The Chronic Alcoholic Who Hit Bellevue Thirty-Five Times – 1965 – Joe M.

Our next speaker, there has been a change in the program. Unfortunately, Julian B., who was to have spoken here tonight, has taken ill. But there is a replacement, and what a replacement. Once again, the facts create the interest. And the interests, quite simply, are these. that our speaker recently celebrated his 25th year of sobriety. His story is in the big book under the heading, Joe's Woes. There is a brief description of that story and it reads simply like this. Joe's woes were only the beginning when he hit Bellevue Hospital for the 35th time. He still had the state hospital ahead of him and even after a a heartbreaking test of his new found faith ladies and gentlemen may i present to you from new york city joe m good morning everybody Uh, I am Joe Miner and I'm an archaeologist. Maybe I'm a little different than the ones from Alaska and Ohio and Florida. As you often hear mentioned up here, a fellow speaker will get up and say, I never drank until I went to high school. Next one would get up, proceed them and say, I never took a drink till I went to college. Well I never drank in high school or college because I never went to high school. Our leader told you about 35 trips to Bellevue, that is so. And let me say this, that should qualify me as an archaholic because they don't take you in the archaic ward in Bellevue for a signer. And when we mention archaholism is a disease, I I think it's a very, very insidious disease and a very progressive disease. I took a drink in my early teens, I got drunk in my early teens. And I stayed drunk for a period of 30 years, to say. Now I made my first trip to Bellevue back in 1916. And at that time, I was diagnosed in Bellevue Hospital as a chronic alcoholic Now what the hell did a chronic archaholic mean to a 16-year-old boy? I thought a chronic archeholic was a derelict or a drunken bum A Skid Row bum or a Bowery bum And I didn't do too much about it But little did I know at that particular point that I was to make 35 more trips to that institution, and little didI know atthat point that I, too, wound up as a derelict. I wound upas a drunken bum, a Bowery bum, and a Skid Row bum. So I think we areaffected with a very, very progressive disease. It's a disease that's I don't think there's any cure for it the medical profession claims they had no cure for it that was brought out today in one of the meetings and here in AA we don't have a cure for this so-called disease but here in AAA we do arrest this so called sickness and And a proof of that is talking to you here tonight. Now, I'm going to skip along because being an A.E.A., I have a pretty rough story and I don't have time to tell it here tonight, but you may read it in page 445 in the big book and if you play numbers, don't play that number. That damn number owes me about $30,000 if it owes me a nickel. Now, I was in A.A. for... No, I wasn't in Bellevue, and I come out. I tried a lot of things. I tried life in my own way. I knew I was having trouble as a young kid, and I tried things. When I come outta Bellevues, I, well, I tried, no, I was going to stop drinking. I was gonna keep this up till the day I got married. Now let's put it that way. And, well I'm gonna skip 10 years. In 1926, I did get married and at the time I really tried to stop drinking. And it was no success with me because I had no luck with it. And I went on and on. It was one continuous merry-go-round I was on for 30 years. After being married a few months, it was suggested to me maybe if I went back to church. I was away from church and I didn't want no part of God and didn't like the word God. A family of four and I'm the only alcoholic and the only bum in the family. And I thought maybe it was God's fault. That's the way I figured out. But I went back to church after the suggestion, and I went to church, and I took many and many pledges. A pledge never hurt me. Even as much as one time... Well, I was married 11 months, and my family or my wife got in the family way and I took my wife to the hospital. I got that far with her and I left her there and I went to visit my wife certain days, in fact every day, and those days used to keep a woman about ten days in trial birth. And then I made the date with a hospital staff that a certain day at a certain hour I was to come down and get my wife and bring my child home well that day come along and needless to say I don't know where I was I wasn't there but my dad took over and he he carried out this mission for his drunken son and I come rolling home oh wee hours of the the morning, and I get in the house, and my dad called me to this attention. And he went over, tried to give me a father-to-son talk, and he was talking to me. Hey, he tried to do good, of course, and then he went on to say, he says, you know, you got to change your pattern of drinking. You got to, you gotta change your company, he said. And here's the words he used and I'm not going to use any other of the words. He said, let these god damn Irish bums you hang around with let them drink all the whiskey they want he said, you buy yourself a bottle of wine, you take it home drink it with your meals, he'll never hurt you Well I took his advice I went out and bought two gallons of wine I come home and I drank the two gallons of wine and I was out looking for my Irish friends So drinking with my meals didn't help I even as much as went to the medical center And my sister suggested one time She was a nurse Things were getting rough Instead of better Now it's going into tragedy Tragedy, three children in the world And instead of getting better I'm getting worse About ten years after I married My wife's got a resentment She was going to leave me At the time My sister suggested To go to the hospital at the medical center. And I did, I went to the medical center and I checked in there or my sister checked in she paid about $40 for this visit. She stood all expenses and she talked to the doctor at the Medical Center in New York City and then we were assigned to a certain doctor. All we got is a number of this doctor's office and the name of this doctor who was supposed to take my case over. We knocked on the door, I knocked on the do,r and an answer from the inside came in and said, come on in the doors open. I walked in, I walked up to this doctors desk he stood up the greatest and he when he stood, he stood up to my shoulder a little bit old fella right away I stared at him I said what what the hell kind of a mess am I in now? I was bigger than he was. I thought I knew more than he did. Well, he asked me the silliest question that anybody could ask. He looked at the paper that my sister handed in the window and he says to me, he says, young man, he says why do you drink so much? I says holy gee there goes $40 out the window. Well, I had a talk with him. You know, I start asking him a lot of questions because I have interviewed psychiatrists in Bellevue by the hundreds. And you know, some of the questions I ask him, he can't answer me. And I was convinced I knew more than he did. And this went on. He got mad at me and threw me the hell out of the office. Then he told my wife and sister to come in and talk to them. And then he suggested that I would go to Bellevue. I did. I went to Belleville the next morning with my wife, my sister, and sober. when I walked in there with two ladies sober the doctor got a look at me the doctor that had seen me come in there in all shapes and forms like on a wheelchair or on crutches or tied down to a hospital cot and he also see me coming with a cop under each arm and when I walk them they they were two ladies, sober. He says, Myna, what are you doing in here in your condition? And I told him about the little squirt up in the medical center. He said, Do you want to go through with this i said yes and he drew out a voluntary commitment to a state hospital which i didn't know it was a state house but had i known as a voluntary committment to a state hospital maybe i wouldn't have signed it i don't know but i signed it and i was in the girls went home and i stood there i stood here for about a week then they called me took my clothes they gave me my clothes and they said you're going up the country And they took me to Rockland State Hospital on a bus. Now, when I got to Rockman State Hospital, I thought I didn't belong in a place like that. And believe you me, I really belonged. And I got mad when I get up there. Not angry, but mad. I got made at the world. I got met at my wife and sister, my whole family. And I get mad at everybody. And I was even mad at myself. stuff. I got so mad, I wouldn't talk to nobody in Rockland. Now here's a little tip. If any of you folks in the audience here tonight ever hit a place like Rockland State Hospital or any other state hospital, do yourself a favor and at least talk to the doctor. Now this went on for quite a while The bus come up from Bellevue the next week And the procedure is everybody looked out the window To see who was coming back Now everything was all right About ten got off that bus And the last two men to get off that bust I happened to be in BellevUE with them maybe 30, maybe 40 times and I knew one of those men had been in Rockland and they come up there and they said look this ain't the worst place in the world cooperate with us and you know we know the ropes in Bellevue and Jimmy here knows the ropes at Rockland so it didn't turn out to be the worst place in the World because 10 days later three of us are drunk or in hell up in Rocklin so even a voluntary commitment to a state hospital didn't help. I got drunk in Rockland so often that they threw me the hell out of Rockland for being a bad example to the other alcoholics. Now, I get out of rockland and what do I do? Same old, I'm on the same merry-go-round. I get in that a little more trouble now I'm going to go I'm gonna skip along and I want to I don't ever want to forget this last trip to Rockland all I remember of this class trip the rocklin is I know it was around 10 o'clock at night or maybe at midnight because I remember the early night shift going off and the late night shift coming up and when a late night shifts come on the doctor recognized the condition I was in and he give the male nurse a set of keys and he says go back there and get that bottle of coralli hide and they give me and while the nurses back there getting the corallihide I recall the doctor hollering bring back an empty water glass so they give me a big water glass full of coralla hide and I drank that and it It knocked me out, and they put a cot on the hospital floor at Bellevue M1, and they laid me down there. And the next thing I remember is about maybe an hour and a half later, these three men, they knelt down alongside my cot, and they're trying to wake me up. They didn't know whether I was dead or alive. They tried to get me to breathe again, I suppose, and then they did. Now they got me up on the set, up on a cot and my legs hanging down And then they stood me up and this male nurse was shaking me around Well when I come out of the fog a little bit I recognize this male Nurse right away, and when I came out of that fog seconds later Alongside of this male, Nurse said a New York City policeman in uniform Now the third man was a first-grade detective He was also alongside of this policeman there's two men from the New York City Police Department and they knew my record I guess and they says give this bum enough rope he laying himself which they did they picked me up that night in the alcoholic ward and they brought me upstairs put me in the prison ward and I was held I was taken downtown the DA's office and I would help her very very serious shot I was hell and I supposed to do seven and a half to 15 years years in state prison for something I, for a felony I committed in the blackout which was no excuse for the law at that time and it's no excuse to the law this very night. You just can't get away with it and it was all set for me but two weeks before they took me downtown for sentence something did happen because a brother of mine that was around He came down and he went back and forth downtown, pulling a few wires here and a few strings there and politics and a $1000. And something did happen because I was taken down on the right date and all. And when I was sentenced, instead of state prison, I was sent to Rockland State Hospital for the rest of your natural life. That happened to be late 1937. And early 1938, I met a man in Rockland that I hadn't seen in a couple of years. And I'd been in jail with this fellow. I'd be locked up so many times, more times than I'd ever been in Bellevue. And I had drank with this guy, got drunk together with him. But I hadn'T seen him in maybe 18 months. And when you meet a guy like that, you want to know about each other. And we did. We swapped stories. And I said, what happened? How come I didn't see you or you didn't See me? the last couple of or this last couple years let's put it that way and there and he's the first guy that mentioned AA he says the reason you haven't seen me he said hey I met a handful of men out the brownstone house in Clinton Street Brooklyn at that time our founder Villa Wilson did have a Brown and Lois they They had a brownstone house in Clinton Street, Brooklyn. And he was going to these meetings down there. They had the membership maybe of about 18 or 19 men. There were no ladies in the AA at that time. He told me all about these meetings, and he went on to say, you know, these fellows are even writing a book. Right now some of the scripts are up in Akron, Ohio and down Jersey Coast and so on and so forth. it. And when the book is published, they're going to name it Archaholic Phenomenon. And that was it. That's all he could tell me about AA and what AA was doing for 18 or 20 men at that time. And he told me all about it. He told me, I was in the same dormitory as this guy. Believe me, oh, I got fed up with him. He said, AA for breakfast. We get up in the morning, he start going in the mess hall more. Well this kept on, we go on a job together was nothing but AA. We wouldn't wake, we'd sit down and talk AA. He was talking AA. Well I stood all I could of at him and then I says now wait a minute, let's put our cards on the table if you say hey what you're building it up to be and now answer me a question what the hell are you doing back here in Rockland he says oh I'm one of the unfortunate ones I had a slip well I don't know what the hell is slip man either well anyway to make a long story shorter we'll skip April of 1939 was the first print of the big book. And May of that same year, May of 1939, and that book was brought up to Rockland State Hospital. It was introduced to the superintendent up there and with a message that they had, they had a message for the hundreds of chronic archaeologists that it was in that hospital at that time. Now Bill come up with a book, but Bob Valentine in the Montclair group he was the instigator getting Bill in there with the book that time because he had known this Dr. Blaisdell and we talked to him they must have sold him a bill of goods because they they sold them a bill of Goods because I asked him, he said, let us prove to you what we are trying to do with this book and get one of the worst cases of alcoholism on the ground. Now, I don't know what's going on in the administration office and at this point I'm in the day room of the reception building and I'm playing pinochle with three other nuts and then this guy comes along this male attendant he says Dr. Baisdell wants to see you drop your cards he said he wants to see up in the office that's the time I was introduced to Bill now Bill is my sponsor I guess I'm I'm lucky like Clarence here, he had Dr. Bob for a sponsor. But Bill is my sponsor, Bill and Bob Valentine. I think I'm one of the lucky ones. Well they got to me, they talked to me, and before they left, they they talked to me for a couple of hours. Before they left they left me the big book and Bill says to me he says you read this book and see what you think about it and and we'll be up to see you again. Well, they did. I read the book, and I kept it to myself. And about a month later, or three weeks later, Bill and a couple other guys from AA had come up. I'm in the day room. I got the book under my arm. I'm talking to a group of men. Made them look like that I was talking AA to them, but I wasn't, see? Bill come in and he says Hiya lad, how you doing? I says, I'm doing all right How are you fellas doing? He says, you letting anybody read the book? I says shh Don't blot this book No, no And And then out of the clear sky I don't know where the hell he got This bum's name from He mentioned a name that I knew had been in Bellevue maybe 95 times And he'd been in Rockland over 12 times And he says to me, have you gotten to Frank Rogers yet? To read this book I said, wait a minute Bill Do you mean that bum back in building 19 That's been in Bellview 90 times And he's been to Rockland Is that the Frank Rogers you mean? he says yeah you know how bill is he says that's the frank rogers i mean i says now wait a minute bill if we want to make a go with this let's keep those bums the hell out of it or we'll never make Well, anyway he had an ace in the hole and he says to me, he explained to me. He says, here's what we're trying to do and you can do more in this hospital and the whole membership can do on the outside and the old membership at that time maybe 95 or 75 people throughout the country. And Bill explained the program to me and before he left, he says, you do this and I'm sure... Well, I did. I done what he told me. Then I took the book after Bill left because Bill says to me, he said, why don't you cooperate with us? He says, who knows maybe in four or five years we'll be able to spring you. Wow! Now, now, now I can understand them. I got two minutes to go. I don't know where the hell I'm going. Well, that's all I wanted to hear. When Bill left this time, I took that book and I went from ward to ward and I was going to sober every son of a bitch in the place up and I did. Leave you and me, I did it. I sobered everybody up, but I didn't sober me. Well, that's it. I went out. I left the hospital. I got thrown in the hospital and I went to the hospital I went outside and I took a glass of beer under a challenge that one of the men in Steinway Hall was Tom Burrell. He got up and here's the words he used and I'm going to use them too. He said, as long as one is an alcoholic alcoholic, you'll never be able to take another drink as long as you live. Now this is before even Bill, I don't think, knew that we had a 24-hour program. And so when he left, when he got through talking that night, this fellow in Steinway Hall, I says, gee, as long long as you live. Well, I couldn't take that May. After the meeting, I snuck out and I had done something I'd never done before in an A.D. meeting, but thank God I'd never done it since. I went out and had a glass of beer, and one beer brought another, and I had about seven beers. Then I was getting fed up with the beer, I was too much of a a beer drinker. And then I said to the bartender, make that a double calvus. He did. Well, three months later, I was back in Rockland again. Now, that's the time I cleaned myself out and here I am after 25 years. I can honestly stand here and say I had my last drink of alcohol 25 years ago in just one month. Thanks to you good people in A.M. Last but not least, the grace of God. Thank you very much. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. And oh, if only they hadn't given us these lights and if they hadn'T placed a time limit on this panel. It's a minute or two to two and we're going to close right on time. But before we do, tell me frankly now Did you ever hear four better speakers? And on behalf of Clarence, Claude, Edith and Joe, may I tell you they've never had a better audience. May we close now please with the Lord's Prayer. Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.