The Delusion That He Was a High-Bottom Drunk – Tom S.

I will say something. My first time I've ever been to a AA weekend was about a month ago today and I went because they say I need to go. I didn't really believe I was going to find anything interesting, but they told me I had to be willing to go so I went and it was a great day or two in Callaway And I was able to hear Tom, and I was thrilled that we had got him to come here. So I just want to say I find it very interesting, and we're proud to have you here, and we can't wait to hear your message. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're a very kind person. And thank you, Evan, for sharing. You were such a bad drunk, you're going to make me look good. everybody got a roll well good to see you I'm Tom Ivester an alcoholic and Warren I am also a member of the primary purpose group and you've been missing a lot buddy I haven't seen you for the longest course mine's in Southern Pines North Carolina it's great to be here and good to see all of you glad to see you get out of the cold especially me I thought I was in New Jersey or somewhere laughter well I want to do what we do and I do thank you very much for being here, thank you Very Much for having this Saturday night meeting for my money, the open speaker meeting is the purest form of AA meeting because it's where we get down and dirty and share what we were like what happened, what we're like now. And so I like that because that's what we do. We identify. We don't teach each other and intellectualize. We identify with where we were broken and healed and that brings hope and that's why we're here. That's what it's about. Also like Saturday night, particularly like Saturday night open speaker meetings because early in recovery there may not be anybody like me but I couldn't afford any kind of social life. Couldn't take any date out for dinner unless she wanted me to cook it because there wouldn't be any dinner. So the Saturday night open speaker meeting is a marvelous place for couples, for families that to get into a safe area that's cheap too it doesn't cost much at all. In fact you can stiff, not only stiff the plate, you can unload it if you want to. So it's just a real pleasure to be here And what I want to do is just what I was talking about. I wantto share with you aboutwhat I was like, what happened, and what I'm like now. I don't know if I've particularly planned it, but I've contributed to an image that I'm a low-bottom drunk. I'm not really. I'm really not a pit bull. I'ma French poodle in disguise. Guys, I'm a, I am a, let me tell you why I finally have just faced up the fact that I'm a high-bottom drunk. Yeah, I'M a guy who, as we said in our workshop today, I' m a home group person. I' M somebody who truly believes in home groups and I was always that, also that way as a drinker. I always had a home bar. And the way I drank and what I did when I drank, I needed somebody to look after me when I fell out and all this kind of stuff. I think one of the few moments of pure serendipity I ever had was in a place. I think I worked there sometimes. I don't know if they ever paid me because I stole enough anyway. but I worked in this bar and I normally didn't sit in benches but for some reason one night I was sitting in a bench I guess and when I get drunk best I remember I get slick you know what I mean I had a policeman tell me one time he said I swear to God you're the easiest man to rest I've ever seen but the hardest one I've never seen to pick up when I pick you up you're like a ferret You know, you slide out. And so I just get slick. And so one night, I guess I was drinking at that bar and just decided to take a nap and slid under the table of the booth. And the time came, they went home. I woke up about 3 o'clock in the morning. And oh, I guessed maybe for two or three seconds, I felt sheer panic because I saw what had happened. And I said, oh my God, yeah, I'm locked in a bar. And then the light bulb went off. Oh, man, I am home, home, homes. You never know what drunks are thinking about when they sit at a bar and look at themselves in the mirror and look out at an array of stuff. I'd often wondered what it would be like to start at one end of the bar and just worked my way down to the... I don't know how far it got. But the next morning they found me laying in the fetal position on a shuffleboard. I never knew what they were for. All they did was get drunk at one end, drunk at the other, and just slide something back and forth. Anyway, that's where I was when they found us the next day. The next morning, demonstrating my high-bottom tendencies. My home bar, when I first started drinking, It was long before it was legal, but nobody cared. My home bar had two places that I was pretty well habituated to. One of them was called the Spanish Garden. Where I lived, I lived in a dry county, but fortuitously there was a bridge that went across the river to a wet county. And so when party time came, it was across the River. And the first place over there was called a Spanish Garden, wasn't a Spaniard within a thousand miles I don't know why they call it they got to name it something and they would they said it was a dance it wasn't it wasn' t a dance I guarantee you that what they'd do get people with guitars make a lot of noise and then it was like human bumper cars people get out there run into each other and all this stuff and then when the band just wore down they'd have a break like we do but there we'd go outside in the parking lot and fight. And then whenever they'd get through fighting but they'd strike up the band and quit fighting to go back in in bumper cars and more. Well, I never did. Now that was a genteel crowd. I mean it was a real high bottom bunch. One night I came in over there and I'd had a little bit of a mishap. Somebody put a brick wall right in the middle of a road I drove on a lot, and well, I didn't know about it, so I T-boned that wall, and the wall won. I got pretty well banged up, but that didn't stop me. I had to go dance on crutches, and so I go over to the distinguished environment, and now when you go out to fight, you want to find somebody you think you can take, and And so some guy saw me coming in on crutches, and he said, that's mine right there. This dude comes over here and starts trying to dupe me out, and I'm on crutches with a cast from my ankle up here. And, well, he was doing pretty good, but I took my crutch and tried to hit him and missed and threw my crotch in the middle of the highway. Well, that bunch of humanitarians stood there watching me and watching the crutch. Nobody made a move. So they watched me crawl like a seal out there to the highway getting my crutch, went back in, guy wanted some more of me. I tried. Well, anyway, that was one of them. That was a very, very nice place. That was not finishing school for me. That was starting school. That's where I started with my high-bottom career. And my real home bar was just up the street at a place. The name of it was Rats. R-A-T-S. That big sign on the highway, Rats, nobody ever asked why you called it that. I mean, it just fit. You got it on there. Called the guy that owned it Rat. He looked like a rat. He'd go long pointy nose and beady eyes. Rats was the reason you could drink there. He didn't care if you were 12 years old. reason you could drink there. Nobody ever raided the place. I mean, I never saw a policeman there in my life. And if there was a crime a human committed, it was committed there. But they didn't raid that because I guess they figured being there was as bad as jail. If not worse, they'd just leave you. Stay in there and kill each other. And Rats was a marvelous place. You'd go in there at 10 o'clock in the morning to 10 o'. At night, see the same thing. Be somebody out there stumbling around trying to dance to the jukebox by themselves. Somebody trying to shoot pool, somebody else trying to sleep on the pool table. Somebody fighting over here, somebody trying to make out in a booth over there. Dogs running through barking. God, what a wonderful place here. Rats. Nobody ever got thrown out of rats in history. Worst thing that happened there is get thrown into rats. And so that was where I got cultivated into refined drinking, was into those places. And I wasn't even old enough to drive, but I was old enough to do that. And then I started doing some serious drinking when I was 16. And I was grown up then and just really, really went at it hard. And I would just the guy that I didn't like. Frankly, everybody you ever hear talk today, I didn' t like who I was, where I was. I didn't like how it felt. I didn' t like anything about it. I was, if y'all won't tell anybody, I'll tell you the truth. I was born in Oconee County, South Carolina. That's just a little... You're out. You're Out. Ah, go man. Wonderful. I was born there during the Depression on a cotton farm. That's what they legitimately did. My grandfather had a still and made liquor, what he mainly did. But that's where I was born. And I was brought up in the cotton fields of Oconee County. I tell you what, I learned by the time I was five years old that that was not going to be my profession, picking cotton. That's good God. That's an awful thing. And so we wised up and moved to North Carolina. I went from cotton fields to cotton mills. And we moved in and became a part of the cotton mill culture. And my mother had, my dad left when I was two years old. I never saw him, but my mother married a series of people that, well, anyway, I'm not even going to, well I'll just tell you about one of them. The first one she married really scared me. But I said Alvin, I thought somebody said Albin. The first one she married, she brought this thing home. And I don't mean to demean vertically impaired people, but he was a runt. I mean, he was just a little... My mother was a big woman and a tough woman. Now, she didn't argue. She'd fight. And so she brought this little old thing home and I had a sister who at that time was seven years older than me. We're now twins. I don't know how she managed that. It's poor math, I think. Anyway, she was old enough when that thing came. She called it Alvin. And I had to call it Daddy. And every time I called that sucker Daddy, I'd just burn. I swore if I ever got big enough, I was going to beat him like a drum. And then I went off to the Army and came back. I was too big. You can't be whooping a little thing like that. I wanted to. I wanted you to. And she finally, anyway, he finally died. Nicest thing he ever did, I think. Didn't plan it. They wouldn't have planned it. Best thing that happened, they buried him in South Carolina, right next to Old Corbin County. I go by there every once in a while just to make sure he hadn't clawed out like a vampire. Now, to the untrained eye, that would look like a resentment fuse. Well, maybe it is, but I ain't going to fix it. I'll tell you that. I'm going to hang on to that one for a while. So the point of all that is that I didn't like that. I mean, I didn'T like anything about it, who I was, where I was. What I was doing, nothing. And I wanted out of Dodge. So when I turned 16, I did coerce. I blackmailed my mother to lie about my age so I could go to the military. I went in the military, got off to a good start, according to them. I knew better, but they thought I was wonderful for a little while. I liked it for about 30 minutes, and then I met the first guy in charge, and that sucker talked to me like a dog. I'd never seen him before. And we don't do that. We might cut you a little bit in the parking lot, but you don't talk to people about their mother and stuff like that. He did, so I didn't like it. And so I went through training in South Carolina. Seemed like everything bad ever happened to me in South Carolina. It's where I was born, it's where God met Alvin, it's when I went in the military, it's Where I Went When They Threw Me Out, and it's were I was married the first time to a woman from South Carolina We divorced in South Carolina It's were I married the second time to a woman from south carolina I divorced her in Illinois first place I ever went to jail anyway it was just not a happy place for me so here I am in Fort Jackson walking around none of it made sense to me whatsoever we weren't shooting at anybody carried a gun all the time but most times didn't have bullets yet but you're walking around in deep sand in South Carolina 140 degrees it felt like wearing an iron hat like something's going to fall on you sucker. A big old thing hanging on my back, a pack. I never knew what was in it. Didn't care what was there. I just wanted to get rid of the sucker. And so I was not a real happy camper. I was aspiring to any military career at all. I had to be one of the biggest goof-ups I have ever seen in my life. I'd have made Gomer Pyle look like a war hero. I was bad, but I wasn't nearly as bad as military evaluation because when I finished, if there's any veterans here, I apologize for anything that sounds like an implied insult. But military evaluations are dubious at best. When I finished basic training, there were 1,000 of us finished up at the same time. And to celebrate, what to do is march you out in the middle of a big parking lot, 110 degrees. and stand there while somebody makes a long speech. And in the end of it, they named five soldiers. He talked about military evaluations. Five soldiers who were outstanding in their training and were people who had a lot of potential for leadership. And these folks were going to be singled out to go through leadership training into OCS and become officers and gentlemen. So they called off the five names. Mine was one of them. That's still the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard in my life. They called my name, I said, huh? People around me said, uh-huh. That was goofy. I mean, just flat goofy. And shortly they saw, as soon as I got a little bit of running room, they saw how goofy it was. So I spent my military career up in, rather than going to officer's training in Honolulu, I wound up in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. And it's a wonderful place. No excuse for being there. All it is is a series of big rocks out in the Bering Sea where it's not fit for habitation. But anyway, that's where I was. I never knew what my job was. They gave me a gun, and they told me where to stand, and I'm standing there, freezing, slammed to death in the middle of the Bering Sea. Didn't have the decency to snow like it does in human parts of the world. It snowed sideways, you know, and it'd just come at you in about an 80-mile-an-hour wind. And I was really happy standing there with that gun. Supposed to shoot something. The only thing I ever saw even close to shooting was a walrus. Who's going to shoot a walgus, for God's sake? And so, anyway, I was not happy at all. And I resolved that like every other problem I ever had in my life. I drank it to death, man, and I just drank like a fish. I don't think I necessarily drank my way into alcoholism. I believe that, you know, it was read here tonight, what Dick read. I believe very much that alcoholism is an illness. It's a two-part illness. Our book says the problem is primarily in the mind, but there's very definitely a physical component because just the mind would be problem drinking. Alcoholism is something that has a different dimension, a physical dimension. So I was a guy that I think just because of that tangled up history that I developed and blossomed those defects of character that make drinking such an imperative thing in life. And so there's no question of why I drank. My God, yeah, I was a miserable dude. Booze at least numbed the pain and made me feel better, made it possible for me to integrate and act like I was at home with other people. So I was just a guy that saw his problems drinking. But something happened to me. Best I can tell, in hindsight, best I can say is somewhere when I was about 18 years old, on ADAC out in those islands the best I can tell I did exactly what Dick read he said we alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking that is the most succinct clearest definition of alcoholism that I have ever heard I've listened to learned lectures and read book after book I've never heard anything it more clearly gets to the heart of the matter than that simple little sentence, we alcoholics. I'm a man who lost the ability to control my drinking. If I hadn't lost theability to controlmy drinking, I'd be doing it tonight because, man, that is the cheapest relief I ever had in my life and I could get a quart of Pop Skull and, man... I'd on the illusion I always think I'm in Hawaii and so, good God, I'd have been stupid not to drink but what happened a guy like me, as important as he was I lost the ability and mine became just like every case of alcoholism I've ever heard anything about that if I took a drink I could not predict what I would do couldn't predict how much I would drink where, what, with whom and what I Would Do and so my life just became a continuing kind of saga of just one goof after another one goof efter another screwing up everything I was a guy that, somebody told me one time, only one guy, but one guy told me one time that I had an extraordinary amount of potential. I never forgot that. I could just hear it in my sleep. Man, you've got a lot of potential, doesn't he? And I had hundreds of people say, man, you're a scumbag. You ain't hitting on nothing. But I remember the one guy. But anyway, I was a guy that I had a tremendous number of opportunities. I mean, I could be sober a few days and look like a world-beater. I had lot of snapback, and I could really, really look good. It was impressive to people. I go looking for a job, people offer me a better job than I'm looking for. And, of course, I had remarkable propensity to take a drink at exactly the wrong time. and I don't care how good the opportunity is one drink and it's history and that was my life just a lot of things that could have had happy endings but that fatal flaw that if I take a drink I'm not like other people it triggers something in me called craving the good news about alcoholism that obsession of the mind the mental part is something that we have to sort of keep at bay for the rest of our lives and there not only can but has for me, there have been times when I have been absolutely overwhelmed with an obsession to drink after several years of sobriety so obsession is not something that just goes away magically craving on the other hand will never happen to me again because it only happens if I take a drink and it triggers the phenomenon of craving in a guy like me And that will never bother me unless I have a drink. And so that was what happened at 18 in Whittier. And so I had banged around a little more, and then finally they got tired of messing with me. Well, they'd been tired of messin' with me, that's why they sent me out there. I mean, my God, who am I going to aggravate out there? The walrus? And so they were more than sick of me. And it was just one thing right after this, trouble after trouble. not a lot of heavy duty crime or anything I wanted to but you've got to watch me on this time yeah but I've got a long way to go man I have just started drinking well that's alright I talk slow now we'll quit at quitting time I don't care if I'm mid sentence because they're going to pull the plug on me I already told me that But I'll just tell you one little thing. I know I had criminal intent, but I wasn't able to execute it very often. But I was stationed in one place in Alaska that was, like everything, was isolated. And there was only one vehicle in the base that was for passengers. And that belonged to the base commander. And it's the only one that was a passenger vehicle. Now, I'm not sure what happened. But the military police told me what they thought happened. And they were making their rounds one night, and they saw vapor coming out of a snowbank. Well, there are not many hot springs in Alaska, I tell you. And so they thought that was a little peculiar. So they stopped and looked and dug out the snow. And here's yours truly sitting there driving the Jeep. and they didn't know where to go, you know. Yet it was jail. They took me out. It was so ludicrous. I mean, my God, I'm driving, I'm stealing a car and the only place to drive is a circle about as big as this building. What are you going to do? I mean it would have looked ridiculous if they charged me with a crime of vehicle. Would have stolen it but there was nowhere to take it. So, I guess the illegal parking is what put me in there. But anyway, you know, I had good intent, but the execution was lousy. And so just that kind of ridiculous stuff, you Know, just goofy stuff that I could give you thousands of. But they sent me back to the States eventually. And so they wound up dealing with me a little bit more. They were well-intended people. I remember some of those folks, and they were well-intended. They would say, now back then, there was no such thing as a capturing program in the military. Yeah, now today, thank God, there's dignified treatment for dealing with people who have that problem. Sorry about that. It's not hiney flu, it's just bronchial. So don't hesitate to kiss me. Anyway, they just didn't have any of that kind of stuff. And so they would tell me that I ought to stop drinking. But, you know, thank God we do have the resources for that now. So they finally brought me up before a board of officers and were going to review and decide what they're going to do with me. And it was a foregone conclusion that I was not going to make a real soldier of the year thing. And so they went over and they were kind-hearted people. They didn't want to do anything dastardly, but they didn't have a choice. What are you going to do with an idiot like this? And so we went over their stuff. We went over the history. They knew it better than me. And they told me stuff. I said, geez, I'm sorry I missed that. That would have been fun. And they ran it all down to me, and then they told me that they were going to have to kick me out. They used that term. They had some fancy term for it. It meant the same thing. And so I was – they gave me – read a piece of paper to me and he gave it to me. He said, undesirable discharge, unfit for military service, dash alcoholism. Twenty years old. you know about how much impact that had none absolutely none no and so i stepped out of there did exactly the same thing i was drunk on the floor of the train when i pulled into charlotte and so it just was the same old thing all i was doing is relocated and i'm going to i'm going to try to frame if i can i'm it's hard to do this but i'm gonna try to refrain i'm not somebody, there's some element in there who don't like drunk-a-locks. I guarantee you I'm not in it. I love drunk-o-locks I love them man because that's where we connect for God's sakes we don't connect in academia we connect where we were broken and that's what Dr. Bob said about why he connected with Bill Bill told him about his experience. I loved drunk-alocks particularly mine I want to hear it all but I'm going to punish myself and see if I can frame it a little bit because it's really just a repetition of the same old thing and just working my way very, very obviously downhill somebody could have watched me perform for one day and diagnosed me, a wino could have diagnosed me I mean, my God, man I was like a runaway train so when I got out I had no real life plan or goals or anything like that. I'm just a guy drifting from one experience to another. And there's some bunch of guys, I don't even know why, but we got together and decided to go to Michigan. I think we heard everybody was rich and famous and all that. They hadn't been there lately, I'll tell you that. But anyway, we went. They left. I stayed. And I lived in a marvelous city in Michigan named Flint. Flint, Michigan. Roger Moore made a lot of money out of Flint. Flint was voted two times the worst city in the United States in which to live. And each time it was voted, I felt proud. I said, well man, at least I helped put them on the chart, you know, at the bottom. But we made it, guys. We're number one. I spoke at the Michigan convention a couple years ago, and I don't know, I was just in a raunchy mood. And the house was full of Detroit and Flint people, and that's where I lived was in Detroit and Flint. And so I just took off on them pretty bad, you know. I'm being gentle here. And I was watching the crowd, you Know, because I could tell where the Detroit delegation was and Flint, and I'd see them looking at others. And what they were saying was, who's going to kill this fucking? Well, I didn't say it. They did. Almost 53 years, that's the first time I have ever done that. Don't you tell anybody. This is an anonymous program. But who's gonna kill that gentleman first? That's what they're saying. And, man, when I got off that stage, they came at me in a swarm. You know, man what are you ragging our tongue? I said, you know Mayflower runs out of there, move. Anyway, that's where I was. And so I'm just a guy crashing through life, you Know. And the other place in the book that, in several places it's alluded to, but in the book there's a differentiation in describing the illness and they use the term delusion to describe the trajectory I was on because I'm carrying out a pattern of life and behavior that anybody could have seen was nothing but disaster ahead. Anybody could have see it. I didn't. Delusion means an inability inability to differentiate the true from the false. And I could take a look at something, and to any observer it would look absolutely bizarre. To me, it looked normal. The other thing, it talks about illusion and inability to see life as it is. And that in a very small nutshell tells me about what happened with that period when I was going through that stuff in the military and booted out, that anybody could have seen it and yet I kept thinking that there would be a happy end to this story. One of these days I'm going to get my feet on the ground and look out world and I'm moving right straight down the tube and so I went to work with General Motors they obviously didn't do background checks but I went to work and if anybody bought a 53 Buick, I'm sorry I didn't mean to do that And naturally, that didn't last in that. I got blackballed into the corporation and couldn't get a job anywhere at the General Motors plant. And then I wound up just sort of drifting down the food chain. And I'm not a criminal. I never have committed a deliberate crime in my life. I've never committed a predatory act in my wife. And I've just not geared that way. now I did live a way of life that would have seemed criminal to the untrained eye but it wasn't but if you live in a city like Flint you're either going to engage in criminality or you're going to get into pot one or the other you're not going to come out of there unscathed and so I wound up living a way of life that I swear to God I didn't even know existed I mean, you know, in North Carolina, we had ragtag junk going on. But here, this was almost a society where we just cannibalized each other. And there were only two types of people in there. Nobody just worked on a regular job and took care of business. Oh, there might have been a few, but they were hard to find. And it was basically a society of either rollies or rollers. and whoever was friskiest on a given night might be the roller and if the other guy felt better the next night he might be and you'd be the rollee but that's what it was that was the food chain that was the medium of exchange and we basically just sort of sort of trashed each other in that process I wasn't reared to do that kind of stuff but by the time I got there that delusion was so real in my life that that seemed normal It seemed normal. And it was as far from where I had started my life as you could possibly be. Well, I finally just gave up trying to work and just survived with that kind of survival kind of a behavior and wound up selling my blood five bucks a throw. That's what the going price was and that's what I got. And I'd have let them pump me dry if they hadn't had the means of monitoring folks like me. And so that's who I was. You can tell I was a real high-bottom drunk and just crashing. I knew that it was inevitable that I was going to come to no good end. I knewthat. I didn't have any romantic notions anymore that it's all going to end. I'll tell you the hell of alcoholism. I'll tell you all those things, a few of those things. And certainly that's characteristic. But the real hell of alcoholism, I was talking to somebody about it today, the hell of alcoholicism is not what happens on the outside. It's what happens in the inside. Because while all that frantic, antic behavior was going on, what I'm doing is dying on the inside and it wasn't part of the time where I lived. That's the hell of alcoholism. That's one reason I think that we can sit in a meeting, which I've done many, many times, sat at a table with people, any one of whom could have bought the town. I mean deep pockets people. And yet there's commonality. We couldn't have been more different in terms of where we fit into society. But we meet where alcoholism rules and that thing of totally just dying on the inside. Now, I can remember what it was like to be in my late teens and early 20s. I'd look at myself in the mirror and want to gag at what I saw. You're really on a roll, and that's the best you can do. And look at yourself and say, My God, fella, why don't you just hang it up? Everybody be better off. You're Really hitting the ball when it gets to that point. But that's world. That's the hell of alcoholism. It's what goes on quietly, desperately inside, not outside. and so I knew I had no illusions I knew that the end would come from me pretty quick for some strange reason I had selected 29 as about the age I thought I might make I was very confident it would probably be something like that I doubt it would have even gone that far had things happened differently but I was somebody that, you know, I finally wound up doing the kind of thing I was brought to a stop. The only time I ever stopped drinking was when I was brought to the stop. Either hospitalized with something broken or jail or in places they put you when they think your behavior is a little bizarre. That's the only way I ever stop. I never stopped because it was time to go to work or duty calls or anything like that. I stopped when I were stopped and so I would just bang along and I knew that there was danger ahead. I knew I was capable of anything But I was, like I said, I was never a malicious, ill-intended guy, you know, trying to hurt people. But one morning, many of you know. I've got a lot of friends in this group. Many of you are well aware. I was one of those guys who wound up doing what I know every person in this room has feared doing. If not personally, somebody you care about. And I wound up one morning in jail and flipped. No novelty there. That was a routine occurrence. And so I came up. I was at the point where I actually felt more comfortable when I woke up in jail because I knew I was in the right place. You know, I was someplace I wasn't supposed to be. Somebody put me there. And so, I came to and it was no big deal. Just another night in a hoose gown. So, I assumed I was sitting there for the same as always, either drunk or hustling or scuffling on the street or whatever. And when I was awake a little while, I knew the routine quite well. The jailer would usually come by at 10 o'clock, and he'd see if anybody wanted to try to negotiate bond or to get out somehow. He came by, so I called out to him, and we knew each other. I said, hey, guy, when can I get out? And he looked at me with just pure scathing scorn, really, and said, I hope never. I had no earthly idea what he was talking about, no earthly ideia. But I knew he was serious. He was not playing. He was quite serious. And he went on. And I was a little puzzled by it because it was not typical behavior. And so I went back into the tank where all the guys were at work that were not locked themselves. Went in, and one of the guys told me that the night before, some guy had been driving drunk down the main street of the city, Saginaw Street in Flint. So they'd been driving down the Main Street and had struck and killed two people who were trying to cross the street and that I had been arrested for the crime. I had no idea what he was talking about. But even the possibility of that was more than I could handle because I'm not somebody who's insensitive to human life and when I was greeted with even the possibility, I just simply could not accept the information. I just pushed it away. You know, mine's a strange thing. It won't accept more than it can handle. And that explains a lot of behavior to me. And so that was mine. I'd just refused to believe that. And then gradually accepted what seemed to be the truth that I'd done more damage than any alcoholic ever ought to be allowed to do. And my, I had no, I mean, I just collapsed. I was just done. My only thought was I just wanted to disappear. I didn't care What happened? I just wanted to disappear. And the only time I'd ever been in jail, I didn't try to get out. My family down in North Carolina, they never knew where I was anyway. But I wouldn't have even thought of calling them because I knew what they'd do. They'd come get me. And so I don't know. I'll never know who because I'm not going to try to find out. But a policeman there, I'm pretty confident a policeman saw the condition I was in. And I was just totally destroyed. And, you know, all I did was sit and would not interact with anybody. I just wanted to be gone. And so this policeman saw that. And I guess if they asked me if I did something, I'd say, yeah, you now, whatever. It wouldn't make any difference. And so they contacted my mother and sister, who were still down in North Carolina. And my family did. It's one reason I like family. This is a family illness and therefore a family program of recovery. And so my family did what families will do all too often. And so they made a trip to Michigan that they couldn't afford. Got an attorney that they couldn't afford to defend a guy that didn't even have any defense for himself and uh i didn't want out of jail i was ashamed to get out of jail i was a shame to look at anybody i was ashamed to be breathing for god's sakes getting out of gel would have been the furthest thing from my mind but i didn' t know how to say that i was so destroyed i didn''t know how to say that to anybody, including my family. And so they got the attorney and he did what the attorneys do. He examined the case and then made a case for my being released on bond. And I was released on bond to await trial on the 17th of July of 56, I believe it was. I knew I wouldn't drink. It had nothing to do with alcoholism. I didn't believe I was alcoholic, had nothing to do with that. It had to do with overwhelming guilt. I thought it would be impossible to take a drink after having done something as horrendous as that. Little did I understand that rather than being the most likely place, it was probably the most unlikely place had I known anything about alcoholism. And so I didn't drink the first day. I walked the streets all day, all night, until about noon the next day and then of course I started to drink. And from the 18th of July of 56 till the 19th of November, I drank literally like nobody I have ever seen. Now that's not an idle statement. You know, in the meeting today we were talking about 12-step works. I have worked physically hands-on with thousands of alcoholics. Not a few. Thousands of alcoholists. I've never worked with one like me. I held an alcoholic in my arms while he died on a 12-stepped call. he was not an alcoholic like me. He was still fighting and even as he died he was protesting that he wasn't as bad as us. I wasn't like that. I just had given in. I don't think there was any question I was trying to drink myself to death. Some people say they didn't do that because of fear that was not the case with me. I just didn't want to leave a family best I could analyze it I didn't wanna leave a family with another burden of inappropriate guilt of whether they could have done something. And so I guess I figured if I was just found dead of an overdose or whatever, that it would be at least a question. And so that's what happened. During that punch, I just stayed blind drunk as much as I possibly could. And then the 19th of November, I finished a bottle of gin that just had three or four inches in the bottle. Finished it and went off to court and knew it was a one-way trip. I had no defense. I had an attorney, but I had No Defense. And so when they did the trial, they put me on the stand. And I said what people, black guys, the only thing they can say. They'd ask me something and I'd say, I'm sorry, I don't know. I don' t know. And that's the fact, you know. As I listened to the testimony as if I was on the jury. And when I listened the testimony, I would have voted guilty just like they did. And so I was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, sentenced to a max of 15 years in the Michigan State Prison. And it was a strange kind of a reaction. I'd been in every kind of confinement, but always nuisance level. It was never serious, hard lockup type stuff. It was always county jail, pea farm, stock age, that kind of stuff, a ton of those. but never a serious kind of criminal confinement. But when that guy found me guilty and passed the sentence, I felt, I guess, a very human instinct of fear, just a natural instinct of feeling. But at the same time, the most real sense of relief I'd ever known because I knew it was done. It was over. It wouldn't be anymore. I'm not talking about happy days or light at the end of the tunnel. I'm talking about, it's what I've heard people describe who go through a near-death experience. When they think it's over, there's a period of peace and sometimes euphoria because it's all over. And that's what I experienced when I was, was just that it's done. It won't be anymore. Next day I would take an end to these Michigan's Maximum Custody Penitentiary at a place called Jackson that at that time was the largest walled institution in the entire world. And the day I was taken in there there were 6,300 and something guys locked up behind one wall. And they were my former associates from Flint and Detroit and all those places and I knew it wasn't going to be Disneyland because there's no way. And so I went in there. I never thought I'd ever come out of there alive, and honest to God, did not care. I knew if I came out, it would be toes up. And I'll tell you this, that I honestly believe that we had some interesting conversation today in our workshop about this whole business of the crush point where something happened. If it had been necessary for me to ask for help in that institution, I would never have done it. I would never have done It. I wouldn't have asked for a glass of water, never mind help. When you feel when you feel that much self-loathing excuse me, and shame and guilt, there's no way you're going to ask for something. And so I wouldn'T have done It. And what happened is amazing. This is a complex illness, but the solution is often so simple that what happened that started to put the wheels in motion, that culminated with my getting into real solid recovery was a guy an MSW guy interviewed me one day, did a typical social history. I'd had hundreds of them and I did that, I could do them asleep and got through and he made the same startling discovery that everybody that had ever done those things with me did He said, man you've had a lot of trouble with booze. And I said yeah I mean, my God, that's obvious to you. I've got a record at least three inches deep. And there's not a predatory crime in the entire deal. Everything in there is drunk and. Use your own imagination. If a human can do it, I have done it drunk and been caught for a lot of it. And so that's what my history was. So, I mean it didn't take a rocket scientist to say you've had a lot of trouble. There it is. And I said yeah. And then he said, he spoke a foreign language. He said, we have an A group here, and I think you ought to go. Now, this wasn't like we're doing now with mandating and putting choke leashes on people and all this kind of stuff. We hadn't gotten that refined yet. And he just said, I didn't know what he was talking about. I had never heard of anybody helping an alcoholic. The only therapy I ever had was a blackjack. Yeah, I'd had a lot of that, and it's very effective, but again, short term. But I'd never heard of it. Never heard of anybody, anything to do with alcoholics. And so he said, got an egg loop. I didn't say what is that. I didn'T care what it was. I was just almost like a guy, a comatose guy, almost. I just was not responsive. I was totally shut down. I didn' t communicate with anybody. I didn''t know how to do anybody or ask them where they were from. None of that. I didn ''t know who was in the cell on either side of me. It wasn''t I didn�t care. They just didn'' t exist. When you're totally isolated, that's the way the world looks. So that guy had told me that, and it wouldn't have been a thing. It was just conversation, social worker gobble. I wouldn't Have taken any action on that. I wouldn' t have known what to do. And then he sent me a little note a little while later and said, You can go to your first AA meeting. He didn' t say Groundhog Day, but that' s what it was. February 2nd of 57. And I didn' T want to go to AA. I'm a severely isolated guy, and the last thing in the world isolated people want to do is go yuck it up with somebody. And so I said, no, man, I'm not going to anything. And I'd learned that AA stood for Alcoholics Anonymous. That did not sound too jazzy to me. That's not something I'd want to say, yeah, let me end that. But he did, and I wandered over there just when they announced it. I didn't wander over. He looked like a guy on, what do you call it? Those old stuff that used to smell so bad and make you feel decent. That old, anyway, whatever it was. That stuff they used to give you before they invented all the modern stuff that make you kind of numb. Oh, no, not that bad. I quit before it got that bad! Whatever it was, it stunk like a skunk. I tell you, it was awful. But drunks would fight for it. And so I was about like that. Thorazine, that's what it is. They make you do the Thorazin shuffle. That's about how I walked over to that meeting. I had no idea what to expect. I thought it was going to be some kind of a religious hootenanny of some sort. It's the only thing I could imagine. And man, when I quit picking cotton, I quit organized religion. And I swore I'd never go back into one of the establishments ever. And that was almost a solemn vow. I didn't go back in to a church until I was 11 years sober. So I wasn't a confused young man. I was somebody who had adamantly reached a conclusion and took a stand on it. And so I walked in. They had an officer on the door, got my name off the shirt, Ivester, yes sir, sit down. I sat down, listened to my first meeting. Now I've got to hurry because she's getting ready. I got, I got to, I sat out and really didn't know what to do. First thing they did was pray. And that's my biggest fear. I said, yep, that's just what I thought. They were praying and I'm thinking they got me. And they'll be in here any minute now with snakes and shaking and stuff. And so I've got to steal for the trip. And then they read stuff. Good God, we read everything but the phone book. I mean, they read a lot of stuff. And that looked churchy to me. And then to introduce the speaker, he did not look churchy. He was a guy. I had never seen anybody. I mean, this guy, he didn't look bad if you were way in the back. But if you got close, man, he did not improve with proximity. That boy was a – he'd been a professional boxer and not a very good one, I don't believe. He was chopped up big time. And this guy told his story. I never heard an alcoholic tell his story, I'd heard them tell stories, but not their own. And so he's telling a story, and I thought, why on earth is he doing that for me? I mean, it made no sense to me. Yeah, here's a guy burying himself naked in front of 300 hairy-legged convicts. There's got to be something wrong with that. And I mean it would seem weird to me, I didn't identify with one syllable of anything he said. As different to me as anybody I've ever seen. I left more confused than I came in. Next week I was back. Nobody sent for me. Nobody would have missed me if I wasn't there or cared. Nobody would, including me. I'm just a sort of little object in space. You know, I'd go over there. I had an experience. And it finally dawned on me why I came back. You know we talk about AA being a program of attraction. That doesn't mean TV ads or billboards. That means how we present ourselves to people who come to us. and that's why I like to be a cheerful greeter everywhere I go I don't care whether it's my group or yours I'm going to be somebody that's going to be trying to add a positive energy to what's there because that's what attracts, that's What Attracted Me I couldn't have told anybody why I was back the next week, nobody would have cared anyway but there I was I never missed a single meeting stayed in there three and a half years, never missed one certainly not because I was a quick convert I didn't believe I was alcoholic, thought I was too young knew I was two smart because one guy told me I had a lot of potential. I truly didn't believe I was alcoholic. I didn't know anything about it, but it kept coming back. I'll tell you one of the reasons I like speaker meetings so much is I know what I'm trying to say to you, but I don't know what you're hearing. That's your business, not mine. And so when I sat in those meetings and listened to people tell their story, what it sounded like they were saying was that they were alcoholic because when they drank, they got in trouble. I thought, my God, that's what it is. I've had that all my life, and it's nothing new. Now, that certainly not a real fine definition of alcoholism, but the important thing, it was enough to keep me in my seat. And so I kept coming back. I never missed a meeting, but certainly not because I was a rapid convert. I truly didn't believe I was alcoholic. I thought I was too young when I first heard the notion that it was an illness or disease. I found that an embarrassing concept. You know, not something I could radiate with. It seemed to me, I said, what a wimpy thing. I mean, my God, it's not malaria for God's sake. What's a disease about getting drunk? I mean that's the way I thought. But it kept coming back. And then gradually, gradually, finally, it took me two years before I ever heard one speaker with whom I fully identified. And when I did he was as different from me as a man could be. from all appearances, but inside he was very much like me. A guy whose internal life didn't look anything like his external. And that's where I connected the first time. I was fortunate in that the group I went into was an excellent group of alcoholics anonymous. Had 300 members in there. That was the capacity and it stayed at that. It was 6,000 plus people. You're going to have a pretty good crowd. And so it was a popular place to be in. And so I'm just one face in that crowd, but it was an excellent group. And what I mean by group, it was a purposeful bunch. I don't mean we had 300 stormtroopers. Any group is going to have a solid core of real hard rock people. But we're in all stages of repair here tonight. You've got some, I might be the oldest rat in this barn. But everybody's not an old goat here. We've got people that are brand new. So we're not one thing in this gathering. We have people in all stages of repair. We've Got people still feeling around trying to figure out how to spell A-A. And so the beauty is we start where we are, you know. And so that kept me there. And that group, there's something about a group, There's a sensitivity in a group that knows there's a little radar to it. They can pick up on people who are either exceptionally needy or ready. I don't know what it is, but there's just sort of a sense you have of when to make a move. When do you pull somebody in? When do You try to shut them down? It's a sensitivity that happens in a Group. It doesn't happen in casual gatherings. It happens in Groups where folks understand and know each other and there's real ethic in place. And so that's one reason I'm a strong home group person because that's where I got introduced. And in that group, it's where back then we weren't too refined and there's some notion we used to do it better back then. Don't believe it. What I did was fumble my way through those steps and that literally fumbled my way though. I never heard of anybody taking anybody else through steps until I was in AA for a good while. I'd never heard of a big book discussion because we didn't have any. So we were pretty crude overall, not just in the penitentiary, in the world. And so I just kind of fumbled my way through, and I did the very best I could. I didn't Have a sponsor per se, but there was another inmate with whom I was a good friend, and I trusted that guy implicitly. He was a very knowledgeable guy, one of the wisest counselors I've ever known, And he wasn't a counselor at all. He was a guy that robbed service stations a lot. But when he quit robbing service stations and got in there, he became a fine, fine person with a lot of influence. And so I didn't call him sponsor. I called him friend. But he was helpful to me in sort of wading through some of that murky water. And what happened with me? I did those steps to the very best of my ability. I heard when I first got in here, one of the inmate leaders said He was pointing to the steps. You know how we hang them up on the curtain and think of the shape? He said, there are 200 words in those steps. And if you'll take the actions laid out in those footsteps as honestly as you know how, when you get through, you'll be a different cat. And it doesn't even matter what your motives are. I thought, come on, man. I come off the street, they'll tell me your motives don't count. Baloney. You can't be phony and get anywhere. But you know the guy told the truth. I did those steps as honestly as I knew how. When I got through, before I was halfway through, just like the book says, I had an absolutely transforming experience. I became a free man. There's never been a human, I don't believe, who hated a penitentiary as much as me. I hated every second that I lived there with a purple passion. but I became a free man in that environment first place I ever learned what real kindness and consideration is about where I learned dignity and integrity and loyalty and honesty learned it in that environment this is a powerful program this is not some rinky dink social club this is a powerful transforming experience and all I have to do is give myself to this simple program and it worked for me there as well as it has ever worked for me anywhere and powerfully so and so when the time came for me to leave I don't know if it was time or not but they did and it's time to go I was prepared to go the best way to deal with transition is to be a strong solid member of AA then transition is almost a no brainer and that was true for me they told me that you need to have a job to get out I had a job waiting My family got it for me a year before I was able to get out. Yeah, I'd heard people who – I learn a lot from losers. Yeah,I really do. Now, I know that's kind of a cold-blooded way of looking at it, but I guarantee you I'll still grab people that have had trouble and say, tell me about it. Tell me what happened because I don't want to do it. So I want to learn from people who have demonstrated for me what doesn't work. And so I'll eat that up in a heartbeat, and I did that there. I was a barber. It wasn't a very good one, but I was persistent. Cut a guy's ear off one time. Not all of it, just the top. He wouldn't let me put it back. But he wanted to fight, but I Was the only guy in there that was legally owner of a razor. So when he saw my equipment, he wasn't as mad as he thought he was. but anyway that's exactly what happened there was absolutely nothing in this program that I couldn't do inside a maximum custody penitentiary not one single thing nor one single reward that didn't come to me there and so I was prepared and so I had made a contact in North Carolina didn't know anybody down there everybody I knew was drunk But I found out. I found a way to find out how to get in touch with AA. Wrote a letter to a group. It was the biggest group, so I assumed it would have to be the best. And, see, that was in 1959 maybe that I wrote that letter. No, 50. Well, anyway, a long time ago. A long time before. And I still haven't gotten an answer. I know the Postal Service is a little slack sometimes, but good God, man. That's a long time, 50 years ago. It really pricked my balloon. I mean, I'm pumped up. The AAs walk on water, and they're all just absolutely heavenly characters. And so I really got disillusioned. I said, yeah, these guys that come in here, sure, they're carrying people. They're answering people like me. But they've got a bunch of stuffed shirts out there that don't want somebody like me And all I'd ask them in the letter, I didn't want anything. I just said, I'm from North Carolina. I'm locked up up here. I'm getting ready to get out. I want to know if it's okay if I come to your group. That's all. No answer meant eloquently no. We don't want you. Well, I wasn't thinking very well. So I talked with some of the guys in there and some of the guys that came in. And what they told me is that everything that flies the flag ain't necessarily an A group. You got some things that are just a gaggle of muttonheads that want to sit around and shoot the bull. And they're not groups. They're just a gathering of folk, no real leadership or whatever. And some groups quit meeting. They actually close up. And they move. And they fail to pay their box rent at the post office. There are a lot of things happening. Well, I wasn't thinking of that. I'm thinking about they don't want people like me in there. And so I said, shoot, I'm writing again. I wrote to this small group. This time I had a letter quicker than I thought the mail could run. And all I did, I said basically the same thing to this guy. But the letter he sent back immediately was absolutely priceless to me. I still got it after all these years. And he basically said in a full-page letter, he basically says, come on home. We want you in our group. we want you and we need you. Now, that's a heck of a message to a guy who thinks he's not going to be useful or acceptable to anybody and he'll say, we want You and we Need You. And boy, they did too because when I hit the ground, he moved out of town. He became a second sponsor, but he moved, not because I moved in, but he just moved out there and I had the marvelous experience of helping develop Alcoholics Anonymous us in a city. And God, what an experience. What an experience that, thank God I was well prepared because I either had, I was either going to fall or get there and so we did. And I had the extreme pleasure of watching a group come alive and real, have real meaning and purpose. When I left that town two years later, we had 60 members as opposed to one when I got there. And so, yeah, it's amazing what can happen. And I got, I'll wrap this up real quick because she's balling her fist already. I just want to share this because I know that everybody here is not on a roll. Yeah, I know sometimes when the early, particularly in the early days or even the first few years, the future can seem a little bleak and you just wonder if there's ever going to be any kind of doors open. I can't tell you that my case has any criteria but I'll just tell you very quickly that things happen to me and you believe what I'm telling you because it's absolutely true. From the day that I got into recovery and secured my first job, I never applied for a single job in the entire history of my recovery. And I've had some excellent, excellent jobs. I've never applied to one nor a promotion nor a transfer. First job I had was in a cotton mill and I didn't like it, but I loved it. And I kept it because I didn' t want to get in the fast lane too quick. And I swept the floor in a mill on the third shift for two years because I wanted to be solid. When I said I won' t go back, I meant it. I meant I'd do whatever it took. And so I stood there. And amazing things happened to me. Not because I'm some special guy, but because people, I guess could read that I meant what I said. And so the second week I was out, some guy said, go to the prison with us. Some guys around there were going over to a meeting at a prison. And he said, Go with us? I said, Are you insane? I just got out. I'm not going over there. They probably won't let me in and if they do, they probably won'T let me out. So no. And the guy said I saw it. Come we'll get you out. I said, well, you better hope I get out because if I don't, you better hope I don' t. So I went over there and here I am two weeks out of a maximum custody penitentiary and I'm going in posing as somebody carrying a message. That was unreal. Unreal. Two months later, I was the outside sponsor of that group in that prison. Could have been more affirmed if they'd elected me governor. What a tremendous affirmation, eh? To be able to go back and take a leadership position in carrying the message into an environment similar. Not as whole... Well, anyway, just not... Same kind of lock-up, doesn't matter where it is. You can lock up at the Betty Ford Center and it's prison for a while. So it doesn't mind what the box looks like. We've all been in them. And so I started doing that. And I'm going to tell you some stuff that happened to me in rapid fire, and you go to the bank on it because what I'm gonna tell you is absolutely true. Absolutely true. It sounds almost magical thinking, but I'm who I've just told you I am. I'm not some crown prince in hiding that just blossomed all at once. I'm somebody who found a brand new life in Alcoholics Anonymous and found a way to be of useful purpose. Learned a lot of stuff in my actions in our college anonymous. My parole guy, now obviously with a crime like mine when I had left the state of Michigan they put on my parole papers and letters literally that big this man's to never operate a motor vehicle and I accepted that as a fact of life and I had absolutely no quarrel. My parole guide came to me he'd seen how I operated came to him the first month I was out he started bringing me problem cases. And he's making $100,000 a month to fix them and he puts them on me. And I'm one of his cases, you know. And he'd bring them there and say, I don't know what to do with this fool, Tom. Work with him. And I'd drop him in my front yard. I'd say, thanks, boss. But anyway, I was out there for two months. And one day he was talking to me And he said, Tom, wouldn't it help you if you could drive? And I said, yes, sir, but I can't. You know, as if he didn't know. I mean, my God, he's got a record of my life. And he says, well, let me take a look at that. A little later, he called me and said, can you meet me at the Sears store uptown? That's where the license agency was. My sister drove me up there. Went in, and my guy was standing back there talking to a fellow. Went up to him, and he saw me. And then when he got a break, he introduced me to the licensed guy. Now this sounds weird. Probably illegal. But I'm going to tell you exactly what happened. The guy that I didn't know, the examiner turned to me and he shook hands with me and he said, Mr. Logan, my pro guy says that you might like to have your license. And I said, well, it would be helpful. And the guy handed me a license. Didn't even ask me if I knew how to drive. I mean, nothing. I was no test of any sort whatsoever. I mean you even asked me what a stop sign looked like. I mean nothing. Absolutely not a thing. Didn't even pay for it. Cost $4 back then. And I don't know who paid it. Somebody must have. But it can't be legal. There is no way that could possibly be legal but I've been driving ever since. It's an amazing thing. I honestly believe, had I been trying to con and manipulate that into happening, I believe I'd be walking today. What I've found, and I don't believe it, what I know is that, now hear what I'm saying, not when I want something to happen, but when God has work for me to do, the walls come down. And I don' t care what they are. just like that one. One state says he's to never operate a motor vehicle. And then I was DCM five months after I was out. I was a DCM in my part of the state and loved the job. I'd gotten two years from Michigan State over television when I was coming off speed. I had taken an awful lot of speed, not because of the drug addict. I just like long parties, you know. Speed worked well. But speed will mess up your wiring a lot. You just get weird. And so I couldn't sleep. And then I'd get tortured trying to sleep. And one day, you hear some brilliant stuff in the A. A guy came and spoke one day and he said, Some people have trouble sleeping early in recovery. And I'm just listening. I think he's got something wonderful to say. And he said, I've learned something. If you can't sleep, stay awake. I said, what kind of fool is this? I mean, my God, is that profound or what? And then I thought about it and it was profound. Because that's what you're going to do anyway. You might as well make it your plan, you know. So I finished two years from Michigan State University while I couldn't sleep. Thank you, Speed. Thank you very much. I don't want to see you anymore. But amazing, amazing stuff. And DCM, at Michigan State, I learned how to spell DCM. And so I got the job. And two years after I was out, I was sitting in my house one day. And I got a phone call from Michigan. It was an attorney. And he had introduced himself. He was the attorney representing the families of the two victims in the accident where they were killed. And he identified that. He said, the families have initiated a lawsuit. and I was not targeted in it but he said their belief is that what happened was not really your fault and I wouldn't know the difference one way or the other. It was not real it was not your fault that the young folks were trying to cross the street and jumped back to avoid a vehicle and jumped into yours and you know good and well any human being not just an alcoholic any human Being is going to grab at something like that and I thought my God it's just like the message from the governor when you're waiting for the chair but that lasted maybe two seconds because it didn't mitigate anything. It didn't change one iota. My irresponsibility was just as plain as day so it didn's change anything and so he said the families wanted me to call you they would like for you to come up and be a witness at the trial and I said well I'd be happy to do anything I can Of course, but I wouldn't be much help because I couldn't even testify at my own trial. They put me on stand and all I could say was that I'm sorry I don't know. And so I said it wouldn't be much, much help. He said, well they think it would help. I said, okay, I'll be there. And now you talk about I'll wrap up around this. I've got about 50 more years, butI'll wrap it up. A lot of times when I'm telling my story I don't tell about the resolution, about the amends. And, you know, when you're dealing with human life, that's no small task. And so that was something that haunted me every moment of every day. And so I was thinking hungrily about how to make amends or how to do something before I ever heard of AA. Just as a human being, I knew I needed to do Something. And so when I got in the program, started hearing about amends, man, I grabbed everything I heard. And even before I got out, I was able to take some actions. There is, thank God, there is such thing as indirect amends. And so I was unable to do some amends directly with the victims of the crime, the people who died. Was able to make some ammends and was able for me to take some actions that started to have some positive impact on that. It'll never go away, of course. But at least it's an effort. It's a gesture. And that's what the amends are about. But the real presenting problem was the families because they're still alive and they're living with the natural things you're going to feel after something like that happened. And so I said, yeah, I'll go. So I went back to Michigan, went into the same courtroom I was tried in. You talk about an eerie feeling to walk in there and I'm not sitting on the prisoner docket. I'm sitting over here on the other side but I recognize everything in there. And so sat down and we went through the deal And what the, it put me on a stand and it was exactly what I told him it would be. I'm sorry, I don't know because that's all I could say. And not again, just like at drive-by, I don' t know why this happened or how but I don''t think it's even legal again. But God somehow doesn't have the same rule book and so in the course of that trial, of that hearing, the judge called to recess and he pulled the attorneys to chambers. You know how they'll do. And so the bailiff, the guy in the uniform, came over and he took the two families down the hall. I thought it was a potty break, you know. So he's taking them down the hallway. So he went down and he came back, came up to me and gestured for me to come and go down the aisle. Now what happened is not supposed to happen. You don't mix victim and victimizer in the same room. You surely don't put them in the sameroom unattended. I mean, that just doesn't happen. That's ridiculous. But God doesn't always have the same rule book. And so we're going down the hall and I think he's going to show me where the John is and we come to a door. He steps over to it, opens it and gestures for me to come in. Well, I stepped in the door and it doesn't take long to see here were the two families. One in one corner, one in the other. They weren't together. And you know how it is when you get just total shock about something. It was just like a giant flashbulb went off. And I thought, oh my God. And my thought was not free at last. My thought was run. It was run and then I thought. I said, well, boy, it looks like your prayer has been answered because I've been praying for the willingness to make amends and the opportunity. And I said it looks likes your prayer is answered. So I went in and met with the first family And they were incredible people. I had no idea what they would say or do. But I'll never get over the shock that I felt. They welcomed me as if I were part of the family. They welcomed and were totally forgiving, totally loving, unbelievably so. And I thought it just can't be. But they were for real. And then I walked over to the other family and this was an Eastern European family that had migrated to the United States and they were a pretty stark family, a very patriarchal kind of family. And so they were in the family circle when I walked over and they knew I was coming. So I went over and the father stepped out of the circle, came over and met me and so I asked him we shook hands and I said can I speak with the family? He said no, we've talked, talk to me. I said okay, I will. And so I did that. And then I said what I wanted to say to him, and then he conveyed that to the rest of the family. And then he came back out of the circle, and he said, we appreciate your coming, but, I mean, I hadn't asked for anything other than just listen, but that doesn't matter. But he said we can't forgive. Please don't bother us again. Well, I think our book makes it very clear that we don't find our relief at somebody else's expense. So I have to accept that. And I still have to give it up. Who knows? That opportunity may come. If it does, I'll be ready. But that's what the amends are about. Sometimes you can't. We make amends wherever we can except when to do so will hurt them or somebody else. And so we don't have the right to do that. And that's where I stand with that. I do a tremendous amount of indirect amends, tremendous amount. And it's like I'm extremely, I'm the busiest man I've ever met. And I wouldn't want any different because a lot of what I do, certainly some of that zeal comes from the fact that my actions are at least a contribution where I can make up for some of the damage with maybe contributing to somebody else. I'd be amazed how many people I find around the world who have experienced what I've done and, quote, got away with it. Most tortured people I've ever met. So there are opportunities. And so that's been an enormously important thing, obviously, enormously important. and then I was I'll just synthesize this real quick like that I'm working in a cotton mill and I was working that mill when I went up there to that hearing I had no real aspirations I'd have kept that job forever I guess but I got a phone call one day from our state capital from the headquarters of the prison system and the guy on the phone I'd met once he had come by that visited that unit where I was sponsoring that aid group. And I think somebody told him just to come by and say hi to me or something. So he came in and just said, hi, how do you do? And all that. And it was him on the phone. And I remember the name. And he said, Mr. Ivester, now I'm a guy on parole from a maximum custody penitentiary in the state of Michigan. You've got to remember who that is. So he gets on the call and he says, Mr. Rivester, We were expanding the rehabilitation program in our prison system, and we were wondering if you would consider accepting a position. I just, human reaction, I said, do you know who you're talking to? He said, yes, we know. We've checked you out. Of course they have. And I said to him what I honestly believed. I said, my God, I'd rather do that than anything I could imagine. To myself, I said very realistically, ain't no way. The day of that phone call, there had never been an ex-con in the history of this planet. Nowhere on this planet an ex‑con hired as an official in a prison system. And I knew that. And I didn't know they weren't going to start with me. But ugly looks funny sometimes. it's amazing what people find beautiful yeah that but and nobody's ever told me why they call me i mean my god there are thousands of ex-cons all over the planet why they called me some rinky dink from in north carolina and nobody ever toldme i didn't ask you know they didn't ask me amazing thing i went to work as a professional employee in a prison system and it's an eerie feeling. One reason I'm a lover of A.A. traditions is that, now I did bother to go back and finish my education but that was after I was employed as a professional and but I'm a guy who's stepping into a place where man has never stood. Nobody has ever stepped in those steps before. I talked to a man who was the first guy to walk on the moon and I could relate to what he described because that's exactly how I felt. You know, how do you deal? Who do I talk with? Who can I share experience with? Nobody. And so this program God as I understand him and AA Traditions, hear me AA Tradition did as much for me as anything I've ever learned in management training or college or anywhere else because they're about how to fit things how to make things work together and tremendously important. I had no real aspiration I didn't even know they paid I didn' t ask them about salary yeah I'd have done it for nothing if I probably had to steal on the side or something but I didn'T know and didn' T care and so they paid me a little something I never just like I said and I'll repeat it this is God's truth I never one single time applied for one job including that one and everyone had followed because what I did and I think if there's any magic to it and I don't think there is I believe it's a spiritual program and when God's got work for me to do the walls do come down those came down and when he's got further work for you to do the next ones will come down and they did come down and now certainly I did my part what I didn't have a game plan I would have been happy with the first job I ever had but what I wanted to do was excellent work because the way I do my work tells you who I am. If I do sloppy work, that's who I am. And if I'm somebody who's negligent and uncaring, that's Who I Am. And you want to stay away from people who do that. And so what I did was every job I had, I treated it like it was the most important job in the world and gave it my very best. And it's amazing when people are looking for talent. They're looking for people to recruit. They don't look for people sitting in the coffee shop shooting the bull. They don't look for somebody that's sitting around griping about what the boss did or whatever. They look for people who are hitting the ball, who are doing the work, who carried it out, who got the interest of the organization at heart. He said, that's what I did. I didn't have any strategy in it. It's just what I Did. And my God, people started every once in a while, somebody would say, hey, would you be willing to try this? And then somebody else would try this. I went into supervision and then into management and I started directing some programs. And one day, I think the most startling day of my entire life, many of you know this, one day the head of our system, my office was in the same building with the head of our assistant, he called me and said, Tom, stop by the office. I've got something I'd like you to do for me. And that normally meant pinch hit. You know, go do a class for him at a college or civic club or something. That's normally what he wanted. So I went by and said hey boss, what is it? So he was busy just a minute, and he said, Tom, now bear in mind who I am. And he knows who I is. And he said、Tom, I would like for you to take over an institution as warden. And I'll guarantee you, I don't care how much speed you took. That is not what appears on the screen. I think I'll get out of here and run one of these suckers. No way. No way, that's so far away. from any of the even wishful thinking. And when I got up off the floor, I said, come on. I said man, I don't want to be the head screw. He said I don' t want you to be a head screw and he told me what he had in mind and it had just enough challenge and creativity. He knew who he was going to. You know, I'm somebody, if you want a manager, don't get me. If you want somebody to make it run straight and smooth and predictably, you better stay away from me because I'll have that sucker running backward tomorrow. You know I'm a designer or a developer. I'm somebody who likes to make stuff happen. And so he knew that. And, and so I said what do you want? And, you know, he described to me in just a few minutes his vision of what he would like to see happen. No plan whatsoever. You know, learn something about delegation. You pick the right guy for the program to do the job. Give him the support he needs and turn him loose. That's exactly what he did. And so, he took me. I mean a guy with my history took me drove me down to a prison and he introduced me to the staff. We rode down together, 50 miles away. And I went out to the parking lot, started to get in the car, and he drove off. I said, hey, wait a minute. Come back. Don't leave me down here with this. Anyway, that was it. And that led to a marvelous career, a 39-year career. And when I retired the next day, I became the chairman of AA Service and Corrections in North Carolina the day after I retired. My wife was so thrilled. She couldn't wait to congratulate me. Well, tell you what, it's been a heck of a trip. I appreciate you guys listening to me. And if there's anybody, if there'S any message in what I said, there's no brilliance in it. But if there' s one thing I hope you heard, there' S hope. Excuse me. I don't care what your situation is. what I've found and truly believe if I give my life to this simple program amazing things happen truly do all the best thanks