The Al-Anon Wife in the Devil Suit – Jack S.

He's been a close friend of mine shortly after I got in the program. If this is the first time for you to hear Jack, you're in for a decidedly treat. Jack S. will sometimes next month celebrate 25 years of continued sobriety, almost a quarter century of service to other people. I know of no man, as of yet, that in joyous sobriety lives it any better than Jack S. Would you please help me in welcoming Jack S from Louisville, Kentucky? Thank you, Dr. Hill, for those kind words. I'm awfully glad to be here. My name is Jack Sullivan. I am an alcoholic. Don't say that too close to airports, see. A guy hollered at me across Stanford Field one day real loud and everybody in the airport got shook up. I'm very glad to be here about six or eight months ago Dr. Brady invited me and asked me if I'd be interested in coming up to talk to the impaired physicians I said is that same thing as a drunk doctor? He said yeah and I said well I can relate to them or I could tell you that I'm an impaired railroad worker really wouldn't matter a whole lot. He said, well, you come on, you'll certainly enjoy talking to that distinguished group of gentlemen. So I told Dr. Hill tonight that many years ago I heard the definition of what a distinguished gentleman was. There was a famous politician in running for office and his wife was touring the farm belt trying to get votes for him. She knocked on the door, a little boy come to the door. She said is your mother and father home? He said yes ma'am come on in and on the way in she stopped and looked over the fireplace there was a picture of her husband. She said my what a distinguished looking gentleman and that little boy said yeah my daddy said if I didn't quit playing with myself is going to look just like him so it's nice to be here with you distinguished but i have a philosophy when i speak at any a group that But I always like to let you know who invited me. That was Burns Brady and Keene Hill. And I tell you that because they people are very gracious. When you're through, no matter how sorry you might have left the audience, they always applaud and tell you what a fine job you did. Then you leave town, they go to those two people and say, where'd you get that bastard at? I don't want to leave any doubts in your mind. I have another philosophy about speaking at AA. When I came in here tonight, I knew I was going to talk. When you came in, you knew you were going to listen. If you get through before I do, you go on home. And it won't bother me at all. I don't like these things a friend invited a guy to talk one time in an AA meeting he never heard him before and he he wouldn't shut up he kept talking and talking and talking he became very disgusted with him he picked the gavel up it was laying on the table and he threw it at him and he missed him and he hit some lady in the front row and knocked her cold. He ran down with a glass of water and threw it in her face. He said, I'm very sorry. Is there anything I can do for you? She said, yes, hit me again. I can still hear that bastard. So I stay away from gavels if I can. I'm an alcoholic that never wanted to be one and never wanted to be an AA. I had absolutely no desire to be any part of this program when I first got here, and for a lot of obvious reasons. I thought it was neat, which you all did, but I didn't need it and I had no intention of going, which I'll tell you about a little bit later when I got there, I didn' t want to stay. I'm from Louisville, Kentucky, and I was born and raised around 4th and Central. And 4th & Central is a corner that borders Churchill Downs Racetrack. So if you've never been to 4th&Central, I'm sure most of you have seen the Kentucky Derby on television and that's where the Kentucky Derby was run. And I was born and raised there, and I use that word because for me it's good English. I was speaking somewhere one night at an AA meeting and I made the remark that I was born and raised and my stepmother corrected me after that meeting she says don't say that it's not good English tell people you were born and reared she said anything that's raised has absolutely no intelligent form of life and my father looked at her and said you leave that boy alone he knows what the hell he's talking so I can tell you that I was born and raised at 4th and Central. And I did real well in life for about 13 years, and after that it was all downhill. I went to that corner when I was about 15 years old, and I don't know why. I have an older brother who's 14 months older than I am, and as a young man he continued his education. He got a degree in industrial engineering. He is a vice president with the General Motors Corporation today. I have two sisters that married when they were about 20 years old. They both still have the same husband. They both have four children. And three out of the four led normal, quote, whatever the hell that means, lives. And when I got to be about 15 years old, I went out to that corner and what I found out there was very, very attractive. I found it to be very, sehr interessant. I'm sure you can fill psychiatric libraries that will explain why I did that, but I don't have the slightest idea. I only know what I saw liked, and I saw people running around there driving big automobiles. They had good-looking women. They had pockets full of money, and they didn't work. And I thought, man, that's what I want to do. So I started out to become an alcoholic. I made a decision. I didn't know it, but I was a little late in life anyway. I'm not the first alcoholic on this continent I'm sure you know that I believe the first alcoholic here, I've never read this I just believe that the first alcoholic ever on this content was Christopher Columbus I believe Columbus had to be an alcoholic and the reason I say that is just looking at his life he left home and he didn't know where he was going when he got there he didn' t know where it was when he came back he didn''t know where had been and some woman paid for the whole damn trip. So I believe he was the first one. And when I was 15, I set out to become part of him. Well, what I found at that corner was interesting to me. I began to drink a little bit, but I threw aside all the things I'd ever been taught, which didn't really matter a whole lot Not because I had absolutely no feelings for those kind of things, and I'm a firm believer today that words without feelings are meaningless anyway. That I truly know that Alcoholics Anonymous is the language of the heart until your heart's open to this program it doesn't really help a whole lot. And I never had any feelings about organized religions or gods or Ten Commandments or Thou Shalt Nots. It didn't bother me. And I don't know what I was taught but I didn't absorb a damn thing so when I got out there was an exciting way to live, it looked like. So I began to drink and I hung around that racetrack and began to gamble. When I was about 16, I met a young lady out there and she took me from Soprano to baritone. I thought that was interesting as hell. So I wound up right in the middle of it. And I hung in there pretty good for about four or five years. And the only adverse part of the whole thing, I guess, was my father and my dad and I really got at war over what I was doing, who I was doing it with. And seemingly to neglect all the things that were good and decent in people's lives. So just a holy war with him and I and I didn't want anybody trying to discipline me or tell me what to do or when to do it. And I began to live my life doing what I wanted to do when I wanted To do it? I think that's why it's really difficult for people. I guess in basic simplistic things, he simply says stop doing what you want to do and start doing what you need to do. And I never remembered doing what I needed to do. I always did what I wanted to do, and I could badmouth my father because at that age I knew it all. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that reminded me of me. It said hire a teenager while they still know everything. And i thought boy that's me. I knew everything And I didn't need anybody to tell me a damn thing, and I would just constantly run and battle with my father. And it seemed like the only thing that could take me out of that smart-mouthed kid and that type of attitude and that arrogance about myself was the backseat of a squad car. It's a fascinating thing. I believe the breeding ground of humility is the back seat of a quad car. You can take some real tough drunks and set them down in those things and they get humbled for some reason. And I was that way with my Father. and my father was a good man and thank god he lived for eight years of my sobriety so we had many many opportunities to talk but i'll never forget the first time i was ever arrested at the age of 20 for drunk and disorderly and that dumb old man that i had been arguing with all those years i dropped a dime in the telephone and with all bits of humility that i could muster when he answered the other end I said, Daddy Remember a guy down at the bar talking about his wife He'd be telling all them barhops and bartenders about that old bitch he lives with All the trouble she's causing him Lock him up Sit back and listen He'll drop that quarter in the phone and she'll answer He'll say, Honey And that was the same way with me I said Daddy he said what do you want I said I'm in jail he said why did you call me I said well I thought you might come down and get me out oh he said I wouldn't worry about that if I was you by God I was worried about it he said as smart as you are why he said i'm sure if you figured a way to to get in, you'll figure a way to get out. And he hung up and told me, don't ever call here again. He said, I understand they give you one telephone call in those places. Don't waste it. And I never did again. And for the next 13 years, from the time I was 20 until I was 33 years old, it just progressively got worse like any other alcoholic's life will. and back when I came in a in the city of Louisville in 1962 I was the youngest member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the City of Louis at the age of 33 and those old-timers back then believed that was a little young really you know I have a friend up in st. Louis that some of y'all may know Paul Keebler and Paul has been sober about 45 years and Paul said when he came in AA they had a measuring stick if you had nine teeth in the wristwatch and could count up to ten he wouldn't let you in and he was serious that you had more drinking to do come back when your watch is gone i guess you know so they viewed you suspiciously look at the kids today you see around hey my god they're 18 whatever some of them are younger than that you know a lot of people don't believe that you can do that but you can uh one of our old-timers down low but last one or more nights said how old are you boy that kid looked at him said 19 that old man laughed said 19. he said hell i've spilled more liquor than you ever drank a little boy looked at me and said maybe if you'd drank more of instead of spilling it you got her quicker you old bastard but i went for 13 years just progressively getting worse i went to work for the lobel and nashville railroad when i was 20 years old and they hired an alcoholic and i say that because i believe that any fool would quit drinking when it was causing me the trouble that it was caused in me i believe in society today any idiot would stop drinking when it begins to create all the hell in my life and your life. But I also know that fools and idiots, they may quit drinking. Alcoholics based on self-knowledge and self-will cannot stop drinking. So the next 13 years was just literally down the road. I never married while I drank. I have my wife here with me tonight. Gay goes everywhere I go. They're just her and I, and I don't leave her home anywhere I go She doesn't like to stay home. I don' t like to leave her there. So wherever I travel, she goes with me. But I never had a wife when I got married. I didn't want one. I thought they were useless damn things. Sometimes today in AA I feel so inferior. You know, I run around with people that's had many of them. I got one friend of mine said he's had jars of peanut butter that lasted longer than some of his wives. And she's in Al-Anon now, and they're strange people. Hell, they'll marry drunk and get rid of him and damn thing ain't got another one before the holes in her hands heal. I'll catch hell for that thing. She's always sitting around giving me that Al-Anon handshake, you've seen it. I don't know why I never decided to get married, drunk or sober, but I just never did. I never wanted a wife and I told my sponsor one time how ugly them women, I run around some ugly women and he said they weren't going to get a jewel which was true. But girls I used to go with were not, well they just weren't pretty I guess. I used go with a girl who was ugly. She went home one night and went in the bedroom and started to undress and forgot to pull the blind down. And a peeping Tom came up to her window, and when she got about half undressed, he reached in and pulled the blinds down. But all my drinking was on my own, and I've never regretted that either. gradually progressively got worse confronting the people that you confronted back then who were constantly threatened and warning you of what was going to happen to you if you didn't quit and naturally you cannot do that to alcoholics because you cannot scare alcoholics into stop drinking when they're basically people like me who was drinking to fit in that world out there and to be a comfortable human being who found that fast lane and the things that went on and very very exciting and I was a very very uncomfortable person away from that and like all people I had periods of sobriety to where I would stay sober and try not to get involved in that again and it became a point to where i i just could not tolerate life the way that it was and so I would slide back into that environment vying and declaring I'm not going to drink I'll have a coke and I'd get back over there and become proud of myself in a week or two and have a beer and a beer never hurt anybody so I'd have two and then I'd have six and then the half a pint it had me and that went on for the next 13 years you know and all of them trying to stop you by telling you what was going to happen to if he didn't quit and never back in those days did anybody understand the misery and the emotional problems that people like me had trying to live out there sober in the isolation of my own mind and basically ignorant was wrong with me you know and the doctor then the physician they didn't treat alcoholics you know the ones that I knew didn't treated alcoholics for a lot of reasons I don't think they knew anything about it the family doctor that I had was one and doctors have very poor sense of humor they get a little upset if you puke on patients in the waiting rooms and I think really that they didn t like us because we didn t pay our bills but but you couldn't get anybody to treat an alcoholic for what was wrong with him, so they threatened you. My doctor, family doctor, looked at me one day and said, if you don't quit drinking, you'll die. But not knowing anything about alcoholism, how could I explain to him the obvious as to what happened when I did quit? Everything has an opposite to it, and in this program it's a basic simplistic thing. I hope to God it always stays that way, especially in the interior of AA. as Dr. Bob said in his last talk, and I think it's so necessary maybe in today's society that leave the Freudian complexes to the scientific mind that it has no place in here. When you come through those doors, I don't know of anybody that I know particularly gives a damn who you are or where you came from or how smart you are. But they didn't know anything about it back then either. But the basic simplistic thing was what happens if you quit? If you drink, you die. But if you live, it's a miserable place. You don't go back to living, you go back to existing. And if I stop, I exist in a society. I've never lived in my life until I found AA. And I couldn't exist out there without something that made me fit or made life better or adjust to whatever it was it needed adjusted to. So if I drink, I die and perhaps maybe that's better than trying to exist in a society when a judge says if you don't quit drinking, you're going to the penitentiary. And a policeman and said, if you don't quit drinking, you're going to jail. And my father said, if you do not quit, get out of my house. My boss said at the railroad, if you did not quit drinking go to the unemployment lines. And all of these people telling me these things. There was a Monsignor in the Catholic Church at that time who was a friend to our families and he thought the solution to alcoholism was a pat on the head, a seat in a sanctuary, Bible in your hand, come back in an hour. And none of that works. And I know after a couple of his lectures one day I come staggering through that schoolyard there holy name church drunker in hell and he dashed out of the rectory to confront me and he told me in no uncertain terms that when we died we would meet on the way to heaven and then he said when you meet somebody they're generally going one way and you're going the other he underestimated us drums because he turned around and started backing that directory and i looked at him and i thought i wonder what the hell he's done he was such a well thought of man sure the hell wasn't me and all those things they told me that would happen to me basically happened to me and nothing worked you know and god knows how many for years and years and years in our society did they try to scare people into not continuing on with their drunkenness as they called it back then, or their alcoholism. Some people went to great lengths to do that. We had an Al-Anon lady down in Louisville that tried everything in the world and nothing worked to scare that guy. And she went down to Caulfields one day. It's a costume shop there in Louisville and she bought a devil suit and she put that thing on at night. And about 1 30 in the morning, here he come, drunker than hell. And he leaped out from behind that hedge in that devil suit. she said I've come to get you and he said who are you she said i am the devil he said by god put her there he said I been wanting to meet you ever since I married your sister didn't help So I went through all those things, and I finally lost all things that people lose from drinking alcohol. And I wound up on Skid Row. And I lived a life on Skidd Row in the city of Louisville for about a year and a half. Now, Skid row is not a very exciting place, and I have no regrets about being on Skit Row. If I had my life to live over, I'd rather live on Skitt Row. I'd Rather not have a wife. And I'd Rather leave my father's home and go live in a gutter. believe it's easier and much simpler than the lives that some of my friends have to live i believe it is better to leave home and go live in a gutter than it is to go get a guter and bring it home with you and i've seen some of the stinkiness filthiest rottenness gutters running down through the middle of the living room to some of finest homes in the country i've see sick alcoholics in their own mind honestly to god and truly in their insanity believing that the people they love the most and sometimes their beautiful wives and lovely children and these sick alcoholic thinks that they're in some way responsible for what he has become and he reaches out from his living room gutter and tries to drag them down with him a lot of times he succeeds and they become just as sick as he is and just as miserable and just is filled with the degradation and despair that alcoholics soon know about believe me it's a lot easier to leave home and go live in a gutter than to go get one take it home with you Skid Row is not a physical place. It is not a physical place. But life on Skid Row is exciting occasionally. You know, you run into policemen, they're interesting people. You know I still wonder about them but interesting people, they take them to academies and educate them. You can tell that by the way they talk to you sometimes. They give them white cars and nightsticks and flashlights and pistols. In Louisville, there was people being raped and robbed and mugged and burglaries going on. They were riding up and down alleys hunting winos. And we used to sleep in most anything we could find, and there was a hardware store at 4th and Central. It's still there. It was the days before the Dempsey dumpsters, so they threw those big cardboard cartons out back, and we would get them and sleep in them. And it was a nice thing to protect you from the elements. Cardboard is a great thing to protection from rain and cold. If you've got another drunk left in, you might want to write that down. It's C-A-R-D-B. Very useful. Very useful, and the nice thing about it, you can even become a snob wino. And I say that because if you got there early and got a big freezer box like those whirlpool freezers came in, you can lay down in them, and you could look at some poor guy trying to adjust to one of them little console TV boxes hell you knew you were better than he was sometimes the thought would cross your mind they ought to get him out or he's ruining the neighborhood but these cops would ride down these alleys and jump out of those big cars and shine lights in your eyes from that five seller and ask the intelligent question that they'd learned at the academies what are you doing and you would look out your box and say, nothing. And they would arrest you. And I thought, wouldn't it have been nice to have known something about alcoholism? And when that cop rolled down that alley and threw that light in my eyes and said, what are you doing? You could have stuck your head out of that box and said officer, I'm progressing. I got a word. I ran into a fellow from a finance company one time I borrowed some money from them I don't guess you all have ever done that but and they couldn't find me and that disturbs finance companies when they can't find you I think I borrowed five hundred dollars from a year later owed them eleven thousand or something like that but they couldn'T find me they became very disturbed over it and uh finally a bartender squealed on me one day and told the guy from this finance company said hell he lives back there in cardboard jungle with all the rest of them drunks and i looked up this morning here come a guy back in there didn't belong he was well dressed and had on a tie and snooping around through there and i was sitting in one of those freezer boxes with a pint of wine and a two-day old racing for him and letting the world go by yeah and he kept peeping around and finally he saw me in there and I saw him he walked over and he knocked on my box I opened the flap to let him in he said something I've never understood to this day he said are you Jack Sullivan I said yes sir he said I've got some news from you I'm Mr. So-and-so from this finance company and I said yes sir he said do you realize you borrowed some money from us about a year ago and have not paid one damn dime on that loan and i said yes sir and he said i'm going to tell you something boy he said if you don't start making some payments on that loan you're going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble and to this day i don't know what in the hell he had in mind i don' t i don''t think you can tar and feather people in kentucky maybe you can i naturally thought i would die in that alley i knew that every day of my life would be like that day and i literally despised living i believe i would have killed myself and it's only a hypothetical thing but i believe that the reason i didn't was for some reason i could never convince myself that was where my life was meant to end i came from a good family i had a brother as I told you about who was very successful in life. I had a lot of resentments against him, naturally. They go with it. But I just couldn't convince myself that's where I was meant to die. And I guess that's the spark of a conscience or a presence of God or whatever it may be. But there's something there that's just saying this is not the way it's meant to end. But it is extremely difficult to convince yourself of that when you live that way. i believe that i was a hopeless alcoholic and i say that because i believe the definition of hope is that somebody who believes you'll succeed tomorrow where you fail today and i certainly had no belief that tomorrow would be any better than today and i was just literally waiting around to die i guess and i Was sitting in the back room of the saloon there that's on that corner the downs cafe for those of you who are familiar with, on the morning of the 21st day of August of 1962 and the back door that saloon opened and my father walked in with a man I had never seen before in my life. And my father pointed me out to this man and my Father went over and sat on some stool that went around a lunch counter. Now this man was a recovered alcoholic in AA and he was moving to Frankfort Kentucky to help the governor start what we know in the state today is comprehensive care program. Remember there were no such thing as treatment programs and Jack Dawes was this man's name and Jack was going to help the governor install some sort of treatment program and in his when he was getting ready to leave the city he was a friend of a vice president with a railroad he stopped by his team to tell him that he was leaving and this man told him about me and my father worked in this personnel office with Mr. Shaw and Jack said, I'll try to help the boy. He doesn't know what's wrong with him. And Jack was a firm believer, as most of us are. You know, if the one thing that we have to offer the sick, suffering alcoholic, it's hopefully to God that we can in some small way alleviate his ignorance as to what's going on. What's wrong? And I think for that, I'm responsible in many, many areas. At least we can offer that. What he does with that information is what he does or she does with it. But for God's sakes, we can at least alleviate the ignorance of the people that don't know. And that's what he was able to convince this man, that nobody had done anything to help me. They had given me numerous chances to kill myself, but nothing to help me. And Jack said, everybody deserves that. My father did not want to get involved with me. My father said I had played emotional yo-yo with him too long. And that is exactly what he called it. He said, you've run me up and down a damn string like a yo-Yo. And he said, you build me up and let me down. And I'm sure a lot of you spouses have been through that where you have hope and it's taken away and you want to believe and you can't. It's just an up-and-down thing, and he was tired of it. And I hadn't seen him in a long time, and he didn't want to be involved with me. My father was able to release me with love. He cared about me and he loved me, but he believed that if you were looking for a helping hand, it was on the end of your own arm. And he says later on in my sobriety, he regretted that neither one of us knew where to put it. But he also believed that if you dance to the music, you pay the fiddler. I will not pay for you. And it was a lot easier for him just to know rather than to look. And so he didn't want to see me. He won't be bothered with me. And Jack Dawes was able to convince him that I deserved that opportunity. So this morning when they walked in the back door of their saloon, I was amazed to see my father and I certainly did not know the man that was with him. And my father, as I told you, went over and sat down on some stools or went around a lunch counter and this man came over to the table where I was sitting. I was dirty, filthy, suffering from dehydration and malnutrition and all that goes with it and everything that alcoholism of that type extended period of time breeds. Most of my teeth were knocked out. I used to think I was tough when I drank. I never whipped Tom Thumb. So I was a hideous-looking mess, and my father said it was very difficult even for him to recognize me. But anyway, Jack came over and started to sit down where I was, and he was a very distinguished-looking man. He had on a nice suit and a tie, and he had gray hair, and he just looked at you as if you thought he was the president of a bank or something. And he stuck out his hand and smiled. He said, Hi, my name is Jack. I understand so is yours. and you know i was i was kind of dumbfounded by this but for some reason i have total recall of it and i said yes hi he said do you mind if i sit down i said no sit down he said i've come out here to help you i'd like to help you if you will let me i cannot help you if you won't and i asked him why why would a perfect stranger take time out from his life or a busy schedule or have any desire at all to help some hopeless human being like myself and he said something that i didn't believe then but i know tonight was true he said i used to be like you are and somebody helped me and i guess that's basically the message of alcoholics anonymous i used to be like you are and somebody helped me he says come on go with us he said your father has continued to pay the medical insurance premiums for so you had health insurance with the railroad he said i've talked to a psychiatrist at a psychiatric institution in louisville called our lady of peace and he's agreed to admit you and he said I want you to come and go with us. So that morning on the 21st day of August of 1962, my father and a man by the name of Jack Dawes took me to a psychiatric hospital in Louisville Kentucky and admitted me about 1030 in the morning. Psychiatrists were the grandfather of alcohol treatment. Many many times you hear a lot of people stand at these podiums and give psychiatrist hell. When I hear people do but I always want to know what they said when you went back to see them. It's awful damned easy just to stand there and give somebody hell. And the man that treated me treated me in the only way that he knew how. He was not a strong advocate of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I don't discredit him for that. He believed what he believed, but at least he would take me in and others. Truly, he thought alcoholics suffered from a valium deficiency, and if he could get our valium levels back up to their proper place, we'd be all right. But that was neither here nor there. He admitted me. The first week I was there, I was in one of them wards where they lock you up and strange enough, that night, the 21st day of August of 1962, Alcoholics Anonymous meeting went into that hospital for the first time ever. The first AA meeting at that hospital was the day I went in. They didn't start that group for me, but I appreciated it, whatever they did. But after I was there for a week, strangely enough, I got fairly, you know, feeling pretty good physically. And they had moved me from an enclosed ward into an open ward. In the morning of the 28th day of August of 1962, I was sitting in a semi-private room talking to another alcoholic about the only thing alcoholics know anything to talk about. we were discussing sex money and booze now we don't know anything at all about any of them but we like to talk to each other because we believe each other you know there's nothing like finding another drunk to lie to because you get some sort of a weird feeling he believes you and so we were just sitting there having a running conversation it was absolutely beautiful you know we and all those flappers in our minds had closed about the misery and the hell that we had caused everybody and that's a strange psychological phenomenon in alcoholism that when you sober a guy up and he's not sick anymore he tries to remember the good times in relationship to the bad you know and a nurse came in the room and give me that al-anon handshake she said don't you go anywhere tonight we're going to the AA meeting I said going where she said to the AAA meeting I said what in the hell is an AA meeting she said Alcoholics Anonymous I said Alcoholics anonymous are you insinuating you think I'm an alcoholic she said I'm not insinuated a thing I said I'll have you know I'm no damn alcoholic. She said, I'll have you know that if you're not going there ain't any. And that hurt. I said, i'm not going to any damn day meeting. She said you'll be back there tonight at 7 30 with me or I'll put you back over there where those doorknobs are on the outside. I said, well, I believe we'll go. It kind of makes you feel like you volunteered. And that guy said, why do they want you to go back there? I said hell, I don't know. You know, I'll drink a little. I ain't no damn alcoholic. Alcoholics are people that got problems they can't handle. Hell, I'm not that way. I can do most anything. Ego, spell it with an I. but it's not me i don't drink too much damn it if they leave me alone i'd be okay if i got a problem i can handle it i don t need them and and they want me to some degree whatever degree except responsibility for what's been going on in my life they're crazy as hell ain't my fault nothing's my fault you ever see a drunk punch himself in the nose i never did you don't see that on the street corner beating up on themselves they're beaten up either physically or verbally to the people that cause them all the trouble hell ain't nothing wrong with me not my fault drinking's not my problem we had a guy in louisville one time come down the street and had both of his ears burned and a man said to him how in the name of god could have could you burn your ears oh he said i went home last night drunk said my wife and i got in a big argument she was ironing said the telephone rang said I reached over to get that phone and picked up that damn iron and stuck it up to my ear and the guy said well that explains your right ear burn how'd you burn the left one he said that son of a bitch called back have anything to do with drinking you might remember that you got another drunk in you you're sitting on a bar stool somebody's going to ask you how come you're drinking i thought he's going down mating say oh he called back they won't know what you're talking about but you will. But God, I was mad they were going to make me go to that AA meeting. I didn't want to go to a damn AA meeting while I was in that hospital in that week and that day. I wanted to go to the square dance they were having in the auditorium that night because while I was there, I'd fallen in love. Did you ever see two drunks fall in love in a nuthouse? I mean, that's about the cutest thing you ever say today. If you put one sock on a foot and set them on a bed, they don't know whether they're supposed to lay down or get up and they're in love and you'll see them walking around them treatment centers and hospitals and They're holding hands and blinking eyes at each other. And they can't wait till they get out of there. Sometimes they don't. Then you'll only find one thing that's dumber than that. You'll find somebody come along trying to separate them. I think they call them counselors. If you work in one of them places and you see two drunks in love, for God's sakes, leave them alone. Do everything in your power to get them to stay together. Because if you separate them, they'll screw up four people. And I'm marching back down that hallway and a nurse, that nurse, got me by my earlobe A 33-year-old man who has returned, macho again, ready for him again, dragging me into a damned AA meeting. And I got back to that door and there stood some damned old woman. She was over a bit of 60, gray hair, put her arm around me. Said, hi, honey. She said, honey, would you like a cup of coffee and a cookie? And I thought, I wonder where in the hell she thinks I've come from I'm a damn worldly person I've heard them stories about old women and young boys I just looked at her and went in and sat down And some guy got up to talk Well, I got to talking Hell, I was flying high on that volume and he was talking and wanted to tell me what he knew. I didn't see a damn thing wrong with him knowing what I knew. So we kept talking, and he kept trying to shut me up, and I wouldn't shut up, so we had a hell of a meeting. I came away from that meeting after he finished thinking that by God, I didn' t blame him, that anybody drank like he did ought to quit. And I would have quit under those circumstances. But, but... probably the most killing word in the English language to any alcoholic that ever lived. But, yes, but you see, I've never been there. And that was my impression. God, if he only understood what was going on in my life out there, boy, he'd know why I drank. But the way he talked, hell, I didn't blame him for quitting. And I got up to leave. And I went out there to that door and there stood that damned old woman and I'd been in their meeting making a perfect ass out of myself and she looked at me and smiled put her arm around my shoulder again said honey you come back next week we need people like you and I thought they ought to put that old broad in a home somewhere get her off of the damn street there was nothing to do in that psychiatric hospital all that week until next Tuesday night and you had to go back to that damn meeting. I went back in there and sat down next to some old man. I didn't like him. I don't even know why I sat next to him. Became a sponsor. He said, hi, how you doing? I didn' t really see whether it was any of his business. I mean, I hardly knew him. He wasn' t a doctor. He was a damned old insurance salesman. You know, and I thought, well, you can be nice to him anyway. I said, I'm doing all right, but I ain't no damn alcoholic. He said, well, if you ever find out what you are, you ought to do something about it. You look like hell. And I got up and moved. So I went back the following week after I'd had a session with my psychiatrist and again, a well-meaning man. My real name is John O'Connor Sullivan Jr. They call me Jack because of the junior. It's a nickname. And around my house, when he'd holler, Johnny, I'd run. My daddy'd run, so I was Jack. But that's my real name, John O'Connor Sullivan, Jr., and I was a junior, and my father worked for the railroad, and so did I. And when I went to work for the railroad, I was Johnny Sullivan's boy to everybody, and he picked up on that right away and informed me that I never had an identity. The cause of never having an identity if you really don't know who you are and never given that opportunity to find out and grow emotionally, then you're going to be an immature emotional dwarf. And when you are in that kind of condition, you're going to experience the traumatic things in life that I had undergone. And because of the fact that I never had an identity basically led to my downfall. And I said, yeah. Made sense to me. I thought, boy, I can't wait until my daddy gets up here and I can tell him if he named me Charlie I wouldn't have to go through all this crap. and I thought boy that guy's smart that doctor well he said one thing I didn't agree with him at all told me I was poly addicted and I said by god you're lying I ain't never had sex with a parrot in my life but he still thought I was and well I couldn't wait to that fallen Tuesday night and I run back today meet and sat down next to that old man he said hi how you doing I said just fine. He said, you're looking better. I said, I feel better. Found out that they ain't no alcoholic. He says, really? I said yeah, I never had an identity. Well, I went through all that crap and he said, You never had a what? I say, I've never had any identity. And I told him a big long story and he laughed. And he looked at me and he says, Boy, if you'd been a grape picker in the Garden Eden, you'd have been a drunk. And I got up moved again. So I stayed there another week and they came and got me and took me to an insane asylum. I went to a place in Hopkinsville, Kentucky called Western State Hospital in 1962. It was the beginning of an alcohol treatment unit in that nuthouse and that one ward was set aside where you could put alcoholic patients and it was a weird place i certainly didn't enjoy being there it'll you know kind of ruin your character in that insane asylum but i think the thing that hurt most was that the nuts didn't want you and you sit out there on the ground or around the grounds and them people that were insane were on benches talking about you. I mean, that hurt. You'd hear them. What do you think of them drunks, Martha? I don't like them. Never did. Why did they bring them here? Bunch of damn troublemakers is all they ever were. I mean this hurts you when insane people are talking about it. I didn't think I belonged there either. There was a guy that used to sit down there day in and day out on a little bridge that went over a creek, and it was creek rock walls beside of it. They called it slave rock down there. He'd sit there day-in and day-out with his ear up to one of them rocks. And I went by there one day, and he looked up at me, and said, and I went over there and sat down and he said listen well I put my ear up to one of them rocks and looked at him I said I don't hear anything he said it's been like that all day and I thought I don' t know Oh, man, I got to get the hell out of here. And a guy that was a patient there explained to me the value of AA, the irony sometime in alcoholism. A guy sitting on a couch with a broken leg explained to be how at one time in his life he owned a large insurance agency in Louisville with a big home and a nice family and he lost it through alcoholism. And he got in AA and stayed sober five years and got his agency back and he got his family back and he get too busy for AA and he joined the martini for lunch bunch and he left. He lost his agency and his family and there he sit on that couch with a broken leg and an insane asylum. But he would constantly tell me day in and day out how good his life was when he was with AA if only he would have stayed. What the hell have you got to lose by trying it? what the hell have you got to lose by trying it look where you are I'm telling you what it did for me I only wish to God I would have stayed with it and he convinced me that it was worth a try I've been back in Louisville Kentucky one week and on a Saturday night there was a meeting at Preston and Broadway and I went to that meeting every Saturday night back then with Hillary and that night about quarter after 8 while that AA meeting was going on. That Saturday morning, Jim had been released from Western State Hospital. He got off of a Greyhound bus in Louisville and got to drinking. And that night, he was killed by an automobile crossing Broadway Street while that AAA meeting was going on across the street. And I was sitting in it because of him where he got to live. Look the way things are going. And how many times have so many of us seen other people They were gifted maybe to direct us here, but for some strange unknown reason could never grasp again the feelings they once had for this program. And Jim was one of those people and he died that night. I came home and my sister gave me a home with her and I went back up to Our Lady of Peace Hospital and I started running around with Hilary Sanders and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life. would write on a blackboard up there every Tuesday night before that meeting how does AA work and under the how was the honesty the open mind and the willingness and that was all they wanted for me or expected from me you don't drink alcohol 24 hours a day and you come to these meetings because they make you feel better and if you will try to whatever degree you're capable of trying to do those two things and remember that the very first thing that you must do is get honest because the honesty will identify what the problem is. The honesty is the thing that breeds the truth. A lot of times in AA you hear people talk about an altered perception. The definition of perception is the truth as you see it and the alcoholic perception, the truth as he sees himself has nothing to do with the reality of the situation the way it is. Other people's perception is the truth of what's going on in his life, and I couldn't see that. And he informed me very damned emphatically that honesty had nothing to do with lying, cheating, or stealing, although you can try that for a while not to do it. But basic honesty breeds the perception to see the truth, and the truth will recognize what the hell the problem really is. And if you'll open up your mind, you immediately will open up Your eyes. And If You Open Up Your Mind, You Will Immediately Open up your heart. Because not only does an open mind allow you to hear, an open mind allows you to see and an open man allows you feel. It's fascinating sometimes I wonder if that passage in the Bible where Jesus made the blind man see, I wonder that could have been an alcoholic with eyesight because an open mind will allow your heart to feel and your eyes to see but you must get honest and you must sit here and listen and do what the hell you're told to do. And you must be willing in due process of time, whatever that is for you, because the book tells you that it will sometimes come quickly and sometimes come slowly. But whatever that period of time is for You, You must be Willing to implement into action the things that You will learn here through the 12 steps of AA. And He said, Don't you worry about getting open-minded. You just get honest. I'll get your mind open. He said, all alcoholics have an extra bone in their body. I said, I didn't know that. They said, earth people don't have it. Hillary said, it ran from the base of your brain to the base of your spine. And only alcoholics can do that. Alcoholics have that bone. And he said, God put that bone in an alcoholic's body for one reason only, that if you'll kick an alcoholic in his ass hard enough, that bone will vibrate and open up his mind. and he said i'm gonna get your mind open and you become willing and i hung with them i didn't have to go to 90 meetings in 90 days they made me go to 367 the first year i sobered but i stayed with them and got honest to the best of my ability and my mind opened to where i would listen and i was willing to at least try because during that period of time in my life, things seem to get a little bit better. You know, and I said, okay, I don't have any problem with the fact that I'm powerless over alcohol and an unmanageable life. And he said, yeah, and don't you ever forget that unmanangeable life is going on after when you're sober. That's where the unmanegeable life exists. And I said okay, I can handle that too. But I said I'd like to know just who in the hell this power is that's greater than me. And he says, by God, you're talking to him. i said i can understand that but i sure as the hell am not insane and he said if you're not i don't know who is because the very essence of sanity again is honesty it's a fascinating thing about honesty and sanity and it's the type of sanity that alcoholics anonymous talks about that for some strange reason with us alcoholics you will be as sane as you are honest to whatever level of honesty you're able to establish in a lifetime that same degree of sanity you will attain and when you are capable of doing that to be honest with yourself you will my friend be returned to sanity and i said well i want you to understand one thing before we go any damn further i don't believe in god and i never did and he says it doesn't matter what you believe in? What did you believe in when you got here? Supposing this whole program was based and dependent upon whether you lived or died into what you believed in. You see when I walked in that back door and like a hell of a lot of people I didn't believe in nothing except me maybe to some degree of dishonest thinking. I thought maybe I was still somebody but I lived a life isolated in the world of my own isolated in my own mind as to what I was and I didn't believe in a thing. When I came in that back door, people supported me long enough for maybe for me to attain a little bit of belief in my life that I could be better. And after I was around here for a while, I attained a little Bit of Belief in the people like you, that surely to God there were some decent people on this earth that cared enough about me to let me stay here long enough to where I could care about myself, that supported me with emotional strength long enough to where i could stay here and maybe support somebody else for a while they believed in me when i didn't believe in myself and if you're so damn smarty ask why are you here i never met an alcoholic in my life that volunteered for alcoholics anonymous they've all worked like hell not to be here tried everything known to god or man not to come here and here you sit so if you're so damn smart why are you here and it's not material or anything else as to what you believe in and it doesn't matter whether you believe In God or not because God believes in you and we're not asking you to accept any kind of organized religion where you have to reach up to God we're just simply asking you two stands still where God can reach down to you because you see god believes in you and the only thing that i'm saying to you he told me is let's examine your will compared to his if you're so damn reluctant to turn your will and over to the care of god then let's examine your willand see where it brought you and why are you so unwilling to swap that will with god's will when it don't cost you nothing and he's even willing to give it to you whether you believe in him or not and he said, examine your own will and I'll show you what God's means to you. He said, your will says cry. God's will says laugh. Your will says destroy. God's Will says create. Your will say destroy. God'swill says to quit. God'sWill says persevere. Your wills says rot. God'sWills says grow. Your willsaids die. God'swills says live. your will says hate, God's will says love. And the type of love that you only find in the presence of these people in this room and the typeof love because of it that makes all of us better people because we have suffered through the tragedies of our own lives. And it's the typeof love that you don't find anywhere else. It's a very simple, basic meaning love that simply says I'm better because of you. you see if I tell you I love you I don't love you for what you are I love you for who I am I love what I am when I'm with you and because of you I'm better and maybe in some small degree because of me some people are better but it's the type of force or energy that comes from the existence of ourselves and the belief in what we believe in that you just don't find anywhere else and it's existing not through action or not through words but through a language of the heart that alcoholics have the feeling and the caring for each other and if you don't believe that's true you put this room in total silence and you feel that force and that energy that we all generate from one to another. This program is simply nothing more than a triangular thing, in my opinion, like a little kid trying to join dots together in some kind of a game. The connecting dots. If you'll draw the line through the dots, you connect the line. And you can put God up here and people down here and yourself over here and when you connect the dots, when you form that triangular friendship and caring and love and service and concern and when I say that when you find that that type of energy flows from God through people and back to you and back with God you my friend will find that you're living in a world that will provide you with the greatest peace and contentment and happiness to whatever degree it can be attained in the human race. As long as you stay here put into action the steps you know and stay active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Be willing to love, be willing to serve. Be willingto pass it on to the less unfortunate. You will refine the rewards and the riches in this life that I'd never dreamed possible. Twenty-five years ago tonight, I was sitting in an alley living in a cardboard box knowing that someday my life would end never having been any better. After about a year of that, I got my job back with the railroad and met Gay, and Gay and I got married, and we've been married for 24 years. We have a good life, have a good home. I have a great job. In 1974, the Louisville National Railroad program asked me to start an alcohol—or the railroad asked me to start an Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program for them because our people were dying. Our chief executive officer knew me. He knew about you, and he wanted to help people. And I did that, And now we're joined by the Seaboard Railroad. And when I left Louisville this morning, we were the CSX Corporation. I don't know what in the hell it'll be when I get back. And I've had a very enjoyable and rewarding life because of you. I've never left and have no intention to. I believe in putting into action the things that I've learned in my daily living, and I believe en staying active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that I might be useful to other people. I'll tell you a story that I close every AA talk I make with. I think it's a story to remember. I heard it some 20-some odd years ago, and I don't really remember where. It was about a man that was walking down a very cold and lonely road one night and in the middle of the road laid a snake. And because of the bitter cold, the snake was dying. When the man passed him, the snack looked up at him and said, Mr., would you please pick me up and put me under your coat and get me warm that I might live? If I have to lay in this cold road, I'll die. And the man said, I couldn't pick you up and put you under my coat because you are a poisonous reptile. And surely if you were restored to vitality, you would bite me. And the snake said, I wouldn't bite you if you saved my life. And the men picked him up from the road and put him under his coat. And when the snake was restored to vitality, he bit him. And the main jerked him out from under his coat and threw him back to the road. and he said i thought you promised not to bite and with a snickering grin across his face the snake looked at him and said you knew what i was when you picked me up my friend if you're sitting somewhere someday in the isolation of your own mind or a crowded bar room if you pull the cap off of the bottle or the cork out of the jug rationalize it to those that care to listen explain it to those you can. But if you've been here, if you know me, if you've met us, you know what it is when you pick it up. Thank you for having me.