh, hi.
Hi.
My name's Jim.
I'm an alcoholic.
Hey, Jim.
Yesterday was my birthday.
I just want to say that.
For many years, coming up here, just 11 years, it's a big deal, thinking as a kid, coming
up, picking up the chip.
I mean, it's still a big deal, but it's the normal way of life.
That's probably the most important thing, the thing I'm most grateful for, that this
is the normal life.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Any other blue chippers tonight?
All right.
I'm going to offer you a blue chip.
I'm going to offer the white chip one more time, because it's that damn important, and
everybody deserves a second chance.
Anybody want another white chip, too high, too shy?
Second chance.
All right.
Great.
Well, congratulations to you and your higher power blue chip goal.
Thank you very much, Julie.
Thank you, one and all, for joining the blue chip speakers meeting tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's the bottle, the book, or the gun for me.
Seems like heaven's out to get me.
Trouble always following me.
Feeling like I just can't outrun.
Seamless.
That are all around me
I try to go attend those meetings
I've had a problem with honesty
What you see is my heart bleeding
I've met a strong son I've never seen
I'm a victim of life's circumstances
I take every pill from A to Z
I try to blot it out
That feeling of self-doubt
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
My name is Julie, and I'm an alcoholic.
Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABBA Club,
where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more sobriety tells his or her story.
Hey, everybody, I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic.
I'm going to read something from page 29 of the big book.
Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language, from their own point of view,
the way they establish their relationship with God.
These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives.
We hope no one will consider these self-fulfilling accounts in bad taste.
Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight
and listening later on aabloochipspeakers.org, desperately in need,
will hear our speaker, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems
that any of us shall be persuaded to say,
Yes, I'm one of them, too. I must have this thing.
I love our speaker we have here tonight.
I wanted to get him for a long time.
He had some health issues and things, but I was thinking about it.
I think as much as anybody I've ever heard in this program, when I hear him, I hear the joy of sobriety.
And that joy is not necessarily contingent on what's going on around you.
It's just he has an infectious sobriety.
That's the best way I can describe it.
I hate long introductions, but he knows he's at home here.
So please.
Help me welcome him in.
Ready to go?
I'm Ed Hart, and I'm an alcoholic.
When I got here tonight and I saw the podium, I said to Jim, I said,
I have problems with my waist.
I don't know if I can stand while I tell my story.
He said, well, I got a school bar stool here.
We can put it behind the podium.
I said, I've fallen off so many bar stools.
Let's put me in a stable where I can sit.
Sit down like a normal person.
I want to thank Tim for asking me to speak tonight.
And I want to thank Tim R. for walking me through the vetting process that they have here.
You know, these guys are tough.
You know, I can see asking me in my home group and data sobriety.
But when they start asking about, do you have a valid license for what you fight for school and that, you know.
I don't know if I was telling my story here or auditioning for an episode of Cops, you know.
But anyways, you know, NAB has been a big part of the AA.
AA in Atlanta for a long time.
And for me, it's really a privilege to be able to speak here.
You know, when I first came in, I spent a lot of time in these rooms.
And NAB was a great place to get so everything was who's your sponsor, what step are you on, you know, what work, what service work are you doing.
Everything was wrapped around it.
A lot of good old-timers that were willing to spend time, you know, guys like Jim.
Joe P. and Bill R. and Bob Carver.
I'm trying to stay away from the last name.
But Dick H. and Larry K.
And just a whole raft of people that are really there to help.
Newcomers coming in and giving you, you know, a helping hand, you know.
And it was a great place to get sober.
I'm originally from Massachusetts, a town called Chumstead.
It's outside of Lowell, just north of New Hampshire.
New Hampshire is right on the Massachusetts border.
I have my father.
I never saw my father take a drink.
And I have a brother, younger brother, younger sister.
He didn't want to have, she didn't have a problem with alcohol.
My mother made up for the rest of us.
She was a raging alcoholic.
And, you know, this was back in the 40s and 50s.
And you didn't hear much about AA at that time, you know.
You know, I understand, you know, there's a group now in Sandy Springs and they're starting to redo the 12 steps.
And the first step is now we're admitted we were alcohol.
How it's over alcohol that allows you to become unfashionable.
And, you know, it's kind of, you know, today is kind of a mark of honor to go to any boy clinic.
You know, you're a status symbol, you know, but that wasn't the case when I was growing up.
There was a boxing camp in the next town called Dropkick Murphy's.
And it was where the fighters worked to train out.
And every once in a while you'd hear about some businessmen, they would send them up to Dropkick Murphy's for drying out.
No AA program.
Just keep them off the booths for a while, do some road work, work them out, sort it out, and then put them back on the street.
And Joe P., who was a longtime member of Skyland and a very active here at NAVA, we were talking one night.
And I said to Joe, I said, do you ever hear of Dropkick Murphy's?
And he started to laugh.
And I said, well, it's so funny.
He said, that's where I met my wife.
He said, my wife's family has some connection to Dropkick Murphy's.
And I was up there getting dried out when I met Elaine.
Probably the worst.
The worst thing that ever happened to Elaine.
But anyways.
But anyways, my mother was, you know, off the rails as far as drinking.
And I couldn't stand her.
I hated to be around her.
And my father had a little clothing store.
When I wasn't active in school or sports or whatever, I hung out at the store.
I did everything possible to stay away from her.
You know, growing up, I didn't do a lot of drinking through high school.
And not at any of the guys I ran with.
We all were active.
We were all decent students.
We were all played ball.
All had girlfriends.
All had a set of wheels.
You know, that kept us pretty busy.
I got out of high school.
I was a decent student.
And I got accepted at Boston College.
And I nearly flunked out the first year because there was nowhere I could get any study and done at home.
And even though we only lived 30 minutes away from Boston College, I convinced my father to let me live on campus.
And things changed right away.
My grades picked up.
I ended up being dean's list.
I was a good student and all that.
Had a lot of good friends.
And again, none of the guys I ran with did a lot of drinking.
You know, BC was like most colleges.
There was a lot of drinking going on.
We just...
None of us were really into it.
You know, we drank once in a while, but drinking was not a big deal.
In fact, you know, most people when they get to A, they stop drinking.
When I get to A, I started drinking, you know.
Now I should explain that.
When I got out of college, I went to work for Otter.
Arthur Anderson Company, and it was a major international accounting firm.
And I went to work for them in New York City.
And in the business circles, it was referred to as AA.
You know, who do you work for?
I work for AA.
And I was only there about two weeks, and the guy said to me,
do you want to join us for happy hour?
I don't know what the hell that was, but it sounded okay with me.
And, man, it was love at first sight.
I mean, I loved everything about it.
I loved the camaraderie, the BS that went on, the babes in there and everything else.
You know, we'd sit there reminiscing about the future,
embellishing on our achievements, minimizing our failures.
We were all hot shots.
We were all going to set the world on fire.
And, you know, at that time, drinking was not frowned upon at all with companies like that.
It was English.
You were supposed to be able to hold your liquor.
You know, getting drunk was not a good idea.
We had booze at most company functions.
And you just didn't want to be the first one there or the last to leave.
You know, you went and kind of martyred your drink.
And when you left it, you went out and got smashed.
But you didn't in front of the rest of the people and all that.
And I went to work for Andre Anson in 1961.
And I did real well with them.
I got a lot of, you know, promotions and all this going up, moving up the ladder.
And it was kind of up or out with those companies.
Either you got promoted or you hit the street.
And.
I lived in Manhattan, the Upper East Side.
You know, I had a nice, you know, what do you call it, high-rise apartment with the doorman and all the trappings and all that.
And it looked like I was doing pretty good.
And I get to a point, you know, no matter what I'm doing here, I couldn't see myself raising.
I got married when I had my first child when I was in New York City.
And I couldn't see myself raising a kid in the city.
And Connecticut and Jersey and that, they didn't turn me on.
So I went to these.
Human Resources.
And I said, I like to think about making a move.
And they said, would you consider going to Puerto Rico?
Well, nice climate, sounded good.
So I went to Puerto Rico, sight unseen.
I just moved the family down.
I'd never been there before in my life, not even on vacation.
But that didn't stop me from making the decision.
You know, wouldn't doubt do it, you know.
So I moved.
I go to Puerto Rico.
And it was a great opportunity because it was a small office, 100 people.
I think there were like 15 Cubans, 80 Puerto Ricans, and 5 gringos, 5 Americans.
And we took on a lot of responsibility.
So it was a great chance to take on a lot of responsibility.
And I did well down there.
You know, I continued to perform well with the company.
I was getting the record promotions.
And it was another added benefit to Puerto Rico.
All your stateside clients somehow.
And I found a reason to come to Puerto Rico in January and February, you know.
Just the fact that they were located in Chicago and they ended up in Puerto Rico in January and February, you go figure, you know.
And what they really wanted to do was get a company-paid vacation.
And to make it cheaper for them, they came and expected us to entertain them.
Well, I mean, how stupid of them.
We bought them drinks, put it on a bill, built it back to the company they were working for with some kind of a carry charge on it.
Okay with me.
I was getting a drink for nothing.
The company was paying.
It was fine.
It was the same thing with Puerto Rico as in New York.
You know, drinking was okay.
You just didn't want to make a fool of yourself in the working environment.
So, again, I got good promotions.
I had a nice home in Condado initially.
Then I bought a home and by a moment reappeared in this area of Puerto Rico.
Really a nice home.
We had a live-in maid, live-in gardener.
I mean, a gardener, live-in maid.
In fact, when we sold the house, when we moved back to the States, the house became a consulate for one of the, I think it was San Salvador or somebody like that.
So, we were living the good life, you know.
And I would have said, we got it knocked.
My wife might have thought differently.
We had two more children when we were in Puerto Rico.
And I was constantly gone.
If I wasn't working, I was drinking.
If I wasn't drinking, I was golfing.
If I wasn't drinking or golfing, I was working.
I really had no time to be.
I didn't know how to be a husband.
I didn't know how to be a father.
It was terrible.
I mean, I...
So, I mean, I thought things were going great.
She might have been different.
But anyways, after a while, it was time to come back to the States.
So, I took this transfer to Atlanta, Georgia.
So, we moved from San Juan to Atlanta.
Moved into the Atlanta office of Andre Anderson.
And we had bought a nice home in Sandy Springs.
New cars.
Great school district, all that.
You know, a lot of optimism in that.
And then things started to kind of go sideways.
I got my first DUI in, I think it was 1973, and I had nine DUIs over the next ten years.
Now, this is when you could still buy them off.
You know, today you'd be in a slammer.
In fact, my attorney said to me, if you get another DUI, don't even call me
because mothers against drunk drivers sitting in those courtrooms looking for somebody like you,
you're going to slam us.
So, don't even call me.
So, I knew you'd tell me how I drank one from 83 until I got in the program in 91.
Kept drinking without a DUI.
Let me tell you, a lot of enablers and a lot of cabs and pins picking you up
because, you know, I just couldn't afford to get another DUI.
But anyways, my career at Andre Anderson started to stall, and I ended up leaving that.
Over the next 15 years, I worked for a series of real estate companies.
You know, some major ones.
Cousins Properties was one, if you might have heard.
It was an Atlanta-based company.
Sam Zell was out of Chicago.
He's the guy you see in the top.
Shows with the Fortune 500s and all that.
And with another guy, I built the Valley Apartments over in Sandy Springs
and redeveloped Hidden Liner and stuff on 41.
And I was, you know, I was still drinking up a storm, but I was kind of hanging in there.
You know, I'd get in a little trouble, and I'd bounce back.
I always just seemed to be able to pull myself together and all that.
And things at home were just at the tank, you know.
I was never at home.
And when I was, I was...
I was half in the bag and all that.
And then, to get to the point, I moved with my wife,
and I tried to get the kids back together again, and it didn't work.
So I moved out.
I moved into one of the apartments that I owned over in Marietta.
And...
So I get here.
And then I joined the work for Zell,
the guy out of Chicago in the Atlanta office.
And he decided to close that office because he decided he didn't want to be in...
He wanted to be in the office buildings and apartments, not retail.
I was buying shopping sets for him.
So he decided to close the office.
So like everybody else, I decided to go out and, you know,
went over to Office Depot, get business cards and let it head,
and I'm an entrepreneur, you know, you know how bad it is.
Not self-employed, you're an entrepreneur.
There's a big difference between the two.
Anyways, but things, I just couldn't pull it together.
And I was living with this girl that used to work for me,
and things weren't going there.
She was the same, you know, and I could see why.
I was still spending like I used to spend.
I still belonged to a golf course.
I was still playing golf three or four days a week,
spending money like I had it, and I didn't have it.
Things were just going down and down and down.
And, you know, I'll be high.
I'll be out of my mortgage payments, and I'd get, I'm a CPA, right?
And I'd forget to file tax returns.
You didn't file.
You don't forget.
How do you say it?
I didn't get noticed from the IRS, you know, and I'd write deceased
and put them back in the envelope, you know, like that was.
If anybody wants to use that as a tax planning strategy,
let me tell you, it's not a good idea.
But, I mean, I just couldn't pull it.
I just couldn't get it together.
I was going downhill and downhill.
And the girl I was with, she was sick of me.
I was sick of her.
And I said to her, why don't you say, I'm going to get out of here.
I've got to get out of here.
I think you'll hold me back, you know.
Hold me back.
I was supposed to, I was trying to broker some real estate deals,
and I made a few deals, believe it or not.
But the problem was I was drinking around the clock.
I used to keep a bottle between a box spring and a mattress,
but I needed a few pops just to get vertical, you know.
I mean, I couldn't get up without a little bit of help.
And by 10 o'clock,
I was too drunk to make a phone call.
When you've been working an hour a day,
you don't make a whole lot of money in the real estate business.
So, anyway, so I had a buddy of mine,
and he had an office warehouse thing over on Jimmy Carter Boulevard.
And I was working out there and using his phone and, you know,
thinking if I get out of the house early in the morning,
maybe I could stay so early.
It didn't really go down.
I just put to work with a jug in my car.
So, anyways, I'm there one afternoon, Friday afternoon,
things are quiet, and all of a sudden I see this truck pull up in the front of the building.
Everybody else had gone for the weekend.
It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm still hanging out there.
All of a sudden, this guy, I see he's putting stuff in the front of the building we were in.
And I'm in good golf clothes, and bowling ball, and clothes, and a couple of chairs.
So, I walked away and said, what are you doing?
He said, my mother says she never wants to see you again.
She had downloaded all the stuff that I had.
You know, his truck, and dumped it on the front lawn of this office warehouse complex that was there.
I'm walking around saying, whoa, man, this is bad.
I've got to make some moves here.
So, I'm driving a Mustang convertible at the time.
You know, that's not the most vehicle when you're going to move.
You know, that's not your vehicle of choice.
So, I dump everything I can into the Mustang.
And I get at the end, and I get this executive chair.
You know, the ones on the rollers and all that.
And that was the last thing I had.
And the only way I could get it into the Mustang was put it upside down in the back.
And I said, I've got to go over and talk to her, because, you know, something's wrong here.
So, I start going over there, and I see all these people looking at me.
And I can't figure out, why are they staring at me?
Well, as I'm driving, the wheels on that chair were going like this.
It looked like somebody with a homemade helicopter was flying in off the ground, you know.
And I'm thinking.
And I'm thinking, man, this is not a way to keep a low profile, you know.
And so, I get up to the, into the apartment complex.
And the cop says to me, I knew all the cars by name, because I wasn't in DUIs.
I was having papers served to me, you know, warrants and all this crap.
And he says, Eddie, he says, you know, Judy got a restraining order on you.
You can't be within, I don't know, 15, could have been 15,000 miles.
But all I knew was this was how it could have worked.
So, I went back to the warehouse, to the office warehouse complex I was working out of.
And I knew they had some empty bays.
Not the office portion, but the warehouse portion that they were baking.
They never locked those up.
They locked up the office portion.
So, I go in, and I find an empty bay.
Overhead door.
Pull the Mustang in.
Hey, I got a new place to live, you know.
I mean, you know.
So, I'm sitting there, and I'm going, hey, this is pretty bad.
At that time of day.
At that time, I probably had about $200 to my name.
I mean, that's all I had.
The car I'm driving, the police are looking for it because I hadn't made payments on it.
And they cleared it.
My ex called me one time.
She said, the cops are looking for you.
I said, what for?
Oh, which ones?
She said, all of them.
I said, what do you mean all of them?
She said, you know, Cobb County, Fulton County, everything in the metro area.
They were trying to track down the cars so they could repossess it.
And what I would do is, you know, I would change the license plates.
You know, I would go to, you know.
Grocery store.
Nobody would take it.
I'd put it on the back of my car, you know.
And it would never match.
It would never match up my car with that license plate.
You know, as long as I don't get stopped, I'm getting away with it.
So, anyways, I moved into one house.
And, you know, and I'm thinking, you know, I've got to do something here.
I pawned it.
You know, we pawned for a while when we were drinking.
You know, I pawned this for a while.
I don't know if I got a moment of clarity or what.
But I said, you know, I've got to do something here.
I pawned it.
You know, we pawned for a while when we were drinking.
You know, I pawned this for a while.
I said, you know, maybe this drink will get the best of me.
So I called a buddy of mine.
And I said you have a problem with drinking.
What are you going to do?
What did you do?
He said, I went to AA.
I said, really?
This was like, this was a Tuesday morning.
A Monday morning.
It was Labor Day.
It was in 91.
I said, really?
Is that work?
He said, yeah.
I said, I was able to stop drinking.
I said, maybe I should do this.
It was like 10 o'clock in the morning.
Maybe I should do that.
He said, well, if you want, I'll take you to a meeting this afternoon.
He said, call right up for me at the 81-11 club.
Well, meet me there.
Okay, that sounds good.
At 11 o'clock, I called back.
I said, Bob, I take a vote.
We're reacting.
I don't think I'm already here.
1 o'clock, I called back.
Bob, you're still going?
This was on for two or three hours, right?
Finally, he said, look, I don't care what you do.
If you want to go to a meeting, I'll take you.
If you don't, that's up to you.
I'm not going to do any more.
So I went to my first meeting at the 81-11.
I missed the whole thing because I was probably blown about a 2-3.
You know, white chip.
He said, how can you make a white chip?
I said, who are the chips?
I mean, I missed the whole chip ceremony.
I mean, at that time, the 81-11 had a metal blind going across on Roswell Road.
I'm trying to keep a low profile again.
Every time I turned around, I banged that metal blind.
It was like cymbals going up.
Boom!
People would turn around.
I said, oh!
Boy, you are not doing a good job of keeping a low profile.
You made more noise than all of the other people combined.
So anyway, so this buddy who took me to my first meeting, he called, contacted the girl who threw me out.
He said, you know, Ed's in bad shape.
He's got no money.
He's living on the street.
Can you give him help?
So she got me a room in the Claremont Lodge.
Let me tell you something.
That warehouse was safer than the Claremont Lodge.
I blew it in the Claremont Lodge.
The whole night long, you could hear the cars going, there was diaries going, and the flashing blue lights going on.
Guys coming to my door going, boy, kid, kid, who's there, who's there?
You know, I thought I was in the suburb of Mexico or something.
I mean, there was nobody speaking English in there, and I'm trying to get, you know, trying to get my stuff together and all that.
So one of the guys at the 8111 said, hey, you're right around the corner from a clubhouse called Nava.
You ought to try Nava.
So I said, it's okay.
So the first time I pulled to Nava, let me tell you, you talk about intimidating.
I pull in the driveway.
I look at the building.
This looks like something out of a John Gaudi movie.
I figured they're down there eating pasta and talking about who they're going to knock off in that low-slung building, you know.
Who were the first three people I see, right?
Larry Kay.
He has the glasses, and he doesn't know how to use the bipod.
So you cook and dine, you're like this.
Tim B., I don't know if anybody remembers Tim B., tattooed up.
He looked like some kid who had forgotten to take his riddle, and Jim was all, you know.
And Harry.
Harry with the satin jacket.
Harry the hobo, I think we used to call him.
We used to ride the rails.
And I'm thinking, man, if I have to hang around with these guys to get sober, I'm in deep doo-doo.
And I really was in deep doo-doo.
I didn't know any better.
But, yeah, they became great friends, you know, and all that.
And I started, you know, initially I was going to one meetings a day, and then I went to two and three meetings a day.
And I'd go to a meeting here, and I'd go to the 81.
And I don't know, that car I had had to run on fumes because I know I didn't have enough money to put gas in for the trips I was taking.
But I was, you know, but I gave, you know, I was able to stop drinking the first time since I can remember.
And I was credited with that to go into meetings.
And that was all I heard in the beginning, was don't drink and go to meetings.
So my recovery was, I stayed mocus for a long time.
People are not familiar with that.
It's moving slowly out of focus, mocus.
I was mocus for the first two or three months.
I remember I would text my swan, so I'd say, hey, I'm going to meetings at Nava.
They want, they think you ought to work the steps.
He said, Eddie.
He said, I hate to bust your buckle, but there's some people see you at meetings, they're not even sure you've stopped drinking.
You need more dry time before you start challenging the steps.
But he said, I'll give you a suggestion.
He says, take a certain time every day.
And I don't give you a morning, noon, or night.
So just review the preceding 24 hours of your day and ask yourself, if I had those 24 hours to live over, what would I do differently?
If I did something well?
Could you have done it even better?
If you did something you're not so proud of, what would you do the next time?
That was his introduction to me for taking inventory.
And even today, I tell new customers that I work with, I say, read those pages, 85 through 86 of the big book.
You don't have to have any time in the program for that periodic, that little float on it, that little period of quiet time to help you go.
But anyways, you know, and so I went to a lot of meetings.
And I made sure I went to either a speaker meeting or a big, big meeting or a step meeting.
And I avoided BB meetings.
And when my daughter came in, I said, make sure you don't go to any BB meetings.
She said, yeah, what's a BB meeting?
I said, it says it's an AA meeting, but they don't talk AA.
They just talk BB.
And it's a, you know, BS is what there is.
Make sure that when you go there, you get the AA message and don't waste your time.
And on AA meetings.
So, but anyway, the other thing we didn't be getting, and I don't see it as much.
Tapes were a big thing.
You know, you swap tapes, you know.
There's so many tapes out there with good speakers like, you know, Sandy B. and Clancy.
There's 50 guys out there that are all good speakers.
And we swap tapes back and forth.
And some are on step studies and some are on just their story and all that.
Everything was, you know, what meetings you go to, what steps you are, you know, a list of the tapes and all that.
You know, so I get, you know, get into the, get into the step work and all that after a period of time.
And finally started to click in.
My, my work life took me forever.
You know, I watch people watch.
People would say, oh, I'm doing the four step.
And I was, I was still trying to figure out how to, you know, we think.
Not at the end of the promises, you know, how do they know to say that?
They go, it's the same every meeting.
Really?
I couldn't make the dots.
I thought somebody was up to go.
We think not.
And I was missing it, you know, but I just wasn't connecting the dots and, and I really struggled.
I made a few deals with the real estate, got a few bucks.
I just couldn't get it together.
In the meantime, I had moved into a apartment up in Sandy Springs and somebody made some money.
I paid a little bit of the bills.
But I was still struggling, you know, and I'm working, I had one of these sponsors who's so encouraging, so gentle and kind, you know, I'm working, here I am, I'm 52, three years of age, bad health, you know, just not in good shape.
And I'm working at color tile.
I don't know if you know color tile, it was a ceramic tile and laminated floor in place and the tractor trailer would come in, in the summer.
It would be $120.00.
It would be 20 degrees inside that tractor trailer and up there, schlepping ceramic tile and pergo and laminated wood and all that and it was just killing me.
I called my sponsor and I said, Matt, I said, this job at color tile is going to kill me.
He gave me that smarmy shit, pardon me, smarmy, he said, yeah, but then you die sober.
I said, yeah, this man, if I come over to your office this afternoon, you're going to die sober.
I don't want to hear that crap.
I want to find me a job.
He said, give me some money.
That is crap about you're going to die sober and all that.
But anyway, so, I mean, I didn't have time for that crap.
Go do that somewhere else.
Don't do it with me.
But I was, you know, still trying to pull it together.
And, you know, bit by bit, I get involved with the service work.
You know, I always had a home group and even today.
And today, you know, I used to go to a meeting because I was afraid what would happen if I don't go to a meeting.
And now I go to meetings.
to see the good things that happen.
I still go to four or five meetings a week.
It tells you what my social life must be like, right?
But anyway, it's a great way to, you know, deal with friends and all that.
But by getting active, you know, if you look around and you look at PTA or Boy Scouts,
you're going to find that 10% of the people do 90% of the work.
And you're just going to make up your mind you want to be part of the 10% of the 90%.
And that's the way I look at it.
I'm an intergroup rep, GSR, treasurer of the Marietta Roundup for about four or five years.
And I've just taken that job on for the new Marietta Roundup, which is coming up in May.
Hint, hint, take flyers when you leave it and sign up for it.
And I see Mary tonight.
She says, oh, Ed, Hotline Ed.
You know, that was, you know, I like to be called Handsome Ed.
She calls me Hotline Ed.
And because I chaired the Hotline probably for eight years out of an over 12-year period.
And that was a great service.
You know, people don't realize that if Willie Nelson had been on the Hotline,
he would have had much more material than he did by hanging around with those cowboys.
I mean, some of the stuff that comes on, it's funny.
I got a call one night and the lady says, when is the A going to have an opening?
I said, I don't quite understand that question.
She said, well, my husband says he knows he needs to go to AA.
And there's no openings.
I said, what?
I said, let me, tell me where you live.
But she gave me, I said, oh, we're back out of, just down the street from you.
There's an opening tonight.
It's been, before it's open enough.
Make sure you get in there at 730 before somebody takes it.
Get him over there.
I'm sure that guy came in that night with a little buzz on him.
Come on, Eddie, we're going on AA meeting.
Well, I ruined his drink.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I had another girl call up.
We had a good talk.
And she'd been in and out for a while.
And I said, were you a friend of Bill W.?
She said, more like a passing acquaintance.
You know, hey, there's some funny lines at AA.
You know, the hotline can give you some fun, you know.
Anyway, so my father says to me one time, he says, what are you going to do about the IRS?
I said, I'm not going to do anything about the IRS.
They're not bothering me.
I'm not bothering them.
He said, you're going to get to a point where things, when you're at your lowest, the IRS will come up.
You've got to go see the IRS.
Well, I, you know, got all my paperwork together.
And I made an appointment to get out of the IRS.
I walk in.
And the lady says, oh, Mr. Hart, so nice to see you.
It's not often we have people come back from the dead to visit us.
I knew this was going to be a long day.
But I've got to tell you, if anybody's got any problems with the IRS problems, I can go straight up with them.
I told them exactly what happened.
I got wrapped up in the booze and lost control and all that.
They were, nobody could have been treated any better by the IRS than I was.
I went in there.
I wrote them $125,000.
The very fact that I showed up with all the back taxes and that, they cut those penalties and interest and that from $125,000 to $75,000.
White, $50,000 just by me showing up.
And that's progress.
And I'll bet on the $75,000.
I'll bet on the $75,000.
I'll bet on the $75,000.
If I paid them $30,000, that would have been a lot.
The thing was, my daughters would say, damn, we just came with the IRS.
I said, I don't want to know.
A dog be discouraged.
And I would file and I'd have tax funds come and the refunds would say, we applied this balance.
I couldn't even keep track of it.
I had so many years open with penalties in there.
And then one day I had a refund coming and I got like $14.
I said, holy mackerel, I have paid off the IRS.
That's the only reason I got it.
And I never went back and tried.
And on it, dear work.
Whatever I got was, I was glad to have it behind me.
I was delighted and all that.
But anyway, so, I mean, you know, I ended up, finally I started hitting some licks.
And, you know, I started doing some pro bono work, you know, guys, work guys in a program.
I was doing a lot of tax returns for guys up at the 81-11, you know, just for nothing.
I'd just throw it and throw the numbers together and help them.
Until they heard my story about, you know, me dealing with the IRS, they wouldn't give me the work to do anymore.
I wasn't even paying for it.
But they said, you're as wacky enough to file a deceased notice.
I don't want you to do my tax return.
So, I mean, that's all right.
But anyways, I started to make some connections and I started, you know, I started to get some decent jobs.
And, you know, and I ended up having actually a pretty good career.
I think it was really funny.
I became a controller, a major.
Real estate company mostly in nursing homes.
We owned a lot of nursing homes.
And I had unlimited power to sign checks on the account.
I was the chief financial guy.
We had gone through a major refinance sale of several of the properties.
And we were sitting there with all the suits, you know, with the wingtips and the, you know, the button downs and all.
Everybody flashing the cross pen and pencils and that.
And I'm executing wires for, you know, 35 minutes.
And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, these guys only knew where I was about 15 years ago living in a warehouse with no money.
Would they be trusting me with $35 million?
We think not.
But I never did put the warehouse address on my resume.
I have a philosophy.
Never let honesty.
Get in the way of good judgment.
You know, there's certain things that's best left unsaid.
But anyways, I mean, AA has been great with me.
I mean, I'm having a great life today.
You know, I'm having some health problems.
I just, you know, I had some back surgery done.
And I guess it's supposed to be PT.
But PT, it seems to me, has just taken too long.
You know, I don't talk much about my ex and my daughters in my story because I was a terrible father and a terrible husband.
And I didn't help.
I didn't have time for them.
I didn't know how to be a father.
I didn't know how.
And I didn't even want to try.
You know, I was more interested.
I would rather be drinking or playing golf than I would be spending time with them and all that.
And when I got sober, I realized there was no way I could unring the bell.
The damage that was done was done.
There was no way to go and undo that.
The best I could do was try to be a decent father and a husband going forward.
And I actually remarried and he died a couple of years ago.
And he left to be just in a mess.
And I was able to go in and kind of work with my daughters and work that all out and all that.
And, you know, I was telling Miriam, my ex has got dementia now and she's now completely with it.
And we had gone out, my two daughters and my ex, and went to some kind of a show.
When I was robbing the loft, my ex put her head back in the window of the car.
She said, you seem like a very nice man.
And she has no idea who I am.
And my daughter, who was in the program, said, Dan, that means you don't have to do any one nice step.
She doesn't even know you did anything.
I said, that's not quite the way it works and all that.
But anyways, today I have a good, you know, but I say a good relationship with my daughters.
I mean, I don't know how you have a great relationship.
Everyone should be, oh, I'm my child's best friend.
I never thought I was.
My daughter's best friend.
You know, I want to protect them, you know, and they don't go hand in hand.
But, you know, getting them back in my life has been a learning experience.
You know, one of the things I've learned since, you know, getting sober, when a woman says to you, we need to talk, that means you need to listen.
You know, and I always thought they wanted an answer.
And my daughter said to me one time, Dad, don't you realize when I ask you a question, I don't want an answer.
I want a bet.
I said, well, call your mother.
She's a child.
I can't handle the venting side.
But I've got to tell you, you try to do the right thing.
Thank God for caller ID.
I mean, just sometimes that phone goes off and I look at it and go, oh, not tonight.
I can't handle it.
So I make the police all work and I put it on buzz and silence and go to bed and worry about, I'll wait till tomorrow to worry.
But I'd say A has been a great run for me.
You know, I come in and I'm really wiped out.
And, you know, to have this.
If I have today, I mean, how can I not be grateful?
How can I not give back to this program?
And, you know, you take any situation, you go from where I was in 1991, broke into a house, car is trying to be rescheduled, everything's gone to where I am today.
That only happens in three places, TV, movies and AA, because it's just you look at it and it's incredible.
And I don't sit there saying, yeah, look what I've done.
You know, I just kept plugging along with the, you know, took things as they came, worked, you know, suggestions I bought.
If anybody said to try this, try that, I tried it, I tried it, I tried it.
I had a lot of help along the way.
I'm more than willing to help.
You know, the newcomers come in, I want to reach out to them, encourage them, stick with it.
Things will get better.
And, you know, it's a great deal.
You know, all you got to do is stick with it.
And I appreciate you giving me a chance.
I talked tonight and everybody was kind of polite and not many people walked out.
Last time I told my story, people walked out at 820.
So either their hearing is better than yours or you're more patient.
I don't know.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ann.
I'll just keep going from here.
How's that?
You want to set me up?
All right.
All right.
You guys can hear me.
And thank you so much.
That was very entertaining and very enlightening as well.
And I'm so glad I did not miss that.
I have asked Julie to come up and hand out the chips.
Hey, y'all.
I'm Julie and I'm an alcoholic.
I'm really grateful to be here, grateful to be sober.
Ed, thank you so much for your story.
That was awesome.
Here at NABBA, like so many places in AA, there's a chip system.
And it denotes your time away from your last drink.
If you're just coming in or just coming back from experimentation or you're sick and tired of being sick and tired of being sick and tired,
we offer a white chip.
It's the international sign of surrender.
If you just want to surrender just for today, come on up and pick up a white chip.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Anybody else for a white chip?
All righty.
After 30 days and nights, 30 long days and 30 long nights without a drink, international symbol of handcuffs.
You don't have to wear them anymore.
Anybody want to come pick up a silver chip for 30 days?
30 days?
Okay.
If you make it to 90 days, you're blushing.
Blood's running a little bit redder without the alcohol.
And we offer a red chip.
Anybody at 90 days?
Right on.
Right on.
Right on.
Right on.
Anybody else for 90 days?
All right.
Cool.
Six months.
A little sunshine starting to show up.
Six months.
Awesome.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Anybody else for six months?
Nine months gets you a green chip.
Anybody for nine months?
Come on.
We're on a roll.
Anybody with nine months?
Okay.
How about 10 months?
Nine months.
All right.
Anybody with an AA birthday, years or multiples, gets a blue chip.
Anybody got a birthday?
Oh, hi.
Hi.
My name's Jim.
I'm an alcoholic.
Hey, Jim.
Yesterday was my birthday.
I just want to say that.
For many years, coming up here, just 11 years, it's a big deal, thinking as a kid, coming
up, picking up the chip.
I mean, it's still a big deal, but it's the normal way of life.
That's probably the most important thing, the thing I'm most grateful for, that this
is the normal life.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Any other blue chippers tonight?
All right.
I'm going to offer you a blue chip.
I'm going to offer the white chip one more time, because it's that damn important, and
everybody deserves a second chance.
Anybody want another white chip, too high, too shy?
Second chance.
All right.
Great.
Well, congratulations to you and your higher power blue chip goal.
Thank you very much, Julie.
Thank you, one and all, for joining the blue chip speakers meeting tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's the bottle, the book, or the gun for me.
Seems like heaven's out to get me.
Trouble always following me.
Feeling like I just can't outrun.
Seamless.
That are all around me
I try to go attend those meetings
I've had a problem with honesty
What you see is my heart bleeding
I've met a strong son I've never seen
I'm a victim of life's circumstances
I take every pill from A to Z
I try to blot it out
That feeling of self-doubt
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
It's the Bible book or the gun for me
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