The Danger of Selective Forgetting – Tom B.

I was born a Brady too. My name is Tom Brady Jr. I'm an alcoholic and I haven't I had a drink since July 20th, 1965. I almost forgot that. And if you want to applaud somebody for that sincerely, applaud the Almighty and this program, not me. I've got emphysema. I'm having a little trouble with this heavy air. And so if I have to take a couple of puffs off my inhaler, If my voice starts going away, just, you know, sit back and ask Dick to wave his arms. He'd be glad to. I am the second illegitimate son of Burns Brady. The first illegitmate son of Barnes Brady was Bill Brady. And that's the reason there's a damn many Bradys here tonight Burns was quite active In his younger days I wish you were here to hear that I was thinking about something today In my years of drinking And since I've had One of my biggest character defects has been what Bill Wilson calls selective forgetting. And I've been told that if I forget what it was like, that there's a good chance I'll repeat it. And I was reading back here on page 151 in the big book, and let's all just remember for just a minute here. It says, For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship, colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom, and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heart-breaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt and one more failure. The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of king alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places hoping to find understanding, companionship and approval. Momentarily we did, then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous four horsemen—terror, bewilderment, frustration, despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand. Now and then a serious drinker being dry at the moment says, I don't miss it at all, feel better, work better, having a better time. As ex-problem drinkers we smile at such a Sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself. Inwardly he would give anything to take half a dozen drinks and get away with it. he will presently try the old game again for he isn't happy about his sobriety he cannot picture life without alcohol someday he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it then he will know loneliness such as few do he will wish for the end I have been there and I'm sure that many of you in this room have been at the same place and I just like to remember every now and again that for myself and I like to help others remember that too that what the book teaches me is I have a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition I am never cured of alcoholism never according to this program in which I believe you ever notice how smart children are children under things understand things in a simple way alcoholics novice is a simple program you know i remember i got a son named jason he's eight years sober now thank god he weighs about 240 he's about six three and when he was a young guy you've heard of armchair philosophers. Well, Jason was a potty chair philosopher. When he sat on his potty chair, he wanted somebody to sit there and discourse with him. And he would say the darnedest things to me. And one day he said, Dad, why don't I be the dad for a while and you be the son? And I said, well, how are we going to do that? He said, it's simple. He said, I'll grow up and be the father. You grow down and be the kid. And you know, I believe from the bottom of my heart one of the main purposes of Alcoholics Anonymous is to help me strip away this massive ego and become more like a child. If you will, become God's kid again. And begin again to see things like a child simply as they ought to be. You know,I've sat around many meetings over the years and We talked about the first three steps, and I've heard the first three steps very eloquently discussed, philosophically discussed, metaphysically discussed. You can almost hear the violins going in the background. That deep shit, you know? It's really, really simple. When I was a kid, I knew that when I was beyond my limits, if I would get somebody bigger than me and turn the situation over to them, the situation would be solved. I had a friend who was named Ronnie. And Ronnie's the filthiest kid I ever knew in my life. Ronnie wiped his nose on his sleeves, you know? And he pulled boogers out of his nose and put them in his hair. Twist his hair around and it stuck out all over his head. And Ronnie stunk, you Know? And he didn't have a chance. His mom and dad were street drunks. He really didn't have a change. And I liked him. But I was afraid of him. I don't know if it was the smell or what, but I was scared of him and I could beat Ronnie at two things. I could outrun him which was good because I was scared of me and I can beat him shooting marbles. Any of you older guys remember shooting marables? And the games of marbles is real simple. If you win, you get the marbles you know well I would win and Ronnie would take my marbles but I knew what to do I went home and got my dad I said dad Ronnie's got my marples he said did you win son I said yes he said that's not right let's go get them and he'd take me by the hand we'd go to Ronnie's house I think Ronnie just you know got my Marbles to get to see my dad who he loved to death you know and he'd say, Ronnie, did you get Tommy's marbles? He'd say yes, sir. Did you win? No, sir That's not right, son Give them back Okay Now here's the first three steps The first step says I have lost my marbles and I can't get them back The second step says I know that if I get somebody bigger than me I can probably get my marables back and the third step says when I turn the situation over to that larger being, I do in fact get my marbles back. So the next time you hear a long philosophical discussion, pull out your five-cent sack of marbles and start shooting them across the table and maybe somebody will get the message, you know? It's okay, Dick. Is that all right? intellectuals don't understand alcoholism intellectuals i believe are the real low-bottom drunks the thinkers they have to figure everything out you know uh the two lowest bottom drunks that'll walk through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, in my opinion, are the intellectuals and the overly religious. I'll call it religiosity, if you will. They're the toughies. You can get that old boy with puke all over him out the gutter and bring him in here and he'll pick up his deal right away. You get a guy with a couple of PhDs and 10 years later he's still saying, what's powerlessness? and if i were talking can you imagine me talking to a phd or an intellectual about my recovery and he's you've been sober a long time you must be an awfully strong person i say no sir when i admitted my weakness i began to get well and he would say and rightly so from an intellectual standpoint that makes no sense and i said i know it doesn't well you must have fought an awfully hard fight to win the victory over alcohol. No, sir, I surrendered. And he says, and that makes no sense. I said, I know it doesn't. He said, well, you do. I say, well I go to these meetings. Oh, group therapy. No sir, it's not group therapy, just a bunch of drunks sitting around talking to one another, lying mostly. And she says, that makes no sense. I said, I know it doesn't. Well, what else do you do? Well, I have a sponsor. Oh, a psychotherapist. No, sir, he's a plumber. And he says, that makes no sense. And I say, I know that doesn't matter. What else do we do? We have this program, you know. All the great metaphysicians and psychologists got together and put you together a program. No, sir, it was written by a bunch of drunks. And this guy's about out of his mind by now, you know, with my answers. And he said, well, who founded this outfit? And I tell him, a bankrupt stockbroker and a proctologist who had lost his ass. And I'm telling the man the truth, and he can't understand the truth. You know, what is more reasonable? what is more logical than that a person like me should understand me better than anybody else understands me and if he has had a life-saving experience in his own life be able to translate that message to me because I'm like him. It's very reasonable, you know? Now, when I say I'm an alcoholic I mean a lot of things you're not going to read in a psychology textbook. I'm the kind of person who always believed that anything that feels good should be done to excess. If it feels good, overdo it. So sometimes I eat too much and sometimes I sleep too much, you know? I remember when I found out sex felt good. I was by myself just like every one of you were. And in spite of my mother telling me I was going to go blind, it felt so good I decided I had to keep on at least until I was nearsighted. It's one of the first successes in my life. I'm the kind of person that likes to do everything at once and do it all perfectly. If I have phone calls on the phone and letters on the table, I'll try to do them all at the same time. I'm like a ping-pong ball bouncing off the wall going one way or the other. Our friends the aliens call that obsessive compulsive disorder. I call it the Tasmanian Devil Syndrome. You know? I'm a great starter and a poor finisher. And this one almost killed me. With my alcoholism when I was hurting, fast forward. Help me, help me, health me. Help me God, help AA, help anybody. And then I'd get feeling a little better and I'd pull it back on stop. You know? How many times have you seen people do this? They come in here and they get a month or two and they're glowing and everything's nice and they're getting their bills paid off and the wife's speaking to them again, you know, and the dog's licking them on the face and the kids are not running away and they say, I don't believe I need this. And pull it on stop. And you know this program is a program not of stop start, stop start. Stop start. It is a problem of practice. And if you practice, that means you've got to be a good finisher. Ask any good baseball hitter what's important the follow through ask any good golfer what's the most important the follow thru and they spend hours and hours and hours and hours the best of them on the practice tee and in the batting cage and our program if I'm not mistaken uses the word practice in the last step and it's very important i always loved magic i wanted to be fixed any all they want to be fixed i went to doctors to get fixed i went to the baptist church to get fixed every time they'd sing just i am i was and i'd go down and you know give myself to jesus again jesus got tired of seeing me coming and when i wasn't immediately and magically transformed I got mad at God or the doctor or whoever it was I'd ask to fix me this time, you know. There is no magic. What there are in this program is miracles and miracles require a maximum effort from me, you Know and a maximum amount of power from you and higher power if they're going to transpire. It's a partnership deal all the way. It's we thing. We is the basic word in this program, in case you don't know it. It's the first word in the first step. It's forward to the first edition of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, we. This is a we program. Of myself, I am nothing. but with the we with this benign powerful community you know I can become something okay now when I say I'm an alcoholic I mean simply I live in a body that will not handle alcohol does that make sense to you and our friends the scientists call it a biochemical genetic disorder usually having to do with the hypothalamic control system in the brain. And you can go for that if you want to. Dr. Silkworth said I was allergic. I can understand that. You know, I'm allergic to penicillin. Every time I take a penicilin shot, I break out. Every time we took a drink, I broke out drunk. They tell me in this program that something is wrong with my mind, that my main problem centers in my mind. Not the root of it. but the main problem centers in my mind. And they mention the word insanity. And I believe the type of insanity they're talking about in this program, like you were talking about earlier, is not the run-of-the-mill kind of insanity. They're not talking about schizophrenia or manic depressive disorder or clinical depression or anything like this, although many of us may have this disorder. They're talking abut an insanity which says on page 38 although we may have been intelligent in other respects where alcohol is concerned we have been strangely insane. Now there's a difference in strange insanity and straight insanity you know what I mean? If a guy is straight schizophrenic you can give him some howl dolls and he'll come back into the world for a while, you know? You give an alcoholic some howls dolls he'll be back in ten minutes say give me some more of that shit I lost it you know talk therapy does not work you know because I ain't going to tell nobody about me and I'm such a manipulator when I was in the psychiatric ward once within two weeks I had the doctor telling me his problems I was all the way into his potty training and everything you know What is this strange insanity? The idea that someday, somehow, he'll be able to control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession, which is a desire gone wild, of every abnormal drinker. And you know the only answer to that means this. I have been separated from something I must not be separated from because on page 45 it tells me not lack of howl doll is my dilemma lack of power I must find a power by which I can live or I'm going to die this obsession will not go away unless I connect with some kind of power greater than myself that's the only relationship you know between strange insanity and it has to do with alcohol in other areas of my life i may be you know function normally but when it comes to alcohol i'm i'm crazy crazy as a bed bug you know it's like we're all sitting around in a in a store you know an old store with an old wood stove any y'all ever do that and the old guys sit there and lie to each other and those kids believed them, you know. I can see Dick and Bill sitting there now. And Bob walks in the door. And, and Bob, before we can tell him not to, goes straight to the stove and puts his hand on it. Well, it burns him. And we feel sorry for him. We take him to the doctor and we get it all wrapped up and fixed up, you knowing. Two weeks later he comes back to the door and says, give me your attention. Okay, Bob, what do you want? I want you to know I'm putting my hand on that stove again, but it's not going to burn me this time. And he does it again. Now suppose he does this many, many times. He may be an able, intelligent, friendly person, but when it comes to stoves, he has not a damn lick a sense. And that's the point. When it came to alcohol, I was nuts. Okay? And the thing that differentiates for me alcoholism as it is treated in AA from every other approach is this I'm spiritually sick too I have a spiritual malady and listen to this once the spiritual maladies overcome I'll straighten out mentally and physically not the other way around no world is a spiritual malady any manipulators out there any of you ever read page 60 to 62 huh each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show that's me i was only comfortable when i was in control and i would do anything to get in control i'd lie cheat steal tap dance shuck and jive do anything i had to do to get control of every situation i was in because it scared me to death when I was not in control. Now, when I tried to manipulate people, they didn't like this because they wanted to do it too. And a wall was built between me and them. This is the way I visualize it. Now the approach that AA takes to this is that when you have a wall between you and your brothers and your sisters, you also have a wall between you and your God. You're isolated. You are disconnected from what you must not be disconnected from. And the approach is simple. First of all, quit playing God. Hereafter in this drama of life, he's the director. Y'all know the words. You've read them. He's the father. We're his kids. and then we were supposed to list the blocks that we put into that wall you know by name our faults and check them out with somebody real good make sure we didn't miss any and in steps 6 and 7 we ask God to take out enough of those blocks so that we can be of service to him and the people around us and we step through the wall and lo and behold we connect and we make restitution to those we have harmed and once I am connected the obsession to drink alcohol disappears like you had read on tonight a little further we feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality that's the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous or the miracle of Alcoholic Anonymous to me as far back in my life as I can remember I was afraid and angry but I didn't know what I was afraid of and I didn'y know what I was angry about but I feel those two feelings way back when I was a little boy I had a lot of reason to be afraid I was the ugliest baby you ever saw people say how do you know that I said my mother told me that My mother told me, son, I never saw an ugly baby in my life until you was born. And you was the ugliest thing I ever saw. You was all blotched up and everything. I wouldn't take you out of the house the first six weeks you were on the face of the earth. I didn't want anybody to see you. I told the psychiatrist that one time. He said, ooh. Ooh. He said that must have been traumatic for you. I said, no sir I've seen my baby pictures Mother was right I was ugly And as I grew up I didn't get much better I was one of those skinny little old boys You know, shoulder blades protruding in the back And I hated that It looked like a tricycle when you were walking around You know And I'd try to pull my shoulder blades in By pulling my shoulders around And my chest would disappear and my mother made me wear knickers my legs this big the knicker hole is that big some of you guys remember and they were always falling down and they're always made out of brown corduroy and i squished when i walked and i didn't like that either and i was sure my mother hated me if she wouldn't make me wear a knickers somebody mentioned a couple years ago man knickers are coming back I said not on me they're not in addition to being so skinny I had freckles all over my body I had feckles where people have never reported having freckle I had them there all over me and I hated them I looked at me and I was skinny and I had all these freckled you know it's a funny thing I used to figure if the freckles would go away, everything would be all right. Long about the age of 13, they was replaced with the ugliest set of pimples you've ever seen in your life. Other kids had these little old zits, you know, that just pop them out. I had cysts and carbuncles and balls and risins and all these things all over me, man. Couldn't even have a simple pimple. Now, I want to be a macho man. I'm tired of being skinny and freckled and all that and looking weak and ugly, and I want To Be a Macho Man. My mother had four big brothers, and the most macho in the bunch was my Uncle Durwood, and they called him Dud. Now, Dud was a motorcycle cop in the days when they wore riding britches and leather spats up to their knees and he had a harness across here with silver bullets in it and a pearl handle 38 sitting high on his hip and he smelled like gunpowder and shaving lotion and he squeaked every step he took because he had so much leather on. And that was macho. And you know what Dud and my other uncles called me? Pudding head. how you gonna be macho somebody calling you pudding head check out a macho list and see if you see it on there anywhere but you know when I was up behind my Uncle Dud on that Indian motorcycle that police motorcycle with my arms around him I was not afraid see even then i needed a power greater than me i didn't realize it till many years later you know bill he's 90 years old now and he is still the most macho man i've ever seen in my life he he was my hero a few years ago he was throwing blood clots and having a lot of trouble he was in the hospital i jumped in my car and drove from charlotte up to burlington north carolina And I went into his room, didn't say hello or anything. I said, you can't die. He said, oh? Why not, Tommy? And I said because you're my hero. And if you die, I won't have a hero. I'm going to tell you something I feel from the bottom of my heart, the soles of my feet. We need heroes in Alcoholics Anonymous. we do not need idols because a person makes a good talk you know and you put him up on a pedestal and you wait for him to make a mistake so you can just tear him to pieces that's an idol I'm talking about heroes I'm telling you I'm not talking about girls and gals and guys that get out there and they do it and they make a mistake they pick themselves up brush themselves off and go and do it again they carry the message of this program they will help another drunk even if it takes something away from them to do so. They are willing to, if you will, and this is non-conference approved literature, lay down their lives for their friends. And I wouldn't be sober tonight but for my heroes. Bob White, he's dead. Chuck Chamberlain, he'S dead. But they're not dead. Do you understand what I'm saying? Not a one of them is dead. Harry Barrett, you know, I could go right down the list, and I used to hate these guys. And they're my heroes. My greatest hero of all was my daddy. My daddy was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest man that ever walked the face of the earth. I won't even argue that point with you. My daddy would walk down the street and all the dogs and children would follow behind him. Now when dogs and kids and children love you, you got something going for you That's very powerful. And I was born in a little old textile mill town down in North Carolina, you know? And on one side of the street all the houses were just alike and they were built of wood and the street wasn't paved and that's where the workers lived. And on the other side were great big houses with a paved street and that'S where the managers and the doctors and lawyers lived, you KNOW? And the railroad track ran right down the middle of town. and everybody on my side of the track which was the worker's side was family to me. It's what they used to call extended family. It's missing in 2000 and that's sad. It was an extended family and I spend a night at your house I eat at yourhouse if I misbehave I get punished at yourhaus Your mama and my daddy do by us just like they do with their children and that is the way it was and you know we helped each other the man next door had a smoke house full of country hams and country sausage go over and help yourself we had a community garden all of us worked in it we had fresh vegetables all the time I was the egg man I delivered the eggs you know and tried to ring chickens and eggs I never could get away with that chickens would fight me man I'd have to put them up under a tub and watch them flop around in there I couldn't stand it so they took me off that job and i love those people the lady that lived next door to me was named lena she's the best cook on the block she's also the best eater on the block and lena was a large lady and i used to love to hug lena man when i'd hug lina i had a breast in each ear and she'd rub me on the head and say i love you pudding and i just go and there was nothing sexual about it do you understand it was like being enveloped with warm fleshy love if i saw her tonight man i'd grab her and say you know and i had my best friend bill jr was her son you know he's a dark skinned little kid It had the most beautiful curly black hair you've ever seen in your life. He hated it. He wanted to be straight like mine. I remember finding a can of lard one day, and we straightened out his hair. That's the happiest I ever seen that kid until the curls started popping back, you know? And he hated to bathe. His mama put him in the tub. He'd take off down the street. And like I said, he was dark-skinned. The only thing light about him was his little butt. And you see this little moon-like butt going flying down the streets. And she'd come out and say, put knees loose again. And I'd go catch Bill Jr. You know, I remember these things. This little boy was programmed for self-destruction. If he was within 10 yards of your car, you didn't dare shut the door, his hand would be in that door. You know the kind I'm talking about? Old man Lucas would come by the house some days, you know, and he's going down to slop the hogs. I don't guess you slop hogs up in Ohio. but he had a you know he had a wheelbarrow he'd put me in the wheelbarow we'd go down to the hog pen and while he slopped the hogs fed them I'd go over and play in the creek and wade and drink some of that cool water out of the creek catch a few crawdads you know didn't have care in the world take my shoes off walk home barefooted you know if somebody asked me where I was going I'd say I don't know what you gonna do when you get there have no idea you know and now we want people to write down their goals and their objectives and their standards for everything and why they're doing it i was just being i don't know when i stopped being and started pretending but that was the day that dishonesty came into my life because the deepest form of dishonesty on the face of god's earth in my estimation is to pretend that I am something that I am not used to go to movies every Saturday cost nine cents to go to movies see a double feature western two good serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers these were the original space men you know good cartoons not this monster crap you see on TV now I'm talking you know Bugs Bunny Wiley Coyote. Wiley Cowdy is one of my role models. Wiley don't never give up. You know what I mean? He knows he's not going to catch that roadrunner. Reminded me of me when I was drinking, you know? Maybe if he'd just changed brands from Acme to something else, he'd catch that coyote. And the western cowboys are my heroes. Some of y'all are old enough to remember them Some of you have to watch TBS about 4 o'clock Sunday morning You might catch some of them There was Sunset Carson And Rocky Lane And the Durango Kid And Wild Bill Elliott Oh God, Wild Bill was something Wild Bill wore two silver six guns backwards And you draw down on Wild Bill And he'd spin those six guns around And shoot your guns out of your hand See, cowboys was polite in those days. Today you go to a cowboy movie, there's guts all over the screen, you know? And then he'd spin them around and put them back in there. And my favorite cowboy of all time was a dude named Lash LaRue. And they called him Lash because he carried a bull whip. You draw down on Lash, he'd whoop that gun out of your hand. He's about the coolest cowboy I'd ever seen in my life. And he was standing up on the top of the saloon one day at the end of this movie and run all the bad guys out of town and he popped his whip and he whistled and his horse came running by. And he popped it again and leapt into the saddle and rode off into sunset popping that whip. That's the most wonderful thing I ever saw. Tears came to my eyes, I swear to you. And then again and again. Flash. Ooh. Well, you got to emulate your heroes. So I went home and got a piece of rope and went up on to the garage. A little boy next door had a pony named Beauty. I said, John Q, go saddle up Beauty for me. And he did. I said now walk her past the garage. And he didn't. And I popped my rope and whistled and leapt into the saddle. And when I hit it you could have heard me scream in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I don't know if that was a spiritual experience or not. But I'll never forget it, I'll tell you that. And 30 minutes later, when I got my breath back, I started wondering about Lash LaRue. I'll tell you that right now. Thought maybe old Lash had some surgery or something. It's a wonder I ever lived to become a drunk. and you know all my trips back to the hog pen sometime i'd lay down in the front yard and look up at sky not looking for anything it was there yeah kids it's there you look at it i didn't try to analyze it measure it nothing i just look at us that's nice i'm gonna do this again and i get on move to my next experience you know nice cloud where'd it come from wonder where it went you know I'd go sit in the China Berry tree outside the kitchen window that's my favorite thinking place or should I say my non-thinking place because I relax there and I just watch the thoughts come through my head and I think about my daddy and what a sweet man he was and I'm and I think about my mother who's a bit different my mother was a black belt southern baptist do you know what i mean by that i often say i have two diseases alcoholism and southern baptism and both of them are incurable and she ran the church you know and she was a wonderful woman i know that today i found out after i got sober but mom didn't know how to overtly express love she'd give you money say go to the movie give you all the money you want, buy you clothes, take care of you. I knew she loved me, but she never said so. I think about, I got a good daddy and I got a good mama. I've got good friends. I love Lena, you know, and Lashley Rue and Wild Bill Elliott. But something's missing. And I don't know what it is. But if I ever find life is going to be wonderful. You know what Carl Jung wrote in a letter to Bill Wilson one time? He talked about the alcoholic's phenomenon of his craving for alcohol being the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness. It's like Johnny H. out in California said, I'd sit there in that tree, and everything was together except one thing. It was like there was a hole in the middle of me, and it was getting bigger and bigger and nothing would fill it. When I was 15 years old, I was on a high school singing trip in Greensboro, North Carolina. They got the best singers from all over the state, and I used to be a really good singer. And we gathered, and we practiced for a week, him we'd present a huge concert. And I was up there with my wise friends, Ducky, Boots, and Egghead. And they called the cab driver and gave him seven dollars and a half, and he gave them a bottle of brown liquid with a label on it that said Cream of Kentucky. And I said to Egghead, what do we do with this stuff? He said, you drink a water glass up as fast as you can. Then you drink a glass of water and you keep on doing that you're going to feel good, Tom. I followed directions real good. And man, the hole closed. And I felt like I belonged and the fear wasn't there and the anger wasn't there. And I was as good as they were for the first time in my life. Even felt better when they started passing out and puking. And when they were all passed out all over that hotel room, I called the cab driver, gave him $7.50, got me a pint of cream from Kentucky. I thought I had found the thing I'd been looking for, the thing that had been missing from my life. I honestly did. Didn't turn out that way. by the time i was 15 16 i was getting locked up regularly in the wake county jail in raleigh north carolina my daddy on the board of deacons in the choir teaching sunday school my mama hostess of one of the largest churches in town i'm making the social pages dick you know on the back drunk drunken disorderly resisting arrest drunk driving drunk driving drunk driving. And I'm ashamed of myself, you know, deeply ashamed of myself. And the more deeply ashamed I became of myself the more need there was for me to dull the shame. By the time I was 23 years old I'd had over a thousand stitches taken in my face alone as a result of drinking. This elixir I found in the hotel room tricked me. It gave me one almost heavenly experience. Ease and comfort like I never felt in my life. And that's the only time it ever did it for me that way without penalty. I always excelled at academics. I was one of those that's how I got That's the way I control things in school by the way y'all. I was the student in every class. I was a soloist with the choir, you know. If there was a spelling bee to be had, I won it. If there's a math contest, I win it. I made straight A's. I never made below an A in my life until I started drinking, ever. I was disgustingly perfect little boy. In the Baptist church, they had a group of boys called the Royal Ambassadors for Christ. and the highest rank in that outfit was Ambassador Plenty Potentiary and I couldn't even pronounce it but I was one quicker than anybody had ever been one before. Do you understand what I'm saying? Rise to the top. I'm an academic. I got a good mind. It almost killed me. Genius range they told me when I took a test. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous when I was about 23 years old. I thought, man, this is going to be duck soup. There's 12 steps on the wall over here and 12 traditions on the walls over here and there's a guy up front and he's got a blue book in front of him. He's in control. All I've got to do is memorize what's over there and what's in that book. They'll put me up front. I should be president of this outfit within six months. It's arrogant. Arrogant, controlling. If you could get a closer look at this book you'll see what happened for the next seven years with all the knowledge I needed of Alcoholics Anonymous in this head. The longest I ever stayed dry was 89 days. i could not stay sober on knowledge for the first time in my life knowledge gave me no control whatsoever and i used to sit and drink these are whiskey glass circles on the front of this book beer can circles and cry and read this book and say why can't i get it i'm dying why can'T i get I did brilliant things like most alcoholics do I drove under a tractor trailer one night in Wheeling, West Virginia took them four and a half hours to cut me out of the car nine and a halve hours in the emergency room putting me back together unconscious for three weeks in traction for three and a Halve months got medically addicted to morphine lost from 225 pounds to 120 left the hospital with my leg bent I thought permanently went home couldn't walk met a nice doctor there who said we got a new drug that just came out it's just like a strong aspirin totally non-addictive and that's what I'm going to give you it was called Percodan couldn't sleep at night so he gave me Seganal so I sat around in the lawn chair and ate Seganel and Percadam until I could get up on my crutches. And as soon as I could get up all my crutches, I went out and tried to clutch on my Volkswagen and I found out I could push it in. And I pushed it in and I started my Volkswagen and I went to the nearest bar and I got drunk. I have no doubt I'm a real alcoholic. None whatsoever. And people were amazed. How could you do that? And you know the only answer I could give them if I was honest? I don't know. I don' t know. My life was unmanageable. Alcohol was telling me when to drink. I wasn't choosing anymore. My choice was long gone. It's like an old country man I met at Mashville, North Carolina one time had on overalls and a cat hat. He said, I can tell you about unmanagability. I said, what is it? He said it's my truck. I said, what's your truck got to do with unmanageability? And she said, it won't go by a liquor store without turning in. And I don't even have to touch the wheel. We give out white poker chips in North Carolina when you surrender. I could towel this floor with them. I met some mean people in Alcoholics Anonymous. They were ugly. They were profane. And they talked in circles. Didn't make a bit of sense, and they were all stupid. And they called them old-timers. And I hated them. There's one group I went to that was an old-timer named Bill Crumpler. I called him grumpy. I hated his guts. He'd wait for me to come to a meeting. He swears he didn't, but he did. And as soon as I'd come in the door, he'd drop his finger on me and say, how you doing, boy? Oh, God. I said, I'm fine. And he'd go to cussing and back me in the corner and tell me exactly how I was. That scared me. Boy, he says, you can't think your way into good living. You've got to live your way into good thinking. And I think to myself because I was scared to say it to him, shut up, you're stupid and you're ugly, you old bastard. And I love this when I'm studying and theology and Hebrew and Greek and philosophy, you know? Getting on up there with the real academes. And he says to me, how come you always run around looking for God? God ain't lost. I hated that man. He sat in the same chair every Tuesday night and said the same thing every Tuesday tonight. He'd rattle his chains and he'd pull his nose. He had an ugly nose. It looked like a pickle. He'd pull on it, you knows, and run his hand through his hair and rattle His chains, pull His nose, run His hands. say the same thing every Tuesday night. At discussion meetings, they always got to me last. And I'd say, Martin Buber said so-and-so. And Aristotle said so and so. And Plato said so und so in his dialogues. And he'd turn around with me and say, shut up, boy. I didn't like that. My intellect should have been treated with respect. He didn't seem to have a lick of respect for it, you know. Then they quit coming to me at all. Some good people tried to help me. Some good people. I decided once I was going to make 90 days if it'd kill me. And we'd give out a red poker chip down there for 90 days and I had one of them pasted on the 90th day. I was going to get that chip. And I'd gone through all the rest of the steps. You know how we go through the intellectuals. Yeah, that does. I changed the word here or there but this does it okay. Got to the 11th step found out the greatest meditators in the world wore orange bathrobes and crossed up their legs real funny and chanted and shaved all the hair off the head, you know. I said, I think I'll try that. Well, I'm too vain to shave the hair off my head. I couldn't find an orange bathrobe anywhere so I wore my old dirty blue drinking terrycloth drinking liquor bathrobe. Y'all probably had one, you now. And I'd broken my leg so many times driving into immovable objects in my automobile that my wife would have to help me get in the lotus position. And it hurt. and I'd sit there and say now I'm not putting down yoga I'm not it was just that there was an idiot trying to do it okay 89 days I stayed dry on the 90th day I rested I called grumpy one night. All the liquor was gone. Test pattern was off TV. That's when you need help, ain't it? It's about three o'clock in the morning. He said, boy, don't you ever call me again drunk. He says, matter of fact, don'T YOU EVER CALL ME AGAIN. If you want to get sober, you know where we meet. Don't call me to come get you. You can walk. And he said, frankly, I don't care if you ever get sober. I called him everything but a child of God. And I bless him tonight. And he's one of my heroes. And He never changed. Last time I saw Him, He was dying with bone cancer. I walked into His hospital room. I'd been sober 16 years and down came the finger and he said, boy you'll never make it. There was constancy about these people. You understand? Constancy. I came to honor about July 25th and I mean came to 1965 time. And I knew I couldn't drink, which I'd known for a long time. But somehow it never dawned on me I couldn'T quit. And that hit me. I can't drink and I can'T quit and the third idea was and I'm going to die. Now I'm a college professor by this time, about to lose my job. Okay. Can't quit drinking. Five years probation, two years on the chain gang hanging over my head. all I got to do is get caught drinking and I go out to the chain gangs. I couldn't quit drinking. I said, I'm going to die. Now, I am going to tell you this but understand it like I mean it. I knew AA wouldn't work because I had tried it. But I made a profit out of grumpy. I walked back to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I went late and I left early. I was so ashamed, I didn't think anybody wanted anything to do with me. And these people would gather around me and say, we're glad to see you. And I would think to myself, if you knew who I was, you wouldn't be glad to See Me. We need you here. If you knew what kind of person I was you wouldn' t need me anywhere. We love you. That shivered me to the bottom of my feet. They kept on saying these crazy things. And, you know, in those days we had what was called group sponsorship. they didn't say here's my number call me because they knew i'm an alcoholic alcoholics don't want to bother people no they got my number and i started getting six and eight calls a day from people i didn't even know be ready at 7 30 how you doing today why be ready at 730 you don't ask questions we'll be there in front of your house you get in the car and I went to a meeting every night the first two years I was sober and I didn't have a driver's license group sponsorship don't tell them to call you you call them I'd love to see it come back because I had no individual sponsor yet and I needed all the support I could get I was about to become a newborn baby and I needed a cradle and I need people to burp me and change my diapers and feed me in little bitty specks that I could take, you know. And they did it. And I got looking around and I saw this man in the group and he drove a Continental and I liked that. And he wore very expensive clothing and I like that. And he smoked illegal, you know, $50 Cuban cigars and I was like, I like things about that long, you know. And he'd walk around with it sticking straight up like a wand. He looked like Leopold Stokowski. But the thing I really liked about him and the thing that frightened me about him was his eyes. I say this day if you want to see a person's sobriety blossom, look at their eyes. God is so visible. And his eyes just gleamed. I couldn't look at him. I was afraid he would see me. And I saddled up to him one night and I said, my name's Tom and I don't want to die. Would you be my sponsor? And he turned on me, Charlie, and he threw down that finger. And he said, boy, I've heard about you. They tell me you're not just an alcoholic, they tell me your crazy. But we'll do it on one condition. And I said, what's that? He said, we'll do it my way. And I don't know but one way and it's in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. You willing to do that, son? And I said... Listen to this. Yes, sir. Please. You know what had happened to me? Without knowing it, I had surrendered. You can talk about surrender till the cows come home. If you don't take the directions your sponsor gives you, you ain't surrendered. Now, if I'd have known it, I'd Have told the whole world about it. Look at me. I've surrendered, you know, and lost the whole thing. But I didn't know it. God keeps stuff from you like that, you know? When you're arrogant as I am, I want everybody to know it and you ever notice how brilliant your sponsor seems until you ask him to be your sponsor and then he goes utterly stupid on you? Well, Harry went stupid on me immediately. He said, The first thing I want you to do is I want You to come to these meetings early and shake everybody's hand and ask them how they're doing. I said, I don't want to come to meetings early. I don' t want to shake their hands. I don''t care how they''re doing. And why do I have to do that? And he said, Boy, you don'''t ask me why. You do what I tell you to do. Now in the days of treatment centers, you know, we have counselors. And we sometimes confuse counselors and sponsors. They ain''' the same. I have a master's degree in counseling. If I told you to go and do something like that, I'd say, How does that make you feel? my sponsor didn't give a happy shit about how it made me feel he kept telling me whether it's raining or shining whether you're feeling good or you're feelin' bad there's certain things you gotta do in this program or you will not stay sober and he did care about my feelings deeply he cared about my feeling as he showed me many times many times I did what he told me I didn't miss anybody as I went around the room looking at the floor and mumbling. I knew he'd see me and embarrass me. Gradually, my eye level came up and I was seeing some ankles and I saw some shins. Saw some knees, some hips. Wish I hadn't seen those hips. That started being a problem. And then after a while I was looking them in the eye and I wasn't glad to see them and I knew that they were glad to say me too. and I've got this feeling all over me. Damn, I belong here. This is home. This is family. This is real spiritual family. I didn't think all this. I just, you know, got that feeling, you know? And I started crying. I cried for a year. Every time he'd ask me to do something, I'd cry. Come up and read the preamble. I started staying sober. When I picked up my red zip, for three months you'd have thought I'd been sober 30 years. Not three months. The place went wild. When I was sober six months, got a yellow token they called grumpy. And he said, ain't no way he's been sober six month. I got pneumonia, on you, but I want to come down here and see this. Then there was a year and I had my speech all made up, man. Oh Lord, man, it was a beauty. Oh, I'm telling you. And I got up there and got my speech out and opened it up and started bawling and couldn't quit. Just cried like a baby, you know? And they kept counting. See, this is God's protection plan. They counted up to 25 years, and I had the same anniversary date as this quiet little old gray-haired man that I'd never paid much attention to before, you know? Only he was 24 years ahead of me, and he picked up a 25-year chip that night, and we became just like that. I started calling him Pidge I called him my pigeon I said if you keep on doing what I tell you Pidge you'll be okay he got sober up in the East Cleveland Clinic I mean way back in the old days been sober long in God and he'd take that stuff go over to his house and his wife would give us milk and cookies Dick you want some milk and cookies some Al-Anon said something to her about it one night I said, you baby these guys too much. She said, listen woman, this is my house. I'll treat these boys exactly like I want to. And that was the end of that. And we got our milk and cookies. And I learned from this man. I learned simplicity from this guy. This man, his name was Wilson Booty. He's dead now, but he's not dead. You know? I could go to him just torn to pieces and sit down with him and he smoked a pipe and he'd light that pipe and I'd go I mean God was in him God was all around him you know what I mean and he didn't know it isn't that funny about people who are like that they don't know he honored me one day Dick we spent about seven hours together He told me his whole life story. That was an honor to me. I began to learn some things. I began to learn that sanity was the ability to recognize what's good for you and do it, and what's not good for You and not do it. I hadn't had any of that. Even when I could recognize what was not good for me, I couldn't not do it. You know what I mean? Because I didn't have the power. I began to understand some things. I began to understand that love is more than a feeling. Feelings come and feelings go. But the love that we're talking about in this program is not that kind of love. In our society, we talk about the kind of love which is called eros. Some enchanted evening, you see that woman across a crowded room when you're sure she needs some spiritual growth. And six weeks later, you look at her when you wake up in the morning and say, who in the hell is that? It's a combination of hormones and emotions. And then there's agape love. And that is responsible behavior toward other human beings based on care, respect, and concern for them and acceptance of them just like they are whether you like them worth a damn. AA taught me that. My daddy, you know, he died with lung cancer. That's ugly. He suffered horribly. I prayed for him to die. i sat with him around the clock my mom and i took turns couldn't afford private nurse the day before he died he turned over to me and he said son am i going to die and i said yes sir let me tell you something about his daddy when i was 18 years old the judge had given me a choice either go to jail or go to the military and you know i got patriotic in a hurry and he took me down to the bus to go to United States Air Force and while he was telling me how much he loved me this is my dad he had his hand on my butt pushing me on that bus he wanted me out of his life I was driving him and mom crazy in the morning before he died and he says am I going to die son and I said yes sir the doctor says so and he said when and I say he said real soon and I says does that scare you now my dad's not a member of AA he's a member of the spiritual club he knew some things he had bonded with an old timer and AA just like that and he looked at me and he said Tommy I want to tell you something I love you he said you're one of the finest men I've ever known in my life my son gets up one night to introduce me to talk at a meeting and he says speaker tonight is is the finest man I know. He's my hero. He's my father. Eight years before then, he wouldn't even speak to me. Gifts. You know? Gifts i'm not going to go into it in detail but there's been a lot of death and sickness and stuff in my life in the last 10 years you know a mom a wife a daughter close friends in aa i've been sick seemed like just one thing after another and I've, you know, yelled at God and I'm screamed and I wanted to die but you know what? I never thought about taking a drink not once see, I think the one thing that this program gives us for sure is sanity and I think everything else is icing on the cake I don't know how long I talked, I don' t care I got a little more. A friend of mine named Eddie Kilburn up in South Carolina, he writes music for people. And he wrote a song one time, and I want to share it with you as if it were a dialogue between my oldest daughter who died in 97 of alcoholism, my son, my youngest daughter, and my mom. And my oldest daughter says to me dad why aren't you famous i said christy i think i am because all the people you see here tonight came out here to give me a hand but their applause isn't what really matters it's what i can feel from their hearts and if tonight i made believers of some who have lost them or made friends with a few who were scared or if there's another new believer who came here a critic and i told him that somebody cared, then Christy, I always feel famous. Though I'm not seen on TV, I get all the attention my ego can handle doing this live and for free. You see, I do it live and for free." My youngest daughter says, "'But Dad, why are you lonely?' I said, "'Francis, I guess I am because there are a few people that I miss tonight who are not here to give me a hand. But you know, in some ways they're closer than the people out on the front row if i'm quiet i can hear grumpy's heart beating rhythm see bob white driving his car and there are preachers and poets that i never met like bill wilson who hasn't gone far so i'm alone but i'm not really lonely i just got a group you can't see they give me all the companionship my faith can handle doing this talking with me because you see they do this talking with me and my son says well dad i think you're crazy and i said son that's what keeps me sane i was born with a strange sense of humor to go with a strong sense of pain and i found that there's nothing so serious that it can't hold its own in the joke so i might smile a little about people suffering and laugh about losing my hat make people think i give talks without answers because i tease them and hide where they're at but I also love things that are simple and a smile is the last thing you'll see on the face of this crazy old outlaw laughing out loud because I'm me I laugh like this because I am free and then my mama but Tommy do you love Jesus well mother doesn't it show well I've been listening to you for an hour and frankly I got to say no because if you did, you'd be famous. Big concerts and Christian TV. You'd be so well known you'd never get lonely. You'd never go crazy or weird but you've got to give up making talks without answers and you ought to shave off that old beard. I said, Well, I love you too, Mother but you sure found it different than me. You see, I do my best and I do it like Jesus because He did it live and for free. Thank you very much.