The Big Reward of Being Current in His Affairs – Hank J.

they're here I'm really pleased to be here and I want to thank the committee for asking me to speak here tonight it's the last time I'm gonna be out of state this year and I couldn't have picked any better place to come because I really do feel like I'm coming to my home because I know a lot of people here and I respect and that I've respected love and and I went to a meeting this afternoon a little impromptu get together and there's eight of us I think and and Louie and Kevin and Don were there and there was a from two months to 41 years there and those eight guys and we talked it all over and we've got off got it all solved so you know if you have any questions why seek one of us out we can give you the answers i'll tell you that but i took a nice walk through the city today and i enjoyed the snow you know and uh i don't know if i it's a nice place to visit i'll put it that way i'm going back to to that 75 and 80 degree weather tomorrow jesus but i used to drink a lot i i started drinking i guess when i was 13 something like that you know the behind the gym type drinking nothing very serious just whenever i had a chance you know with the boys but i was in a big hurry to grow up and connie was speaking about didn't you know her kind of lost her childhood i think i identify with that because i was on a big rush to grow up i started smoking when i was 11. you know try to look old and uh god if anybody ever see a kid smoking let's look he makes him look so much younger you know and but i was trying to look old and i started drinking at 13 and but uh i went into a bar in california when i was 18 years old and you're supposed to be 21 in california i passed for 21. and they served i ordered a drink they served it to me they didn't ask me for any id you know i graduated right then and there i became a man right then in there what else is there to learn if you can buy a drink over a bar without being asked how old you are you've got it made you're grown up i could play the jukebox over in the corner just as good as the rest of the guys in fact i thought my selection of songs were a little better than most and i didn't feel at home when i came to aa but i sure felt at home in that bar i could sit at the at the bar look myself in the mirror get better looking after each drink i just went back every opportunity i had from then on i drank i drank on a regular basis from then on and uh i from then the focal point of my life i had alcohol in it somewhere you know it was alcohol every anything i've ever learned in my life except maybe work i learned while drinking you know i either drank before during or after and generally all three and uh i that was a way of life with me i met my wife in a bar where else do you meet girls and uh we uh we got married and moved out to a little shack in a little kind of a nice little track house actually and the payments were 56 a month and i had trouble making those payments you know those payments would come due on the first of the month i'd have trouble making them uh you know because i use my money to drink with and uh if anybody would have asked me you know what's your problem hank and i would have said money money is my problem you know you know all those payments come due and i just couldn't make them so i figured well i'll double up next month i won't make it this month i'll double up next month and next month that come along and have to come up with a hundred and twelve dollars where am I going to come come up well that kind of money I'd stiff all my other creditors and somehow it make the payment we almost lost that place several times and we finally sold it before they foreclosed out from under us and we moved in with my father for free but if anybody would have asked me what is your problem i would have said money you know i don't know how i ever got involved in this work i do it just doesn't pay enough if she'd only go to work and help out a little bit you know but no it turned out she was pregnant you know she already had a baby by a previous marriage and and now here comes number two and I couldn't afford to have the baby I didn't even start saving for that baby until about a week before it was due I couldn'T come up with the money so I went to the beneficial finance company I borrowed the money to pay the hospital and medical expenses to pay for my son's birth when he turned 25 years old and i finally got sober in aa i finally got beneficial finance paid off i don't know about you folks but i always had a crisis in my life i'd almost get those guys paid off and something would happen i have to go consolidate my bill and they never gave me enough you know i i thought i was asking for enough but they never really gave me enough and besides something would happen a part of that money on the way home anyhow and but i'd get there and i'd say get home start writing these checks to pay off all these bills you know i'm going to have it all into one payment and uh wasn't enough so i have to go to the pacific finance and borrow the rest and sometimes i had a bank loan going too sometimes all three at the same time you know that's okay at income tax time yet you can deduct all that interest from your income you know used to be able to uh and uh but uh so that was okay then but i used to wonder you know what is it that you're buying here you know you're making these payments what have you purchased with this money you're not buying anything you're just making payments that's all i finally figured it out after i was sober a couple of years what I did is I financed about 20 years of my drinking every time I took a drink I paid an extra 15-20 cents in interest to the beneficial finance and that's the way I lived my drunk-a-log is really not very exciting now Connie's story sounds exciting she would have got into some of the good stuff there you know i'm sure it would have been but uh you know you hear such exciting stories sometimes from these podiums my god some of the things some of these guys done while drinking it that's really hard to believe sometimes you know really exciting i heard a guy went into a bar he punched everybody out in a bar and uh the cops came he punched the cops out too and he got thrown in jail he got thrown into the cell he walked over the bunk he wanted pulled the guy out of the bunk and punched him out too that's exciting drinking god a t-man drinking you know i love it another a guy, he used to drive a lot while he was drinking. He used to drive through a tunnel 65 miles an hour and make a U-turn right in the middle of the tunnel. Sometimes he'd hit telephone poles only there were 100 yards off the highway. That's really exciting drinking. But the best one I ever heard was this jet pilot he was on a three-week drunk and he came out of a blackout going faster than the speed of sound at 20 000 feet now that's drinking yeah that's not only he man drinking that's class you know and uh you know all i ever did is i just sat around and drank i didn't know i was going to be the speaker here in fargo north dakota had i known i would have tried to spice up my story a little bit but all i did is sit around and drank i used to watch a lot of tv yeah play old phonograph records sometimes sometimes i'd read a book nothing very heavy to some condensed version in the Reader's Digest. And that's the way I operated. Sometimes I'm envious of the jail time some of these guys have done. I was in jail for about an hour one time when I got my drunk driving. I did get a drunk driving arrest, and I was only in for about another hour. So I can't even tell you about my jail time. everybody's got some jail time to talk about and uh but uh we just existed you know i you know my wife the cause to cause uh excitement every once in a while would kick me out of the house she'd she'd come home and find me intoxicated and for some reason that used to irritate her and uh she'd tell me to leave i i didn't have any self-worth back in those days you know she'd say leave and what i should have said wait a minute you're asking me to leave my own house you know i'm making the payments here how can you ask me to leave the house you that's what i said but i didn't have any self-worth she said leave i just packed my safeway shopping bags and split but i never moved very far from home i i just down the street and i'd work my way back in uh in and out back and forth she divorced me three times the last time she divorced me i i said you want a divorce is that what you wish if you really want to divorce you've got it you can have the house you can of the furniture you can have everything all i want is that stack of old 78 records they're collector items and i want those you know and so I moved into a little apartment I used to call it an apartment actually what it was is a garage they had made some living quarters in this garage and it's a half a block from the water in Hermosa Beach California and I was and the landlady said you're a half-a-block from the water no kidding gee that's great and I figured I'd get up every morning and run five miles along the ocean edge and then i'll dive in and ride a few waves in you know and it's a great way to start the morning terrific you know as far as i know the water was down there i really never got around to checking it out well i only lived there four years you know because i have a dual problem like a lot of people in aa have dual problems nowadays they're alcoholics and they're drug addicts and they're alcoholics and overeaters and their alcoholics in this and their alcoholic than that and you know I'm an alcoholic and a procrastinator I always figure if a thing's worth doing it's worth waiting until tomorrow even consider doing as a result I just postponed about 30 years of my life you know and I never made any decisions at all the decision was to be made you know i postponed it until it was too late somebody else would make the decision then i used to and gripe about the decision but i can't blame me i i didn't i didn't make that decision i used say you know that's really true and uh but that's the way i lived and uh i uh but i i got in that little that little apartment that little place it It was a 12 by 15 room, really, is what it was. They had made living quarters in this garage. And I bought a turntable and 10 speakers from a friend of mine. I had speakers in all four corners, behind the drapes, behind the couch, in the bathroom, inthe kitchen, you name it. I had a speaker there. And a typical day for me was to wake up. It would be 10 o'clock in the morning. Oh, man, I'm an hour late to work. and I'd throw my clothes on and get in that car and weave in a lot of traffic I had to make it you see because I should have worked yesterday and I I left all these papers all over my desk and some of those papers are a little bit important you know if the boss were to see them he might question why I was leaving them laying around so casually and he didn't know if I had some papers in my desk drawer some of them were months old they were too old to turn in if I if I turned them in was going to get fired you know and if i didn't turn a man i was going gonna get fired and i had this feeling of impending doom that talk around about it here in aa and that's the feeling i had and i was really what i was doing i was racing the boss to my desk and uh i'd get there and check everything out everything the same as yesterday saved again i go to the coffee room get a cup of coffee and go back to my desk, and I'd shuffle papers and make excuses to my customers and try to look interested, you know. And I'm a great excuse-maker. Geez, I used to – you know, I can really do it. They just come to me automatically. I can make an excuse about anything. And, uh, I use to make excuses for my customers. And one of my favorites was the computer excuse. They're still using that one right to this day. And I'm one of the originators of the computer excuse. You know, the computer's been down for the last three days. As soon as it gets working, well, I'll get a printout and then I'll call you and we'll get all this straightened out, you know. If you don't hear from me within a week, call me back and we'd get it all squared away, you know? Hell, I used that excuse before we even had a computer in our office. At a respectable time, i go to lunch at the bar that was conveniently located right next door to where i worked and they sold martinis over there and i like martinis and they sold double martinis for a dollar during the lunch hour the regular martinis were 75 cents but during the launch hour you could get a double for a doll so i figured hell whoever heard of having one martini you're gonna have two anyhow so you might as well order the dollar one you'll save 50 cents god knows you need the money bad so i'd order the $1 one and i'd get to sipping on that drink and i kind of compare it to the guy sitting next to me he'd have a 75 Center and I'd say to myself this isn't really a double it's a little larger than 75 Center that's all if it were really a Double they'd be charging more money for who the hell do they think they're kidding around here anyhow so I better have another one then I'd have another one that I'd call the office tell them forgot to tell you going on a lot of calls this afternoon take messages i'll be back tomorrow morning at nine o'clock i'd head towards the beach and stop and buy the cheapest bottle of vodka i could find whatever was on sale that day that's what i bought and i'd get home about 2 or 2 30 in the afternoon and i'll hang up my clothes real carefully the creases fall properly i'm a real neat drunk and and uh and put my shirt away and tie and everything and put my pajamas on and i'd sit on sit on the edge of my bed i'd untype that cheap vodka take a big big jolt out of it several swallows you know i'd say to myself i've done it again today this not cannot continue you know you're not the only guy that's ever been divorced you're not the only guy who has ever been in debt why the hell don't you do something about it all you do is sit around and talk about stuff you never take any action on anything then I'd put one of those old 78 records on the turntable something like Billy Eckstein singing Who Can I Turn To and then I go into my fantasy starting tomorrow morning it's all going to be different starting tomorrow morning i'm going to get up at six o'clock i'm gonna get down to that damn office by seven i'm on a knockout paperwork for a couple hours when that phone starts ringing tomorrow i'm want to be ready to do business and starting tomorrow a whole new life is going to open up for me you know i'm to work 365 days in a row without you know just going to out there and do it once and for all and get out of debt And I'm going to quit drinking starting tomorrow, too. I'm not going to drink for a year, and I'm going to work 365 days in a row. I'm gonna put a big X on my calendar, you know, starting tomorrow. And it's all going to be different. I can spend a year doing that. I can put one year aside like that. A lot of people do stuff like that, they take jobs. and Saudi Arabia and go over there and work in the oil fields for a year and recoup their finances. I don't even have to leave town. I can do it right here. Boy, sometimes, you know, that's the solution to my problem. I don' t know about you, but sometimes I just have these wonderful ideas like that. You know, terrific idea. you know and i knew that within a year i was going to be in terrific shape everything is going to fine i heard a speaker not long ago say that when he used to fantasize like that you know in all that he could see the finish of it he just felt like it was a job well done it hadn't done the thing yet but yeah and and that's why i fell i just thought it was wonderful so i had another drink I start celebrating that's our plan a little upbeat music now you know I knew everything is gonna be all right and I look up at the clock be like 10 minutes to 11 it can't be 10 minutes 211 I just sat down on the edge of this bed a few minutes ago you know can't bit clocks gotta be wrong I'd call the operator and check 10 minutes or 11 where's the time then look i was almost on a boot oh wow and so the liquor store closed at 11 o'clock and you know so i'd throw my clothes on over my pajamas and run two blocks to the liquor story that's when i first started jogging about that time because i had to get there before it closed you know and just the guy was closing up bottle of schmirnoffs i always bought the better brands right there, right where I lived. I wouldn't want them to think I was cheap right there in the neighborhood, you know. And I could stroll back to my shack with peace and contentment and security for the rest of the night. And I'd get back there and play a few more of those old records and reminisce about the good old days that turned out weren't all that good, you that was in my imagination too and uh and i'd you know i think i think i'll work two years in a row at the end of two years i'll take a year off and i'll have so much money by then you know just take a whole year off i'll buy a boat and i sail all over the world you know be an adventure just like you see in the magazine the movies god what a terrific idea you know and i started rehearsing the speech i was going to have to give because i knew i was gonna be salesman of the year and somewhere in there i'd pass out the next morning i'd wake up it'd be 10 o'clock maury an hour late to work oh man and throw my clothes on get in that car waving and out of traffic and i had to get there because the boss might see these papers and i knew i was going to be fired and i'd get there check everything out everything's the same as yesterday saved again get a cup of coffee go back to my desk and make excuses and shuffle papers and try to look interested at a respectable time i'd go to the bar that's conveniently located right next door to where i work i'd go there and have lunch you know i'd over and make my big decision of the day whether they have the dollar one or or the 75 Center. Then I'd have another one, then I'd Have Another One, then I'D Have Another One, and I'd call and tell them, I forgot to tell you, I'm going on a lot of calls, take messages, I'll be back tomorrow morning, nine o'clock, and I'D head toward the beach and get home about two and hang up my clothes and after buying the cheapest bottle of vodka I could find and sit on the edge of that bed, untap that cheap vodka and take a big, big jolt out of it, several swallows. i'd say to myself well you've done it again today you know this cannot continue you know you're not the only guy that's ever been divorced you're not not the owner guys ever been in debt why the hell don't you do something about it you sit around and talk about stuff you never take any action on anything then i put one of those old 78 records on the turntable something like billy ekstein singing who can i turn to then i'd go into my fantasy about starting tomorrow morning it's all gonna be different starting tomorrow i'm going to get up at six o'clock i'll get down that damn office by seven knock on paperwork until nine when that phone starts ringing tomorrow i want to be ready to do business you know and you know i'm a terrific salesman i know it the boss keeps telling me about all the potential i got and i believe him and uh i just need to release some that potential too late now i've retired i had all that potential i never did fulfill all that never got around to it i guess and uh but uh i figured well you know i think what i'll do is starting tomorrow i'm gonna work 365 days i'm going to put a big x on the calendar i'm not even going to drink starting tomorrow you know maybe i'll go to a new year's eve party and have a couple of drinks but starting tomorrow a whole new life starts you know i didn't do that once or twice i did that hundreds of times and i really don't know how i held on to that job really get right down to it but i did because and funny i always always kind of up there in sales you know because towards the end of the month i just i really would work around the clock and and i always got a plaque every year for outstanding salesmanship and product knowledge and being the type of representative we want represent this company and all that good stuff you know and uh no money but but yeah that's all i had going for me there at the end you know of my drinking it's my job because i had drank away my wife i drank away all the kids my kids and my house and all my friends everything was gone all i had is that job you know and i worked for a pretty large company and they put my name on one of their business cards that's who i was and so i really did that's my identity on that business card and so i managed to hang on to that job I wouldn't have hung on to that job, I'd have been an old vet in front of the Veterans Administration building or something. And so that's why I was able to somehow keep that job. But about that time, I got a call from my ex-wife. She said come and get your drunken son just like you are. It seemed that he had turned 16 and he was out drinking and not drinking so much but just getting in trouble and nothing very major just a lot of nickel and dime stuff but that night he had gone to a party and came home intoxicated and uh threw up on the carpet and i was the last straw hand and she called me and said come and get him you know and uh i didn't want him to come and live with me you know and he didn't want to come and live with me and uh he said occasionally he would he would come in and spend a weekend with me he never really wanted to do that but his mother would make him and uh i never i didn't want him to come what do you say to a 16 year old kid i could never think of anything and you know if i was a real dad what would i be saying to him now you know so i start criticizing him about his grades and his hair his haircut that's a good one you know and why don't you get a decent haircut how come you're not playing football you ought to be student body president of school you're really slacking off i'm really worried about you you know that's what i used to say to him if i wasn't drinking which was rare and but if i was drinking i just tended to slobber all over him telling him how much i loved him and all the troubles your mother and i have had through the years has nothing to do with you we love you he used to just sit there and cringe and somehow i'd get him cornered and uh i don't know about any of you but once i get on something like that i can't quit and i would just pour it on i just drool all over and tell him, you know, you're a love child. You were no accident. You're a loved child. He used to just cringe. I can still see his look, that look on his face. And somehow he'd escape. Next morning, I was ashamed of myself. Couldn't look him in the eye. I was just ashamed of himself. Not that I had been drunk the night before, that I had let my guard down and told my son I loved him. I'm from the old school, you don't tell anybody anything, you don' t show any emotion to anyone, you never let them know how you're feeling about anything. And I practiced that all my life. I could go to these jazz joints in Hollywood and L.A. and hear world famous trumpet players and saxophone players and just blowing up a storm and I'd just sit there with a cigarette in one hand and drink in another and never move a muscle and all the squares were snapping their fingers and tapping their toes and I was looking down on them man, I was cool and you know that's what they call it and I practiced that all my life if you told me a joke I had it down i was i could i had it down so good so well that if you told me the funniest joke in the world you know i'd acknowledge that's a that's the funny joke i i wouldn't laugh i said it's a funny joke but the only time i laughed is if i saw you fall down and hurt yourself and so i was ashamed of myself you know i couldn't look him in the eye i get him in a car and drive him home and dump him off he asked his mother one night one time after he come back from a weekend with me and he asked His mother he says uh you've divorced him is there any kind of legal action i can take i don't want to go back there so she said that you know he didn't want to come and live with me i didn't want him to come live with but she said so we had to do it right and but that was the start of a beautiful relationship that we've got going to this day and we we did real well together we were batching it you know did real world and uh... She came down and checked us out one time, not me, but checked him out. And we, one thing led to another. We got to talking. You know how that is. And we both admitted we were miserable people, but we seemed to be more miserable apart than we were together. And why are we treating each other like this? Our daughter had already split, and our son would probably be going into the service soon. what are we treating each other like this for why don't we try to be more understanding of each other why don t we try to be kind to one another and all we have is each other and so she started promising me things that she would do and then I promised her and she promised me and I promised her we spent the whole Sunday afternoon promising wonderful things to each other I know i'm sure we both knew that we couldn't fulfill most of those promises but we really had a good time that sunday afternoon but one of the things she promised me was that she wouldn't fight me on my drinking anymore and in fact she joined me and i should have been suspicious but i wasn't because she never used to drink when i was married to her she didn't drink little did I know that during that two or two or three years that we were apart she had started drinking and she had crossed that so-called invisible line into alcoholism immediately when she talked in Alcoholics Anonymous she used to say that she was an alcoholic from the very first drink and you know that's happened some people they take one drink and they go crazy and they get her end up getting arrested that night and everything in my case I really think I drank myself into alcoholism I had a lot of fun with was drinking for a lot of years it was a social lubricant for me it enabled me to dance and romance and do all the things that normal people seem to be able to do all I need is a couple just to get started you know and then one or two along the way every so often and and i can be very social and uh but uh i don't know when i crossed that invisible line into alcoholism i became allergic to the stuff i i can't tell you when and if a doctor would have told me that i was allergic to it not to drink i i wouldn't believe him i would so wouldn't have mattered but i crossed that line into alcoholism maybe 10 years into my drinking 15 maybe i don't know when but it wasn't the first drink i know that and uh it doesn't make damn bit of difference she was an alcoholic from the first drank me maybe 10 year down the line we were both alcoholics doesn't matter and you know i uh i'm allergic to penicillin too it turns out i took penicilin a lot of times The last time I took penicillin, I had a sore throat. And I went to the doctor, and the doctor gave me a shot of penicilin. I almost didn't get home. Jeez, I just got all itchy, and my neck swelled up. And I wound up in the hospital for eight days. I almost died of penocillin poisoning. And the doctor said, you know, you shouldn't be taking penicilli. I said, what are you talking about? I've taken it a lot of times. He says, don't ever take it again. You become allergic to it. he said i can't guarantee that if you take a shot of penicillin again that you won't die the next time i said no kidding i said i promise okay and uh i'm proud to stand up here tonight and then and inform you people that i've got about 32 and a half years off of that stuff i haven't had to go to one meeting about it it hadn't been necessary for me to apply the 12 steps to my penicillin allergy i haven'T got a sponsor about it or anything you know hadn'T been necessary for 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. It turns out the allergy to penicilin is just a little bit different than the allergy to alcohol. I just never, ever have had an overwhelming desire to take a shot at peniciller. and but she when she moved in you know we started drinking together and I'd still coming home early and putting my pajamas on sitting on the edge of the bed and playing those old records and reminiscing and fantasizing about what's gonna happen starting tomorrow and here comes my son home from school it'd be like two o'clock 2 30 in the afternoon here he comes and i'd say to them who the hell do you think you're kidding it's only 2 30. school doesn't even get out until three o' clock you're already home at 2 30 you've ditched school and i stand there in my pajamas with a bottle of vodka in my hand you know and i'd ask him you know how the hell do you expect to amount to anything you know if you don't apply yourself in this world my son you haven't got a chance i'm really worried about you you know he'd look at me funny he always had three or four guys with him and they all looked at me funny and then go out surfing or whatever it was they were doing and then i'd wait for my wife and and she'd come home and we'd have our first drink of the day together my 20th and her first and uh she was always glad to see me and i was just really waiting for her for her you know when i drink i love everybody especially my family I'm the luckiest man in the world to have a wife like that and two lovely children. It's a privilege to work for them and to support them. If I'm drinking, I don't quite think of it that way. So I'm really looking forward to her coming home. And she's always glad to see me when she comes home. And we have our first drink of the day together. and as we're finishing the first drink I'm starting to get a little cozy she's starting to get standoffish and as she's finishing her first drink as she blacking out all the pent up emotions and hostilities of a lifetime come out and she just got meaner than hell she had a complete personality change and you know we could never drink together it was just impossible we always fought and argued I'm not here to take her inventory I'm sure you'll all understand that but I think I'll tell you just a few of the things it'll just help you understand my case a little better when she did stuff like throw the christmas tree lights and all out the back door she used to break my own she i had my own little private sony tv you know she i was watching that one night all of a sudden she took a hammer killed it dead right there and I could never believe the action she took you know I'd stand there and oh honey don't do that you know i never i never stood up for my right can't believe how i acted and but she used to break my old 78 records just because they played them more than once you know when i took that drink at that bar when i was 18 years old they were playing it's good music and uh i truly by the way really i truly believe that my emotional growth stopped right then and there when I was 18 years old when they served me that drink over the bar. And I didn't make any changes in my life until I came to AA about 25 years later. And I'm still playing the same music that I played in that bar. And anything else, I just will not accept anything new. and you know i'll just stay with the bad i but i'm not i'm not going to try anything new and if it didn't happen when that during the time i was 18 it's no good so i know that before i even tried and uh so that's and that's the way i lived all those years no wonder i was a rotten husband no wonder I was a rotten father you know I dealt with marriage like I was 18 years old. And so we just used to fight, and I'd play one of these old records. I'd put one of those old records on, and just like I'd say, I'd pray it, my God, it's a good song. It's like the first time I ever heard it. I'd pay it again and again and then one more time, and it used to drive her crazy. She would go over to the phonograph, take the record off the turntable, and smash it don't break that it's a priceless 78 you know you can't replace those good i'll never have to hear that damn thing one night she went over the phonograph just took the arm and bent it up i couldn't play any more records that night i'll tell you that i don't know where she got her strength from the next morning i got a hammer and pliers and a wrench i tried to straighten out that arm i couldn't get it straight i was a metal arm i don't know and she never ever remembered a thing she did she said and i didn't know anything about blackouts until i came into aa i always remember i remembered everything i don'T KNOW WHAT'S WORSE NOT REMEMBERING OR REMEMBRING i remember that's all and uh i finally told her i said you know this is ridiculous we're this is worse than it used to be you know we didn't get along before not since you started drinking it's really bad and you know some people should just not drink that's all and so i said i'm going to go to my brother's house tonight stay all night with him when I come back tomorrow morning I expect you to be gone that's more time than you ever gave me I expect your out of here I moved here first therefore you go this time and I let you kick me out of all those other houses but this is my house and so I expect you to begone when I came back and so i went to my brothers house you know I got three brothers I went to the brother who you can knock on his door at 1am And as long as you've got something in a brown paper bag, he'll just pull you right in. And we sat up all night and philosophied about everything. And we really had it all figured out. And while we were doing that, she decided to commit suicide. She was always—but it was no big deal. She was—she was always committing suicide. She was suicidal right into AA. she had about eight months of sobriety eight or ten months of sobrieto and something bad happened and we know it was bad she could never remember what it was but it was bad because she was going to kill herself then she remembered she couldn't because she was the cookie lady at the meeting that night you know sometimes you wonder why they give some of us flaky people some of the jobs they give us around here they're life-saving jobs that's why but anyhow that night she was going to do it and but before she did in a blackout she went into the car to the closet where my clothes were hanging and just took a knife and slashed my clothes to pieces it's ripped everything up cut my shirts and ties in half and cut the pant legs off my pants stabbed my damn shoes the thing that bothers me the most is she went into my dresser drawer and cut up my shorts she did a complete job on it on me i'll tell you that And when she got through with that, then she went into the room and threw lamps around and pictures off the wall, pulled the drapes off the curtains, you know, the curtains off the windows and just destroyed that place. Broke records and all that stuff. And then she Went to bed. But before she did, she turned the gas on, kitchen oven, and went to bed, she woke up next morning nothing happened that old place we lived in you know it's a half a block from the ocean and and the wind used to whistle through those boards you could have turned the gas on tin ovens never smelled it in there so she survived yeah and she looked around she had been the only one that had stayed there that night she looked round and saw what she had done And she knew she had done it, but she didn't remember doing it. And, you know, it looked like a bomb went off in that place. And she just couldn't believe what she had been doing. What she had gone. Then I came home. And I had trouble believing it myself. And then our son came home and he checked us out. He thought we were moving again. And there we were. We had hit bottom. I'm from a good family. She was from a good family we didn't have any alcoholism in our families and at least not mine anyway and when we got married you know we really had some wonderful plans what we were going to do with our lives. We had wonderful plans what we were gonna do. We were gonna live the good life and all we had managed to do do is sit around and slowly drink every bit of goodness out of our lives. And from then on nothing was good. From then on everything was bad. I kept on drinking, you know this is the part of the story where a lot of guys say, and you know and I hit bottom so I looked up number in book and called AA and some real nice guy came out and took me to a meeting and everything just been wonderful ever since you know and i didn't know and i'd i didn t do that i just kept on drinking and things were lousy but i kept on drinkin anyhow and uh we had just prior to that we had started back to group therapy again we had gone to therapy off and on for years trying to figure out what was wrong and this last guy last therapist said do you really drink as much as she says i said hell yeah i do i drink a lot now who wouldn't marry to a woman like that i got these two bad kids i got two of the rottenest kids you could possibly imagine i got this pressure job my god the pressure on that job alone would make a person drink but what's the big deal so I drink so what never missed a meal they've always had a decent place to live they've all had clothing and they've always had everything they needed braces on their teeth medical attention whatever it was and so my drinking has not interfered with anything that they would have able to do I never drank this you know and not paid my rent or anything like that so I drink so what I got a lot of pressure on me I need to take a few drinks in the evening and he said have you ever thought of quitting I said as a matter of fact I had and I did I used to think about it every night starting tomorrow I'm not going to quit tonight but starting tomorrow i am and uh he said have you ever thought of going to aa alcoholics anonymous i said forget it i've already been to alcoholics autonomous and i had gone to a meeting two or three years prior to that it was one of these meetings where they pass out chips for various lengths of sobriety and the leader that night said has anyone just finished their first 30 days of sobriety if so come up and get a chip and so here comes this guy up you know he's got his chip 30-day chip he says my name is joe blow and i'm an alcoholic i'm really proud to get this chip because 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 and 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 it's a wonderful glorious way of life and for all you newcomers keep coming back we love you i went oh geez you know any anyone else you're kind of 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 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 keep me coming back to these meetings and i i just love every single person here hate is no longer a word in my vocabulary I love everybody not just the people in AA but everybody in the whole world when my children look at me now they look at us they look up at me with respect in their eyes and I've noticed lately my husband is looking at me with renewed interest it's a glorious way of life my children are failing off they're all failing in school now we're getting letters from all the major universities i wake up in the morning and i reach over and i grab the hand of god and i walk through the day hand in hand with god wonderful glorious wonderful those 12 steps of AA for all you newcomers. Keep coming back. We love you. I just wasn't able to attend the rest of the meeting that night. I needed a drink. I needed it bad. And I went out and got one, or 20. So this guy said, AA. I said, forget it. I've already been to AA, some kind of a spiritual program, religious cult of some kind. It's okay for them. It's just not for me. And so he put my... I said but you know I'm going to quit drinking. I'm tired of all this. I'm gonna quit drinking just to prove once and for all that that's not our problem. You know I wasn't all that wrong. Alcohol wasn't our problem, it's a symptom of our problem but it's more of a solution than the problem you know we just won't face life and so i went to i went this doctor i was going to take an abuse and he put me in touch with this doctor and the doctor's instructions were not to drink for two days prior to coming to the appointment and which i didn't and so when i got there the doctor says is it true that you haven't had a a drink for 48 hours prior to coming here and i said that's right and he says well if that's right he says you don't need an abuse that you're over the hump if you can go two days 48 hours without a drink you need never take another drink as long as you live if you don'T want to scared the hell out of me and he just went on and on and on about the disease of alcoholism you know he just wouldn't quit he just went on and on and on about it and he said that that people that are alcoholic have character defects and that they refuse to cope with their problems instead of coping with their problems they drink tonight instead they wake up the next morning they still got all their problems only now they got a hangover on top of it and they repeat it over and over and over again and he was telling me my story I just didn't recognize it at the time and I said well if you're not going to give me an abuse I guess I better go how much do I owe you and he said I can see I'm not making much of an impression on your so I'm going to tell you something I would normally tell my patients but due to the nature of your appointment here today I'm gonna tell you something he said i know a little bit about alcoholism because you see my wife's an alcoholic and we've tried everything known the medical science on her nothing's worked we've tied an abuse tried psychiatry tried rest homes and sanitariums and treatment centers we've tried everything it all works temporarily as soon as she gets home after a few days she drinks again and as long as she's in the hospital she's staying sober but as soon as she gets out she started drinking again but she's sober now she goes to AA and she's got seven months of sobriety and that's what I recommend that you do he promised me when you leave here this afternoon you'll drive up to the Manhattan Beach Clubhouse and buy the book alcoholics anonymous and There'll be no charge for this call. And that's the only thing that guy said that day and it impressed me at all. And I went up and bought the book and I threw it on my dresser and then we had this fiasco where she tried to commit suicide and everything and she had been with me and heard all of what the doctor had said. And so she went back and asked the doctor because she was really afraid she was going crazy because she didn't remember doing any of that stuff. And she went back and asked that doctor if he thought she was an alcoholic. And he said he didn't know, but why didn't she go to some meetings with his wife? And so that's what she did. She started going to meetings with the doctor's wife. And to be a good guy, every once in a while I'd go to a meeting with her. I hated the meetings. I hated them. you know and uh i just didn't want to you know i refuse to listen by god and i'll be damned if i didn't get sober anyhow it's all a big accident you know and i didn'T you know I I just woke up one day I was sober so and uh I um I realized after I had two or three weeks I had gone two or three weeks without a drink after going to AA. And I come out of this kind of a stupor, I guess, and I realized that I hadn't had a drink for a couple of weeks. And anger set in. I just finished 25 or 30 years of drinking. I've got this rotten wife, two of the worst children you could possibly imagine pressure job i owe money to everybody and it's all past due i don't mean last week i mean past in the past all past do and now i can't even drink what am i gonna do with the rest of my life my life is over absolutely it's over i'm never going to have a good time ever again i'll be able to work i'll get up and go to work on time and i'll come home on time i'll go to a meeting on time I'll get home again I'll go to bed and get up early and go work and one long gray tunnel tunnel for the rest of my life you know I never go to decent restaurant ever again stuck at Denny's for the the rest of my life notice I didn't say Kentucky Colonel you know you can't go to a decent restaurant what do they want to know when you go into a nice restaurant but the first thing they want I know would you like a cocktail before for dinner and you can't say to him well yeah i'd like one but see i've got this disease of a twofold nature it's an analogy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind if i even take one drink i can't predict my behavior if it wasn't for that i sure have one you know 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 IF I WAS STANDING ON A STREET CORNER AND SOMEBODY WALKED UP I'D START EXPLANING WHAT I WAS DOING THERE YOU KNOW I HAD NO SELF-WORTH AT ALL I I HATTA EXPLEAN JUST WHAT A LITTLE BIT OF SPACE I WAS TAKING UP IN THIS AND I YOU KNOW THAT'S ONE THING I'M TRYING TO DO NOW IS QUIT Quit explaining. It's hard. Hard not to explain. I want to explain all the time, but I'm trying to quit. But every once in a while, I find myself explaining to somebody. And I always start from the day I was born for some reason. And that brings up the date, you know, all of pros and cons and ramifications of the subject. And then I realize what I'm doing, and I stop right in mid-explanation. They never notice the difference. Turns out no one's listening to your explanations. No one is interested in knowing why you haven't done something you were supposed to do in the first place. And I'm just trying to quit altogether, but it's not easy that I have a lifetime pattern of explaining. And you know, AA isn't all fun and games. We have a hell of a good time. I do. I had a wonderful time in AA, and it was wonderful being here and seeing my friends that I've known for quite a number of years. They might not be able to see the growth in themselves, but boy I can sure see it. I see them every couple of years or so and it's just amazing and I just love being here with these fellows. But you know, it's not all fun and games. There's work connected to it. And I'm glad that, you know I had three or four miserable months of sobriety where I was really feeling sorry for myself my life was over you know struck down in the prime of my life and i knew it was all over for me and uh i hated aa and i hated going to the meetings i knew i had to do it because i didn't want to drink and and that's when i got a sponsor about that time and i'm very glad that I got a sponsor, and I'm very glad that I got a tough sponsor. Because a tough sponsor will insist that you work the steps, and he or she will help you maintain your sobriety while you're doing it. He or she will answer all those silly questions about subjects that you should have learned when you were a small child. You had to go to the bathroom when they passed out that information or something. And you can talk to your sponsor about stuff like that. I'm very glad that I got a sponsor like that because he insisted that I work the steps and I did. If you're anything like me, if you don't have the Twelve steps as a as a guide to life you know to teach you and get your life straightened out why uh when the chips come down you'll drink and i don't ever want to drink again and the chips came down from me about eight and a half years ago i'm sitting in my office and and my wife comes and tells me i just got back from the doctor the doctor tells me I got lung cancer. I got three months, six months at the most to live. Oh, man. What a shock. We had moved up to the desert and bought a beautiful home up on the desert. We were planning to retire up there in a few years. And here she came with that news. I just wasn't ready to hear that. You know, they talk about trying to live one day at a time in AA. You don't have to try. That's all you're living is one day at a Time anyhow. It's all your God, whether you know it or not. Because we had wonderful plans what we were going to do and they didn't work out. But you see, because I had the training, because I worked the steps, I knew not to have too great of expectations. It's okay to plan, but just don't plan the outcome. And it's okay to make plans, but just don't expect results every time, you know. Or the results you get may be different than the results that you're expecting. And so I was able to handle that. And I went to my meeting that night because that's what I did on that night. It was my regular meeting night. So I went To The Meeting. That's another way I was trained. You always go to The Meeting whether you feel good or you feel bad. It doesn't matter. you go to the meeting and I went to the meeting that night and I wasn't expecting any answers to my problem or anything I just was there and that night as they do every every night at that particular meeting they read a vision for you I don't know if they do that here or not but on page 164 the big book there's it says ask in your morning meditation, what you can do for the man who's still sick. The answers will come if your own house is in order." I've heard that read and I've read it myself several times. Sometimes you wonder, am I really working these steps right? Am I really workin' this program right? And I heard those, you know, the answers will come if your own house is in order i heard that that night it had a big impact on me and i said yeah my house is an order our house is you know we had some rough years at the beginning of aa my wife and i but we had long since settled all that and we had some darn good years in AA together. And everything that needed to be said had long been said. And we were courage in our relationship. And we had some order in our life, slowly over purity years you know slowly i had become dependable and i had become responsible if you you know if i told you i was going to do something you could oh you could bet money i'd do it because my word was good slowly over a long time that happened and i knew i walked out of that meeting that night i knew I was going to be able to help be some help to her and i was if anybody would have asked me hank just what have you got from aa what have you received from a what's the big reward you know you know sobriety of course my good health but you know what have she got i got it i got even i got caught up i was always behind always behind i always had a 10 things to do if you asked me to do something I couldn't do it because I had all this stuff I needed to do that I hadn't attended to. And over a period of years, I have become current in all my affairs, financially, emotionally, in all of my relationships. And that's the big reward for me. And I'm able to walk down the street and meet anybody. Years ago, I used to hide from people if I saw them coming because chances are I owed them something, money or something. And now I don't have to do that. So when she died, she lasted five years because she used to take in directions too and she did what the doctor said and we had some good years there too and traveled all over the United States in a car and gypsied for five weeks in an automobile station wagon. We had done a lot of good things, and so when she died, it was too soon. She shouldn't have died, but I don't have any power over things like that. It was her time to go, but just be a few days on January the 1st, I dangled a number 16 on a chain in front of her. You know, she had been in kind of a coma, you know, in and out. And I dangled the number 16 in front of her, and her eyes lit up. She was aware what day it was. It was her 16th birthday, and she died a couple of weeks later. And it was a shock because I don't care how prepared you think you are for something like that. It's still a kick in the solar plexus. and uh so i'm but i'm you know i'm i can stand up here tonight i don't have any guilt it's a shame that she had to go but i am not guilty about it i don' t have to stand up here and say gee if only i would have said this i should have said that if only i would have done this no i did it i did and i was set free actually when she passed away and my son and i and my daughter too you know they're both self-supporting from their own contributions and i'm not talking necessarily financial but they're all emotion they're emotionally stable and they're running their own lives. I'm not interfering in their life and they are not interfering with mine. And our relationships are current. And everybody I know, that's my prayer in the morning. I get up and it's kind of a corny prayer but I just say what's next? That's what I do whatever is next. The next indicated thing that's what I do if I put anything off I feel crappy at the end of the day you know because I'm a you know I'm the biggest procrastinator in the world and and but I don't I don' t do that anymore and if I if I'm if I if I'd put in a full day and do everything that that set in front of me that day when i lay my head on the way on on the pillow that night i feel good i feel spiritual you know because i got nothing nagging at me and so uh i'm very glad that she was my wife and i'm glad that you as a mother of my children and it was i'm sorry that she had to go but now i've got a choice you know now i can mope around in aa i got a lot of friends in aaa and they'll feel sorry for me you know poor old hank after all those years of marriage you know he and lou she was wonderful in aa she sponsored a lot women you know and of all those years you know now now he's alone poor guy you know i can really milk that you know and uh i can't really do it or i can choose to live and that's what i've chosen to do is to live and the people in aa you know have brought me back into the land of the living i dealt with death for five years they just pulled me right back into the land of the living you know and i can't begin to tell you the adventure i've been on this last three and a half years i'm doing things i should be retired up on the desert you know uh sitting there in in a rocking chair or something and instead i'm here in fargo you know i've done all kinds of exciting things i've even entered the dating game once in a while you know i've met a woman and i asked you know well i wonder whether i should ask her out or not you know and i talked to myself well okay and i call her up and want to go out i know damn well she wouldn't wanna go out yeah and she said yes oh crap now what the hell am i gonna do and all the feelings that i had when i was 17 and 18 years old come rushing back to me All those feelings of inadequacy and nervousness and all that stuff. It's all come back to me, and I remember why I started to drink in the first place. And this time I'm getting through all that without a drink. And I really do feel I'm a fortunate man. And I figured it all out. What I did is I fulfilled my responsibilities as an employee me as a husband, as a father. I fulfilled all those responsibilities and now God's given me a few years to enjoy myself carefree without any responsibilities and I'm having a great time. You know that son that used to look at me so funny back in those days. The reason he was looking at me is so funny is that he was stoned out of his gourd. Seemed that he He had a drinking problem too, and he took a little LSD and smoked a little pot and stuff too. I'll be damned if he didn't turn himself into AA when he was 21 years old. I watched him take a 16-year cake last May the 27th. My daughter's son, his nephew, is 23 years old and he's coming up to five years of sobriety. And every Wednesday night we go to the same meeting together and celebrate our sobriety together. And sometimes they say there's no big deals in AA, but there are. That's a big deal. And my daughter and my daughter-in-law, they both send you greetings from Al-Anon, and we're an AA family. We weren't any kind of a family 20 years ago. On December 29th, if I make it, I'm going to have 20 years. And 20 years we didn't have – we weren't ANY kind of family. And now, you know, we're still not the best family on the block. I wouldn't try to kid anybody, but we conversed like it was Thanksgiving the other day and at the table all together we actually conversed right you know across the table you know just like we were real people or something and it's a it's a wonderful glorious way of life you know and no I've had a lot of bad days in AA you You know, I've had the worst days of my entire life in AA. Some people don't have bad days after they get sober. They say anyway. But I have had the worse days of My entire Life in AA, you know. But I've Had 20 Wonderful Years. Because see, they expect you to cope with life. They expect us alcoholics to cope with life without any alcohol, without any pills, without any funny cigarettes, just on the natch. And sometimes coping is hard and it's difficult for us. And so I've had the worst days of my entire life in AA because I felt every painful bit of it. But I've been there for 20 wonderful years. And so, I've met a lot of wonderful people in AA, All the people that I was looking for out there in those bars, they've all gotten sober. They're all right here in AA. But I wouldn't trade places with anybody tonight. Twenty years ago, I'd have traded with anybody. But I'll accept who I am tonight. I have an exciting life. And so about the only thing that I can tell you for sure is that this program is really a wonderful program to be in and when I see my children now they look at me with respect in their eyes and I found out that this really is a spiritual program and I know that I found God when I walked through the doors and you know it's the lights in the eyes of the people that just turn me on and keep me coming back and thank you very much Thank you.