The Allergy to Alcohol and the Penicillin Comparison – Hank J.

Hi everybody, my name is Hank Johnson. I'm an alcoholic and I want to thank Susie for asking me to speak here tonight and I hope she's having a good time wherever she is. It really is a privilege to speak hier and there are a lot of people in this room that I love and that's made the life that I have today possible. And I owe a lot to everybody here. I like the Pacific Group. I hated AA when I first came to it, and when I finally got involved in the Pacific group, I started getting enthusiastic about my sobriety, and uh and i and i i still have that feeling i drank a lot i drank a long long time i i started drinking in high school a little bit but i really hit the big time when i turned 18 because i went into a bar when i was 18 years old and you're supposed to be 21 here in california and i passed for 21 and they served me and immediately i became a man that's what i wanted to be a man and a man can buy a drink over a bar without being asked how old he and I could play the jukebox over in the corner just as good as the rest of the guys and I thought my selection of songs were a little better than most if you want to know the truth I could sit at uh you know at the bar look at myself in the mirror and get better looking after each drink and I just went back every opportunity I had from then on and I was 18 years old and I didn't have to learn another thing as long as I lived. And so for the next 25 years, I dealt with life with a set of emotions that were 18 years old. And no wonder I had problems, you know. It's okay when you're 18 to act 18, but when 20 years goes by and you're still acting that way well then you seem to have a little problem and uh but i drank every opportunity i had i like to drink and uh drinking was uh the focus in my life the only thing i ever learned while sober was work everything else included drinking i either drank before during or after, and generally it was all three. And I just drank. You hear a lot of exciting stories sometimes from this podium. People get up here and tell the most exciting stories you can imagine. You know, they go into bars, they punch everybody out in the bar, and the cops come, and they punish the cops out, and they get thrown in jail, and then they go over to the bunk they want, pull the guy out of the bunk, and punch him out too. Now, you know, that's exciting drinking. And I used to hear a guy talk about driving through a tunnel 60 miles an hour and decide to make a U-turn right in the middle of that time. And he used to hit telephone poles all the time, only they were 100 yards off the highway. And Jesus, you know, that's drinking, that's exciting drinking all I ever did is just sat around and drank you know I wanted you know how do I know when I was going to be the main speaker here tonight I would have tried to spice up my story a little bit but all I did is just sit around and drink used to play old phonograph records used to watch a lot of TV sometimes i'd read a book nothing very heavy just some condensed version in the reader's digest you know and i just kind of let the world go by i'm an observer of life you know i didn't i never participated in it i just observed you doing it and criticized the way you did it and uh my life was very boring to put it mildly and I heard a young guy speak about his father one time and he said his dad used to just sit around and act like a goober that's kind of the way I was and I used to get kicked out of the house a lot my wife used to come home and find me intoxicated that used to excite her for some reason and she'd tell me to leave and it never occurred to me to stand up for my rights and say wait a minute you know I'm paying the bills here you know I belong here. I'm making the payment, you know. You can't kick me out of here. But, you Know, I had no self-worth back in those days. She said leave and I just left. And I never moved very far from home. I just moved down the street and then I'd work my way back in. I was in and out, back and forth. And she divorced me three times and I wound up in a little shack in Hermosa Beach, in a Little Garage. and made some living quarters there. And I thought, you know, this is the third time she divorced me. For God's sake, if you want a divorce, you've got it. You can have the house, you can havethe furniture, you canhave everything. Just all I want is my stack of old 78 records. You canhaveeverything else. And I moved in this little place, and it was marvelous because it was a half a block from the water. And I figured, geez, I'll get up early in the morning and I'll run along the ocean five miles every morning, and I really get in shape, and it'll just be great. As far as I know, the water was down there. You really can't prove it by me. And I used to go to work late and come home early, and I'd sit at the edge of my bed after buying the cheapest bottle of vodka I could find, And I'd untap that cheap vodka, and I'd just be disgusted with myself because I didn't do a decent day's work. And I would sit at the edge of my bed, and I would take a big, big draft out of that bottle, several swallows. And I said to myself, well, you've done it again today. This cannot continue. You're the only guy that I know that just can't seem to get out of his tracks. everybody at the office is is doing good and you're just you're just uh wasting your time and and uh and i'd sit there and i go into my fantasy and i think about starting tomorrow it's all going to be different starting tomorrow i'm going to get up at seven o'clock and i'll get down to that office i'll knock out paperwork for a couple hours when that phone starts ringing tomorrow i want to be ready to do business and starting tomorrow what's all gonna be different starting tomorrow, a whole new life is going to start. Every waking hour I'm going to earn money. Every waking hours. I've got a key to that office, I can go in there on Saturday and I'll knock out paperwork, and hell, I could go in here on Sunday and I'd plan my work for the coming week. You know, if you're in sales, if your plan your work and then work your plan, you can't miss. And I knew everything starting tomorrow was going to be great. and uh and then i'd get to thinking how much you know if i if i triple my income i'm going to be out of debt in no time what are you going to do with all the money then well i'm gonna buy a white lincoln continental drive it up to that house where she still lives and i'll drop it off in the middle of the night with a little note thanks for all the good years and I'll sign it H and then I'll buy a smaller car for myself a little Mercedes coupe you know and I'd sit there and I fantasized my life away you know I'll get all this money coming in and I'm going to buy a car and I've been everywhere in the world sitting on the edge of my bed you name it i've been there and uh i'd look up at the clock and it would be like 10 minutes to 11. my god i just feel like i just sat down here you know and uh and i checked the time i'd call the operator and check 10 minutes till 11. all right jeez and i'm almost out of booze so i'd throw my pajamas my clothes over my pajamas and run two blocks to the liquor store i had had to get there before 11 close at 11 that's when i first started jogging about that time i had a make i'd get the guy just as he was closing up bottle of schmiernoffs i always bought the better brand right there around where i lived i wouldn't want him to think i was cheap right in the neighborhood and then i could stroll back to my shack with peace and contentment security for the rest of the night and i'd have a few more drinks I'd play a few more of those old records and I'd start rehearsing the speech I was going to have to give because I was gonna be salesman of the year I knew that I'd wake up the next morning and I'll be 10 o'clock and I'm already an hour late to work and and you know and I get to work and I shuffle papers and I make excuses and at a respectable time I go to the bar that was conveniently located right next door to where I worked and go there and have a martini and then I'd have another one then I'd have another and then I had another one that call the office and tell him I forgot to tell you I'm going on a lot of calls this afternoon take messages I'll be back tomorrow morning at nine o'clock and I'd head towards the beach stopping by the cheapest bottle of vodka I could find and I get home about two or two thirty and I'd hang up my clothes real carefully and put my pajamas on I sit on the edge of the bed and untapped that cheap vodka and I take a big big jolt out of it and I say to myself you know done it again today this cannot continue you know you're not the only guy that's ever been divorced you're the only guys ever been in debt why the hell don't you do something about it get a second job at least you can't do anything about your marriage at least get a second job and uh wait a minute you don't need to get a 2nd job you're in sales if you're in sales you can make any amount of money you want to within reason by god that's right starting tomorrow morning it's all gonna be doing starting tomorrow morning i'm going to get down that office by seven i'm gonna knock out paperwork for a couple hours and that phone starts ringing tomorrow i'm to be ready to do business and starting tomorrow it's a whole new life a whole new wife is starting tomorrow you know and every waking hour i'm gonna earn money every waking up and hell i can go in there on saturday and clean up my paper I've got a key to the place I can go in there and plan my work for the coming week, and I'll be out of debt in no time. What are you going to do with all the money then? Buy a white Lincoln Continental and drive it up to that, buy the smaller car for myself. Starting tomorrow, a whole new life starts. You know, I didn't do that once or twice. i did that hundreds of times about that time i got a call from my ex-wife she said come and get your drunken son he's just like you are it seemed he had turned 16 and and he was going to high school and he's getting in trouble nothing major a lot of nickel and dime stuff but uh just enough that was driving her crazy and it seemed that he had gone to a some kind of a party and came home drunk and threw up on the carpet or whatever it was and uh what it was was the last straw that's what it was and she called and said come and get your drunken son just like you are and instead of saying you know i had no self-worth back then instead of saying wait a minute you divorced me you know you got custody of that kid you know you're having trouble with him deal with it but no she said come and get him so i went and got it he didn't want to come and live with me and i didn't want him to come on live with but she said so we had to do it right and uh you know he used to come down and visit me once in a while before that spend a weekend with me i never knew what to say to him what did to say to a 16-year-old kid? I could never think of anything. And I'd say, well, what about if I was a real dad, what would I be saying? And so I started criticizing him on his grades. And how come you're not playing football? You know, you ought to be student body president. And all things I kind of wish I would have been when I was in school. and he just used to shrug that off and that's if I wasn't drinking if I was drinking I just tended to slobber all over him and tell him how much I loved him all the trouble your mother and I have had through the years has nothing to do with you we love you and he used to sit there and just cringe and I couldn't stop once you start on something like that I don't know about you I just can't quit and and and i would just pour it on you know that's the one decent thing that your mother and i did was to have you he used to just sit there in pain and and I'd have him cornered so he couldn't get away and i was just and finally he escaped somehow and uh the next morning i'd just be ashamed of myself not that i had been drunk the night before but that i had let my guard down and told my son i loved him see i'm from the old school you don't show emotions to anybody at any time and i practiced that all my life no one knew how i was feeling i'll tell you that and i never smiled i never laughed you know if someone told me a joke instead of laughing, I'd say, that's funny. The only time I'd ever laugh is if I saw you fall down and hurt yourself or something. And I just couldn't control myself then. And so I was ashamed of myself that I had let my guard down and told my son I loved him, and I'd dump him in the car and drive him home and open a door get rid of it because jeez i couldn't look him in the eye and he asked his mother one time says you've divorced him is there any kind of legal action i can take i don't want to i don' t want to go back there and uh so uh he had to come and live with me and that was the start of a beautiful relationship that we've still got going to this day and wasn't very much longer after that that she moved in with us too and seemed like she came down and checked on him one time one thing led to another and we started talking and we admitted to each other that we were miserable people that we seem to be more miserable apart than we were together why don't we try this thing one more time and sell that house up in torrance and pay off our bills and we'll get a fresh start our daughter had already split by then and uh and uh he would be going in the service or something and and who did we have except each other and uh so why are we treating each other this way and uh we make a fresh start and she said i won't even fight you on your drinking anymore alan in fact i'll join you and i should have been suspicious but i wasn't because you see all the years i was married to her she never drank and little did i know that during that two or three year period that we were apart she had started drinking and she crossed that so-called invisible line into alcoholism immediately you know she always when she spoke in aa she used to say that she was born an alcoholic she knew she was an alcoholic before she even drank she knew it because she had a father that he was a real nice guy but when he drank all hell would break loose and and he'd uh he'd go on a three-week drunk or something and heíd wind up in the hospital or or even worse sometimes and she was always afraid to drink and uh little did i know that uh you know her her fears were well founded i'll tell you that because she was just not a fun person to be around when she drank some of us can drink and some of them can't and she was one of those that should never drink and uh so she said she used to always say she was born an alcoholic in my case i think i drank myself into alcoholism i had a lot of fun with alcohol for a long time and it was a social lubricant for me it enabled me to dance and romance and do all the things that that normal people seem to be able to do without drinking and uh it was my friend and uh and i had a lot of fun drinking and but it turned on me and i became allergic to it i can't tell you when that happened but it did i know it and uh but same thing happened to me with penicillin I took penicillin several times it always was fine the last time I took penicilin I wound up in the hospital for eight days I damn near died the doctor said who gave you this penicillon anyhow you know I says well what do you mean it's always worked just fine uh you know he says well don't ever take it again he says you're allergic to it and and I said well how can that be i said it's always worked fine for me and he says well sometimes a person becomes allergic to it and he said i advise you never take it again you really might die the next time no kidding i promise i will never take it again and i'm proud to stand up here tonight and tell you people that I've got about 32 years off of that stuff. It hasn't been necessary for me to join any kind of an organization. Now, I don't even know if they've got Penicillin Anonymous. I'm not even sure. I haven't had to get a sponsor about it. It hasn'T been necessary from me to call anybody up at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning and say i've got this uncontrollable desire to take a shot of penicillin i just quit cold turkey and it hasn't been necessary for me to take a shot again the same thing happened to me with booze the only thing is i i just never have had a craving for penicilin for some reason and uh so i think i drank myself into alcoholism it really doesn't matter if you're an alcoholic from the first drink or you drink yourself into alcohol and we're all alcoholics anyhow so after that, after she moved in all hell broke loose and we just could never drink together and I'm not here to take her inventory you understand but I'm just going to tell you a couple of things it'll help you understand my case a little better but she did stuff like throw the christmas tree lights and all out the back door she used to break my old phonograph records you know just because i played them more than once i don't know about you people but i get hung up on a song sometimes i you know i'm still playing this 20 years later i'm Still Playing The Same Records I Was Playing When I Was 18 Years Old and I play this record and it's like the first time I ever heard it. My God, that's a good song. And I'd play it again and then one more time and again and sometimes I just get hung up on a trumpet toot. I'd lay that needle in there toot, oh man, that was great. I'd let it in there again and it used to drive her crazy. And she'd go over to the phonograph and just take the record off a turntable and smash it. I'm like, God, don't break those. Those are collector items. You can't replace that. Good, I'll never have to hear that again. And we could never drink together, which is bad news. I finally told her, I said, well, this isn't working out any better than it worked out before. and uh and i allowed you to kick me out of all those other houses but i moved here first therefore you go this time and i'm going to go to my brother's house tonight and and when i come back tomorrow morning i expect you to be gone that's more time than you ever gave me and we're not even married remember you divorced me and and so i went to my brother's home and drank with him all night and while i was gone in a blackout she decided to commit suicide again that was another one of her character defects she was suicidal she was all that's how she dealt with you know if something bad happened you just kill yourself that's all and uh and that night in uh she was suicidal right into aa she had about eight months of sobriety and and uh something bad happen it must have been bad she was gonna do it again and then she remembered she couldn't because she was the cookie lady at the meeting that night sometimes you wonder why they give some of us flaky people some of the jobs they give us around here well they're life-saving jobs that's why so anyway that night she in a blackout she decided to commit suicide but before she did she went into the closet where my clothes were hanging and just took a knife and slashed every stitch of clothes that I own just ripped everything to pieces just you know just made a complete shambles out of everything even cut my ties in half and my shirts and went into my dresser drawer and even cut up my shorts and then she took the rags and that she had made and put them around the doors and the windows and and tried to make the place airtight and went in the kitchen and turned the gas on in the kitchen oven and went to bed. Next morning she woke up, nothing happened again, and she had been the only one who had been there that night. She looked around and saw the mess that she had made, and could not believe what she had done. And then I came home, and I had trouble believing it myself. our son came home and he checked it out. He thought we were moving again. We used to move a little bit, you know. My son said he went to 12 different, you know, that we moved 14 times in 12 years. He tends to exaggerate. I think it was only about 13. But we used to move a lot. And we had hit bottom. That was our bottom. I'm from a good family. She was from a good family and uh when we got married we were going to do a lot of wonderful things with our life we had great plans we were gonna live the good life and all we had managed to do is sit around and drink every bit of goodness out of our lives and from then on it was bad from then on nothing was good it wasn't all that good prior to that but it from then on it was terrible and we had hit bottom i didn't know it but i had i'd hit bottom and uh this is the part of the story where jerry guys say and i hit bottom so i called aa and some real nice guy came out and took me to a meeting and everything's just been wonderful ever since not me i didnít know it i didníd know iíd hit bottom side just kept on drinking and sometimes they said i had moment of truth so I called AA hell every time I ever had a moment of truth I drank immediately I don't want to know anything about the truth I've had a thousand moments of truth every time have one I drink I can't I can face the truth especially about me I can face it a little bit about you but I'd rather not you know and but the truth about myself i have to drink so uh there we were and we had started back to group therapy a little bit before that and uh we had gone to therapy off and on for i don't know how many years but this was a couple's workshop and that's where married couples go and cop out on one another and this therapist asked me do you really drink as much as she says i said hell yes i do i drink a lot Who wouldn't? Married to a woman like that. I got two of the worst children you could possibly imagine. Pressure job, my God, the pressure on that job alone would make a person drink. But what's the big deal about it anyway? So I drank. They've never missed a meal. They've always had a place to sleep. They've also had a job. They've had clothes. They've already had roller skates and bicycles and whatever they needed. And I just don't understand what the big deal is about my drinking and uh and i said you know i need to drink i put a pressure day in i got a pressure pack day so i come home and i have a few drinks so what he said have you ever thought of quitting i said as a matter of fact i have and i thought about it every night i'm not going to quit tonight but starting tomorrow morning i am and uh he said have you ever thought of going to aa and i said thanks but no thanks i've already been to aaand i had gone to a meeting one time it was one of these meetings where they pass out chips for various lengths of sobriety and that night the leader said does anyone just finish their first 30 days of sobpriety if so come up and get a chip and uh this guy came up with his chip and my name's joe blow and i'm an alcoholic i'm really proud to get this chip and i know this is a spiritual program that i found god when i walked through the doors of aa it's the lights in the eyes of the people that just turn me on and keep me coming back to these meetings i just love every single person here just before i came to the meeting tonight i got a call from my employer and he's made me general manager down at the plant a wonderful glorious way of life this is and for all you newcomers keep coming back we love you and i thought oh my god anybody else and then here comes this lady my name is mary smith and i'm an alcoholic and i'm really proud to get this chip and i know this is a spiritual program and that i found god when i walked through the doors of aa it's the lights in the eyes of the people that just turn me on and keep me coming back to these meetings. I just love every single person here. Hate is no longer a word in my vocabulary. I love everybody. Not just the members of AA, everybody in the whole world. Just a short time ago, my children were failing in school, and now they're getting letters from all the major universities throughout the United States. and i'm proud to stand up here tonight and say that my husband and i are a couple once again and i thought oh god and i you know i just never went back that's all and uh and so when this guy suggested i go to aa i said forget it i've already been to aaa and I said some kind of a spiritual program or religious cult some kind and it's okay for them but it's just not for me and so but I read an article on some stuff called an abuse and I think I'll get some of that because I'm gonna quit once and for all just to prove that alcohol has no has It's nothing to do with our problem. And I was right. It was a symptom of it. So I went to this doctor to get anabuse, and I had been told don't drink for at least 48 hours prior to coming to the appointment. And I went there, and this doctor checked me out, and he said, you know, if you haven't had a drink for 48 hours, you need never take another drink as long as you live. You're over the hump. If you can stay sober 48 hours without drinking, you need never drink again and gee he just scared the hell out of me and he just went on and on and on about the disease of alcoholism how we got character defects he said and he said then we refuse to cope with our problems instead of coping we drink tonight instead we wake up the next morning we still got all our problems only now we got a hangover on top of it and we seem to repeat just over and over again he was telling me my story and i just didn't recognize it and uh so i finally said to him you know if you're not going to give me any interviews then i guess i better go and how he said i can see i'm not making much of an impression on you so i'm going to tell you something this is my wife's an alcoholic i wouldn't normally tell my patients that but due to the nature of your appointment here today i'm going to tell you that he says we've tried everything known to medical science we've cried rest homes and sanitariums and an abuse and we've fried everything nothing's ever worked for her but she's sober now she goes to aa and that's what i recommend that you do and uh and you know after this fiasco where my wife tried to commit suicide she had been with me and heard all this stuff so she went back to him and asked him if he thought she was an alcoholic and he said he didn't know but why didn't she go to some meetings with with his wife and so she did and the very first thing they taught her the very first thing i told her in aa was that it wasn't her fault that i drank they could have started her out with something entirely different than that i just about had her convinced that it was all her fault that i drank but they said no you know you can't make anybody drink and if you think you know so don't carry that guilt around some kind of an ego trip you're on if you think you can make somebody drink he would have drank regardless of whether you ever met him or not and you can t make him quit either so don t pour his booze down the sink he'll just go buy another bottle but if you think you've got a problem with alcohol if you think you're an alcoholic maybe you better come back to these meetings and work on your problem and just let that sob drink himself to death that's what he wants to do it's his life she kind of liked the ring of that so and I went to some meetings whether and I hated the meetings and I finally told her I said I've gone to my last meeting but you know a funny thing happened to me I went to several meetings with her and i hated those meetings but and i had a bad attitude and i had closed ears i wouldn't refuse to listen to what was being said and i'll be damned if i still didn't get the message anyhow and i found out that i was an alcoholic and so i i said i'm going to quit drinking but i can't go to aa anymore i can send the meetings and so idea i quit drinking a little bit before thanksgiving and i stayed sober i didn't drink through the drinking as part of the year through the drinking through the christmas holidays and the saturday night after christmas she went off to a meeting and and i stay at home and uh i um kind of took a little mini inventory of the situation and i said you know you're wrong really not an alcoholic after all if can stay sober since before thanksgiving and not drink through the drinking as part of the year that proves one thing it proves that you're not an alcoholic so i went to the liquor store and i bought a half a pint of vodka and i no sooner got it back to the place and i drank it and what the hell did i buy a half pint for i went and got a fifth and went got another fifth and i drank all day saturday and all all saturday night and all day sunday and i closed a bar up somewhere at 2 00 a.m and woke up the next morning it was 10 o'clock and i'm already an hour late to work and it's monday you gotta go in on monday or you're an alcoholic and so i somehow i did and i went over to the bar a little early that day and i had a bloody mary because that's what you have when you're sick and uh the bartender asked me if i wanted another one i said just skip it and i haven't had a drink since and that's been a little over 18 years ago and my life has changed dramatically and i didn't know that that was going to be my last drink had i known that that was going gonna be my glass drink i wouldn't have had a bloody mary i'll tell you that i could have had something in a fancy glass like a like a brandy you know a 50 year old brandy or something in the fancy glass i could've drank it straight down and then i coulda smacked that glass out of there stomped out of the bar triumphing over alcohol what i didn't know was my last drink so far it has been and i found myself in aa meetings of all places And then anger set in. And I had just completed about 30 years of drinking, and I've got this rotten wife and two of the worst children you could possibly imagine, a pressured job, and I owe money to everybody, and it's all past due, and now I can't even drink for God's sake. What am I going to do with the rest of my life? Nothing. That's what I'm going to go through. to do there's nothing to do if you don't drink i don't care what they say in aa you know how can you you know i need a drink and uh the function and uh and hell i'll never be able to go out socially again i'm stuck at denny's for the rest of my life you never go to a decent restaurant ever again what's the first thing they want to know when you go to an ice restaurant would you like a cocktail before dinner that's what they want to know and you can't say well yeah i'd like one but you see i've got this disease and it's of a twofold nature it's an allergy the body coupled with an obsession in the mind if i had take even one drink i can't predict my behavior wouldn't for that i'd sure have one i'll tell you that i used to think you had to explain all that stuff to people i used to spend 90 of my day back then explaining things to people that didn't want to hear the explanation and uh you know if i was standing on a street corner and somebody walked up i'd start explaining what i was doing there i had no self-worth i had explained just what a little bit of space i was taking up and that's what i'm trying to do now is quit explaining and it's hard every once in a while i catch myself you know and i'll start on some long story i always start from the day i was born you know i bring you up to date so you know all the ramifications and so you can understand my case and and uh sometimes i find myself explaining and i catch my self and i stop right in mid explanation and you know the sick part of is they never notice the difference it turns out no one's listening to your explanations it turns out that no one wants to hear your excuses why you haven't done something you were supposed to do in the first place and so i'm trying to quit all together and uh so you know this is uh aa has been really good to me i you know it enabled me to do a lot of things to cope with lot of things that i would never have been able to cope with had i not had this program and time prevents me from from uh from telling you all about it i goofed around here in my talk and i haven't told you a damn thing but my wife got sick and died of cancer i was able to help her however when she was sick i was unable to be dependable that's what aa has done for me it's made me be dependable and you can count on me and it's made me current in my you know when i wake up in the morning now and you know i'm current i was always behind i was always coming from behind all the time and uh aaa has made me current and my wife and i we had some good years in aa and we had a turbulent marriage but we we had some good years in AA. And when she died, it was a shame. But I don't have to stand up here and feel guilty because, you see, I did everything I was supposed to do. Our house was in order. And obviously, you can't help anybody unless your house is in order. That's what it says. And so, and we were current in our relationship. Everything that needed to be said had long been said and so uh when she died i can stand up here tonight and i'm not guilty i don't have any feeling of guilt it i can i don t have to say if only i would have done this if only i if i would've only said that no i'm free and i can close the door on that episode of my life i'm glad i was married to her and i m glad she's the mother of my children and i miss her but it's okay because i've got a wonderful life going for me because of the trough steps and and uh and the uh the things that you learn around this group i uh i just want to tell you something that my son that used to look at me so funny back in those days turns out he's an alcoholic too and uh it uh you know he used to look at me awful funny back in those days well the reason was that he was stoned out of his gourd but i'll be damned if he didn't turn himself into aa2 and if he stays sober on may the 27th he'll have 15 years my grandson comes to this meeting too he's 21 years old he's got three years of sobriety and the three of us come to this meeting every wednesday night and celebrate our sobriety together and my daughter and my daughter-in-law both send you greetings from al-anon and we're an aa family and we weren't any kind of a family 18 years ago we're still not the best family on the block but uh you know we've all got the steps to work if we choose to work them and thank you very much for having me the pacific group is an open meeting of alcoholics anonymous all members of the community are welcome to attend the single most important aspect of a recovery however is the principle of one alcoholic relating to another alcoholic therefore only alcoholics actually participate in our meeting if your primary problem is other than alcoholism we think it would also be helpful to you to contact an anonymous organization which more specifically deals with your addiction in any case we hope that you learn here that what you learn there may be helpful to your recovery and or understanding I am Harvey Ferguson I'm an alcoholic I want to thank Clancy for asking me to participate it's an honor to participate in a any place especially here in my home group. If you're new, I want to welcome you here because when I was new and I came here, I didn't feel welcome, but I was welcome anyway. I drank for as long as I could, as often as I couldn't. I drink as much as I good, and I was fairly successful for a long time. I didn t get into a lot of trouble. I d go to jail too many times, just a few. I was born in Georgia, in the deep south, out in the country. And my brother and I grew up in a small town. We just had to run on this little town. My father was a small businessman. He always owned some kind of a business, a grocery store or a garage or a gas station or a bar or whatever. And we always had money. I grewup with a work ethic that if I wanted anything, I had to work for it because my father knew wouldn't he my dad just didn't dole it out and uh so i got i kind of got tired of working at a very early age and i you know i had alcoholic feelings early on in life very early in life i i felt all those feelings of rejection and not being a part of and but i made up for it by being a fast talker and a hustler and and a brown noser and i and a politician when i my last year in high school I didn't go to very many classes because I had all these extracurricular jobs and my homeroom teacher said that she probably would flunk me if I wasn't so well connected politically and it was true. I was like the fire marshal and the driver and a projectionist and a carpenter and all this stuff but I figured out what made the system work and shot an angle and got around it. I always thought I was kind of stupid until I got sober and I found out that the people that do that are alcoholic or usually alcoholic or bright or both. So I never did have any trouble with any sort of school I went to. I got through with a minimum amount of work. Anyway, I was asthmatic and I was kind of sickly and I never played any sports. My brother was always as big as me or bigger from the time I can remember. And he played in the band and he played football and he's the one that got all the girls and I hated this son of a bitch and I would go and work for my father especially if he had a bar he had several bars and I liked to work in bars because you got hurt all the dirt and I thought I knew everything anyway this was just after World War II and the guys were coming home and I grew up in the early part of the Korean War and I like the way those guys got treated my father had been in the Marine Corps and he'd done a stitch in the Army too so when I got out of high school I joined the Marine Corps I was 5 foot 10 I weighed 116 pounds and I thought you know when I got to Paris Island I knew that this was the first of a lot of mistakes I made until I got here but my old man told me when I get to Paris he says when you get over there he says I don't want any phone calls home he says the only thing I want to hear from you is a postcard giving us your graduation date when your platoon outposts if you get in any trouble he says don't you ever come home and he meant it and I hadn't started to drink yet Anyway, I graduated with honors and I had a uniform and I was in very tremendous physical condition because at that time the training cycle was about 14 weeks. And they ran us day and night and I just felt wonderful. But I didn't feel like a man. I felt inadequate and I didn' t feel like I could get girls. I looked like something off a recruiting poster. I know that now but I didn''t know it then. And I gained 3 pounds in boot camp. I weighed 119 pounds. Anyway, I started to drink when I got to my permanent unit and I went overseas the first time and I got laid behind booze and I said, Jesus, this is the lecture of life. What has it been? All those years I was working in my old man's bar I could have been drinking but he didn't like drunks. I had an uncle whose older brother was an alcoholic and he just hated my uncle and my mother had some relatives that were alcoholics and he wouldn't go around them. He just hated them and I didn't know why. I just, my father had a real violent temper and I never broke any of his rules and neither did my, we broke, my brother and I broke his rules when we were little kids and he just whipped our, I whipped our asses when we got older. We knew better. My father was very lenient and my mother was kind of the boss around the house. My old man was, he'd let us do about anything we wanted to. So I had a good upbringing. I grew up in a home full of love and we always had, you know, we always had plenty and, you now, my old man would even, he would even walk to work or get a ride to work so my brother could have a car. So, you know, I grew up without feeling inadequate or, you know, inferior and that stuff. I felt as good as anybody else. But anyway, I started drinking the service. And right away I started to drink to get drunk. And I didn't know that. I would drink as much as I could. The first time I drank, I drank as much as I was able to. As much as possible. And I got drunk. And I did not black out. But I drank maybe a half a case of beer in about a two-hour period of time. And burned a hole in my uniform and burned my arm. And I thought, well, this is the way, you know, I thought the hangover and the puking and all that was just, you knows, the downside of drinking. It was agony, and that was the... Drinking was the agony, the ecstasy, and that Was the agony. You know, and I figured that's the way it went. And I did well in the military because I knew how to do it. I knew How to show up, suit up and show up and look good, and i knew how To talk. And I was not very big, so I had to learn How to be slick. I was harassed about my accent I had an accent that you could cut with a knife and I thought well you son of a bitches I'll show you and I learned to talk like the people from wherever if I was doing business with somebody from New York I'd talk like they were or from Pennsylvania and it got me what I wanted and that's all that counted I made a cruise one time to the Mediterranean and four of us were in charge of about 2500 tons of ammunition and it was myself and this Jewish kid and a black guy and a Puerto Rican And I said, you know, this Jewish kid was kind of in charge of the money and the logistics. And I really learned a lot that year. I learned about shooting crap and playing poker. But I really had a good life until the alcohol really was very toxic. I got out of the Marine Corps because by the time I was 19 years old, I was a full-blown alcoholic. And I went home and I didn't fit in. My brother had gotten married and had a nice wife and a couple of kids. and I had all those feelings and I felt awful when I was sober and I didn't understand why. I got a job that summer and I started dating this school teacher who had a kid she was a wonderful lady beautiful girl but I just felt awful and I was like I had to drink between those periods of being sober to feel like I fit in and I eventually went back into the service and I did well there I got to be a flying crew member helicopters were beginning to come of age then and I learned about helicopters but I would just get in a little bit of trouble but quite not enough to get put in jail or anything so I got out of the service and I worked for a couple of aircraft companies around the country and by the time I was 30 years old I was a full-blown alcoholic I was either working or drinking or passed out someplace and I got everything I wanted I wanted to go to Europe and have a nice salary and I went there and I just got in trouble and I was in South America and I просто couldn't handle it so the Vietnam War came along and I came back into the service and I moved to Vietnam I got medevaced back as an acute chronic alcoholic. And they knew what they were talking about when they said I was an alcoholic. Anyway, I got it together and I managed to go back into the service again and I went back to Vietnam again. And anyway, I came back to the States and I was really in a lot of trouble with my drinking. And I met a man in Fort Sill, Oklahoma who had been sober for a long time and he introduced me to Alcoholics Anonymous. And he pressured me into going to a convention in Amarillo, Texas. and I met Clancy and I meet Chuck C and I'm at Mike Ross and I've met a lot of people from California because it's the 25th anniversary of the Top of Texas and the whole program was people from out here and I was very, very impressed with what I saw especially the speakers especially Clancy especially Chuck C and especially Big Mike and I thought well this is what it is like and when I got back to this little Oklahoma town it wasn't like that and I got transferred down to Georgia and it wasn' t like that down there either and I quit going to meetings I was sober I got sober a year and I quitted going to meetings and I started taking pills and I called my buddy in Texas, and I says, what am I going to do? He says, well, you don't have anything in your life. You know, he says, you're not married or anything. And by this time I'd gotten, he wouldn't let me stay in the service. So he says you should go out to California. That's where the best day in the world is. So I got drunk one more time and ended up at the Midnight Mission. And I had several thousand dollars when I started and I took a bus. I'd go from one city to the next city and I'd get drunk. Anyway, that's been almost a little over 13 years ago. And if you're new, I advise you to get a sponsor and get in a group where there's a lot of activity and start working the steps. Because when I got here, I was dead. I thought that I was going to be institutionalized for the rest of my life. I couldn't keep a job in this toy store. They gave me a job running these little toys, and I couldn'T keep Donald Duck separated from the fire trucks. and Plancy saved my life and he's my best friend if it had not been for him I'd be dead because I wouldn't listen to most people I could always find some reason to not listen to you it doesn't matter where you came from but he always put his finger right where the source part was and would you know he always told me what was wrong with me and what I should do and once I learned how to follow the direction you know I learned how to not hurt so much so if you're new I urge you to stay here thank you Thank you, Harvey. Our second ten-minute speaker tonight is Esther Vee. Hi everybody, my name is Esther and I'm an alcoholic. I would like to thank Clancy for this nerve-wracking honor. I am speechless, and that doesn't happen to me very often. I am really grateful to be here. I love this group. I love Alcoholics Anonymous, but I particularly love this group. I love the fact that 11 1⁄2 years, almost five years of my life have taken place in this group, and there are so many people here that I know that I can call from anywhere. I can talk any time, day or night, and they will be there for me. and I feel that I can do the same for them and that was impossible for me before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous the way I looked at people and the way I pigeonholed them is what can you do for me are you interesting exciting and do you have any kind of a utilitarian value it never occurred to me that there might be something that I would want to try to do for people or anything like that and learning to be a friend and learning to be able to accept friendship and help in this group and in Alcoholics Anonymous has been one of the most incredible things. It's a true treasure, and I really value that. And before I get wrapped up in my story, I particularly want to thank my sponsor. We've been together for almost 10 years now, and that's an incredibly long time. And she and her help and her guidance have meant so much to me and all my women friends in this group who welcomed me back last fall from Arizona and made me feel real comfortable again and made it feel like I am home and this is where I belong. I stopped being a social drinker at age five after my first drink and it's been downhill ever since until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. From the first minute I took that drink, you know, with my brother we went around after my parents had guests and we emptied the glasses and we snuck things out of the kitchen and it immediately did that magic for me. It made me feel okay, you know. I had no idea at that time what those feelings were. It was many years later in Hollywood in the spring of 1976 when I heard Clancy talk about the feelings of an alcoholic when I realized that this is how I felt when I was five years old, you now. Always either feeling terribly superior or terribly inferior, you kno, either trying to save the world or feeling just so guilty, you know, that what JC did on the cross wasn't enough. I needed to do more, you now, and it's just all of these totally insane feelings, and that's why I drank, you know. Whenever I had something in me, all of those feelings evened out, and I was able to join humanity, and i was able sort of pretend that I was capable of doing normal living, you You know, like to me normal living is like for a lot of people doing time. I have to do normal living, you know. It does not come naturally to me at all. And reality does not comes naturally to be. All of those things are still totally alien to my nature. Yet somehow in eleven and a half years in Alcoholics Anonymous what I learned is to do it, you now. I don't try to understand it anymore. I don' t try to intellectualize it anymore, I just do it. And that was another incredible thing for me. I have always been awfully good about analyzing problems. I can write essays, I can research, but forget about doing it. I don't want to do it. It's boring trying to have to take care of business and just doing the things that normal adult people do just never appeal to me. So this is the kind of things that happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous that enabled me to stop drinking and to stop using. By the time I got here, I was a daily drunk for almost a three-year period. It wasn't always like that. I had a lot of fun at the beginning of my drinking and using. I came to this country when I was 18 years old and I didn't speak any English and I Didn't have any money. I just graduated from high school and I guess it was the ultimate geographic coming from Hungary to the United States. And until I got here, I had no idea how difficult it was going to be. And drinking and the drugs is what enabled me to cope with my own fears and learn the language and go to college and do all of those things. And I did have a lot of fun with it. I was still young and I could consume an incredible amount and I really enjoyed it. And that was the days when I was at UCLA. It was the day of the late 60s and early 70s, and it was a lot of fun. You know, I really enjoyed sort of being a quote-unquote revolutionary and flower child. You know it was all just an excuse for drinking and going up to Berkeley when the UCLA campus was way too quiet and just having a lot of fun, you know. And I traveled a lot in those years and I just did a lot of things that were a lot of fun and, you now, booze and the drugs were my best friends until by the time of graduate school, at the end of graduate school it started to catch up with me and I started to have terrible anxiety attacks and a lot of blackouts and a lot of nagging horrible feelings that other people just didn't quite drink the way I did you know I used to I started to get very sick and throw up a lot and do very bizarre things like uh disgracing myself with um you know other women's husbands and boyfriends and uh things like that and mouthing off at the wrong time at the right people and it was just becoming more and more uncomfortable and the more of those feelings grew the more I had to drink and the more I had to withdraw, and as I said by the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous my daily routine was to get up around four or five o'clock in the afternoon you know because I knew that if I got up in the morning and I started drinking I would be an alcoholic and I did not want to be an alcohol therefore i did not get up until 4 or 5 in the Afternoon and at that time it was cocktail hours and it was perfectly respectable and acceptable you know to start with a drink And after a couple of drinks, I was able to get myself out of my alcoholic bathrobe into my alcoholic pair of blue jeans and make my daily rounds to the liquor store. I never had a lot of booze at home because every day I was quitting, you know. So why spend the money, you know? I mean, I wasn't working at that time anymore anyway, and I was in thousands of dollars of that and so and i was going to quit the next day and it was pitiful and it was demoralizing and it wasn't horrible those three years those last three years and i don't ever want to forget that i don t ever want to forget it throwing up at my own image at the bathroom mirror and wondering why you know why why somebody with my quote unquote potential then when my quote-unquote breaks in life ended up like that i just couldn't understand it and um um i ended up on a monday night at ohio street um at a meeting and at that time i mean the dishonesty and the amount of self-deception i had going for me was incredible i mean even without of that i really truly was there only to start study alcoholism you know and to study you and i uh remember uh that first meeting you know uh listening and having this this uh this dichotomy you know that i hated it yet this is where i belong and this is you know when my life was changed and my life had changed incredibly you know both in the externals and in the internals and uh i have learned uh that uh sobriety in itself is the reward you know and it is a tremendous gift and it is something that opens the door for us you know to become the people that that we never thought that we could be. And for me, what it really meant is that I am able now to look back at my life, you know, everything that happened to me in drinking and sobriety and in sobriete, and I am about to embrace it and I'm able to say that I'm glad that that was my life. I am glad that those things happened to Me. I'm happy that I did those things. I am glad I went through the journey and the growth and then that it's continuing and it's really exciting, you know. And the way all of this has happened is by doing all of these incredibly silly little things that have to do nothing with anything, like showing up on time and calling your sponsor and telling people about yourself even when you don't want to. And somehow when you do all of those things, all the unrelated things, the rest of your life picks up and change incredibly. And if you're new, I really do hope that you won't give up too soon, and you hang in there until the miracle happens to you, because it is really truly a miracle, and it's wonderful. Thank you. In this particular area, we conceive birthdays to be without alcohol, without dope, without medications that affect you from the neck up, without marijuana, without anything that alters your perception of reality. And we have a few such birthdays tonight, and we will now celebrate them. Our first one is for one year for Scott P. Hi, my name's Scott Kuyper. I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to thank God for getting me here. I'd love to thank my sponsor, Julian, for that cake. I would like to say thank you to my sponsor. I want to thank Clancy and Charlotte for the yard. I like to think all of you, And I'd like to thank my father for being here. Thank you. Happy birthday, Scott. For six years, Diane S. My name is Diane Sawyer and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. I can't believe that I'm six. It's an incredible journey that I've been on. I want to thank God for getting me here through the help of Frank J. And for my gift of sobriety. I want to thank Clancy, I want thank Rita, especially for this last three and a half years. This last year was real tough and she was there to walk through it as you were also. My prior sponsors Ida and Sarah, I also want to thanks for their love and their support and the foundation that they taught me. And most of all I want thanks Pacific Group and Alcoholics Anonymous and all of you for hanging in there with me. Keep coming back. Happy birthday, Rita. I mean, Diane, you thank me as well. I'd like to give my impression now of Maurice Zolotow and Miss Rita. Now I've got him crying, that makes me feel, makes me a little better. For seven years, Larry W. My name is Larry Waltz. I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to thank my heart of hearts for getting me here. I thank my sponsor, Kent, for getting my cake. I just thank Clancy for helping me and other people like me. And mainly I'd to thank Alcoholics in the Hole. Thank you. birthday, Rita. I don't know if it's my favorite. It's hilarious. Oh, I'm so cute. We have a seven-year birthday for Julian C. Good evening. I'm Julian. I am an alcoholic. I want to thank Clancy for giving me that cake and being my sponsor and for helping me this past year. I want to thank each and every one of you. I wantto thank Clancy also for the structure of this group. Without that, I would be lost, I promise you. I need structure in my life. I wantt to thank the class of 81, for sure. And each and everyone of you have been important to me this year. You've helped me tremendously. Thank you. And another seven-year birthday for Annette G. My name's Annette GWOF. I'm an alcoholic. I'm so glad to be sober seven years. I want to thank Millie for setting a foundation and example for me. I want thank God for keeping me teachable. I want thanks Classy just for being there. I don't know if I could have made it without him but it's really good to know that he's always there when I need him I want to thank the whole group I love this group I love to be a part of it and I'm really proud that my two sons are both here too I am just overwhelmed with the joy of being sober for seven years Thank you I want to interject one thing. I was thinking about when Hank was talking to some of the 10-minute speakers in the town. We try not to hurt one another here, and we try to be kind and loving. But several people and I have mentioned how happy they were that their children were in AA, Annette, Hank, all of them in AA. And it's kind of hurtful to me. I have a number of children, and then that's the stinking normies and I go home from these meetings and I just go up to them and I say what's wrong with you when I was your age I was in the insane asylum enjoy your kids in AA mine are down at the malt shop for eight years Becky J my name is Becky Jacobson and I'm an alcoholic hi I want to thank Evelyn for that cake and for being my sponsor and for being a real person I love her love of life and her sense of humor and I would truly love to have about half of what she's got inside of her I want to thank my first sponsor and my very very dear friend Betty Andreessen I want to thank Mary Ann King for her honesty I heard her skewings a while, a long time ago and I didn't think she'd really ever say more than hello to me and I called her one not too long ago in the middle of the night and she was there for me one more time with her honesty and her kindness I'm very grateful I want to thank Ruth Cohen I don't believe I'd have the lifestyle I have today if it hadn't been for her I wantto thank my husband who's here in the back excuse me, it's an inside joke um I didn' t know you could love somebody so much and still be so safe. I want to thank the women who share with me. I don't want to think that I can thank, but I want to thank people who were kind to me when I got here. I don' t ever want to forget. I was not the kind of person to be kind to, and there were people who were nice to me then, and they're still kind to me. Even when I didn't have anything but hatred and anger, they were very kind to me. And if you can't find any today, if you stick around you might find one out of every three dozen but it's worth waiting for thank you happy birthday Becky well you didn't thank everybody for uh 15 years Joe H Good evening. My name is Joe, and I'm an alcoholic. If I were to tell you how pleased I am and why, it would be a long time, and I've learned the hard way that you don't do that here. so I'll just say the conventional thank yous as quickly as I can but I gotta tell ya I am so fortunate I am so happy and grateful about the blessings that God has given me from my life and the fact that I was fortunate enough to stumble into Alcoholics Anonymous 15 years ago that I have a sponsor like Clancy who not only has created a structure for us, the group but one for me in my life that's literally kept me alive kept my life growing and getting richer and better with each year so that I can honestly say that I had never been happier in my wife and the greatest gift of all in my life and one that I'm most grateful for is the dearest person I've ever known in my life and that's my wife Alice and I want to thank her too and of course, all of you you played a very important role for me and I thank you very much happy birthday Joe would you like to stand up Alice for well he had to be here last week to understand that for 22 years Byron W hi my name is Byron Walleen and I'm an alcoholic and I want to thank Clancy for being my sponsor, and for being a part of every important significant thing that's happened in my sobriety. I'd also like to thank my wife, Marion, who is the joy of my life, and my friend Tommy C., who has walked beside me for 22 years. I would like to think Chuck Welcome Susie and Vincent Pat, who have been there when we've needed them so badly. I'd like to thank the Pacific Group for what you've given to us in the Upland area, the format of your meetings, the people you've sent out to us Tuesday and Friday nights for a number of years, and that's going beyond any length to come to Uplands. I would like to thank you for the reception that you've given the bus people when we travel in here on the last Wednesday of each month the influence of this group has come out to San Bernardino County and it's standing us in good stead and we thank you. Last of all, I'd like to think the members of the class of 66 which was the first organized Pacific Group class There were seven of us. One member has passed away. Six of us are still sober and active in Alcoholics Anonymous. I thank you very much. I love you.