The Arrogance of the High-Bottom Alcoholic – 1966 – Tom P.

You know, if it wasn't the Chiefs last minute, if you have your program, we ought to line up speakers, Father Tom P. and then son Tom P., Jr. We are going to turn that around. We're going to have Tom P.-Jr. speak first and then Tom P.'s Sr. second. Well, I couldn't stand here and tell you anything at all about these young'uns. I met them just a minute ago right up here on the stage. But if they say they're alcoholics, I believe I can tell you a little bit about them. I'm not sure. I'm going to try to, though. I'm waiting to be fooled or whatever you might say. So let's start. Give a great big hand to Tom P. Jr. of Hankins, New York. Thank you. Before I start, I'd like to try something that's kind of fascinated me. I went to the meeting this afternoon and enjoyed it very much. This is something we don't do up north, so if you'll bear with me for a minute, I'm going to try some. Hi. Hi. My name is Tom Powers. I'm a junior, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm truly very grateful to be here. This is my first trip south of the Mason-Dixon line, since with the help of God and this wonderful fellowship, I stopped being naughty some 20 months ago. So, and I'm very glad to be here. This is also the first convention that I've attended since I've been sober in AA. And as I said, I enjoyed the meeting very much. I've met a lot of wonderful people, and I feel truly privileged and grateful to be there. I don't, my sobriety does not represent a great deal of time. some of the speakers this afternoon had more years than I have months. And also, my story is not a low-bottom story. My father was a nuthouse commuter. I never made a nut house I never had an alcoholic convulsion but without doing any of these things I managed to pretty completely follow my life up Now, the big book says that alcoholism is a spiritual, physical, and mental disease. When I came into AA, physically I wasn't in very bad shape. Mentally, I was kind of loused up, but I wasn' t clinical. But spiritually, I w as a sick chicken. I was bankrupt. So, the one unusual feature of my story, I suppose, is that I came in contact with the cure eight years before I got the disease. I get an award either for stupidity or hard-headedness, I don't know which. I attended my first AA meeting when I was 12 years old, and I was impressed with this fellowship from the start, deeply impressed, deeply impressed. The understanding that I had as a 12-year-old is very much different than what I have now, but I remember vividly how much this fellowship meant to me. And how much I got from sitting in these meetings, I came every week for a long time. I became the group mascot. They, they, you know AA has a jargon and when I first came in I didn't understand all this talk about high bottoms and low bottoms I figured I had the lowest bottom in the room. But I really got something here, and I think maybe there's a good chance that if I had been a little bit more open to what was going on here, I might have got the good that's in here the easy way without scraping my shins and rubbing my nose and a lot of other people's nose in my own dirt for several years. I know people, I've met people tonight and talked to them, who are applying the principles of this program in their lives without being alcoholics and being helped greatly. I had a chance to do so, and I did a little bit of it for a few years. As I stuck around, some of these principles rubbed off, and then I worked them a little bit. And they worked for me. I got through my high school years, and I went off to university, still hadn't had a drink. I was a good boy. I went up to Yale University on a fad scholarship. As far as I knew, everything on my horizon was very bright. I had the world by the tail, I thought. There was some trouble on my horizon and this I think maybe if I'd been a little sharper I could have seen this but I didn't. From the time that I can remember clearly which is about 11 or 12 when I can remember sequences of events in my life before that it's just patches but from this time I was a person who suffered from the character defect of resentment to an unusual degree I didn't acknowledge this at the time I now see this to be true I would like to have said that I had an Irish temper but it wasn't this I was a person who had a serious problem in the resentment area. And I had another problem, which is probably the reason it took me such a long time to pick up the truth that is here for anybody who will follow a little advice and take it. The technical name for this kind of problem, the psychological name, is arrogance. In plainer language, I was just a little snot. who had great difficulty taking advice from anybody, even the best kind of advice from the most intelligent and well-meaning people. I didn't take it well. And this was a life difficulty, only I didn' t realize it at this time. And the third difficulty that I had that I soon... This was the first one that I came to realize. The only thing I didn''t find out for a long time is an effective way out of it. This is depression, and I'm convinced that a lot of people in my age group suffer from this. The way it hit me, and this is a thing that I had some of through my teenage years and it became progressively more serious as I got older, was a deep feeling of the meaninglessness of my life. i i was a guy who swang swung from extremes i had good moods and in these good mood i was very very good and i wanted to be around aa and talk about the spiritual part of the program and then i got moods where i thought everything just looked impossibly gray to me and the people in AA look like a bunch of jerks and I myself look like a jerk to myself and the government looks stupid and the world looks like a raw deal and this wasn't a wise guy attitude this was something that was a sincere thing I regard this now as a spiritual disease and it was a thing which became intense as I got away from AA. I was in AA as a parasite on this fellowship. I came and sat in the back of the room and I drew off this fellowship and I never gave anything to it. I used to sit back there and pass judgment on the speakers. And if somebody gave a real hot talk, well, I thought that was a good meeting. And if someone went a little too long or if I'd heard this story a couple times before, I criticized him to myself and went out. And this isn't a very healthy attitude to have toward this fellowship, and it didn't stand me in very good stead. Because when I got away from home, where AA was in the air and in the conversation and unavoidable, I didn't go looking for any AA and I didn' t go looking for its equivalent. And as it turned out, I was a guy who couldn' t live without some of this truth and this power that is generated in this fellowship. I got away to school. My difficulty with arrogance was made quite a lot worse by the fact that I succeeded in school, and a few of my professors told me I was an intelligent young man and God helped me, I believed them. and it took me a good while to start to get over that. I haven't finished getting over it yet. I've got a sponsor who helps. He says he's going to give me the hook tonight if I go 31 minutes. I ran my life on self-will. I never was a philosophical atheist. I never said, I don't believe in God. I just lived that way for many years while saying a lot of prayers and going to a lot of church. When the chips were down, when things were going good, I was fine. I'd say my prayers and I'd go to church. And when the things, the chips Were Down, when I was in the grip of depression, when I Was In Life Trouble, I turned to the only thing that I really had deep trust in, myself. And from the beginning, myself didn't work very well. These depressions knocked me flat. This is before I'd ever done any drinking. I was scared to death of drinking, and I never did take a social drink, believe me. When I was 10 years old, I saw a woman in alcoholic convulsions in our bathroom. I had friends who were suicides, friends in DTs, friends permanently committed. I knew the risks involved. I did not take my first drink carelessly. I did Not Take My First Drink Ignorantly. I took my first drank and I always drank medicinally. my sophomore year in college I discovered this chemical cure for these depressions I'd had a period where the depression sapped my energy so much that I it was just almost an unendurable effort to get up and walk the streets I cut about half to two-thirds of my classes that semester I used to just lay in the bed all day and then I couldn't sleep at night and I'd get up and walk the streets of New Haven, Connecticut for a long time and finally I got to the point where what was happening in my life was unpleasant enough that I wanted any way out and I drank and I got drunk and my personality changed the first time. There was one person with me on this episode and this person got the hell scared out of him by the way I acted. And I was scared too. And I said, that's it, I should have known better. I'm not going to drink anymore. And I quit and three months later I made the experiment again. I was in Florida this time i drank again my personality changed again i acted insanely and this time i got into some trouble and i did some harm that was five years repairing it never got repaired until i got into AA, but I did some harm, which I didn't want to do. And I said, I'm going to stop drinking again. And I tried and I couldn't. And i tried again and I got drunk again. And finally with the help of an AA friend, I got off drinking again now. At this point, believe me, I was good and scared. I didn't it didn't occur to me yet that I might be on the road to this disease that really didn't occurred to me I'm not sure why now but the thing that I did know is that I did not like acting in the way that I acted when I drank that I was not a normal person with this and very small quantities of this stuff made me a very irresponsible fellow and at this point I was scared enough that nice Tommy Powers took over and I went back to my religion in my own way in my self-willed way still and I took a vow a lifetime vow that I would never drink again and believe me I meant it and I put every ounce of willpower and sincerity and fervor that I could muster into this vow and I kept it for 18 months and I thought I was doing pretty well. About halfway through that 18 months something happened in my life which changed things. I had a chronically bad back. I wore a brace, I was out of work for five months. I had a lot of letters from specialists saying how unfit I was ever to do any heavy physical labor and how unacceptable I would ever be for military service. And I showed up for my physical in the middle of the Berlin crisis when they were shooting the flashlight through one ear, and if it came out the other, they were taking you. And they took me. And this was a great shock for me. I was unprepared for it. And I resented it from the beginning. And this resentment problem, which I thought I had whipped on my own, came out in a fashion that shocked me, looking back on what it did to my life in a matter of a few months. I went into the Army and here my previous pattern of life was forcibly broken up. I had a pattern in everything I did. I would start something with enthusiasm and after a few years or months or years quit. I started college with enthusiasm and I got tired of that and I quit. I started to prepare for the Episcopal ministry and I get tired of it and I start to hang around AA and get something out of that and I went to Al-Anon and I left. I went back to Alateen and I was in a bad mood and I had a lot of enthusiasm and then somebody would offend me or somebody would give an unworthy talk or I would just get depressed into one of these gray moods and I would drift out. Well, Uncle Sam is one outfit you don't quit. And this threw me. I wanted out and I'm not standing up here and bragging and saying this. Believe me, this is not something I'm proud of at this time. I'm still a member of the active reserves, and if my time does come again to serve, I hope that I can serve honorably because I didn't serve honoribly the first time through. I got an honorary discharge, but that's only because I had a boozer as my commanding sergeant. He got me through some scrapes. Otherwise, God knows what would have happened. uh i tried to quit i tried to quit with the medical deal and uh we hemmed and hawed about this and finally it became clear that i wasn't going to get my medical discharge and i was going to have to tough it out and i went back with the attitude all right you so-and-so's i'm going to tough it off and i'm going to toughen it out but you've made it rough on me now i'm gonna see how rough i can make it on you this is the resentment. And with a person who has this attitude, it isn't surprising that depression follows because you just, you don't hate other people and resent other people the way I did without eventually hating yourself. And I think depression has a lot to do with this. And finally, the thing gets confusing and you don�t know what you hate or what's lousy except for the fact that you're miserable. As I say, I lasted 18 months of this hitch dry. How this happened, I still don't know because it was not a pleasant 18 months. But eventually, the thing that kept me sober is fear. Deep down in me, I knew that I didn't have a prayer of being a normal drinker. and I did not want to become a basket case. I didn't want to go to an institution. I didn' t want to die young. I just wanted to be happy and have fun in my own way. But the thing that the fear didn' T cut through, the one thing that was deeper about this booze, the power of booze is very real because my fear of this thing was great but it wasn' T great enough to overcome the memory of what the booze did for me, because whatever you want to say about the boozed, the one thing that it does do is produce release temporarily, granted. But it does do that. And eventually things got tough enough for me that the consequences didn't look that tough, and I drank again. And the same thing happened, And this time, I really didn't decide to quit. Something changed here. My last few months in the Army, before this, I was miserable. As long as I was just depressed and not drinking, I Was Miserable. But a relatively sane member of society, as soon as I started drinking, things changed. I'm a person who cannot blame his trouble on his upbringing, none of it. I had a great upbringing. I admired my father through my teenage years for what had happened to him in this program and I didn't know many kids in the high school I went to who admired their old men. I really didn't. And I did, sincerely. I had every chance, so I couldn't blame that. When the booze entered my life, all of a sudden I stopped being a responsible member of society. One thing my upbringing had instilled in me was a deep desire to do well, to do right, to be a right guy, to get with this spiritual program. I only found out later that you can't get with the spiritual program on your own terms. This is what I was always trying to do and it failed for me. I wanted this, but I sought it in my own way. And as hard as I sought It, I couldn't get It. And when I started drinking, all of a sudden I turned my back and started to walk a very different way. And from being a guy interested in the good life, I became a guy who didn't give a good damn for the good Life. and I didn't want to be near AA meetings and I couldn't stand to be in the room with my father because I hated him and envied him so that I couldn'T stand it for no other reason than that he was doing well and he had something real and I didN'T have it. I conducted a private little campaign of hate against the unfortunate men who had the responsibility of being in authority over me militarily I was up for court-martial for insubordination the young man who had been so interested in going into the ministry eventually stole the sum of $420 from the United States government I was bad news to these people when I got out of the army usually when you get out of the army as I say I got my honorable discharge usually when you you get up there's a friendly little ceremony you walk into the orderly room and the first sergeant is sitting there and he smiles and shakes your hand and wishes you well I walked into the orderley room and the first sergean was sitting at his desk and he just looked up from his papers and he looked straight at me and he never smiled and all he said is powers if I'd been in this outfit a little longer you wouldn't have any of those stripes. And he looked down at his work, and I walked out, and that was the last of my contact with the Army. The Army had decided to me that college wasn't so bad. I ran back for some more college where life was easier, and I thought, now I will do what I had always done before in college in my first couple of years. When things got tough, I'd run home for some More AA, you know? and I'd sit in meetings and hear people say good things and I feel better. And I said to myself, now my troubles are over. I came home, I went to college, but nothing else changed. As I say, I wasn't interested in going home anymore. I couldn't stand to go home anymore, I hated it. I felt that I was trapped when I went home. And, you know, I thought that I had bad companions in the Army. I blamed everything else, using every excuse I could to avoid facing the possibility that there was something wrong here with me. I didn't want to face this. And I blamed my companions and the violent Army training. I was a combat soldier. I was paid professional killer. I never got off domestic soil but I was a big killer and the nearest I would come to violence is I used to shoot my mouth off in the bar but even then I was insane but the insanity had its limits too I wasn't too insane as soon as things started to look like they were coming to physical force they said wait, now let's talk this over I wanted to be reasonable. I got back into college, and you know, I fell in with the same bunch of boys. Isn't that funny? My companions were no different than they had been, and I had no interest in stopping drinking at this point. I had not interest in changing my life because remember, I drank for release from something. I was a kicks drinker, and I was still getting my kicks. And one thing that I'm thankful for to the people in AA, and especially to my father, is that at this time, these people didn't come and try to ram any AA down my throat because on the few weekends I did come home, I used to just sit around there with a chip on my shoulder waiting for somebody to mention something about this, and I would have been long gone. But everybody left me alone. They let me run my merry way, and as I say, I'm thankful. I think I may owe my life to it. I think this is a real possibility. I got out of the Army in September. By December, I was in enough trouble that the kicks were gone. I ran through my kicks, I guess, quicker than some people. I think this may be one of the things that happens when a guy starts drinking without ignorance. I didn't have the benefit of ignorance, and I think This is One of the Reasons that I Didn't Have the Dubious Benefit of a Long Career of Social Drinking. My total drinking career is five years, none of that social drinking. I drank with other people, but I never drank for that reason. By the end of that year, 1963, I was in life trouble of the worst kind except for murder. I think to take a person's life would represent worse kind of trouble than I was in, but I can't really think of another type that is worse. And I got into it, all of this, the stealing of money, the irresponsibility, the violence that I did do, the harm, the great harm that I gave to other people. None of this did I ever want and none of this did I even want. None of it did I ever start out to do. And after this one episode at the end of the year I said to him I finally came to the point where I wanted help and I turned to that old tower of strength me and took another one of these resolves not to drink, and this one lasted two weeks. And then I was drinking again, and I was in more trouble of the same kind, and worse trouble, and they took another resolve, and that didn't last a day. And I took another reserve, and it didn't last. Then I didn't take any more resolves because I knew there was no point to this. And at this point, I wish I had better words to convey to you this feeling, having sat in these rooms in AA meetings for years, and all of a sudden the truth is born in on me where I can't lie to it. I can' t push it off any longer. I'm whipped. Well, at this point one would have thought it would be very easy if you're whipped and you have the great good fortune to have been exposed to the way out of this disease, you go and get some of this help. And one thing stood in the way of that. And that's my egotism, my arrogance, my pride. I couldn't do it. Or whether you couldn't or you wouldn't, I don't know. I can't stand up here and say. Anyway, I made attempts to, and I didn't. I used to lie in my bed at night in the middle of the dry heaves. I'd heave and heave for hours. And I'd come and lie in My bed and roll and toss, and And I'd have these dreams about how I was going to contact AA. And then this little television show used to play out about me coming home triumphantly to the family with a period of sobriety under my belt, you know. And I showed them I did it, you now. The prodigal son returns. And then the next morning, I wouldn't feel so bad and then I'd be drunk again. And it didn't work. The kicks were gone. The laughs were gone. The fun was gone. I got to the point where the beer was not cutting the depression. It was not producing what I wanted. So I switched to stronger medicine. And then I got to the place where I started to be obsessed with the idea that I was going to die before my next birthday. Now, you may say this was insanity I still don't think this was so insane. I honest to God don't, because I drank with a crowd, several of whom did die young. I didn't just drink. I was involved in a whole way of life that went against society in a way that put a lot of people in the newspapers as early deaths. i have a friend of mine at the age of 19 who died from alcoholism while trying to rob a store he fell out of a fifth-story window and was hit with a high tension wire this kid never had a chance to take the first step and i i'm grateful as i stand here tonight i thank god that i did have this chance because I think there are a lot of people who have this disease just as much as any of us who never had this great good fortune to have a fair chance to take this thing and make a start at this program. This obsession that I was going to die did not leave me, and it got to the point where nothing, no amount of booze would cut it for any longer than just a night or so, and it was back with me. And I was involved not just in an alcohol addiction, but in other addictive types of behavior, which I won't go into, which were, along with the booze, as I say, when I said I was a spiritual bankrupt, I meant it because I had no self-respect. I had loathing for myself, and I didn't believe that I could make this program. I honestly thought that I was a person who had had a shot of this truth that's here, and had turned around and booted it out of arrogance. And some people like this don't get it back again, and I thought maybe I was one of those people. So, why I got another chance, I am at a loss to explain this evening. The only thing that I can say about this is I thank God for it. But six months after the point when I knew I was powerless over this thing, finally, I somehow, by the grace of God, this is the only explanation I can offer for it, did get enough humility to come back here to where the help was all the time, and I had known it all the Time. I never could drink enough to blot out the memory of the truth that was here. And I came back, and I got sober. I was sober for a month. I was sore for six weeks. My self-respect started to come up. My health came back very fast. And I went to my sponsor. I was kicking around the fringes of this fellowship. I wasn't plunging in. I was around here again, having a little AA, not admitting I was an alcoholic, but I was staying sober. After about six, well, maybe less than six weeks, just a few months of sobriety, I came home and talked to my sponsor about how I was doing on the program, and I was patting myself on the back because I was dealing with a problem. Because I was going some work with the 11th step that appealed to me. and I expected that he'd give me a big slap on the back and say, you know, terrific, keep up the good work. And he said to me, people with a pattern such as yours carry quite a load of guilt with them, and it's usually a good idea for people like yourself to take the fourth and fifth step. And I said to myself, no, this I won't do. I didn't say anything to him. But, as I say, I was a person who led two different lives. And this was true and is true today, the difference in the life. The difference is such that today my drinking friends don't believe I'm for real. They don't much understand what I'm about, and we don't have much in common. and I have one of my army buddies who put up with me drunk when I attacked this guy physically and tried to injure him, and he put up mit all kinds of stupid behavior. And when I told him I was in AA, I didn't hear from him anymore. And the people in AA—including my wife and my five-weeks-old baby and most of my friends in AA, thank God, have been spared the exposure to me when I was drinking and some of them, my wife finds it that she has to kind of take it on faith what I say it was like then because it's very different now. And when the fourth and fifth step were suggested to me, I quietly said to myself, No. I've got this new life now. These people have respect for me. They admire me. There is nobody going to know what went on in my life. Nobody's going to Know This. So, I got a little resentment at my sponsor because he hadn't patted my back and because he suggested something to me which meant following a little advice that I didn't like, and remember, this is what I didn' t do very well. So I didn t do it. And I made another mistake. I assumed that when I got into AA, a 24-hour program is good for these old guys who drank for 700 years, you know, and they were kind of weak. You know, they had to hang on tight one day at a time. But the kid, if the kid could ever get back, the kid wouldn't drink anymore. And the kid drank again. Well, fortunately, two things were fortunate about this. One was that I did have enough sanity to come right back. The second thing that was fortunate was that just prior to my drinking, I had been forced into my first 12-step call. The idea of 12-stepped work when I first came in absolutely frosted me, because I could see myself. I'm 26 now. I was 24 when I came in, you know, and I look about 19. I go out to carry the message to some guy, and, you know, he says, kid, give me a break, you know. And so I was saying to myself, you know, you're unworthy to carry The Message, and really it was egotism. All the 12 steps says that we tried to carry the message. It doesn't say we did a hot job, and it doesn't say we never got insulted, and I have been insulted many times. I was too egotistical for that. I WAS TOO EGOTISTICAL TO TAKE SOME GOOD ADVICE. BUT I GOT FORCED INTO THIS 12-STEP call. And the reason this was a blessing for me is because my 12-step call was a resounding failure. This man went upstairs into the bathroom two weeks later and slashed his throat. But this is one of the things that got me back here, because I talked to this man for three hours one afternoon, and this guy told me my story, the whole thing, except for the fact that he now wasn't buying AA. He was in the phase that I had been in a couple of months before, and he wasn't paying it for the same reasons. He had a year and a half of sobriety in AA, and then he went to a psychiatrist, and this is not meant to be a condemnation of psychiatry because there are a lot of real good psychiatrists. Dr. Thiebaud was one. Dr. Silkworth was one, Dr. Jung is another. There are a lot of good friends of AA. But this particular psychiatrist gave this man a very harmful piece of advice, which was one of the things that cost him the life. He told this man, you're such an intelligent fellow that your real difficulty is these underlying emotional problems. And we're going to cure up them problems and then you can have a few drinks. so this guy booted a year and a half of sobriety on the program and ended up a suicide and I remembered this when I drank again I didn't drink intending to and it shocked me and it scared me and I came running back and I did something for the first time in many years and I went to my sponsor and I said tell me what to do I want to do this thing somebody else's way. And he said, fourth and fifth step. So, I screwed up my courage. It hurt me real bad. I thought the poor guy listening to it was going to wither up into smoke and blow away. He didn't. I got a great deal of help from it. These two steps are steps which I have found beneficial to myself to take again at periodic intervals. This was my key to getting my membership in this fellowship. It may be a different step for somebody else. I think the key is whatever the little ego doesn't want to do, That's the hurdle that has to be gone through. I got into this fellowship, and the last 20 months of my life, believe me, I wish I had words to describe. The trouble with being a professional cynic and wise guy for so many years, and I mean this sincerely, is that it is difficult to express gratitude. and I find it difficult for me to express my gratitude to you people and to this fellowship and to the power of Almighty God to which I feel literally I owe my life. I got into fellowship, I was around for a while and I discovered that I had assumed that a high-bottom guy and a young guy like me, my physical health comes back, I could do it on a small dose of AA. I found that that isn't true for me. And I think maybe it's not true for a lot of high-bottom guys, and I feel pretty sure it's no true for most young guys. My work has put me in a position where I do a lot, a lot at 12-step work, and I'm grateful for this. But I think... I do feel this applies to other people. I'm just speaking for myself. But a guy in my particular life situation, situation. I haven't been down this road as far as a lot of you people go, and I'm here by the grace of your experience, the people with the low-bottom stories. I am here because I can identify now. I couldn't before. I have no problem. People ask me, don't you have difficulty identifying with the older people? No, none at all, and i'm here because of that reason, that people get up and tell these stories with the gory details and I can sit back there and say, yes, yes. I'm on the same road. I'm up the road a bend or two, but it's just the same road. And the particular danger for a person of my type is that after a few weeks or months, he would take the first step back. When I'm hurting, I take the first step. Yeah, I'm powerless. I'm powerless. And after a few months I say, hmm, am I? And I do to this fellowship what I did to everything else in my life. I started with a lot of enthusiasm and then I quit. I can't do this. My life hangs on finding a way not to do this and I found the way. And the way is a lot AA. I know people, I've got a good friend in my home group, 19 years of sobriety, he's a two-stepper, 1 in 12. It's good for him. It' s good for anybody who can do it. I can't. I've got to be a 12-stepper. I've gotta be at least a three meetings a week man. I've been in a situation where I get to 14 meetings a week. It ain't too much. It never gets dull. Believe me, it doesn't get worse, it just gets better. And a lot of 12-step work and every time I sit here and hear people up here talking, the longer I sit and the more I hear, the easier it is to identify. And all I can say is I'm glad to be a member of this, and I thank you all. Thank you, Tom. You know, I knew he was going to tell part of my story anyway. I'm sure the rest of you saw some parallels. I can't help but sympathize to a degree with him on this being young bit, because when I came in, they called me Junior. And I know how he felt. All these fellows that were in AA were pretty much up in the years. And they took up a lot of time with me. They were real patient. After I got over being completely scared to death and could open my mouth and ask a question or two. They were real kind and would sit down and take a whole meeting if necessary to answer all the foolish questions I could come up with. They were really good to me. And then I got to a degree of sobriety that I thought, well now, they said this thing works a certain way, I may as well test it. I didn't mean to drink, excuse me. They said that once you get a little bit of a message, you're supposed to try to carry it, you see. So I says to God as I understood him at that time, I thought that I was ready. Please give me a 12-step call to make, one that I can really handle. Here I was, unemployed, couldn't find a job anywhere in the vicinity. Was sober though, about three or four months were. And wouldn't you know, he did give me an 12-stepped call. He sent me to see a judge of all people, me. And I thought, now this is something, you see? It's real terrific how this program works. That did a whole lot for my humility, I'll assure you. Now don't go away. Keep your seats. The gentleman that's over here with the tape recorders won't long enough to make a change. Sit where you are, carry on a little quiet conversation, smoke if you'd like, and we'll be back with you in a moment.